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1974-10-01
N/A
15 min
One-Eyed Men Are Kings [Les... borgnes sont rois] is a 1974 French short film directed by Michel Leroy and Edmond Séchan. In the film, a sad middle-aged man in Paris man and his dog go for a walk, which turns into an ordeal. The film won an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film.
An old gent returns home one afternoon to find, as usual, that his elderly mother is obsessing over her dog. It’s quite an aggressive little creature with huge great teeth that it readily brandishes in his direction forcing a ritual retreat - without any dinner! She summons him presently but that’s just to take it walkies and even that isn’t without it’s hassles as this mutt has an habit of peeing on people’s cars and tripping up blind folks! That gives him an idea… Next day, same old same old but he decides to don a pair of dark glasses and pretend he can’t see either. This proves really quite effective for a day or two as the erstwhile irritable public start to show him a little (misplaced) kindness and even the dog appears to calm down a bit… until it escapes! He now has to be escorted home trepidatiously hoping it’s there but will his new disguise just confuse his landlady and the attendant postman? It’s a simply and light-heartedly produced film, this, that shows us a man who cuts quite a sad, hen-pecked, figure who clearly isn’t as important at home as the dog! I wonder how many others homes this might resonate in?
