Husband and wife conspire to kill the other one. Criterion Collection Year 1951 Video Release 2017 08 22 Studio Criterion Collection Genre Comedy MPAA Rating Not Rated Color Color Runtime 87 Animated Live Action Full Synopsis The writer, actor, and director Sacha Guitry emerged from the theater to become one of France's best known and most inventive filmmakers, and La poison marked his first collaboration with another titan of the screen, the incomparably expressive Michel Simon. With Guitry's witty dialogue and fleet pacing, the black comedy is the quintessential depiction of a marriage gone sour after thirty years together, a village gardener Simon and his wife Germaine Reuver find themselves contemplating how to do away with each other, with the former even planning how he'll negotiate his eventual criminal trial. Inspired by Guitry's own post World War II tangle with the law a wrongful charge of collaborationism La poison is a blithely caustic broadside against the French legal system and a society all too eager to capitalize on others' misfortunes. Director Sacha Guitry Cast Sacha Guitry; Michel Simon; Germaine Reuver; Jean Debucourt; Marcelle Arnold