Toboggan, starring George Carpentier

Toboggan (1934)
Carpentier’s last feature film was a French production, made in 1934, after his definitive return to his homeland. Toboggan, written and directed by renowned filmmaker Henri Decoin, was by far the most interesting film in which Carpentier appeared. Decoin, it should be noted, was also the author of Quinze Rounds, a boxing novel that had won the Grand Prix de la litterature sportive in 1930. The novel is an interior monologue on the part of a boxer who is actually in the ring, fighting his last fight, a fight that, as we are informed in an introduction, will leave him having lost his mind. An interesting if not entirely successful literary exercise, Quinze Rounds demonstrates Decoin’s interest not only in boxing, but in the figure of the boxer at the end of his career, literally beaten down by the cumulative effect of thousands of punches. The figure of the past-his-prime boxer is also at the center of Toboggan.