This was only the second screenplay by Charles Spaak though director Jean Gremillon had turned out twenty or so Silent movies before teaming up with Spaak (they would repeat the exercise almost immediately with Dainah la metisse which no longer exists in a complete version). I'd love to be able to say that some of the elements of the great Spaak screenplays to come - Pepe Le Moko, La Grande Illusion, Le Ciel est a vous etc - are present here but in truth it's little more than a pedestrian melodrama not a million miles from Anna Christie though with the benefit of hindsight we can see a sort of symmetry at work; Spaak begins his story in a penal colony and in a little over a decade he would be imprisoned himself during the Occupation of Paris and as if that were not enough he has Lise shacking up at a Hotel de du Nord, one word away from the 1938 classic penned by two more of the big four French screenwriters, Jean Aurenche and Henri Jeannson. For anyone with an interest in and love of French cinema this is an invaluable insight into the earliest days of Sound but other than that it has little merit.
Review of La petite Lise
