Archimède, le clochard (1959) - film review

Archimède is a tramp like no other.  Contrary to what you might expect, he enjoys the finer things in life – fine wine, a good meal and a cosy place to put down his head.  Whilst his current home – a room in an apartment block under development – has served him well during the summer, it will be uncomfortable during the cold winter ahead.  So he has two options: either he gets himself arrested so he can spend the winter months in jail, or he can go and rough it in the South of France.  He decides on the former option, mainly because the food is more to his palate.  However, smashing up a bar only earns him a week in prison.  His sentence served, he vows to return…

Jean Gabin is on fine comic form in this charming but easily forgettable comedy-drama.  Here he plays the third kind of role for which is best known.  After the romantic hero and the tough patriarch, Gabin’s third screen persona was that of a proud but loveable past-retirement outsider.  Whilst it rarely gave Gabin the opportunity to show his true talents as an actor, this kind of role, which featured in a number of comedies in the latter half of his career, was enormously popular with the French public.

In Archimède, le clochard, Gabin plays an eccentric tramp whose sole aim in life is live as comfortably as possible without money.  Gabin clearly relishes the part and gives one of his most ebullient comic performances.  The scene in which he gatecrashes a snob party and ends up dancing the Charleston is hilarious.  Gabin appears in the film with Darry Cowl, a very popular comic performer from the late 1950s onwards.

The film was directed by Gilles Grangier, who worked with Gabin on a dozen films, most of which were commercial successes.  Grangier is not what one might term a great innovator and his films were diametrically opposed to the spirit of the French New Wave.  However, his films had a mass appeal, usually on the strength of their leading actors (Gabin in particular), but also because they were generally well scripted – often with some fine tongue-in-cheek comic dialogue from the well-known screenwriter Michel Audiard).

© James Travers 2004

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