Bonne chance (1935) - film review

Linen maid Marie is surprised when one of her neighbours, an impoverished artist named Claude, wishes her "good luck" one day. When a client gives her a present, Marie is convinced that Claude’s salutation will indeed bring her good luck, so she goes and buys a lottery ticket. She immediately tells Claude that if she wins, she will share her winnings with him. Naturally, Marie wins the jackpot but Claude is reluctant to take his share. He agrees only when Marie accepts his proposal that they spend twelve days together, living the high life on Claude’s winnings. Although she is engaged to be married, Marie accepts, and they set off on the holiday of a lifetime...

Sacha Guitry’s second sound film, Bonne Chance, makes a stark contrast to his first, Pasteur (a sober biography of the life of Louis Pasteur), and is far more typical of his subsequent films.  This is a playful and sometimes irresistibly funny romantic comedy, very much in the style of Ernst Lubitsch’s early American films. The only things preventing it from being a French cinema classic are the lacklustre direction and some excruciating longueurs (one of which involves Guitry performing some rather pointless and seemingly interminable longhand calculations in what looks like an Open University outtake).   Guitry stars in the film along side his real-life wife, Jacqueline Delubac, who would feature in many of his later films.

Bonne Chance was released simultaneously with Pasteur, with the result that it was largely overshadowed by the latter film, which received far greater exposure and critical acclaim.  The film was remade by RKO in 1940 as Lucky Partners, directed by Lewis Milestone, an inferior work which lacks the charm and sparkling wit of the original.

© James Travers 2003

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