Josette (1936) - film review

Albert Durandal’s dream is to be a singer.  When he loses his job as a modest bank clerk, he decides to make his dream a reality.  With Josette, a ten-year-old girl he has adopted whilst her mother, Jeanette, is in hospital, he tries to scrape a living as a street performer.  Albert’s luck changes for the better when he comes to the aid of an old man, Samuel, who collapsed in the street.  Unbeknown to Albert, the old man is a wealthy ex-banker, and he repays the kindness by getting the wannabe singer his first music hall job.  Albert’s career suddenly takes off and within a year he is a star.  However, Josette is upset that her guardian has fallen for the charms of a gold-digging singer, Viviane, who is already engaged to Lucien.   The young girl had been hoping that Albert would marry her mother when she had recovered from her illness.  Once again, the kind-hearted Samuel is on hand to make a young girl’s dream come true…

For all fans of the iconic film comedian Fernandel, Josette is a must-see film.  Not only does it feature the comic actor in one of his most sympathetic roles, where his talents as a singer and comedian are very much in evidence, but it is also the only film in which he appears alongside his daughter, Josette Contandin.   The film was directed by Christian-Jaque, a personal friend of Fernandel, who would later direct some great popular classics of French cinema, including L’Assassinat du Père Noël (1941) and Fanfan la Tulipe (1952).   Alternating between touching melodrama and light comedy, without so much as a whiff of sentimentality, the film possesses a charm and humanity that is noticeably absent in most of Fernandel’s pre-WWII films.

The elfin Josette (a kind of Zazie-Amélie hybrid) is a delight and shows star quality alongside her father, particularly in the sequence where the two sing a comedy duet together.  Fernandel was protective of his children and had to have his arm twisted quite severely by producer Jacques Calamy to agree to make a film with his daughter.  It is a shame that Josette Contandin did not follow in her father’s footsteps, for in this, her only film appearance, she showed great promise as a comic actress; she could conceivably have become the French equivalent of Shirley Temple.  The fact that this is a “one off” is something that makes the film all the more appealing and enjoyable.

© James Travers 2004

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