L’École des contribuables (1934) - film review

Gaston Valtier is an idler who is more than content to live the life of a man of leisure than work for his living, if only to avoid having to pay income tax.  His father-in-law, Émile Fromentel, is a government tax inspector who, naturally, regards Gaston’s lifestyle with utter contempt.  Not only does Gaston not keep his wife Juliette in the manner to which she deserves to get accustomed, but he is depriving the state of a valuable source of revenue, through the taxes he would pay if he had a well-paid job.   Gaston is shaken out of his happy state of indolence when he learns that his wife may be receiving amorous advances from another man.  How else can he account for the 15,000 franc cheque in her handbag?  Without a moment’s delay, Gaston creates his own company, which, to his father-in-law’s horror, will advise tax payers how to minimise their tax liability by exploiting every possible loophole in the system.  In no time at all, Gaston becomes a very wealthy man, but in doing so he risks losing the one thing he cherishes most, his wife...

Taxes and comedy are not the most obvious of bedfellows but, in their popular pre-WWII stage play L’École des contribuables, Georges Berr and Louis Verneuil showed that there is much mirth to be found even in the supposedly joke-free pasture of income tax returns and tax avoidance.  The 1930s film adaptation of their play is that rare thing: a snappy French comedy that is as funny and as relevant today as it was when it was first screened, perhaps not surprisingly given that taxes are, along with death and double-glazing salesmen, the one immutable fact of human existence.  Unlike most French film comedies of this era, which are by and large pretty anaemic museum pieces, this one still holds up remarkably well and will come as a surprisingly enjoyable find to any aficionado of 1930s French cinema.

The film was directed by René Guissart, who had had a pretty impressive career as a cinematographer before he began directing his own films in the early 1930s.  Guissart started his long career in the United States during WWI and worked on several notable films, including the silent version of Ben-Hur (1925) and Maurice Tourneur’s early near-masterpiece While Paris Sleeps (1923). Guissart’s subsequent work in France as a film director was less distinguished, although films like L’École des contribuables show that he had a natural flair for comedy and perhaps deserves to be better remembered than he is.

Georges Berr and Louis Verneuil’s witty play is extremely well-served in this screen adaptation by a well-formed ensemble of larger-than-life comedic performers.  Leading the pack is the magnificent Armand Bernard, one of the most popular comic actors of his day - a man who looks uncannily like a hybrid of Bourvil and Harold Lloyd, in both his appearance and his charm.  Bernard is superb in this film and (unlike his famous contemporary Fernandel) does not rely on his star persona but turns in a pretty respectable character performance which helps to anchor the film in reality and prevent it from being just another frivolous comedy.  It is fitting that he gets the funniest line: "Quel con...tribuable!" Sharing the comedy burden are some other notable performers: Paul Pauley (a comedy heavyweight who is hilarious as the over-zealous government taxman), Pierre Larquey (one of the great French character actors of the decade) and Mireille Perrey (a charismatic young actress with a long and busy career ahead of her).  With such a talented, well-balanced cast, the film could hardly fail to make the best of Berr and Verneuil’s play.  L’École des contribuables is a slick melange of satire and farce that cheered audiences in the depression gloom of the early 1930s and has much the same effect today, and it will most likely bring a smile to your face the next time you are minded to fill in that dreaded tax return...

© James Travers 2011

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