La Maison Bonnadieu (1951) - film review

In 1910, Félix Bonnadieu is the manager of a provincial factory that manufactures women’s corsets.  He knows that his wife Gabrielle is having an affair with a younger man, Pascal Mascaret, and is determined to break up the relationship.   One night, when Pascal enters his house for another secret amorous encounter with his wife, Félix confronts him and treats him as though he were a burglar.  Félix’s maid Louisette pretends that Pascal was coming to see her, not Gabrielle, since she is secretly in love with him.  Devastated that his wife is still pursuing her affair, Félix asks his assistant Mouffe to give him some advice.   Mouffe tells him that the only solution is for him to make Gabrielle jealous, by taking a mistress...
© Willems Henri (Brussels, Belgium)

Although he is all too easily overlooked nowadays, Carlo Rim scripted and directed some of the finest popular French films of the 1930s and 1940s.  His acerbic wit and genius for observation is most evident in La Maison Bonnadieu, arguably his best film and one that is matched only by his superlative Fernandel comedy L’Armoire volante (1948).  Rim’s screenwriting talents had been put to good use by Marc Allégret in Zouzou (1934) and Parade en sept nuits (1941), and also by Maurice Tourneur in Justin de Marseille (1935) and Le Val d’enfer (1943).  La Maison Bonnadieu, Rim’s second film as a director, is a cruel satire on the peccadillos of the provincial bourgeoisie which exemplifies not only its author’s flair for wit but also his penchant for presenting complex, deeply flawed characters in a sympathetic light.

Mocking the bourgeoisie is, and has always been, something of a national sport in France, and whilst Rim was not the first nor the last film director to indulge in this time honoured practice, he does so with far more restraint than many others of his profession.  The main protagonists of La Maison Bonnadieu - a cuckolded husband Bonnadieu and his wilfully deceitful wife Gabrielle, played to perfection by Bernard Blier and Danielle Darrieux - are blatant caricatures, but they are so convincingly drawn that they cannot fail to win our sympathies.  Bonnadieu’s discovery of his wife’s infidelity, and his subsequent attempts to cure his beloved of her addiction to clandestine romps with youths, are as poignant as they are amusing, and both lead actors are superb at playing the comedy against the drama, and vice versa.

Nicolas Hayer’s brooding chiaroscuro cinematography (which would seem to be better suited for a film noir thriller than a satirical melodrama) lends the film a darkly oppressive feel, which Georges Van Parys’ eerie score beautifully underscores as a lament to Bonnadieu’s failed illusions about romantic love.  The popular singer Mouloudji (who appears in the film, uncredited, as a street singer) provides the film with its most evocative air, a moving ballad to the cruelty and injustice of love.  As welome as these embellishments are, the film’s main strength is Rim’s deliciously mordant script, which includes some memorable lines that have gone on to acquire a life of their own.  These include: "L’amour c’est comme les moustiques, on le tue à coups de pantoufle" and "Si tous les cocus se supprimaient, il ne resterait plus personne pour les enterrer", which roughly translate as: "Love is like a mosquito - one must kill it by beating it with a slipper" and "If everyone who was cheated in love were to kill himself, there would be no one left to bury the dead."  The work of Carlo Rim definitely deserves a fresh reappraisal.

© James Travers 2012

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