Occupe-toi d’Amélie (1949)

Occupe-toi d’Amélie is a French film comedy first released in 1949, directed by Claude Autant-Lara.  The film is based on a play by Georges Feydeau and stars Danielle Darrieux, Jean Desailly, Louise Conte, Julien Carette and André Bervil.  It has also been released under the title: Keep an Eye on Amelia.  Our overall rating for this film is: excellent.


Paris, 1910.  Spectators at the Palais Royal watch in anticipation as the curtain rises on a stage production of Georges Feydeau’s play Occupe-toi d’Amélie.  Once a lowly chambermaid, Amélie Pochet now revels in her newfound status as a kept woman, the pampered mistress of a military man named Etienne.   To ensure his prize remains faithful to him, Etienne asks his best friend, Marcel, to keep a watchful eye on her whilst he is away on military manoeuvres.  Marcel is preoccupied with his father’s inheritance, which is his only if he marries, something he is loath to do.  He decides to take advantage of Etienne’s absence by arranging a fake wedding with Amélie.  Unfortunately, Amélie has caught the attention of the wealthy Prince of Palestrie, who is determined to win her for himself.   With Etienne’s complicity, Marcel finally manages to marry Amélie as planned but doesn’t realise until after the ceremony that his friend has betrayed him and has put him through a real wedding instead of a fake one.  Incensed by what they have seen, some members of the audience leap onto the stage and, far from sabotaging the proceedings, they inadvertently give the play a happy ending...

Possibly the most inspired screen adaptation of a Feydeau farce, Claude Autant-Lara’s Occupe-toi d’Amélie is unquestionably one of the highpoints of 1940s French cinema, a brisk and hilarious piece of anti-bourgeois satire that is as fresh and entertaining today as it was when it was made.  Ebullient performances from a very distinguished cast (headed by the magnificent Danielle Darrieux) and Autant-Lara’s meticulous direction, to say nothing of the lavish sets and costumes, make this a glorious spectacle of mirth and amusement.  There is hardly another French film that is as fast or as funny as this one.

Autant-Lara was renowned for the anti-establishment slant he brought to his films, achieving a kind of notoriety that earned him condemnation from the Catholic Church and a certain breed of priggish film critic.  His previous film, Le Diable au corps (1947) had been branded anti-French whilst his next film, L’Auberge rouge (1951), would be interpreted as an all-out assault on the Church.  However, the director’s main target in his films was the bourgeoisie, that complacent middle class made up of preening parvenus and their pitiful parasites.  Autant-Lara took great delight in pillorying this particular stratum of French society in many of his film, but rarely with as much vigour and as much malice as in Occupe-toi d’Amélie, his comic masterpiece.

© James Travers 2009

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