Occupe-toi d'Amélie
1949 Comedy
Credits
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Summary
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...
Review
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 Write a review for this film... User Comments
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