Pétrus (1946)

Pétrus is a French romantic film drama first released in 1946, directed by Marc Allégret.  The film stars Fernandel, Simone Simon, Marcel Dalio, Pierre Brasseur and Dominique Brevan.  Our overall rating for this film is: good.


One evening, Migo, a dancer at a Montmartre nightclub, decides to take her revenge on her cheating boyfriend, Rodrigue.  She fires two shots with her revolver, but she misses her target and instead wounds a passer-by, a man named Petrus.  When the latter refuses to press charges, Rodrigue slips him a wad of cash, which, unbeknown to Petrus, are forged banknotes.  When Petrus decides to spend the cash in the nightclub where Migo works, Rodrigue contrives to get the money back.  Petrus is determined to make Migo happy and, realising that she loves only one man, she blackmails Rodrigue into carrying on his love affair with her, even though he is planning to run off with another woman...

An excellent cast (which includes some of the biggest French actors of the day) elevates this humdrum melodrama to something that just about passes for entertainment.  Marc Allégret’s direction is competent but hardly inspired, and Marcel Achard’s screen adaptation of his own stage play is flat and unevenly paced.  Fortunately, some pleasing performances from the lead actors save the day. 

Brasseur makes a convincing Don Juan, as smooth as a chocolate milkshake, and only slightly less sick-making.  Simone Simon is an obvious casting choice for the part of the lovelorn ingénue; the actress had only recently returned to France after her spell in Hollywood, taking a walk on the wild side with such films as Cat People (1942).  In one of his early dramatic roles, Fernandel demonstrates that he can play more than just vaudevillian parts in low budget comedies, allowing him to win more challenging roles in the years that followed.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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