Poisson d’avril (1954) - film review

A garage mechanic, Emile Dupuis, buys some fishing tackle with some money that his wife has given him to buy a washing machine.  Discovering his wife’s feelings on the subject, Emile decides to pursue his new hobby in secret.  One weekend, pretending to go to work, Emile goes fishing with his son.  He first visits his cousine, Annette, who is having an affair with a wealthy industrialist, Gaston Prévost.  At his cousin’s suggestion, Emile goes fishing on Prévost’s estate, but soon runs into a country policeman.  The latter reports the apparent trespass to Prévost’s wife, who wonders why Emile, a total stranger, thinks he has permission to fish on her husband’s land.  To conceal his affair with Annnette, Prévost says that Emile saved his life during the war.  To show her gratitude, Madame Prévost invites Emile to dinner, with Annette masquerading at his wife.  Thereafter, the web of deceit and subterfuge comes unravelled very quickly...

This charming light comedy is a surprisingly perceptive satire of the French middleclass, made long before the notion of Bourgeois double-standards and hypocrisy became almost a cliché in French cinema.  Compared with later films on the subject, which adopted a somewhat aggressive approach (for example, Godard’s Weekend and Bunuel’s Le charm discret de la bourgeoisie), Poisson d’avril is much gentler in its depiction of the middle classes, but nonetheless incisive.

The director is Gilles Grangier, better known for his classic films Le désordre et la nuit and Le cave se rebiffe, in which he directed some of the most talented and well-known of actors, including Jean Gabin.  In Poison d’avril, he cast two of France’s best loved comic actors, Bourvil and Louis de Funès, in their first film together (although the latter actor appears in just one scene).  Certainly, the confrontation between these two comic giants is one of the high points of the film.

With some fine dialogue from Michel Audiard and a plot which gets deliriously funny as the tower of lies grows ever higher, this is a largely forgotten film that deserves wider appreciation.

The film’s winning card is Bourvil himself, playing, as ever, the hapless innocent, whose only weapon against the cruel blows of fate is a tireless good humour and a willingness to accept things as they come. He also gets to sing the popular song, Aragon et Castille .

© James Travers 2001

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