Tovaritch (1935)

Tovaritch is a French film comedy first released in 1935, directed by Jacques Deval, Germain Fried, Jean Tarride and Victor Trivas.  The film stars André Lefaur, Irén Zilahy, Pierre Renoir, André Alerme and Junie Astor.  Our overall rating for this film is: good.


Russia, 1917.  Not long after the state wedding of General Ouratieff to Tsar Nicolas II’s niece Tatiana, the country is caught up in a bloody revolution.   With the Tsar and his family facing execution at the hands of the Bolsheviks, Ouratieff and his wife flee the country.  Fifteen years later, they are living a meagre existence in a cheap one room apartment in Paris.  The general has in his possession four billion francs, but this is to be used to restore the Tsar in his beloved Russia and he will not touch a centime for his own use.  Unable to make ends meet, Ouratieff and Tatiana have no choice but to find work, not an easy prospect in a country where there is mass unemployment.  By their good fortune, they find a post as valet and housekeeper to a wealthy businessman, Monsieur Arbeziah.  The general and his wife are surprised when, one evening, Arbeziah invites a Soviet official to his apartment to discuss the sale of oil concessions in his country...

The first of three films to be directed by the successful French playwright Jacques Deval is this deft adaptation of his popular stage play Tovaritch, first performed in 1933 with Elvire Popesco in the leading female role.  Deval is today best known for his subsequent film Club de femme (1936), a spirited satire on the sexual mores of the time which, with its references to lesbianism, prostitution and frenzied cross-dressing, was quite shocking for its time. 

Tovaritch is a far less controversial piece than Club de femme, a witty and inoffensive farce that still manages to extort the occasional laugh, thanks mainly to the efforts of its principals André Lefaur and Irén Zilahy.  The most memorable scenes are those in which the feisty and ever-so slightly doolally Zilahy crosses swords with Pierre Renoir, the latter appearing in a rare comedic role as a Soviet official who looks like he may have shared both a womb and a barber with Vladimir Lenin.  Two years later, Anatole Litvak directed the better known American version of Deval’s play, which starred Claudette Colbert, Charles Boyer and Basil Rathbone.

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