À pied, à cheval et en voiture (1957)
Directed by Maurice Delbez

Film Review

It may be hard to believe but À pied, à cheval et en voiture was one of the French box office hits of 1957, attracting an audience of 3.5 million.  The film's success - which was at least in part due to the immense popularity of its lead actor Noël-Noël - must have come as a great surprise even to its director Maurice Delbez, who had made just one film prior to this, La Roue (1957).  In his career, Delbez directed half a dozen films for the cinema, the only one of which that holds up today being his little seen racially themed drama Un gosse de la butte (1961), which failed to have any impact on its release because of its distributors' concerns over its (then) highly controversial subject matter.  For the remainder of his low-key career, Delbez stuck to television, lending his modest talents to such series as L'Inspecteur Leclerc enquête (1962) and Les Saintes chéries (1965-66).  Were it not for the riproaring popularity of his 1957 Noël-Noël comedy, his impact on French cinema could safely be considered negligible - not what you might have expected for someone who had previously worked as an assistant to such capable directors as Maurice Cloche, Guy Lefranc and Richard Pottier.

À pied, à cheval et en voiture was not the first unimaginatively crafted run-of-the-mill comedy to create a mass stampede at the French box office for no apparent reason - and it would certainly not be the last.  The film does have a few memorable, well-delivered visual gags but these are pretty few and far between and fail to make-up for a mediocre and mostly mirthless plot that fails to provide any surprises or even a modicum level of interest for the spectator.  Exactly what induced performers of the calibre of Noël-Noël and Denise Grey to agree to lend their support to this limp, stuttering comedy is hard to fathom, but they gave it their best shot and manage to extort a few grudging laughs as a working class couple desperate to make a good impression on their future bourgeois in-laws.  (The proletariat's over-earnest attempt at social climbing was a recurrent theme in French film comedy of the 1950s, a reflection not only of the emerging consumerist boom but also of the dramatic bourgoisification of French society in the dying days of the Fourth French Republic).

The lead actors certainly had their work cut out for them, saddled as they were with a ramshackle script that looks as if it might have been knocked together in a lunch hour by a twelve-year-old whose idea of humour hadn't yet developed beyond pre-teen comic books.  Much-loved veterans Noël Roquevert and Jean Tissier are completely wasted in this pointless imbroglio, as are most of the cast, including a host of talented newcomers that includes Sophie Daumier, Jean-Paul Belmondo (his second film appearance), Jean-Pierre Cassel and Darry Cowl.   Another example of squandered talent is Pierre Granier-Deferre, here serving time as Delbez's assistant director.  A few years later, Granier-Deferre would make a far more positive impression on French cinema with his directorial offerings, through such distinctive classics as Le Chat (1971), La Veuve Couderc (1971) and Adieu poulet (1975).

The (highly improbable) success of À pied, à cheval et en voiture encouraged its producer Jean-Jacques Vital to mount an immediate follow-up.  Entitled À pied, à cheval et en Spoutnik (1958), this shameless SINO (sequel-in-name-only) had a different writing team and was more competently helmed by Jean Dréville (who had previously directed Noël-Noël in two of his biggest hits - La Cage aux rossignols (1945) and Les Casse-pieds (1948)).  Apart from the whimsical title and the presence of the leading actors, there was absolutely no connection between Delbez's original navet and this marginally better (but still pretty humdrum) mainstream entertainment.

Film Synopsis

Léon Martin, an accountant with a firm of undertakers, enjoys the quiet life and cannot understand the present craze for the motorcar.  But then, one day, he suddenly finds he has a good reason to obtain a car for himself - to make a good impression on his prospective in-laws.  His daughter Mireille has had the good sense to fall in love with Paul de Grandlieu, the scion of a rich noble family.  Léon's dreams of social advancement look as if they might be fulfilled when Paul invites him and his wife Marguerite to his grand country estate to meet his own parents.  Naturally, Léon wants to make the best possible impression, and what better way to do this than to show up at his future son-in-law's palatial residence in a brand new car?  Monsieur Martin has just one month to pass his driving test and raise the money he needs to buy himself a respectable second-hand car.  Passing the test turns out to be the easy part of this ambitious assignment.  The car that Léon is duped into buying is unlikely to impress anyone, however.  In fact, it will be a miracle if it can withstand the journey ahead of it...