Film Review
À vos ordres, Madame is
one of Jean Boyer's more sophisticated comedies, one that appears to
have been modelled on the lively American screwball comedies of the
time. In a career that spanned three and half decades, Boyer
turned out over sixty films, most of which are (justifiably) forgotten,
but amidst the dross there are some veritable pearls, and this is one
of them.
À vos ordres,
Madame excels not only on the writing front, it is also
well-directed and the surging comedy momentum is marvellously sustained
by the performances from its extremely talented lead actors. If
there was one film which represented the best in mainstream French
comedy during the Occupation era, this is surely it.
Jean Tissier and Suzanne Dehelly are never less than hilarious as the
two long suffering married couple who discover a new lease of life
through an enforced stopover at a snob hotel. Tissier needs no
introduction - at the time, he was one of French cinema's most
sought-after character actors, equally adept at playing comedy and
drama in a wide variety of roles. Rarely cast as the lead but
always an admirable support, Tissier must have relished the opportunity
to take the lead part in this wacky comedy and gives what is probably
the most dazzling comic performance of his career. Dehelly
likewise never became a great film star but she was highly regarded
both as an actor and as a singer, and, as she shows in this film, she
was a formidable comedy performer. You'd never think it but
Dehelly was also an avid chess player and, a year after making this
film, she won the women's national chess championship in France.
Two other actors better known for drama than comedy, Alfred Adam and
Jacqueline Gauthier, help to keep the humour engine ticking over
nicely, aided and abetted by Jacques Louvigny and Pierre Labry.
À vos ordres, Madame
differs from most mainstream French comedies of this period in that it
is not centred around a star comic performer (Fernandel,
Noël-Noël, Raimu, etc.), and it is all the better for
that. Essentially, it's a classic French farce (of the Feydeau
variety) with a 1940s American twist (you can easily imagine a
Hollywood equivalent directed by Ernst Lubitsch or Howard
Hawks). It may not have the subtlety of Jean Renoir's
La
Règle du jeu (1939) but it still makes an effective
class satire, only much pacier and much funnier. Lively but never
silly, this superior Jean Boyer offering is as hilarious today as any
modern comedy, and this is down to a gag-laden script which could
hardly fail to reduce an audience to hysterics, with the unflagging support of
Tissier and Dehelly at their absolute best.
© James Travers 2014
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Next Jean Boyer film:
Boléro (1942)
Film Synopsis
Odette and Hector Depuis, husband and wife for twenty-five years, are
en route for their holiday when their car breaks down. They have
no choice but to spend the night at a luxury hotel whilst their car is
repaired. Never one to waste a franc if she can help it, the
miserly Odette Depuis coerces her husband into pretending to be her
chauffeur whilst she masquerades as a baroness. As Hector has fun
'below stairs', amusing himself with his new drinking buddies and the
pretty maid Angèle, his wife attracts the attention of a wealthy
widower, Monsieur Palureau. Hector likes his new life so much
that he sabotages his car, thereby prolonging his stay at the hotel by
another few days. When Madame Depuis learns that her husband has
been entertaining a chambermaid she is outraged and immediately goes on
a mad spending spree, to the distress of the hotel
manager...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.