Archimède, le clochard (1959)
Directed by Gilles Grangier

Film Review

Jean Gabin is on fine comic form in this charming but easily forgettable comedy-drama.  Here he plays the third kind of role for which is best known.  After the romantic hero and the tough patriarch, Gabin's third screen persona was that of a proud but loveable past-retirement outsider.  Whilst it rarely gave Gabin the opportunity to show his true talents as an actor, this kind of role, which featured in a number of comedies in the latter half of his career, was enormously popular with the French public.

In Archimède, le clochard, Gabin plays an eccentric tramp whose sole aim in life is live as comfortably as possible without money.  Gabin clearly relishes the part and gives one of his most ebullient comic performances.  The scene in which he gatecrashes a snob party and ends up dancing the Charleston is hilarious.  Gabin appears in the film with Darry Cowl, a very popular comic performer from the late 1950s onwards.

The film was directed by Gilles Grangier, who worked with Gabin on a dozen films, an eclectic mix of comedies, thrillers and dramas that included Le Sang à la tête (1956), Le Désordre et la nuit (1958) and L'Âge ingrat (1964). Grangier is not what one might term a great innovator and his conventionally crafted films were diametrically opposed to the spirit of the French New Wave.  However, his films had a mass appeal, usually on the strength of their leading actors (Gabin in particular), but also because they were generally well scripted - often with some fine tongue-in-cheek comic dialogue from the well-known screenwriter Michel Audiard).

Film Synopsis

Archimède is an old tramp who likes to think he is a cut above the rest.  Not for him the penury of sleeping under bridges and scrounging for scraps in dustbins.  He has a taste for the finer things in life - good food, fine wine and a comfortable place to make his bed.  His present abode - a room in a block of flats that is being developed - has served him well all through the summer, but as winter beckons it will be too cold for him.  He can either get himself arrested, in the hope of earning himself a nice warm prison cell, or else he can sleep rough in the south of France.  After much deliberation, he decides prison is the better option, if only because the food is more to his liking.  To that end, Archimède smashes up a bar and gets duly taken into custody.  He is appalled when he only manages to get himself put away for one week.  It seems he will have to resort to more drastic measures if he is to find a comfortable haven for the entire winter...