Film Review
Marcel Achard's play
Domino is effortlessly transposed to the big
screen in this stylish romantic comedy by Roger Richebé, a film director
who deserves far greater attention than he currently enjoys. Whilst
he comfortably handled a whole range of genres, from period drama (
Madame Sans-Gêne)
to thriller (
La Tradition
de minuit), Richebé was particularly adept at this kind of
sophisticated, tightly woven comedy. In contrast to the more boisterous
comic diversions served up to French film audiences in the 1930s and '40s,
Domino is much nearer to the American model and appears to have been
cut from the same cloth as George Cukor's
The Philadelphia Story
(1940) and Howard Hawks'
His Girl
Friday (1940).
The film certainly boasts as seductive a trio of principals as we could ever
hope to find in similar Hollywood fare - in the form of Fernand Gravey, Simone
Renant and Bernard Blier. Richebé had already worked with this
talented threesome in
Romance à trois (1942) and they make
a sublime team with enough chemistry to open a pharmacy chain, ably supported
by Yves Deniaud, Aimé Clariond and Suzet Maïs. It's worth
mentioning that Blier gave great value in two of Richebé's other comedies,
L'Habit vert (1937) and
Monseigneur (1949) - both highly
recommended. Marcel Archard preserves the humour and intimacy of his
three-act play by adapting it with Jean Aurenche, one of the most highly
regarded of French screenwriters, noted for his frequent collaborations with
Pierre Bost on such enduring classics as
L'Auberge rouge (1951) and
Le Blé en herbe
(1954).
Domino is not a film that doles out its humour with careless abandon.
It takes a while for the plot to get off the starting block, but once Gravey has been roped
into the most idiotic of schemes concocted by co-conspirators Renant and
Blier the humour starts to flow as gracefully as a mountain stream, helped
along by the sizzling rapport of the three
leads. Gravey was the smoothest actor in French cinema at the time
(he could probably even out-smooth Cary Grant and James Stewart, given a
chance) and his comic timing (as impeccable as his appearance) is exploited
to the full by Richebé, a director who rarely failed to get the best from
his actors.
Here Fernand Gravey has the perfect screen partner in the stunningly beautiful
Simone Renant. It's a match made in celluloid Heaven and both actors
underplay Archard's subtle humour to devastating effect, leaving Blier to
fulfil his role as the sad comedy stooge, a role he serves admirably.
Blier gets the best gag - a case of mistaken identity in which he tears a
strip off Yves Deniaud for being less attractive to the female sex than he
so obviously is - and shows a penchant for deadpan comedy that would be more
vigorously exploited by subsequent directors. Cleverly written
and performed with panache,
Domino
avoids the scattergun silliness that was prevalent in French cinema at the time
and is nothing less than a comedy tour de force.
© James Travers 2016
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
François Dominique, alias Domino, returns to Paris with his best friend
Mirandole, having failed to make his fortune in Africa. All that Dominique
has to show for his futile expedition is a wooden statue of a love goddess,
which he decides to sell after putting an end to his relationship with his
former mistress Jane. To that end, he contacts Jacques Heller, a successful
art dealer, and is promptly invited by Heller's wife Laurette to an exhibition
by the artist François Cremonne. Laurette sees in Dominique
the ideal man to help her out of her present crisis. Unbeknown to her
husband, she has been carrying on an affair with Cremonne for some time,
but Heller has recently discovered a letter addressed to his wife from a
man called François and has drawn the obvious conclusion. Laurette
offers Dominque a substantial fee if he will pretend to be a former admirer,
thereby diverting suspicion away from her present extramarital romance.
Naturally, the assignment is not without its risks, as Dominique finds out
when Heller invites him to a hunting party. It soon becomes apparent
that Heller intends murdering his rival, once he has uncovered his identity...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.