Film Review
Claude Autant-Lara's 1951 film
L'Auberge rouge is a classic of
French cinema, a black comedic masterpiece which only the bravest or most
foolhardy of souls would attempt to remake. It's hard to say
whether Gérard Krawczyk is brave or foolhardy but the one thing
that can be said with certainty is that his remake of Autant-Lara's
film is irredeemably dire. Even if there weren't a film to
directly compare it with, it would still be obvious to just about
anyone that this overblown spectacle of vulgarity and tacky juvenile
humour is a travesty. And to think that Krawczyk had a budget of
20 million euros at his disposal. To borrow a turn of phrase from
Winston Churchill, never in the field of cinematic endeavour has so
much money been wasted by so few to produce something so utterly
puerile. If you can spot three decent gags in this self-absorbed
pile of crud, you should count yourself lucky (and then book an
appointment with your optician).
Judging by the abundance of supposed jokes relating to bodily functions, the
intention presumably was to bring Autant-Lara's film up-to-date, by throwing
in three members of the team that brought us such comedy classics as
Les
Bronzés (1978) and
Le Père Noël est une ordure (1982)
- Christian Clavier, Josiane Balasko and Gérard
Jugnot. Unfortunately, the participants in this happy
little reunion look as if they have been issued with fatwas
threatening slow bodily dismemberment if
they so much as make anyone in the audience smile - what other
explanation could there be for none of them being remotely funny?
If there had been far less money to throw around, and if Krawczyk had
had more confidence in his actors to carry the film instead of relying
on fancy camerawork and distracting effects, and if the screenwriters
hadn't thrown out Bost and Aurenche's best lines and replaced them with
offensive drivel, the film might have worked. Unfortunately,
there appears to have been a severe case of comedy bypass here and
nothing, absolutely nothing, about this film is remotely amusing -
apart from the fact that it dares to call itself a comedy. That
Autant-Lara's film is still hysterically funny, and funnier than
virtually every mainstream French film made in the last decade, tells us a great
deal. We can expect more remakes like this - and we should avoid
them like the plague.
© Simon Whitaker 2010
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Film Synopsis
In the late 1800s, Martin and Rose manage a remote inn in the Pyrenean
mountains. Unable to make enough money from their honest trade,
the couple allow their adopted son Violet to murder their customers so
that they can purloin their belongings. One stormy evening, a
stagecoach shows up at the inn and its passengers decide to spend the
night there, to the obvious delight of Martin and Rose. This
could be a bountiful evening, they decide. Unfortunately, one of
the new arrivals is a priest, Carnus, and Rose cannot help confessing
her past crimes to him. How can Carnus warn his fellow travelling
companions that they are all in mortal danger without breaching the
confidence of a confession...?
© James Travers
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