L'Homme et l'enfant (1956)
Directed by Raoul André

Film Review

Riding high on the success of his Lemmy Caution films - La Môme vert-de-gris (1953), Cet homme est dangereux (1953), Les Femmes s'en balancent (1954) - Eddie Constantine (America's most popular import to France in the 1950s) is up to his usual tricks in this predictably anodyne thriller, one which sees him team up with his own daughter Tanya (the first of only five film appearances) and popular singer-turned actress Juliette Gréco (attractively made up as a Eurasian beauty).

The film was directed with little sign of flair by Raoul André, a purveyor of such low-grade comedies as Les Pépées font la loi (1955) and Ces messieurs de la famille (1967).   André was unlikely ever to be mistaken for a world-class auteur but his films found favour with a mainstream French cinema audience in their time, although they are (rightly) forgotten today.

L'Homme et l'Enfant is by no means the most offensive of Eddie Constantine's screen outings but it is about as vacuous, formulaic and cliché-ridden as a second rate thriller of this era could be.  With a ready smile and even readier right fist, the charismatic, wise-cracking Constantine does at least have what it takes to salvage even this unimaginative pot-boiler.  In this he is very nearly (but not quite) thwarted by a truly hideous theme song, a French version of Wayne Shanklin's Little Boy and the Old Man (later released as a hit single) and some distracting digressions into tepid and slightly toe-curling erotica.

Engaged as an assistant director on this film was Claude Pinoteau, who would go on to have a fairly distinguished career as a film director from the early 1970s, winning praise for his slick thriller Le Silencieux (1973) and touching inter-generational drama La Gifle (1974), before scoring a notable hit with his coming-of-age comedy-drama La Boum (1980).

Film Synopsis

After WWII, American bachelor and former GI Fred Barker settles in France with his adopted daughter Cathy and manages a perfume factory owned by his friend Carlo Ferell, whose life he saved during the war.  One day, Fred is visited by a complete stranger, Félix Mercier, who informs him that Cathy has been kidnapped and will only be returned to him after he has found his missing granddaughter, a 17-year-old named Hélène.  The stranger insists that Hélène has been abducted, a victim of a white slave operation centred around Ferell's factory.  When Fred finds drugs concealed in a bottle of perfume, he has his first clue to Hélène's whereabouts...