La Famille Duraton (1939)
Directed by Christian Stengel

Film Review

You'd think that reality entertainment was a fairly recent phenomenon, but here's a film that proves the contrary.  It seems that as far back as the 1930s, publicity conscious executives had no qualms about turning ordinary members of the public into performing monkeys for a quick buck.  Of course, back in those days television was a luxury that few could afford, so radio was the main medium of home entertainment, and in France the most popular radio show of them all was La Famille Duraton.  A forerunner of the television soap opera, this programme featuring a typical French family, doing the kind of things that typical French families do, was first broadcast on Radio-Cité in 1937, moved to Radio-Luxembourg after the war, and continued until 1966.  The series' success resulted in not just one but three films.

The first of these film spin-offs, La Famille Duraton, was made just before the war and offers a fictional account of how the popular radio show came into being.  (The film was released in France on 6th September 1939, three days after war was declared against Nazi Germany.)   This was subsequently remade in America by George Marshall as True to Life (1943).  The third film, Les Duraton (1956), shows a real family up in arms against the series because of the trouble it has caused them on account of the fact that they are called Duraton - the film ends with Monsieur Duraton becoming mayor and his daughter marrying a man named Martin, cheekily mirroring the fictional plot of the first film.  Of these three films, the first is easily the best, not least because it brings together two of the great icons of 1930s French cinema - legendary comic actor Noël-Noël and the incomparable Jules Berry, France's own Arthur Daley.

Throughout his career, Noël-Noël made a virtue of his likeable ordinariness, and so he is perfectly suited to play Monsieur Martin, a fusty old yokel who seems to be incapable of completing a sentence without the words "c'est positive ou définitive".  Berry revels (as only he can) in the part of the slippery con artist who comes up with idea of reality entertainment, something that would have a later generation of media executives clambering over each other to emulate.  Noël-Noël's bonhomie and innocence make Berry appear more slimly venal than usual (it's impossible to watch him without booing and hissing whenever he appears on screen) and the scenes where these two comedy giants spar off one another are something to be savoured.  Another comedy highpoint is Noël-Noël's close encounter with Chinese cuisine.

Blanchette Brunoy and Julien Carette are the most recognisable faces in the capable supporting cast, and it is worth noting that Jean Granier, who played Monsieur Duraton (Noël-Noël's role) in the original radio series, appears in the film as a radio producer.  If it's true that it did in fact launch a thousand reality TV shows, La Famille Duraton certainly has a lot to answer for but, by way of compensation, it is an enjoyable satire and did at least give us some notice of what was to come.  It's nice to think that such voyeuristic atrocities as Big Brother and its French equivalent Loft Story can be blamed on French cinema's Mr Nasty, Jules Berry.  All together now: boo, hiss...

Film Synopsis

The Martins are an ordinary French family who live a simple but contented life in the country.  When a stranger, Sammy Walter, injures himself in a car accident just outside their front door they naturally come to his help.  In return, Monsieur Walter offers to install electricity in their house at no charge.  Unbeknown to the Martins, Walter is in fact a writer for Radio-Seine and when he wires up their house he also fixes up a microphone in their dining room.  Every evening, when the Martins sit down to dinner, their conversation is relayed to every household across France and within no time their radio show, La Famille Duraton, has become a national hit. Monsieur Martin's neighbours are not pleased to have their private lives exposed on the airwaves, and when the old man realises he has been duped he heads immediately to the radio studio.  Instead of an apology he is offered a very lucrative contract...