Les Cinq sous de Lavarède (1939)
Directed by Maurice Cammage

Film Review

The imminent outbreak of World War II didn't deter Fernandel from throwing his all into this rip-roaring adventure farce, a kind of “Around the World in Eighty Days On A Shoestring Budget”.  (The great horse-faced comedian would later make a small cameo appearance in Michael Anderson's sumptuous World in Eighty Days, 1956 - a far better film, but nowhere near as funny as this one).  An expansive plot and plenty of location photography gives Les Cinq sous de Lavarède a surprisingly modern, almost epic, feel compared with Fernandel's other studio-bound comedies of this era.

The film is based on a story by Paul d'Ivoi, a popular French writer of the late 19th/early 20th Century, whose works - often fantasy adventures of the Jules Verne variety - have frequently been adapted for film and theatre.  Significantly, this is one of the very few French films which features the Tour de France (including the greatly missed finale in the Parc des Princes velodrome).

Film Synopsis

Armand Lavarède is an inveterate yarn spinner who delights in regaling anyone who cares to listen with his accounts of his wild and highly implausible exploits.  His thirst for adventure will be tested when a cousin leaves him a fortune in his will, on condition that he lives up to his reputation.  To inherit, the supposedly intrepid Lavarède must circumnavigate the world in two months with just twenty-five centimes in his pocket.  If he should fail in this, the entire fortune will pass to Murlington and Bouvreuil, the two men who been appointed to ensure that the terms of the will are satisfied.  In Murlington's daughter, Lavarède finds he has a useful ally who is willing to help him succeed, but in Bouvreuil he has a fierce adversary who is determined to see him fail.  Lavarède's first attempt to smuggle aboard a steamer bound for America is frustrated by Bouvreuil, but by exercising his initiative he manages to cross the Atlantic, only to be mistaken for a wanted hoodlum...