Les Gangsters du château d'If (1939)
Directed by René Pujol

Film Review

Les Gangsters du château d'If is a fine example of the wildly anarchic film comedy that was extraordinarily popular in France in the 1930s - a fun-packed extravaganza in which a succession of humorous escapades and musical numbers is barely held together by the most tenuous of plots.  It was the kind of lowbrow entertainment that writer-director René Pujol specialised in and, aided and abetted by some of the best French comic performers of the day, rarely did he fail to deliver what audiences wanted - a welcome dose of silliness to escape from the toil and anxieties of life in the grimmest of decades.

This particular madcap concoction started out as an operetta (of the same title) written by Henri Alibert and first performed in 1936, with music supplied by its author's illustrious father-in-law Vincent Scotto, one of the decade's most prolific composers for stage and screen.  Alibert was among the leading French chansoniers of the time, affectionately dubbed the 'Méridional des Méridionaux' on account of his strong associations with the port of Marseille.  Alibert not only adapted his play into this film, he also took the lead role he had created for himself, having already proven himself to be a very capable actor in half a dozen films, notably Au pays du soleil (1933).  Les Gangsters du château d'If was Alibert's third collaboration with Pujol, following Un de la Canebière (1937) and Titin des Martigues (1938).

Interestingly, Alibert was the only member of the principal cast in the original stage play to reprise his role for the film.  The part created by Rellys was taken up by Pierre Larqey, one of the most outstanding and popular French comic actors of the 1930s and '40s, who excelled in this kind of uproarious high energy farce.  The film has many other notable performers - from the wonderfully glamorous Betty Stockfeld (a welcome addition to many a French comedy of this period) to the likeably lugubrious Aimos (fondly remembered as Tintin in Julien Duvivier's La Belle équipe) - but it is Larquey who steals the show as the tourist-fleecing keeper of the château d'If (famously the island prison of Edmond Dantès in Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo).  And it is hard to see how he could fail to so given that he gets the lion's share of the best jokes - the sequence in which he 'goes a haunting' with a sheet over his head is worthy of a Marx Brothers film.  Larquey would give another tour-de-force turn in Pujol's equally entertaining swansong, Faut ce qu'il faut (1946).

The film's sheer exuberance amply makes up for the lack of any tangible plot, although you can't help wondering how much better it might have been had the narrative been slightly better constructed and the characters a little less cartoonish.  Les Gangsters du château d'If looks like a film that has been thrown together like a salad, with a colourful collection of characters who come and go like variety turns in a wacky music hall revue.  Alibert's booby-trapped office (complete with collapsing stairs and chairs that make offensive noises when you sit on them - Reginald Perrin would have been quite at home here) allows the repeat gag to be taken to ludicrous extremes, and the musical numbers provide some welcome relief from the schoolboy comedy hi-jinks.  The film's most inspired touch is the scene in which Germaine Roger sings a duet with a miniaturised Henri Alibert - it looks like something out of The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) until you realise that Alibert is supposed to be his photograph 'come to life'.

Film Synopsis

In Marseille, Jean Mariol publishes a magazine that is devoted to hunting, fishing and tall stories.  Jean and his former mistress Odette Paradis, an aspiring young author, have agreed to go their separate ways, but as a publicity stunt the two stage a fake kidnapping so that Odette can obtain a fat cheque from a publisher for her latest novel, The Daughter of Monte Cristo.  Jean's new sweetheart Nine lives in the famous Château d'If with her uncle Esprit, who is employed there as a tourist guide and acts as a go-between for the couple.  All is well until Nine attracts the unwelcome attention of Bimbo, who is mixed up in some nefarious affair with his thuggish associate Dédé.  Matters take another unexpected turn when Esprit's wife Jérômine falls for an inept private detective named Papalouche...