Messieurs les ronds de cuir (1959)
Directed by Henri Diamant-Berger

Film Review

The unbridled eccentricity of Georges Courteline's humorous 1893 novel Messieurs les ronds-de-cuir is matched by this lively adaptation, the last film to be directed by Henri Diamant-Berger.  In a career spanning five decades, Diamant-Berger was a prolific filmmaker who was particularly adept at popular comedies such as this, although he is best known for Les Trois Mousquetaires (1921), a big budget serial adaptation of Alexandre Dumas's most famous novel.  Although he was in his mid-sixties, no one was better suited to bring Courteline's totally lunatic world of dysfunctional functionaries to the big screen, supported by a cast of larger than life performers that includes Noël-Noël, Pierre Brasseur, Jean Poiret and Michel Serrault. 

Bureaucracy isn't so much a profession in France as a way of life, as this film amply demonstrates.  As one hapless member of the public traipses through endless corridors, sent hither and thither with no hope in Hell of getting his enquiry serviced in his life time (or even his children's life time), the entire staff of this outdated administrative mausoleum indulge in whatever pastimes take their fancy, taking care that none of these weird extracurricular activities results in productive work.  Messieurs les ronds de cuir may be set in a bygone era but, for anyone who has ever had to deal with French bureaucracy (a fate worse than death), it seems to be as relevant as ever.  Time wasting is a sport at which the French civil servant is still the unrivalled world expert.

Film Synopsis

In 1906, Monsieur Boudin takes advantage of the laxity of his employers by repeatedly failing to show up for work at the government department which sends him a paycheck each month.  His boss, Monsieur de la Hourmerie, has decided that this can go on no longer and is not impressed when he sees Boudin take a turn at a music hall.  The truth is that Hourmerie's department is one where anarchy reigns and any whim is indulged in.  To stave off boredom and insanity, the functionaries are all driven to cultivate a sideline, safe in the knowledge that no one outside the department would ever notice...