Noix de coco (1939)
Directed by Jean Boyer

Film Review

For Noix de Coco, the distinguished French playwright Marcel Achard adapted one of his most popular stage plays of the 1930s, a typically French farce in which a bourgeois family is hilariously torn apart by an avalanche of exposed secrets.  Raimu reprised the role of Loulou, the only member of the original 1935 stage production in Paris to appear in the film version.  The other two leading roles went to Michel Simon and Marie Bell, who, like Raimu, had enjoyed a meteoric rise to stardom over the past decade.  The rest of the cast was filled out with promising newcomers, some of whom (Junie Astor and Gilbert Gil) would enjoy prolific acting careers in France.

Directed by Jean Boyer, a man with an almost unrivalled flair for crowd-pleasing comedies, Noix de Coco is a rollicking farce of the kind that was prevalent in France in the late 1930s.  With so much doom and gloom about, such films were immensely popular with the public, providing a welcome escape from the grim realities of life.  The plot is, to say the least, ludicrously far-fetched and the comedy somewhat overplayed.  Raimu may have been a great dramatic actor but he is not the subtlest of comedians.  His idea of comedy is to shout more loudly, flex his facial muscles more wildly and wave his arms more manically than ever, often destroying most of the set as he does so.  Michel Simon is a far more natural comedian; by expending less than a tenth of the effort, he manages to be much funnier than Raimu, and also far more true to life.  Caught between these two histrionic giants, Marie Bell doesn't get much of a look in.  Noix de Coco hardly qualifies as a classic but it is enjoyably daft - a dose of unadulterated madness and mayhem.  Georges Van Parys's jaunty jazzband music helps the comedy medicine go down a treat.

Film Synopsis

Loulou Barbentane is a successful horticulturist who lives in the south of France with his second wife Caroline, son Antoine, daughter Fernande and imbecilic son-in-law Josserand.  At a ball, Loulou is shocked to discover that his quiet, unassuming wife is none other than Noix do Coco, the flirtatious cabaret singer he met and seduced in his youth whilst he was in Saigon.  Unable to forgive his wife for her past indiscretions (and with him of all men!), Loulou drives her to leave him, but other revelations quickly ensue.  It transpires that his daughter has been pursuing an extramarital affair (with a man with an unpronounceable name) and, to cap it all, his son has been sending love letters to his wife!