Prends la route (1936)
Directed by Jean Boyer

Film Review

20th of June 1936 is a significant date in French history, the day on which workers acquired the legal right to two weeks' paid leave each year.  One of the main achievements of the Popular Front government (a leftwing coalition that barely lasted two years), les congés payés contributed to the euphoria of the moment and a burst of national optimism for the future that would turn out to be totally misguided.  Prends la route is a film made around the time when paid leave had just become a fact of life and it vividly reflects not only the heady optimism associated with the early days of the fool's Utopia that was the Front Populaire but also the incredible sense of freedom that a fortnight of guaranteed leisure time meant for most ordinary people in France.  It's no wonder that everyone in Prends la route appears so inordinately happy.  This was a time when just about everyone in France had a song in his heart and a smile on his face.

Prends la route was one of a number of uplifting and mostly nonsensical musicals that Jean Boyer directed in the course of his remarkably successful and prolific career.  In common with many of Boyer's musicals, the music and songs were contributed by his long-term associate, Georges Van Parys, whose credits run to well over two hundred films.  Influenced by American musicals of the time, Boyer was instrumental in popularising the musical genre in France of the 1930s and whilst few of his films stand up to critical scrutiny, many were enormously successful and some have become classics.  For Prends la route, Boyer makes the most of one of the most successful French singing partnerships of the day, 'Pills et Tabet'.  Jacques Pills and Georges Tabet began working together in the early 1930s and quickly became one of Europe's best-known acts after the success of their number Couchés dans le foin.  As Boyer's film amply demonstrates, Pills and Tabet are not only fine singers who complement each other brilliantly, they each have a magnetic screen persona and are more than capable actors.  After they went their separate ways in 1939, Pills pursued a solo career and ended up as Edith Piaf's first husband, whilst Tabet turned to screenwriting, contributing to such classics as Gérard Oury's Le Corniaud (1965) and La Grande vadrouille (1966).

Typical of Boyer's musical films, Prends la route has next to nothing in the way of a plot and what plot there is serves as the thinnest of pretexts to link the set-piece musical numbers together.  In addition to a striking opening number set in an office of the Touring Club de France that would not be out of place in a Busby Berkeley musical, there is the likeably daft À mon âge, one of those songs which infuriatingly lodges itself in your head for weeks after you've heard it.  Pills and Tabet have such a strong screen presence (Bob Hope and Bing Crosby are nothing by comparison) that the rest of the cast have a job attracting our attention.  Claude May is ultimately the girl that steals Pills' heart, but it is the far more sensual Colette Darfeuil who snatches our interest, in yet another of her famous vamp roles.  André Alerme looks like a spare limb badly in need of amputation, except in the few scenes he has with Jeanne Loury, who is a delight as the waspish Aunt Guiguitte.  No one could mistake Prends la route for a masterpiece, but its unbridled, unstoppable sense of fun makes it one of the most enjoyably upbeat French films of this era.

Film Synopsis

Summoned by his aristocratic father, Jacques speeds across France in his treasured Bugatti for a meeting with the fiancée who has been selected for him.  Jacques has no enthusiasm for the encounter; he'd rather carry on his carefree bachelor existence with Wanda, his sultry mistress.  Wanda is equally keen that Jacques should not marry and so hurries after him, hoping to persuade him to return to her.  Before he reaches his destination, Jacques meets a pretty young thing name named Simone, who is out motoring in the country with her fastidious aunt.  Before they know it, Jacques and Simone are madly in  love and are soon eloping together.  Assisted by Potopoto, a motorcyclist, Simone's aunt is soon chasing after the two love doves, with Wanda in tow.  All turns out for the best when it is discovered that Simone was the fiancée that his family had chosen for Jacques in the first place!