Film Review
Such was the immense success of
Le Mystère de la chambre jaune
(1930) and
Le Parfum de la dame en noir
(1931) that the films' producer Adolphe Osso was bound to continue
Rouletabille's adventures with a third film. Roland Toutain was
happy to reprise the role of the elastic-heeled journalist Joseph
Rouletabille which had made him an instant star, but Marcel L'Herbier,
the director of the first two films, wanted no part in the
project. A promising young Hungarian filmmaker, István
Székely, was roped in to direct what became
Rouletabille aviateur, the third
and (mercifully) last of Toutain's Rouletabille films.
Székely did direct one or two films of note in his own country
but he ended up helming B-movies in America (working under the name Steve
Sekely) before crowning his career with the sci-fi stinker
The Day of the Triffids
(1962).
Rouletabille aviateur
is probably the worst thing he ever directed.
To describe
Rouletabille aviateur
as a bad film is putting it mildly. It is dire, unutterably,
unforgivably awful. The plot owes far more to Tintin than
anything Gaston Leroux may have conceived, a formulaic comicbook
runaround which leaves no cliché unturned and would have
difficulty taxing the intellect of a dim five-year-old. Toutain
does his best but this time everything is against him and he looks like
the only sane man in a lunatic asylum (certainly the only one who knows
how to act). It's hard to work out what exactly
Székely was doing on this film as it hardly seems to have been
directed at all. The camera is stuck immobile in just about every
scene and the actors just seem to wander in and out of shot, heedless
of whether they are in a film or not. Throw in a truly risible
musical number (which could not be more out of place if it tried) and
some incredibly poor use of back projection and the film ends up
looking so cheap and amateurish that you can scarcely believe it was
given a commercial release.
© James Travers 2015
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
An aeroplane transporting gold from the Bank of France to Hungary is
intercepted by airborne gangsters. The plane crashes in flames
and its precious cargo is loaded aboard a lorry, the ingots concealed
in sacks of flour. Meanwhile, the famous amateur detective Joseph
Rouletabille is on holiday in Budapest when he saves a young woman from
drowning. She is Rosy, the daughter of police superintendent
Bathory. Assisted by Rosy, Rouletabille sets out to discover
where the crooks have hidden the stolen gold...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.