Snobs! (1962)
Directed by Jean-Pierre Mocky

Film Review

It wasn't until his third directorial offering - the boisterous, totally unhinged social satire Snobs! - that Jean-Pierre Mocky finally found his voice, that of the most stridently irreverent social commentator in post-war France.  It may have been the failure of his previous film, Un couple (1960), that propelled Mocky away from drama and towards comedy of the most effervescent and scathing kind.  The J.P. Mocky who had made his directing debut with Les Dragueurs (1959) and could plausibly pass himself off as one of the French New Wave is not the same J.P. Mocky who foisted Snobs! on an unsuspecting French audience and became Agent Provocateur No.1.  This was the opening salvo in a lifetime of caustic critiquing and carping on just about every stratum of French society.

It was the English writer William Makepeace Thackeray who popularised the word 'snob' and gave it its present meaning in his 1846 Book of Snobs.  The French duly adopted the term  and, uncharacteristically, retained its English meaning.  Snobs - i.e. people who consider themselves socially superior to others - abound in Mocky's cinema and are inevitably the victims of merciless lampoonery.  The political class and bourgeoisie are two categories of snobs that Mocky takes a particular delight in ridiculing, and nowhere more so than in his raucous first comedy.

The church, the military, the press, business - there is hardly a single authority figure that Mocky fails to place a whoopee cushion under in Snobs!  Everyone, it seems, is up to no good, wallowing in double standards and trying to get one up on the next guy.  The idiotic election race depicted in the film could be any election you care to name, with candidates scrambling around ingloriously for any vote that they can get, saying and doing anything just so that they can steal the prize they are after.  The characters may be caricatures of the most absurd kind, their exploits may be ludicrous in the extreme, but beneath the exuberant humour there is an all too accurate picture of the electioneering malarkey that has become such a familiar part of our lives.

What makes this particular bout of Mocky mockery so enjoyable are the hilarious contributions from the comedy and acting legends that somehow managed to get roped into this comedy extravaganza and forced to immitate Normandy accents (to varying degress of success).  Francis Blanche leads the comedy troupe, equipped with a dead glass eye that makes him look like a sinister relic from a 1930s horror film.  Michael Lonsdale, a familiar habitué of Mocky's warped universe, has rarely been as funny as he is here, clearly at home in his first villainous role as an electioneering scoundrel (he was destined to be a Bond villain after this).  Mocky also reserves some juicy comedy roles for some personal icons of his, Jean Tissier and Noël Roquevert, and there are still gags-a-plenty for the colourful band of Grade-A eccentrics and certifiable lunatics that make up the rest of the cast - Fred Pasquali, Jacques Dufilho and Pierre Dac are all superb.

Even with such a strong comedy ensemble Snobs! fell on lethally stony ground when it was first released in France in 1962.  Almost universally panned by the critics after being attacked by the censor it ended up being Mocky's second flop in two years.  Whilst it hasn't (yet) acquired the cult status of the director's subsequent anti-establishment comedies - Un drôle de paroissien (1963) and La Grande frousse (1964) - Snobs! is undeniably a rarity - a French comedy that is as sharply pertinent today as it was when it was made.  To quote Thackeray,  "It is a mistake to judge of Snobs lightly... an immense percentage of Snobs is to be found in every rank of this mortal life."  In other words, snobs, like death and taxes, are an immutable fact of life, albeit one that makes us laugh.

Film Synopsis

When the president of a dairy farmers' cooperative in Normandy drowns in a vat of milk, elections are soon arranged to find his replacement. There are four candidates for this honoured position, all equally qualified for the role, all equally determined to win it, by any means possible.  Dufaut believes he can beat his rivals by cosying up to politicians and military men.  It is to the clergy that Lainé turns, confident that if he bombards the Almighty and His saints with enough prayers he is bound to succeed.  Tousseur takes a riskier course, creating a scandal that will reflect badly on the others.  Courtin is the most cunning of the four - he intends to play on the ingrained snobbery of everyone that matters, including the businessman Morloch.  The candidate who wins the order to supply milk to every school in the region will win the election...