Tourments (1954)
Directed by Jacques Daniel-Norman

Film Review

Tourments was the last film that Tino Rossi starred in and whilst he still remained active as a chansonnier for many more years, he had few regrets about ending his film career (Rossi did make a fleeting appearance in one more film, François Villiers's Jusqu'au bout du monde, ten years later).  Despite his presence in almost thirty films over the preceding two decades, Tino Rossi rarely impressed as an actor and in his later years he was content merely to fall back on his own amiable persona, with scripts fashioned accordingly.  This is partly why Rossi's later films have little to distinguish them - they essentially repeat the same formula consisting of a hackneyed and often schmaltzy piece of melodrama interspersed with musical interludes intended to exploit Rossi's real talent as much as possible.  Suffice it to say that the only value Rossi brings to Tourments is in its musical numbers, which include Bella donna and Soir Espagnol.  The plot is mostly a lazy reworking of what has gone before and Rossi's acting is as wooden and anaemic as ever.
 
After directing Tino Rossi in Son dernier Noël (1952), Jacques Daniel-Norman had the privilege of directing him in Tourments, which was not only Rossi's last big film but also the last notable film made by its director.  Like his star's, Daniel-Norman's credits stretched back to the early 1930s, and included the melodrama Le Briseur de chaînes (1941) and comedy L'Aventure est au coin de la rue (1944).  It's hard to find a film in Daniel-Norman's filmography that has stood the test of time - in fact most of his work today looks unbearably trite and dated.  Without Rossi's star presence, Tourments would have been just another bland and forgettable melodrama - at least it would have been were it not for one other essential ingredient: Louis de Funès.   What de Funès does to this film is nothing less than a miraculous one-man salvage operation.

Even as late as the mid-1950s, in spite of having appeared in over seventy films, Louis de Funès was still a virtually unknown commodity, rarely cast in much more than a small supporting role or notable walk-on part, although his talents as a comic performer were recognised and well-utilised by many of the directors he worked with.  In Tourments this future king of comedy gets a more substantial role than was typical in this early phase of his career, and he positively revels in the opportunity to play a fully developed character.  In the unscrupulous private detective Eddy Gorlier we at once recognise the kind of malicious but oddly likeable imp on which de Funès's later comedy persona would be based.  Firing on all cylinders, and with apparently nothing to stop him from stealing the film, de Funès asserts his presence right at the start when we see the outcome of a violent (off-camera) run-in with M. Rossi.  The comedy black-eye inevitably gives way to a comedy pirate patch, and so, little by little, de Funès rips the film from Rossi's lethargic grasp until it is almost entirely his own.  As one screen career withers and dies, another is bursting into life.  Being biffed by Tino Rossi was just about the best thing that could have happened to Louis de Funès.

Film Synopsis

Known to the world as Tony Caylor, Jacques Duffot surprised everyone when he chose to give up his high-profile singing career so that he could devote himself to his wife, Anne-Marie.  After adopting a little boy, Jean-Claude, the couple could hardly be happier.  Then, one day, the boy's biological mother, Simone, turns up out of the blue and enlists the help of private detective Eddy Gorlier in an attempt to regain custody of her child.  Suspecting that Jean-Claude may be the result of a previous liaison between her husband and another woman, Anne-Marie hires Gorlier to look into the matter.  The calculating Gorlier at once sees a way by which Simone's maternal ambitions can be satisfied.  All he has to do is to wreck Jacques's marriage to Anne-Marie so that the adopted child will no longer have a stable home and can be returned to his real mother.  The plan goes awry when, traumatised by his parents' separation, Jean-Claude runs away from home...