Trente et quarante (1946)
Directed by Gilles Grangier

Film Review

After their first successful collaboration on Le Cavalier noir (1945), director Gilles Grangier and popular chansonnier Georges Guétary were ready bedfellows for a rematch, this time fighting over the duvet with rising star Martine Carol (just a few years before Caroline chérie made her a household name in France) and redoubtable character actor André Alerme.  Trente et quarante (the title refers to a popular card game) is not one of Grangier's better known films but it is an enjoyable romp, its distinct lack of plot made up for by the spirited contributions from the three lead actors, helped on their way by a colourful supporting cast.

Georges Guétary is at his debonair smoothest as a love-struck Italian count who breaks into song whenever the whim takes him (roughly once every twenty minutes), and it isn't hard to see why, for a time, he was one of the most popular performers in France.  In contrast to many of his musical rivals (notably Tino Rossi or Luis Mariano), Guétary was a natural screen actor and never took himself too seriously.  In Trente et quarante, he impresses not only with his musical abilities but also with his comic flair, and he is the perfect screen partner for Martine Carol, at the start of her glittering career.

Guétary and Carol are a winning combination but both come very close to being totally upstaged by André Alerme, whose performance - in the fusty military man role in which he excelled - is nothing less than a comedy tour de force.  Another great character actor, Jeanne Fusier-Gir, steals the focus as Carol's prim governess in a few scenes, and Michèle Philippe makes her presence felt, looking every inch the rising starlet at the start of her career.  Guétary and Grangier would work together on another madcap comedy, Amour et compagnie (1950), by which time the singer's international career was poised to take off, aided by a ticket to Hollywood to appear in Vincente Minnelli's American in Paris (1951).

Film Synopsis

In France at the time of the Second Empire, Madeleine falls in love with a young Italian nobleman, Count Mario de Miranda, but her punctilious father, Captain Bitterlin, has no intention of marrying his daughter to such a man.  To keep the happy lovers apart, Bitterlin whisks Madeleine off to Monte Carlo, but Mario is undeterred and arranges to meet his sweetheart 'by accident' on the train to the famous resort.  When Bitterlin wins a fortune in the casino with money given him to by Mario he finds himself in an impossible position.  To keep the money would be a disgrace!  Mario soon sees a way to persuade the old military man to let him marry his daughter...