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How sad is this?

Absolutely Fantastic

A different way of telling a story

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

His wife having died in an auto accident, banker Jean Gabin is is on his way to throw himself into the Seine, when he meets his former housemaid, Mireille Darc, who informs him that he was multiply cuckolded. Eventually the two of them wind up as butler father and maid daughter in a rich, provincial household, while his nasty in-laws try to prove him dead so they can inherit.It's pretty much standard bedroom farce of the classes, from a play by Claude Gével , with the film directed by financially successful Communist director Jean Paul Le Chanois. It's all very amusing, but as you might expect, it's all carried on the shoulders of Gabin, who shifts gears from banker to criminal mastermind to impeccable butler without missing a breath, even though his dinner may burn on the kitchen stove. As good farce should be, it's directed for speed. You've seen its like a dozen times and you may be pretty bored, but Gabin is one of those performers who can read the phone book and I'll applaud.

a charming film, adaptation of a charming play. nothing surprising. except Jean Gabin. who is the same. and the spice who change the taste of a pure French story , predictable, nice but who has low chances to create memories about it. Gabin change everything. for his simple presence. with each gesture and word. with precise irony. and with the science to do everything in the best way. this is all. and the motif to see Monsieur twice . for its humor flavor. for the social duel. for the love story. and for the delicacy to present not real comfortable things. a seductive comedy. and good opportunity to discover a great actor genius.

At the time,Le Chanois was the New wavelet's favorite Bête Noire .One often forgets he began as a communist activist ("Le Temps Des Cerises") and gave a handful of excellent movies in the 1946-1952 era,the best of which remaining his wonderful" Ecole Buissonnière". A craftsman and a humanist at that ,his career is not as dismal as the N.V. clique claims.The sixties were his most mediocre period;he was wise enough to call it a day in 1966 (he died in 1985)."Monsieur" has some good moments ,particularly in Gabrielle Dorziat's scene asking Jean Lefevre for a dead body to make sure her son-in-law is dead and to latch onto his dough;Mireille Darc has spontaneity and charm going for her in her maid turned hooker turned maid again role ,which eventually ends up in a Cinderellaesque way .Gabin is Gabin but his part is weak :just compare to what Sacha Guitry did with Michel Simon in a similar subject in "La Vie D'Un Honnête Homme "(1952).Philippe Noiret is wasted and Liselotte Pulver gives a rather poor performance (to think that she was the heroine of Douglas Sirk's masterpiece " a time to love and a time to die" (1958)!)It was to be Gaby Morlay's last part (she died the same year) and she does seem the ghost of herself;One wishes she had left the screen on a high note,on the endearing "Fortunat" (1960)for instance.

Only one review? Let me add another, because the premise of a rich banker and a tart escaping their separate pasts to be butler and maid in a country house means that they can use their skills in the new job to comic effect but always risk exposure. The story is in fact not too well developed but that doesn't matter because the dialogue and acting are often fun.First, of course, we must place the immortal Jean Gabin who exercises his tremendous presence, dominating other characters by his intelligence and force of personality. When Suzanne as a whore warns him that her protectors are hard men, he merely says "But I am a banker" and outwits the dim thugs in no time. As butler, while cleaning the shoes he notes that the master uses the same bootmaker as the ex-King of Spain. Equal second to my mind come his frenetic employers, the two Bernardacs. He is the incomparable Philippe Noiret, trying to combine pompous businessman and father with passion for his new air hostess wife. She, the Swiss Liselotte Pulver, combines daytime adultery with evening drinking but always charmingly. The lovely Mireille Darc as the prostitute turned chambermaid Suzanne can only come fourth, because she is unfortunately given too little to do. Little contemporary touches recall a long gone era. In the girls' bedrooms pictures from magazines of contemporary pop stars are stuck up on the walls. And in Paris at that time to be chic one had to drive an English car, so we see posh Daimlers and Rovers, sporty Austin-Healeys and Jaguars, plus the ubiquitous Mini.