A remake, some 56 years after this one, is now in Post Production with a screenplay by Christian Clavier - who also plays the host played here by Carette - and co-starring Gerard Jugnot and Josie Balasko. This trio were, of course, founder members of Splendid and all have several tasty writer-director-actor credits on their cvs. In other words none of them are exactly chopped liver but then neither were Fernandel, Julien Carette and Francoise Rosay and the Autant-Lara version also had something the new version can only dream of; Yves Montand singing the plot over the opening and closing credits - something 'borrowed' by High Noon the following year. Autant-Lara was noted for his satiric stance on the Church and he doesn't disappoint here, encouraging writers Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost to include touches like the chestnut grille that stands in as a confessional 'screen' when hostess Francoise Rosay is moved to reveal to Fernandel's monk how she and her husband, Carette, ritually poison the soup they serve to guests at their remote inn, and then, once the victims expire, rob them. This sets up neatly the central dilemma; how can Fernandel save the current guests without betraying the secrets of the Confessional (this could well be where Hitchcock got the idea for 'I Confess'). This is French cinema at its best, which is saying something. The scene where the murderers are just about to dig a grave for their latest victim when they spot Fernandel approaching and quickly convert stiff to snowman was way ahead of its time half a century ago. There's been quite a lot of talk about the atmosphere on the set between the two Johnny-One-Names Fernandel and Carette (Carette vacillated, as did Dalio, between billing as Carette and Julien Carette/Marcel Dalio) with Fernandel, rightly or wrongly, feeling hard done by at the hands of Autant-Lara to whom he allegedly never spoke again, but after half a century surely we can forget that and just delight in a minor masterpiece.
Review of The Red Inn
