The bossy mayor of a small village wants to rule his citizens with an iron hand;there is not exactly general agreement about him.His worst enemy is Gargousse the station master ,who is also occasionally a poacher and a bone-setter/healer ,much to the local thespian's disgruntlement -unfair competition-;besides the mayor's sister ,a forty-something spinster sincerely believes the quack is in love with her;and to crown it all,Gargousse's daughter-in-law falls in love with the mayor's nephew,the village schoolteacher.
This is a pale imitation of Marcel Pagnol's style ,with actors who look the part :Saturnin Fabre as the mischievous "outlaw" ,Jeanne Fusier- Gir in her umpteenth part of an old maid ;but there is a certain passé charm in the depiction of the small community with their gossips,their rural policeman and their steam-powered local train.Note the naive latent racism we find in almost all the French comedies of yore:of course ,the black man,mistaken for a tourist,speaks pidgin French;and the way screenwriters focus excessively on Paris :it takes a bunch of revelers from the capital to enliven the one-horse place .
Director Henry Wulschleger had his own theater company,most of them (Bach,Fabre,Milly Mathis,Paul Olivier ..)were featured here.
This is a pale imitation of Marcel Pagnol's style ,with actors who look the part :Saturnin Fabre as the mischievous "outlaw" ,Jeanne Fusier- Gir in her umpteenth part of an old maid ;but there is a certain passé charm in the depiction of the small community with their gossips,their rural policeman and their steam-powered local train.Note the naive latent racism we find in almost all the French comedies of yore:of course ,the black man,mistaken for a tourist,speaks pidgin French;and the way screenwriters focus excessively on Paris :it takes a bunch of revelers from the capital to enliven the one-horse place .
Director Henry Wulschleger had his own theater company,most of them (Bach,Fabre,Milly Mathis,Paul Olivier ..)were featured here.
