Once again there is only one previous comment for this film, once again it is written by a Frenchman living in France and once again it registers disappointment. How I wish I could be so blase' about French films of the 30s/40s and let's face it, I probably would be if I could turn on my television set and see examples seven days a week but alas that will never be the case in England so I will continue to harvest them where I can - not least from that very same critic - salivate as I savour the names on the credits - in this case Gabrielle Fontan, Marguerite Moreno, Suzy Prim, Jean Tissier, Pierre Larquey and Robert Le Vigan - and subsequently probably overpraise. At a time when Japan was very much an enemy it was arguably brave to assign the leading role to an actress born in Tonkin; Foun-sen had established a modest reputation in French cinema and had already appeared in L'Alibi, Drole de Drame and Mollenard among others and here she plays Renee Menard who has come to Paris bent on finding the father who abandoned her. Fortuitously there are several Paul Menards in the telephone directory and she works her way through a representative collection which is, basically, the plot. Bernard Roland was a journeyman director who did make one excellent movie, Portrait d'un Assassin, from a script by Henri Decoin, and this is very much a journeyman effort. Jacques Viot's screenplay reminds us that not EVERY film made in France from the thirties through the fifties was written by one of the GREAT FOUR -Jacques Prevert, Charles Spaak, Henri Jeanson, Jean Aurenche - it just seems that way and most of the films that were seen outside France were the work of one of the four (five, if you include Pierre Bost, who was Aurenche's writing partner from 1943). Viot had, as it happened, worked on Le Jour se leve with Prevert and it clearly went to his head (he also worked on the dire American version, The Long Night), possibly because he worked with Prevert's best collaborator, Marcel Carne on L'Air de Paris and Juliette ou le clef des songes but of course there is only one Jacques Prevert and it isn't Jacques Viot, not by a country mile. Nevertheless the film is entertaining and, to someone like me, priceless as an example of French cinema BG (before Godard).
3 Reviews
Father you left me.....
dbdumonteil23 September 2007
...but I never left you! A film which is anything but derivative but which in the end falls short of its goal.The script is often boring (I almost fell asleep halfway through),there are too few lovely or magical moments in "la Collection Ménard" .A far east young girl comes to Europa to find his father she 's never known..
Casting an Asiatic actress as the lead (Foun-Sen appeared in other FRench movies ,some of which very famous ("Drôle de Drame" ),but remained unnoticed) was quite original for the time (generally they used to make up outrageously a French thespian ).But Viot tried to imitate Jacques Prévert and it's his downfall:too few of his lines were really funny ,witty or moving,except in some scenes which are few and far between: -like the meeting with the senile old man listening to the old folk song (Written just before the FRench Revolution and thus a true omen of the things to come) "Il Pleut Bergère" ....
-Or Marguerite Moreno's short appearance as a novelist ..
-Or the scene in the registry office (the Public Records Office)where Jean Tissier asks people to be polite.
But it is an uneven film;the subject was excellent and the ending is nothing but conventional ,but neither the writer nor the director rise to the occasion.
Casting an Asiatic actress as the lead (Foun-Sen appeared in other FRench movies ,some of which very famous ("Drôle de Drame" ),but remained unnoticed) was quite original for the time (generally they used to make up outrageously a French thespian ).But Viot tried to imitate Jacques Prévert and it's his downfall:too few of his lines were really funny ,witty or moving,except in some scenes which are few and far between: -like the meeting with the senile old man listening to the old folk song (Written just before the FRench Revolution and thus a true omen of the things to come) "Il Pleut Bergère" ....
-Or Marguerite Moreno's short appearance as a novelist ..
-Or the scene in the registry office (the Public Records Office)where Jean Tissier asks people to be polite.
But it is an uneven film;the subject was excellent and the ending is nothing but conventional ,but neither the writer nor the director rise to the occasion.
Odd collection
kinsayder30 August 2010
An Indochinese orphan (played by the lovely Foun-Sen) comes to Paris in search of the man she believes to be her father. All she knows about him is that his name is Paul Ménard, so she goes through the phone book with the intention of visiting the whole "collection" of Paul Ménards in Paris.
And an odd collection they are, too. It feels like every French character actor of the period was drafted in to do a comic turn in this film. So here we have Lucien Baroux as an eccentric museum curator, Marguerite Moreno as an eccentric author, Pierre Larquey as a mad doctor, Robert Le Vigan as a crazy old man, Jean Tissier, Suzy Prim...
Episodic stories like this can work very well with a decent script and believable performances. See, for example Duvivier's Un carnet de bal. But here, each character seems to have stepped straight out of a lunatic asylum, or a French stage farce. Only Foun-Sen brings a sense of realism and genuine emotion to the piece. Unfortunately, too many of her scenes find her paired with the exasperating Lucien Baroux, a deservedly forgotten comic actor of the time. Only completists of French Occupation cinema should add this one to their collection.
And an odd collection they are, too. It feels like every French character actor of the period was drafted in to do a comic turn in this film. So here we have Lucien Baroux as an eccentric museum curator, Marguerite Moreno as an eccentric author, Pierre Larquey as a mad doctor, Robert Le Vigan as a crazy old man, Jean Tissier, Suzy Prim...
Episodic stories like this can work very well with a decent script and believable performances. See, for example Duvivier's Un carnet de bal. But here, each character seems to have stepped straight out of a lunatic asylum, or a French stage farce. Only Foun-Sen brings a sense of realism and genuine emotion to the piece. Unfortunately, too many of her scenes find her paired with the exasperating Lucien Baroux, a deservedly forgotten comic actor of the time. Only completists of French Occupation cinema should add this one to their collection.
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