Fernandel is an extraordinarily expressive actor. His figure is bulky and his droopy face seem made up of two disparate elements. There are his eyes under their dark, arching brows, that can open to the size of old-fashioned pilot's goggles or narrow into almost sinister slits. Then there is his massive jaw that belongs more properly on Piltdown Man if Piltdown Man had existed. He has large paws too, and they're always being waved around or jabbing the air emphatically. He's always running off at the hands.
The story has him as a buffoon in his uncle's grocery store in Marseille. A visiting troupe of movie people find his ambition to be a star amusing and have him sign a ludicrous contract. The fake contract includes clauses that compensate him for any disease contracted during shoots in exotic locations. He's paid in local currency so that he can immediately pay the native doctors who will tend his maladies. For frostbite, he's paid in rubles. For elephantiasis, Rupees. For sleeping sickness, he gets a few elephant tusks. And for seal bites, he's paid six smoked fish.
His family back at the grocery recognize this as the prank it is, but Fernandel musters all the money he can and travels to Studio France in Paris. They're surprised to see him but still manage to pull one humiliating prank after another until Fernandel is finally discovered to be a great comic.
He returns with his new wife to the Marseilles grocery and pretends to be a failure, but he's greeted with open arms as the prodigal son. All is resolved happily.
If it isn't consistently hilarious, it's still funny enough to carry the story along despite the occasional talky passages. Those talky passages can't be recklessly dismissed. There's a longish, rather philosophical exchange between Fernandel, who doesn't want to debase himself as a comedian, and his girl friend, who argues that comedy is a social service, a kind of moral calling, that helps the poor, the dying, and the bereaved. It makes at least as much sense as Joel McRae's conversion to comedy in "Sullivan's Travels." And some of the speeches -- the uncle's reading the final letter from Fernandel's father, dying in a tent in Africa after wasting his life in pursuit of the Golden Fleece, is touching.
The story itself, like Fernandel's face, is divided into separate parts. (1) His being tricked into traveling to Paris. (2) His "career" in the movies. And (3) his return to his sausage-slicing and good-hearted family. It hardly hangs together but then the story isn't really plot driven anyway. It's more about character and the relationship between humility and grandiosity.
I kept waiting, half expecting it to pass over the line into terminal dullness but it never did.
The story has him as a buffoon in his uncle's grocery store in Marseille. A visiting troupe of movie people find his ambition to be a star amusing and have him sign a ludicrous contract. The fake contract includes clauses that compensate him for any disease contracted during shoots in exotic locations. He's paid in local currency so that he can immediately pay the native doctors who will tend his maladies. For frostbite, he's paid in rubles. For elephantiasis, Rupees. For sleeping sickness, he gets a few elephant tusks. And for seal bites, he's paid six smoked fish.
His family back at the grocery recognize this as the prank it is, but Fernandel musters all the money he can and travels to Studio France in Paris. They're surprised to see him but still manage to pull one humiliating prank after another until Fernandel is finally discovered to be a great comic.
He returns with his new wife to the Marseilles grocery and pretends to be a failure, but he's greeted with open arms as the prodigal son. All is resolved happily.
If it isn't consistently hilarious, it's still funny enough to carry the story along despite the occasional talky passages. Those talky passages can't be recklessly dismissed. There's a longish, rather philosophical exchange between Fernandel, who doesn't want to debase himself as a comedian, and his girl friend, who argues that comedy is a social service, a kind of moral calling, that helps the poor, the dying, and the bereaved. It makes at least as much sense as Joel McRae's conversion to comedy in "Sullivan's Travels." And some of the speeches -- the uncle's reading the final letter from Fernandel's father, dying in a tent in Africa after wasting his life in pursuit of the Golden Fleece, is touching.
The story itself, like Fernandel's face, is divided into separate parts. (1) His being tricked into traveling to Paris. (2) His "career" in the movies. And (3) his return to his sausage-slicing and good-hearted family. It hardly hangs together but then the story isn't really plot driven anyway. It's more about character and the relationship between humility and grandiosity.
I kept waiting, half expecting it to pass over the line into terminal dullness but it never did.
