Drôle de Drame

Rating:
Summary: WEIRD FRENCH SILLINESS
Review: From 1937, DROLE DE DRAME (Home Vision Entertainment) is a French farce set in Edwardian England 0f 1900 that almost defies description.

Director Marcel Carne and writer Jacques Prevert (who later collaborated on Children of Paradise), leapfrogged ahead of contemporary trends and came up with a zany film adaptation of J. S. Clouston's nutty "The Lunatic At Large."

When the Archbishop of Bedford suspects his weird cousin of killing his wife and hiding the body, he sets off an outrageous series of events. What's at stake is the absurd lengths the social snobs will go to maintain their upper class distinction when fear of a stalking vegetarian serial killer threatens the delicate social order. For serious videophiles, this oddity has become a minor classic.

What was going on in the real world of 1937? It's interesting that the French would make a crazy farce of a film that ridiculed English class distinctions. This was released in the USA at only 84 minutes in 1939 as "Bizarre, Bizarre." The timing was unfortunate considering the international scene: i.e., it appeared the French were mocking the English at the very time the Nazis were a threat against both the French and the English. Luckily, the USA rescued the French from the Nazi's in spite of being mostly baffled by this exceedingly silly film.

That said, watching it today in the right Edwardian frame of mind may generate chortles and chuckles but probably few guffaws.

Rating:
Summary: A first-rate absurdist farce. A true classic.
Review: I've been looking for a good clean version of this film for many years, having spent many blissful & lucky summer hours at the old Thalia movie theater in NYC devouring the great French films of the 1930s. Now at last the treasure has arrived. Three of the giants of the golden age of French film are present in this film: Jouvet, Simon & Barrault, masters of farce, tragedy, voice, movement, gesture & innuendo.

Drôle de Drame is a cornucopia of hilarious moments: Michel Simon catching flies & tenderly feeding them to his precious plants; Simon tripping with drunken blitheness down a flight of stairs. Jouvet careening from unctuous righteousness to lasciviousness to extreme paranoia. Barrault's ethereal & other-worldly & highly moral serial killer / poetic lover.

Drôle de Drame is a fusion of classic French farce & theater of the absurd. One of my favorite scenes is the one in which the Chinese hoodlums determinedly & methodically mug a series of slumming drunks in order to collect their boutonnieres for a lover's bouquet. My next favorite is the kitchen enhusiastically overflowing with beautiful dadaist milk bottles delivered by a love-struck milkman in a surrealist costume.

This was an early effort by Jacques Prévert & Marcel Carné who respectively wrote & directed the masterpiece, Children of Paradise. It's not a satire of British manners or mores at all, save perhaps for the more imagination deprived. It's a comedy of the human condition, a link in a wonderful chain of offbeat French films from Le Million to Boudu to Delicatessen & Amélie.

Now, how about a set of DVDs of Marius, Fanny & César. Please someone?