Bonne chance
1935 Comedy   
 
  • Director: Sacha Guitry, Fernand Rivers
  • Script: Sacha Guitry
  • Photo: Jean Bachelet
  • Music: Vincent Scotto
  • Cast: Pauline Carton (La mère de Marie), Robert Darthez (Gastion Lepeltier), Jacqueline Delubac (Marie), Sacha Guitry (Claude), André Numès Fils, Madeleine Suffel
  • Country: France
  • Language: French
  • Runtime: 72 min; B&W
  • Aka: Good Luck
 
 
 
Summary
An impoverished artist, Claude, and an attractive young linen maid, Marie, share the cost of a lottery ticket.  To their surprise, the ticket wins the first prize and they decide to spend the money on a luxury holiday.  Since Marie is engaged to be married to an army man, she and Claude have to pretend to be brother and sister.  The inevitable happens: Marie and Claude fall in love, much to the chagrin of Marie’s hapless fiancé…

Critique
Sacha Guitry’s second sound film, Bonne Chance, makes a stark contrast to his first, Pasteur (a sober biography of the life of Louis Pasteur), and is far more typical of his subsequent films.  This is a playful and often irresistibly funny romantic comedy, very much in the style of the pre-WWII American films of the master of the genre, Ernst Lubitsch.   Guitry stars in the film along side his real-life wife, Jacqueline Delubac, who would feature in many of his later films.

Bonne Chance was released simultaneously with Pasteur, with the result that it was largely overshadowed by the latter film, which received far greater exposure and critical acclaim.  The film was remade by RKO in 1940 as Lucky Partners, directed by Lewis Milestone, an inferior work which lacks the charm and sparkling wit of the original.

© James Travers 2003


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