Fric-Frac (1939)
Directed by Claude Autant-Lara, Maurice Lehmann

Film Review

When you bring three such vivid screen personalities as Fernandel, Arletty and Michel Simon together the result can hardly be described as lacklustre.  Fric-Frac is one of the more lively and enjoyable of the French film comedies made in the 1930s, although its enduring appeal is almost entirely down to its iconic threesome, who spar off each other as enthusiastically as a trio of prize-fighters tanked up on gin and steroids.  The film is based on a popular stage play of the same title, written by Édouard Bourdet and first performed at the Théâtre de la Michodière, Paris, in October 1936.  Arletty and Simon both featured in the original stage production, along with Victor Boucher and Andrée Guize, who were replaced with Fernandel and Hélène Robert in the screen version.

Fric-Frac has one or two brief excursions into the great outdoors but for the most part it is a studio-bound production, filmed pretty much as a piece of theatre with no great artistry or originality in the mise-en-scène.  It's an understated approach that plays to the strengths of Bourdet's play and allows the film to get the most value from its lead actors, all of whom are at their absolute comedic best.  Michel Simon and Fernandel are so well-matched, as the delinquent slob and naive buffoon respectively, that they make the perfect comedy double act.  The scene in which Simon's character succeeds in getting his jobless chum blind drunk, prompting an incoherent but hilarious round of soul-searching, is a classic, and you'd swear that the two actors were the best of friends.  In fact, they could hardly bear working together - Simon's habit of going 'off script' caused no end of friction on set and created a pretty unpleasant working environment.  The actors had worked together before - on Jean Renoir's On purge bébé (1931) - but they would never do so again, although they shared the credits on Julien Duvivier's anthology film Le Diable et les dix commandements (1962).

With two comedy heavyweights vying for the limelight, it would have taken an actress of exceptional quality to even contemplate entering the fray.  Arletty not only enters fray, she positively storms in and makes just as much of an impact as her two male co-stars.  Around this time, Arletty specialised in the seedier side of the female repertoire and, helped by her spindly physique and squawky voice (both of which made her unaccountably sexy), she was unsurpassed as French cinema's archetypal 'tart with a heart'.  Here Arletty's character is a virtual carbon copy of the one she had already played in Marcel Carné's Hôtel du nord (1938) - audiences (and film directors) clearly couldn't resist seeing her parade around the set in tight-fitting black lace underwear.

Just as Michel Simon and Fernandel make a perfect chalk-and-cheese match, Arletty is an effective foil for Hélène Robert, who plays Fernandel's straitlaced employer and would-be wife.  Robert is everything that Arletty is not - a picture of prim bourgeois respectability - and yet she is a fierce combatant when it comes to getting her way.  With two such formidable viragos in the ring, the male leads don't stand a chance.   It's quite interesting, for a film of this time, that the two dominant characters should both be women.  Simon and Fernandel's characters are mere babes by comparison - it is Arletty and Hélène Robert who are really running the show.  There was no clash of egos as far as Arletty was concerned - she and Simon worked successfully together in another popular film comedy made about this time, Jean Boyer's Circonstances atténuantes (1939), where they shared a famous little chanson populaire - Comme de bien entendu...

Fric-Frac was one of a number of films that Maurice Lehmann made for the film company that bore his name and which specialised in adaptations of popular stage plays.  At the time, Lehmann was director of the Théâtre du Châtelet and had great success with his staging of musical comedies.  Lehmann is credited as Fric-Frac's director but, according to Arletty, practically the entire film was directed by Claude Autant-Lara, who received only a minor credit as technical assistant.  Autant-Lara had had a similar arrangement with Lehmann on two previous films -  L'Affaire du courrier de Lyon (1937) and Le Ruisseau (1938), the latter of which also featured Michel Simon.  One likely reason why Autant-Lara allowed himself to employed effectively as a 'ghost director' on these films is because the last film he had directed solo (his first feature) Ciboulette (1932) had been a spectacular flop.  The success of Fric-Frac brought an end to Autant-Lara's association with Lehmann.  He went solo again with his next film - oddly, a British drama entitled The Mysterious Mr Davis (1940) - before making his name in France with a series of high class melodramas - Le Mariage de Chiffon (1941), Lettres d'amour (1942) and Douce (1943).  Autant-Lara would later give Fernandel one of his best-loved screen roles, in L'Auberge rouge (1951).

Film Synopsis

Marcel is an honest, perhaps too trusting, young man who works for a small firm of jewellers in Paris.  His employer's daughter Renée has made up her mind to marry him but he shows her no interest and resents her attempts to control his life.  At a cycle race, our insouciant hero falls in with two colourful individuals who strike him as a decent couple, even though they are in fact a pair of petty criminals who wouldn't know an honest living if they were to trip over it.  Jo is an amiable delinquent whose pickpocketing skills are surpassed only by his ability to siphon coins from one arm bandits.  Loulou, his nubile partner in crime, is a siren of the street who soon has Marcel worshipping the ground she treads on.  Jo and Loulou's interest in Marcel is piqued when he tells them that he works for a jewellers'.  It so happens that Loulou needs to raise a large sum of cash immediately for her beau Tintin, who is presently behind bars.  With the information she manages to wheedle out of Marcel, Loulou realises she can get the money she needs without all the usual window-breaking hassle.  Unfortunately, the robbery is disturbed by Renée, who is quick to exploit the situation for her own ends...