Ferdinand le noceur (1935)
Directed by René Sti

Film Review

Based on play of the same title by Léon Gandillot, a contemporary of Georges Feydeau, Ferdinand le noceur was a perfect comedy vehicle for the young Fernandel during his meteoric rise to fame in the early 1930s.  The play itself isn't much to write home about, an out-dated relic of the Belle Époque that still looks pretty dated even after being given a considerable makeover for a 1930s cinema audience.  The film is rescued by an impressive ensemble of great comedy performers who do their utmost to prevent the whole thing from ending up looking like a staid museum piece.  It's a pity the same can't be said for the film's director René Sti, who merely directs it as a pretty conventional stage play, with the result that it appears painfully slow and static at times.

A victim of anti-Semitism, René Sti's career suffered in the 1940s and he only managed to direct a handful of films (most pretty well forgotten) before completely fading from sight.  He started out as an assistant to Fritz Lang on Das Testament des Dr Mabuse (1933) and directed the French-language version of this classic German thriller.  His subsequent output included the first sound adaptation of  Paul Féval's historical novel Le Bossu in 1934 and his one other collaboration with Fernandel, La Porteuse de pain (1935).

Fernandel's early films broadly divide into two categories - those in which he is part of a great comedy ensemble, and those in which he is unequivocally the star.  Ferdinand le noceur is interesting in that it falls into both categories.  Whilst being part of a remarkable group of irresistibly funny eccentrics (André Alerme, Félix Oudart, Pauline Carton, Romain Bouquet), Fernandel also imposes his star persona and make himself the focus of the play without resorting to his customary comic excesses.  His vocal talents make the film's main musical number Quand on est obligeant a likeable show-stopper, and his penchant for slapstick is put to good use in some of the film's more memorable comedy routines - the highpoint coming when he is turfed out of a brothel in his long johns and literally makes an exhibition of himself.

Near the start of her incredibly prolific career, Paulette Dubost shows her worth as a fine comedic performer and is irresistible as the Modern Miss who refuses to be tamed.  (Any similarities between this play and one written by William Shakespeare are of course purely coincidental.)  A succession of almost surreal comedy digressions (the most bizarre being Pauline Carton fencing with Félix Oudart) amply make up for the fairly unimaginative plot and half-hearted mise-en-scène, but whilst Ferdinand le noceur delivers quite a few laughs it is hardly Fernandel's most memorable film.  The rising star of French film comedy would be far better served by his subsequent films - Jim la Houlette (1935), Un de la légion (1936) and François Ier (1937).

Film Synopsis

An employee in a pharmaceuticals laboratory, Ferdinand is obsessed with coming up with a pill that will allow easily cowed men like him to overcome their crippling timidity.  For his boss, Monsieur Fourageot, he has nothing but contempt.  Since his wife's tragic death, Fourageot has lived the life of a wayward bachelor, chasing after any piece of skirt that comes his way.  Libertine though he is, Fourageot has absolutely no intention of allowing his daughter Paulette to follow his example.  Fearing that his darling child may be taking after him, he has her consigned to a strictly run boarding school managed by a former military officer, Paturin, and his equally fastidious wife.  Unfortunately, Paulette's wild temperament is more than the Paturins can cope with.  Fearing she may be a bad influence on the other young ladies under their care, they soon decide she must be expelled.  This new comes as a terrible shock to Fourageot, who sees his daughter's return to the fold as a threat to his own extravagant lifestyle.

Fourageot has no option but to marry Paulette off to the first eligible bachelor he can find.  The problem is that he must find someone who is capable of taming his daughter, a man whose chastity is beyond question.  He has the ideal man: Ferdinand!  Not knowing what he is letting himself in for, Ferdinand travels down to the Paturins' school and begins his courtship of Paulette, having been misled by his employer into thinking that she is a model of virtue.  It doesn't take long for the two young people to see that they are totally ill-suited.  Paulette finds her prospective beau unbearably dull and moralistic, and she falls short of Ferdinand's ideal by several leagues.  By now, the rumour has begun to circulate in the region that Ferdinand is the most uninhibited of revellers.  Wherever he goes, married women (most well past their best) fall at his feet, and the unfortunate young man only adds credence to these rumours by walking around town in his underwear after being evicted from a house of ill repute.  When she gets to hear of Ferdinand's disreputable behaviour Paulette is in a state of rapture: at last she has found the man who is capable of making her the happiest of wives!