Le Père de Mademoiselle (1953)
Directed by Marcel L'Herbier

Film Review

Le Père de Mademoiselle is the film that put a decisive nail in the coffin of Marcel L'Herbier's filmmaking career.  Based on a play of the same title by Roger Ferdinand, the film looks as if it was made in a completely different era, a tedious bourgeois comedy stuck in a 1930s timewarp.  After the flop that was Les Derniers Jours de Pompéi (1950), L'Herbier was presumably trying to play it safe, but all he does is to convince the world how irrelevant and out-of-touch he is.  After this final cinematic endeavour, L'Herbier gave up making films for cinema altogether and instead redirected his dwindling talents to French television, concluding his career with a series of documentaries, the most interesting being an essay on the French fantasy film, Le Cinéma du diable (1967).

Even if it were to fall into the lap of a more talented and enthusiastic director, Le Père de Mademoiselle would still be a pretty uninspiring proposition.  It's one of those plays that only works on the stage and will only look static and ponderous if projected onto the big screen.  The distinguished principal cast do their best but lustre is distinctly lacking, as much in their performances as in the stilted dialogue and workmanlike direction.  Although past her best, Arletty still manages to light up any scene she appears in, but here her talents are largely wasted, ditto going for André Luguet and Denise Grey.  With apologies to William Blake, in reference to this sleep-inducing plod-a-thon you have to ask "Did he who made L'Argent make thee?

Film Synopsis

Françoise Marinier refuses to allow her parents, a respectable bourgeois couple, to decide whom she should marry.  So she leaves home and moves to Paris, where she is soon engaged as a secretary to the popular actress Edith Mars.  The latter is the mistress of Renaudin, the Minister of Justice.  When Françoise's father pays an impromptu visit he allows himself to be duped into believing it his daughter who is being kept by a minister of state.  In fact, she is amorously involved with a far less important personage, a humble ministerial attaché...