Ça... c'est du sport (1938)
Directed by René Pujol

Film Review

Henri Garat's short but high profile career as a singer and screen actor was almost over by the time he appeared in Ça... c'est du sport - evidenced by the fact that he only received second billing after the film's real star, Pierre Larquey.  The prematurely aged Larquey may not have had Garat's good looks and vocal talents but, the epitome of a screen Monsieur Tout-le-monde, he was far more popular with cinema audiences and, throughout the 30s and 40s, he was one of the busiest screen actors in France.  Garat's decline had been even swifter than Larquey's ascent, hastened by his addiction to drugs, alcohol, women and gambling - a lifestyle that was too fast and extravagant for any film star.  In the only film he made for director René Pujol, Garat is a sorry shadow of his former self, playing third fiddle to Larquey and another incomparable comic performer, Rellys. 

Even though Garat gets all the glitzy musical numbers, the film more rightly belongs to Larquey and Rellys, who pretty well steal the film with a superb double act that they had already established in a previous Pujol film, Titin des Martigues (1938).  Ça... c'est du sport is a made-to-measure film for Pierre Larquey, up to his usual scene-stealing antics as a debt collector who is infatuated with a monstrously demanding Marguerite Pierry (another great comedy performer) and ends up being manoeuvred into a 'mariage blanc' with a black woman.  Larquey's increasingly desperate attempts to meet Pierry's unreasonable demands provide the bulk of the humour, with the ever-resourceful Rellys supplying further comedy ammunition as he goes 'over the top', as the plot frequently demands.  'How this figure haunts me!' Larquey sighs on being lumbered with a tax bill equivalent to the amount he had already been forced to steal from his employer to give to Pierry and then steal back again to avoid going to prison.  No matter how ludicrous the situation, Pierre Larquey always makes it seem that we have all been there.

Implausible as it may seen, the lovely Suzanne Dehelly (another Pujol regular) is the girl that the pug-ugly Rellys has set his heart on, leaving the virtually overlooked Garat with the 'consolation prize' of Jany Briand, an ingénue dazzling in what was, inexplicably, her one and only film appearance.  Ça... c'est du sport is hardly René Pujol's best film - Henri Garat's presence is an unwelcome intrusion that takes away more than it adds to the inspired Larquey-Rellys double act, and the plot loses its head of steam just around the midway point.  Still, it has that infectious sense of anarchic fun that permeates virtually all of Pujol's comedies, and what the film lacks in the way of a coherent plot it more than makes up with its generous slew of gags, all admirably served by some of the greatest comedy performers in France at the time.  It's worth noting, en passant, that Gilles Grangier was the assistant director on this film - he would take up the baton after Pujol's death and become a notable habitué of this kind of popular entertainment. Larquey and Pierry would repeat their fearsome mating ritual in a later René Pujol film, Faut ce qu'il faut (1946), reminding us that love is more a combative sport than a union of compatible souls - not something for the faint-hearted or chronically sane.

Film Synopsis

Monsieur Trapon, a modest debt collector, wants to marry Madame Lavator, a cloakroom attendant in a nightclub, but she insists that she will not marry until her two daughters, Ernestine and Anna, have both found suitable husbands.  It so happens that Ernestine has a willing suitor in the lowly barman Falloche, but Madame Lavator will only sanction the engagement if he gives her 30,000 francs.  Reluctantly, Trapon lends Falloche the money ('borrowing' it from his employer), but then Madame Lavator imposes her second condition: Anna must be married before she can agree to give Ernestine away.  Falloche's friend Henri Le Gall, an aspiring cabaret artist, comes to the rescue: Anna is just the girl he likes.  Monsieur Trapon then inherits a shop from a rich uncle, but in order to claim his inheritance he must pay 30,000 in tax and marry his uncle's niece. Yvonne Romulus.  Trapon's plans to wed the impossible-to-please Madame Lavator now appear well and truly scuppered...