Drôle de noce (1952)
Directed by Léo Joannon

Film Review

After failing spectacularly to salvage Laurel and Hardy's swansong feature Atoll K (1951), director Léo Joannon threw himself into another O.T.T. comedy, with only marginally better results.  Joannon helmed a number of interesting films - L'Émigrante (1940) and Le Carrefour des enfants perdus (1944) are both well worth looking at - but his comedies generally have little to commend them and now appear hopelessly dated. Drôle de noce is a case in point - a rambling, half-baked farce of the kind that was popular in France in the 1950s but now looks pretty puerile.  The film's depiction of the extents to which a father has to go to provide his daughter and son-in-law with a mattress on their wedding day now appear ludicrous in the extreme.  If the film fails to engage today, that is most probably because we have no inkling of how tough life was in France in the austere aftermath of WWII.

Even allowing for the evaporation of its social relevance, Drôle de noce is still a pretty dire attempt at comedy.  The first two-thirds of the film is a ponderous dawdle, whose purpose is merely to set up the slew of farcical escapades that come at the end.  Assuming you can sit through forty minutes of mind-numbing tedium, the film does just about manage to redeem itself in the final third, with Julien Carette putting in his best one-man Marx Brothers tribute act as a he lugs a mattress all over Paris, spreading feathers and mayhem wherever he goes.  It's a fairly rare occasion that Carette gets to headline a film - for most of his career he was relegated to small (albeit very noticeable) supporting roles.  Here he seizes the opportunity to hog the limelight and shows what a great comedy performer he was, even in his declining years.

The laughs are a long time coming, but if you can somehow force yourself to stay awake, Drôle de noce does just about manage to deliver the comedy goods in the last twenty minutes, as Carette's proto-Mr Bean gets haplessly caught up in a Mack Sennett-style cops and robbers chase before unleashing hoards of ravenous wild animals on unsuspecting Parisians, causing a mass exodus of Biblical or sci-fi B-movie proportions.  Apparently, this kind of thing was quite common in the days before internet shopping.

Film Synopsis

Monsieur Barbezat, a well-liked Parisian concierge, gladly gives his consent when the good natured butcher Joseph Bonhomme asks for his daughter's hand in marriage.  Without delay, the wedding preparations are in hand and Barbezat orders a new mattress for the happy newly weds.  On the day of the wedding, Barbezat finds himself short of cash when the wedding breakfast costs more than he had expected, so he has insufficient money to pay for the mattress.  No problem - Joseph and his bride will be away from home on their honeymoon and this will give Barbezat time enough to find the money he needs.  In the meantime, the mattress is placed in the care of the fastidious Madame Aglaé, who will hand it over only once she has been paid.

When the bride and groom change their plans Barbezat realises he needs the mattress straight away, and with Madame Aglaé apparently away, he breaks into her home and steals the essential item and begins hauling it across Paris.  As he does so, Barbezat gets mixed up with a gang of crooks fleeing from the police after a robbery and then unwittingly releases the Jardin des plante's entire collection of wild cats.   As Parisians flee in terror from the lions and tigers that are now roaming the streets, Barbezat continues on his way, determined to deliver the mattress to the bridal apartment before the newly weds take up residence...