Faut ce qu'il faut (1946)
Directed by René Pujol

Film Review

In the course of an incredibly productive career as a novelist, screenwriter and filmmaker René Pujol put his name to over twenty films, nearly all of them unpretentious light comedies that had no other objective than to entertain the ordinary folk of France who flocked to the cinema in search of escape from the grind of life in the 1930s.  It was Pujol who directed Jean Gabin in his first speaking role in a film, Chacun sa chance (1930), and his brand of good-natured anarchic comedy would prove very popular over the following decade - how sad that pretty well all of his work is forgotten today.

Faut ce qu'il faut was the last film that René Pujol directed.  Originally titled Monsieur Bibi, the film was made in 1940 not long before France capitulated to Nazi Germany but it was shelved and was not seen in cinemas until 1946, four years after Pujol's death at the age of 63.  The reason for the delay in the film's release is pretty self-evident - Monsieur Bibi was one of the few films with a contemporary domestic setting to be made in France during the short period between the country's entry into WWII and its subsequent fall to the Nazis.  The film's patriotic strains could hardly fail to ensure instant censorship by the occupying power, particularly as these are backed up by recurring allusions to friendly relations between the French and British (represented by the humorous interplay between two hopeless dry cleaning girls and their unreasonably forgiving English customer).

Faut ce qu'il faut owes its charm to a particularly talented cast headed by one of the best loved (and busiest) actors in France at the time, Pierre Larquey.  Larquey is probably best known today for his ambiguous dramatic role in H.G. Clouzot's Le Corbeau (1943), but in the 1930s and '40s he was better appreciated for his comedic performances.  In Pujol's film, Larquey is at his comedic best in a made-to-measure role, that of an easily put-upon Monsieur Tout-le-monde who allows himself to be talked into a marriage of convenience with his best friend's fiancée.  When this affable precursor to Mr Bean isn't suffocating himself to death with his gasmask or getting himself tangled up in the most bizarre verbal contortions with an English woman who can't speak his language, he is happy to be hauled over the coals by his pathologically jealous housekeeper.  Life in France is never dull.

And there's plenty of humour to go round Pierre Larqey's equally dependable co-stars.  One of the film's delights is a particularly funny turn from Jean Tissier, here positively sizzling in the role of a marriage registrar who gets himself enmeshed in a madcap imbroglio worthy of P.G. Wodehouse.  Not long after he appeared in his most famous role as the aviator Jurieux in Jean Renoir's La Règle du jeu, Roland Toutain (another hugely popular performer of the time) makes his physical presence felt at the top and tail of the film, and not just because he gets to sing the best of the film's many upbeat musical numbers.  (It's a pity the film wasn't released in 1940 - it would have been a terrific morale booster.)  Faut ce qu'il faut is hardly the most sophisticated or original of French comedies but it offers plenty of well-packaged fun - although its main interest today is that it is one of the few French films of its era to show us life in France at the time when the country was at war with Nazi Germany.  It can't help looking like a prologue to the BBC sitcom 'Allo, 'Allo.

Film Synopsis

Charlot could not be happier than he is on the day that his sweetheart Henriette gives birth to their first child, but there is one fly in the ointment: Charlot is still married to another woman and must wait for his divorce to be finalised before he can marry Henriette.  Before the divorce can take place Herr Hitler chooses this inopportune moment to invade Poland, with the result that France is suddenly at war with Germany!  As Charlot goes off to war, along with all other able-bodied young men of his generation, he leaves his beloved Henriette in the capable hands of her best friend Didine and his faithful buddy Monsieur Bibi.  The godfather of Charlot's baby, Monsieur Bibi is willing to do anything to help Henriette whilst Charlot is away fighting the Germans - well, almost anything.  He is at first reluctant to take up Didine's suggestion to marry Henriette so that she can claim an allowance and avoid a life of abject poverty, but he agrees to go along with the plan (even though he is old enough to be the girl's father) once it has been explained to him that he can divorce Henriette and allow her to marry Charlot after he has returned home and completed his own divorce.  The one person who is not happy with the arrangement is Monsieur Bibi's shrewish housekeeper, who has made up her mind that if Monsieur Bibi is going to be married to anybody it will be to her.  What a surprise Charlot has in store for him when he learns that his beloved Henriette is to get married in his absence!