Prince de minuit (1935)
Directed by René Guissart

Film Review

This routine comedy (so typical of most French comedies made in the 1930s) is pepped up by a lively turn from Henri Garat, one of the most successful French singers of the period.  Garat's musical talents are put to good use in three sprightly numbers, and this doesn't leave a great deal of time for the plot, which ends up following a predictable course towards a predictable ending.  The other notable name in the cast is Paul Pauley, a popular comic actor who famously created the role of Régis de Castel-Bénac in the original 1928 stage version of Marcel Pagnol's Topaze.  Looking like a malignant Oliver Hardy, Pauley excelled in the kind of comedy-tyrant role he plays with such gusto in Prince de minuit, and it is sad that he died just a few years after this film, having appeared in Abel Gance's Un grand amour de Beethoven (1937).  In the supporting cast the most keen-eyed of French film enthusiasts will spot Jeanne Fusier-Gir and Pierre Palau, two of the great character actors of French cinema.

Film Synopsis

If Henry's talents as a salesman in a Parisian record shop are seldom appreciated by his employer, Monsieur Galoubet, it is because he is frivolous by nature and cannot help flirting with his boss's daughter.  When he is finally shown the door, he consoles himself by posing as a prince in a popular nightspot.  He is soon mistaken for a real prince, whom he closely resembles, and before he knows it he is being asked to take the place of his exalted look-alike...