Tout ça ne vaut pas l'amour (1931)
Directed by Jacques Tourneur

Film Review

Director Jacques Tourneur made his feature debut with this amiable but pretty undistinguished comedy, one of four films he made in France before moving to Hollywood in the late 1930s.  Tourneur served his apprenticeship working as a film editor for his father, Maurice Tourneur, and would spend the bulk of his career in America.  It is here that he made his best known films, a series of fantasy horror films made for RKO under the stewardship of producer Val Lewton, including Cat People (1942) and I Walked with a Zombie (1943).  Tourneur was equally capable as a director of film noir dramas, adventure films and westerns but he rarely ventured into comedy - The Comedy of Terrors (1964) is his only other notable humour fest - so this makes Tout ça ne vaut pas l'amour something of a rarity in his filmography.

Marcel Lévesque takes the lead in this uneven mélange of sentimental comedy and slapstick, although he is pretty well eclipsed by his two far more charismatic co-stars, Jean Gabin and Josseline Gaël, to say nothing of the veritable cavalcade of female grotesques who keep popping up in front of the camera and extract a laugh at their own expense.   Lévesque's heyday was in the silent era, when he worked for such pioneering directors as Louis Feuillade, but he remained busy in the early years of sound, lending his talents to such eminent filmmakers as Marcel L'Herbier, Sacha Guitry and Jean Renoir.  Josseline Gaël also had a busy career but, despite her astonishing good looks and lively personality, never lived up to her early promise; she is perhaps best remembered for playing Pierre Fresnay's wife Irène in La Main du diable, one of the last films to be completed by Maurice Tourneur.  Even at this early stage in his screen career it is apparent that Jean Gabin is destined for far greater things.  En attendant Duvivier, he was habitually cast as the happy-go-looking juvenile, ideally suited for light rom-coms such as this.

Film Synopsis

Renaudin, a pharmacist, takes in Claire, a young woman who is traumatised by a stillbirth.  Attached to her and anxious to make her happy, Renaudin wants to court her, but she is in love with another man, Jean, who has a shop next door.  Even though it breaks his heart, Renaudin does not press his suit but allows Claire to marry the man she loves...