Johnny Frenchman

This is a curiously timed Ealing film.It was released in the UK in October 1945.It's main theme seems to be promoting Anglo French entente.therefore one would think that it would have been a better film for a year earlier.There is no doubt that Francois Rosay acts everyone else off the screen,even Tom Walls who overcast wildly in most of his films and was bad at taking direction.As has been mentioned Patricia Fox is totally out of place with her RADA accent.I found this film rather overlong at 100 minutes.I last saw this at the NFT about 20 years ago,and have only gotten around to viewing the DVD 7 years after buying it.So not particularly memorable.

Wonderful old film about French and English in Cornwall, living side-by-side and arguing over fishing rights. Light-hearted moments are included, such as an Englishman telling a derogatory joke about French and none of the French laugh at it, and he hedges and haws his way on through his speech, a neighborly sporting event and a concert cancelled because the performers fought during rehearsal. The movie may seem to focus on the young Frenchman and the English lass and their romance, but the real stars are his French mother and her English father. Fran Rosay as the French mother especially compels the movie right up until the end. There are no Hollywood stars in here to steal the show, not even a recognizeable face or two. What a treat. If it ever comes on again, make plans to set a program to record it and watch it later. I had this and Buster Crabbe's Tarzan on tape at the same time, and, thinking I would watch the best one last, I watched Johnny Frenchman first. Turns out, I should have watched Buster Crabbe first! Johnny Frenchman was a delight.

Other reviewers have detailed the plot of this marvellous little film, I watched it this morning where it was shown on UK television on the London Live channel (who have lately started to schedule a lot of little seen British films from the 40s and 50s). Story review aside, the film is a window on lost ways of life, lost communities, cultures, and unlike an historical pic, these worlds were extant as the film was made (though at the very end of their time). A curious insight into pre war local/international rivalries in fishing communities that straddled the channel for 100s of years. The War changes everything in the picture, as in life it seems to have brought to an end centuries of tradition (such as wearing local costume for the Brettoniers). I cannot leave off without saying how wonderful Francoise Rosy is. She brings a life to the picture that makes it fresh decades after it might have been forgotten. truly interesting and entertaining.

I voted this film a very creditable 7/10 and was thoroughly entertained and amused by the good hearted and competing French vs English culture as it related to international fishing rights.The star of this film for me was Francoise Rosay who played a redoubtable Breton widow who has a son Yan, (played by that stalwart of British post war films which required a romantic French hero - Paul Dupuis).Francoise was born in 1891 and appeared in many French & English films and was perfectly cast as Lanec.She has some amusing battles with feisty Nat Pomeroy (Tom Walls) who is the local harbour master (and life boat volunteer) of a Cornish fishing town who has to keep an eye out for poaching French fishermen inside the English 3 mile fishing limit off the coast.

Nat, (a presumed widower), has an attractive daughter, Sue Pomeroy, played by the equally attractive Patricia Roc.Tom and Patricia had previously appeared together in "Love Story" (1944) with Margaret Lockwood and Stewart Granger which was also set in Cornwall.In the latter film Tom had an avuncular relationship with Patricia so these two actors very easily relaxed into their part of father and daughter in "Johnny Frenchman".Although Sue has been friends since childhood with Bob Tremayne (Ralph Michael) she is undecided whether she wants to marry him despite Bob's urging.

The action of "Johnny Frenchman" opens in March 1939 and leads up to June 1940.There is a scene in a Breton port where the French play host to "les Rosbifs" together with a wrestling match amongst the Cornish and Gallic fishermen where Yan breaks a bone whilst wrestling Bob, his love rival.Of course Sue has fallen for Yan and after a talk between Yan & Bob, (who has by now been called up into the navy), this is OK with Bob.All good natured stuff and I wondered whether Lanec and Nat would marry also as they seemed a perfect foil for each other.

"Johnny Frenchman" is an early Ealing Comedy, produced by Michael Balcon with a screenplay by T.E.B. Clarke. It is relatively little-known when compared to films like "Kind Hearts and Coronets" or "The Ladykillers", but does, however, share one characteristic with three other well-known Ealing films, "Whisky Galore", "Passport to Pimlico" and "The Titfield Thunderbolt". All four are set in a small, tightly-knit community, whether that be a Hebridean island, a working-class London neighbourhood, a rural English village or, as here, a small fishing port in Cornwall.

The story opens in March 1939. The fishermen of the port of Trevannick have a long-standing rivalry with their French counterparts from Brittany, the main cause of which is the French habit of fishing illegally in British territorial waters. Matters are not helped when, during a supposed goodwill visit by some of the Cornish men to Brittany, a French fisherman breaks a leg in a wrestling match. Another important plot strand deals with the love-triangle between Sue Pomeroy, daughter of the Cornish harbour-master, her long-term sweetheart Bob and Yann, a handsome young Breton fisherman. This situation does not improve feelings between the two communities, especially as Yann's mother Florrie, who owns her own boat, is one of the most flagrant breachers of the anti-poaching laws, laws which it falls to Sue's father Nat to enforce. ("Florrie", incidentally, does not seem a very French name. Possibly her true name is something else and "Florrie" a nickname bestowed by her English rivals).

The film was made in 1945, at the end of the war, and like most British films from this period is essentially propaganda. The latter part of the film takes place after the war has broken out, when the two communities realise that they must put aside their differences and make common cause against their mutual enemy, something which becomes all the more important after France is occupied by the Nazis in 1940. Not all wartime propaganda films, however, were deadly serious, and the tone here remains essentially comic.

Like "The Titfield Thunderbolt", but unlike some of the other Ealing comedies, "Johnny Frenchman" was largely shot on location. There is some striking black-and-white photography of the Cornish coastline, with Mevagissey standing in for the fictional Trevannick. There are some amusing contributions from Tom Walls as the blustering Nat and Françoise Rosay as the sharp-tongued Florrie. This is not a film in the same class as the likes of "Kind Hearts and Coronets" or "Passport to Pimlico"; it lacks the element of satire at the expense of the authorities, something for which the later peacetime Ealings were to become noted. Seventy years on, however, it holds up better than a lot of wartime propaganda movies. 7/10