Only one comment ,and a very negative one !after reading that ,who on earth is going to Watch "Monsieur Coccinelle " (=Mr ladybird)?
This is totally unfair;Bernard-Deschamp made the best of his would be shoestring budget -first thing to bear in mind is that it was 1938,and the technical means were limited.
In 1938,at a time when the French cinema went from strength to strength ,this is an unique work,which cannot be compared with any of the great works of the time ,and it's enough to have a look at this overlooked effort.
"Monsieur Coccinelle " is a really bizarre work:now a middle class satire,now a fairy tale,now a horror movie(you read well),there are constantly abrupt changes of tone,sometimes in the same sequence .
Take the beginning: Monsieur Coccinelle has a dream,then his missus (rather a shrew than an angel)wakes him up to go to his office :his nine-to-six work has something of Lang's "Metropolis" and predates that of Jack Lemmon in "the apartment" ;men act like robots and it is almost frightening;then a poetic sequence shows our state employee take care of his tree.
In his house ,where his missus is making rough all over,there's a servant who writes her diary ,her first love pleasant agitation (he kissed me and I felt as though something was coming down on my head),with plenty of spelling mistakes;upstairs lives an old romantic auntie,who was never able to marry "Illusion " ,a conjurer her family would despise .
The movie looks like a kaleidoscope and the screenplay is full of gags and fine lines:everything seems to happen at once : Monsieur Coccinelle meets again an old friend ,a bit of a sponger,who doesn't like Madame Coccinelle's quinine tonic wine (he empties his glass in a flowerpot and the plant dramatically grows)and prefers good red wine;that very night,Auntie Aurore dies and the undertakers trip over one another in their haste to take advantage of the situation (would you like a hearse with a speaker which plays sweet music and ease your pain?)
some scenes verge on absurd: just before the old aunt dies ,a doctor tells that her noodles must be carefully cooked ,he suggests the water be changed three times ,then continues this interesting health food concern with his colleagues after the old woman passes away.
The final segment smartly blends horror and fairy tale :drunk ,Monsieur Coccinelle comes back home from the station he took his friend to and begins to see things:dead head,odd pictures of the departed,cat eyes ,a dress which moves by itself ,all in a stormy night,of course. The dream of the beginning has turned into a nightmare where all the events of the day reappear.But every cloud has a silver lining and the unexpected end is a fairy tale ,a hymn to poetry and true love and a put-down of mean self-interested bourgeois.
If you are interested in the past of the French cinema,you have got to see "Monsieur Coccinelle " .
