Battement de coeur

I wonder whether the idea of a school of pickpockets was an inspiration for Robert Hamer's 1958 "School for Scoundrels". In any event this is a very funny, touching, stylish, lightweight piece of entertainment. It's a shame that it isn't better known in English-speaking countries.

This is definitely a (vanity?) vehicle for the excellent and evergreen Danielle Darrieux, provided by her husband, director Henri Decoin (I suppose in the manner of Anna Neagle and Herbert Willcox). Their marriage was dissolved in 1941, but the preceding six years of her career (they married in 1935) were among her most productive and rewarding. How many actresses alive today were at the peak of their careers before World War II?

This is a retelling of the Cinderella story, with the young diplomat, Pierre de Rougemont (Claude Dauphin, a polished and patient sophisticate) in the role of the prince. Saturnin Fahre (excellent here, as in "Pepe le Moko" and many other films) is a rather more benign version of the wicked stepmother. Indeed, he seems a fairly tolerant and genial crime-master.

It is hard to summarise a film that is essentially about dresses, rocks and glances. There are certainly a number of brilliant set-pieces (notably in the 'schoolroom' and at the embassy ball), but this is really a film about charm, very witty dialogue (thanks to Jean Willeme and Max Colpet) and high production values. A typical, workaday film of the 1930s - therefore far superior to most of what is produced today. It is astonishing to think that this world of whirls and romances was on the cusp of being crushed.

Henry Decoin's first efforts were virtually all sentimental comedies (except maybe "le Domino Vert" which was more melodrama -like).Rosy began to turn to black from " Les Inconnus Dans La Maison" and he became one of the masters of the French film noir;unlike what Melville did later ,his was pure French art ,displaying no influence from the American masters such as Walsh,Hathaway,Wise ,Siodmak or Farrow: "La Fille Du Diable" " Les Amoureux Du Pont Saint-Jean ""La Verite Sur Bebe Donge" "Non Coupable" are genuine classics which the new wave ignored of course.

"Battement De Coeur" is one of the last of his rosy comedies (for the record ,there would be "Je Suis Avec Toi" (1943)and like almost all the other ones ,it stars Danielle Darrieux ,then his wife and the young girls' idol."Battement De Coeur" is not unlike Mitchell Leisen's "Midnight" (1939),as French (and American)movies specialist Writer's Reign wrote.Billy Wilder's and Marcel Hachard's screenplays are very similar ,both being very Cinderellesque ."Battement De Coeur" adds a Dickensian touch with his "pick pocket's school" where the "students " learn the tricks of the trade ,under a modern Fagin's watchful eye.Dig this line : "I've not been studying in this school for months to become a constable !" .It's a pleasant comedy : Darrieux is as sparkling as champagne and that's where its attraction lies.

Some six years after this early wartime release Sam Wood remade it with Ginger Rogers and succeeded in snatching a suet pudding from the jaws of a souffle. There's nothing terribly new or innovative in the Cinderella story and this Henri Decoin-Danielle Darrieux husband-and-wife entry came hot on the heels of the great Billy Wilder script 'Midnight' in which the penniless Claudette Colbert was taken under the wing of John Barrymore and introduced into Society. This time around Danielle Darrieux, who hasn't got change of a match when we see her first, enrols in Saturnin Fabre's Fagin-style school for thieves which leads directly to a meeting with an Ambassador which in turn leads to Society where Claude Dauphin is waiting to fall in love with the charming waif turned thief. It's all pure fluff, of course, but it's also all in the wrists and, it has to be said, French wrists have more style than those at Sunset and Vine. Basil Rathbone was a considerable actor in anyone's book in addition to being the finest swordsman - in the original meaning of the word - in Hollywood but compared to Saturnin Fabre he finishes a bad nowhere. It's highly unlikely that this gem will be screened outside a Festival of Classic French Films so the best that most buffs can do is lobby their local Art House. 8/10

For a moment you think you're in for a pretty silly thirties comedy about a school for pickpockets run by Saturnin Fabre as M. Aristide ("Crapule!") but enter Danielle Darrieux ("plus jolie, plus gamine, plus délicieuse que jamais", just as the trailer says), escapee from the House of Reform in Amiens, and the plot exuberantly swings us off into the world of ambassadorial finery and class barriers. She rattles out delicious slang and one funny line after another with the excellent André Luguet as ambassador. When she's caught for stealing a tie-pin, "Well you shouldn't have been wearing such an expensive one on a bus anyway!" As she's muscled out of a cinema, "But there's a cartoon afterwards!" Baron Dvorak (Charles Dechamps) tries to coach her in her new identity: "And you are...?" "Knackered." More hilarious moments as she and goofy Roland (Jean Tissier) make themselves at home in Claude Dauphin's mansion. DD is front and centre, the agile mistress of every comedic or pathetic twist.