Ciboulette

"Ciboulette" is primarily an operetta so if your cup of tea is ,say,Mozart,Miles Davis or the Beatles ,this might possibly bore you. For they sing every five minutes.To my ears ,the only tune I find palatable is the lovely "Nous Avons Fait un Beau Voyage" .

The story: Ciboulette is a market gardener in love with an idle noble man,Antonin.She's got eight fiancés and her uncle urges her to marry one of them as soon as possible.

The director:Claude Autant-Lara who was first a set designer and it shows in "Ciboulette" .Autant-Lara would become one of the masters of the Cinema de Studio which the New Wavelet despised (they did not know what they were missing) and which produced masterpieces such as "Douce" (1943) or "L'Auberge Rouge" (1951).The film begins with a long travelling on the sleepy city which ends up at a lamplighter .The settings and the costumes are dazzling.The "handkerchief scene" is filmed with delicacy : we see her reflection on a pond before a duck comes and blurs the picture.

But it's strictly for Autant-Lara's completists.If you do not like operetta,you must move on.