50 Million Frenchmen

50 Million Frenchmen (1931)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Your tolerance level of Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson will certainly determine how much you enjoy this comedy from director Lloyd Bacon. In the film they play two dumb Americans who find themselves in Paris trying to track down a certain woman. Along the way they manage to drive many people crazy including the viewers of the film. 50 MILLION FRENCHMEN is a pretty bad movie on several levels. I understand that comedy is very subjective but the Olsen and Johnson routine just didn't win me over here. In fact, I thought it was quite annoying at times and especially the Johnson laugh, which just made me want to throw myself in front of a moving bus. Even if you do enjoy their routine you're still going to be left with a rather poorly made movie. This was one of those early talkies where it's clear that most of the people involved just didn't know what they were doing yet. Just check out the opening scene with the woman and watch her performance. She's all over the place and appears to be looking off camera at the director trying to get some sort of help. Others throughout the cast also appears to be struggling in front of the camera but it doesn't stop here because the cinematography is bad and the entire film just has a very cheap look. Bela Lugosi fans might want to skip through some of the film to find his uncredited performance. It's funny to note that this film opened the same date as Dracula.

"Fifty Million Frenchmen" was a musical comedy play that Warner Brothers backed with the plan of turning it into a film. But by the time that it came for filming in 1930, musical films were landing with a thud as far as movie going audiences were concerned. So plans were made to strip out all of the songs and just add more Olsen and Johnson where the music had been. It was still filmed in Technicolor though, which has been lost. All that's left are the black and white copies, which explains its blurry appearance.

The basic thread of the story is not a bad one. A rich ne'er do well American playboy in Paris, Jack Forbes (William Gaxton) well financed by his industrialist father to stay as far away from the family business as possible, sees Lu Lu Carroll (Claudia Dell) and falls instantly in love. Michael Cummins (John Halliday) says that he is also interested in her. He bets Forbes that he cannot win the girl's heart without any of his money as a means to impress her and take her places. If Forbes wins, Cummins will pay him 50 thousand dollars. If Cummins wins the bet, Forbes will pay him 50 thousand dollars. In the meantime, Forbes must make his living any way that he can, starting with no money or letters of credit in his pocket.

Warner Brothers, in just another year or two with better performers, could have made this work as a pretty decent precode. The main problem is the large part that Olsen and Johnson have in this film. Their part is that Cummins hires them to make sure that Forbes doesn't cheat and borrow money off of anyone. They're just not funny and Johnson's incessant hyena-like laughter gets old in a hurry. Show me you're funny, don't TELL me you're funny! Make this about Forbes and his creative attempts to survive and impress the girl given that he has no money and no contacts in a country that is foreign to him, and this could have been interesting. Instead the focus is Olsen and Johnson and their juvenile and archaic attempts at humor.

The few interesting spots include Helen Broderick as someone who hires Forbes as a guide and Bela Lugosi as a mystic.

Fifty Million Frenchmen is a zany madcap farce with the boys on the loose in France. This Pre-Code comedy has some daring moments (Olsen & Johnson wickedly rummaging through lady's lingerie) and a real vaudeville feel to the humor. Olsen & Johnson are one of the most underrated and little known comedy teams of the 1930's and 1940's and this is a darn shame. Personally, I think their best work, in films like HELLZAPOPPIN' and CRAZY HOUSE, are far funnier than better known comedy duos like Abbott & Costello. Look for Bela Lugosi in a small cameo as a sinister swami who falls afoul of the boy's slapstick antics.

"50 Million Frenchman" was originally a stage musical. And, apart from completely missing the songs*, it plays exactly like a stage production. It's very episodic with lots of Vaudeville-style humor. While it nominally stars the comedy team of Olsen and Johnson, they really are relegated to supporting roles where they walk on and do tiny comedy bits--bits that often seem to have NOTHING to do with the film's plot. As for the plot, it's about an American who meets a nice girl in France and falls for her BUT he accidentally loses his money and is forced to get a job. However, he IS rich and has bet another man that he can win the woman's heart without spending a fortune on her. Will she love him for who he is or will the man's friend win her, as he ISN'T pretending to be poor?

Back to Olsen and Johnson. Although this team is practically unknown today, they were quite successful on stage and made a few movies. Most of the ones I've seen were only fair, but their film "Hellzapoppin" is a terrific comedy. "50 Million Frenchmen" is NOT brilliant--mostly because Olsen and Johnson's material is pretty bad. Too often they weren't very funny and were quite corny--and the team laughed uproariously like every line was hilarious...which only reinforced how unfunny they were. In fact, the entire film is flat and unfunny and has not aged well. My feeling is that the film would have been much better without the comedy OR if they gave up entirely on the plot and just had a lot of zaniness (which is exactly why "Hellzapoppin" was such a good film). The other problem is that the film is simply too talky--as if the folks making the film didn't really understand the new medium of talking pictures.

Look carefully at Orizon the Magician. Underneath the beard and the costume, that's Bela Lugosi! He made this bit appearance before making his breakout film, "Dracula". However, as "50 Million Frenchmen" was held about a year before it was released, it turned out both films were released the same day back in 1931!

*While musicals were THE rage in the very early days of talking pictures, within only a couple years, the genre was pretty stale and box office receipts for these films dropped. So, while the Best Picture Oscar went to "Broadway Melody" in 1930, but around 1931 the films appeared to be passé. Because of this, studio execs ordered all the songs removed from "50 Million Frenchmen" before it was released. By about 1933-34, musicals were suddenly popular once again. Why the change? I have always assumed it's because the sound technology improvements enabled the musicals to sound a lot better and weren't inhibited by primitive microphones and flat sound. Additionally, the studios simply refined their style and plots enough that they once again were appealing to Depression-era audiences.

Hardcore fans of Olsen and Johnson and/or Bela Lugosi will need no persuading, but others may find Fifty Million Frenchmen a pretty heavy slog. It's one of those early talkies where the actors hadn't quite figured out how to adjust their body language or their vocal intonations to suit the new medium, and it's at times awkwardly paced and badly shot. Nonetheless there are some inspired moments of Olson and Johnson lunacy, especially when the boys disguise themselves as the assistants of a stage magician and end up on stage performing a deadly sword trick. The romantic subplots are unnecessary and uninteresting and Johnson's maniacal laughter soon gets irksome.