Francesco I

Fernandel is the dogsbody in a traveling show. He finally gets the chance to play the role of a noble knight in the show's musical production of the life of the mistress of Francis I. Overcome with stage fright, the show's magic ball reader, Alexandre Mihalesco, hypnotizes him into dreaming being the knight in the court of Francis I. There he impresses everyone with predictions out of his Larousse Encyclopedia, befriends a ghost, and teaches the court to dance the tango and play contract bridge.

Fernandel mugs it up in this funny comedy directed by Christian-Jaque. It's clearly a gloss on Twain's A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT with a thorough mixture of anachronism and fantasy. Mona Goya plays the show's leading lady and the courtesan, Alexandre Rignault is Henry VIII, and Henri Bosc is the author of the play and the cuckolded husband of Mlle Goya.

I saw this movie when I was about 8 years old, during a sleep-over at my French grandparents. Although the movie never came out on DVD, I did find it in a French video store in Los Angeles twenty years later and enjoyed it as much as when I was a kid! Fernandel plays Honorin, a frustrated stage manager of a traveling theater troupe, whose one ambition is to play the part of the cavalier in the opera "Francois I". A hypnotist puts him to sleep and in his dreams he is transplanted back to the area of the French Renaissance. That's when the fun begins. Having taken a Larousse encyclopedia with him, he becomes the favorite of the French court when he's able to tell them what's going to happen in their future, just by looking it up in the book!!! Being a film maker, I always wanted to make a remake of the movie, until a mediocre Martin Lawrence flic called "Black Knight" was released, in which an employee of a Medieval theme park is transported to Old England, where his modern lifestyle clashes with the Renaissance period ... Believe me, if you can get your hands on the original, watch it, it's a real gem!

Christian-Jaque takes Fernandel to the court of François Premier and it is,along with "Raphael le Tatoué " and " Un de la Legion" ,one of their best collaborations.Probably inspired by previous Guitry's "Les Perles de la Couronne" which Christian-Jaque co-directed .Not as witty as Guitry's lines,"François Premier" is thoroughly enjoyable -apart from the scenes dealing with the Inquisition where clumsiness expresses-,full of puns ,of mistaken identities and of anachronisms .

For this journey through the past ,no time machine needed;a wizard's occult powers will nicely do the trick.He is none other than Cagliostro (or one of his great grand children?)In the sixteenth century the "hero" is mistaken for a fair knight Bayard style ;but he's only got his Larousse dictionary for a sword.This mini-encyclopedia will be useful when the time traveler wants to know what the Ordeal is ...or to become a fortune teller revealing the nobles what their future will be;the future is really his to see.La Palice,a man famous for his self-evident statements learns that fifteen minutes before his death ,he will be still alive .

The precedent user is right when he writes that the film could be remade.