Nobres Sem Fortuna

"Tovarich" was the sort of film Hollywood loved making -- light entertainment, a piece of fluff -- but with a subtle edge lacking in many other films of its era. This is a film that will make you smile, laugh and even choke up a bit. The performances are all brilliant and you would be hard pressed to dislike any character for long, even the 'villain' of the piece. This film even manages to convey its 'message' without being overbearing and destroying the humour. One of my all-time favourites.

Delightful sophisticated `continental' comedy (kind of a `reverse' Ninotchka), so entertaining indeed, that when it ends you have the feeling that it moved along too swiftly, keeping you wanting at least 30 minutes more of film!

French born actors, Charles Boyer and Claudette Colbert work together wonderfully well, under Anatole Litvak's very good direction, in this engaging comedy, based upon a french play adapted by Robert E. Sherwood himself, about two penniless members of the highest rank Russian nobility (escaped from the 1917 Russian Revolution) currently living in Paris, who masquerade as commoners in order to be hired as servants of an aristocratic household, full of sort-of-zany and bizarre characters.

Isabel Jeans and Melville Cooper are perfectly cast as the aristocratic couple, Mr. and Mrs. Dupont, who hire them, absolutely unaware of their new butler's and maid's pedigrees. Basil Rathbone, as always, gives an excellent performance as Comissar Gorotchenko, a very `special' guest at a lavish dinner party arranged by the Duponts, one of the funniest (and at the same time, most dramatic) sequences of the movie.

Boyer and Colbert are so utterly charming that one does not wonder why the Duponts and both, their daughter and son, are completely conquered and taken by the `undercover' Royal Russians, Prince Mikail Alexandrovitch Ouratieff (Boyer) and Grand Duchess Tatiana Petrovna Romanov (Colbert), known by them as Michel & Tina.

This was the third and last pairing of its leading stars, who had previously worked together successfully at Paramount Pictures, in `The Man From Yesterday' (1932) and `Private Worlds' (1935).

(1937) Tovarich COMEDY

Adapted from the play by Jacques Deval produced and directed by Anatole Litvak that has Grand Duchess, Tatiana Petrovna Romanov (Claudette Colbert) and her Prince, Mikail Alexandrovitch Ouratieff (Charles Boyer) attempt to elude capture from the Russian Revolution, to prevent returning a large sum of money intended for the Russian cause. They escape to Paris where they pose as butler and maid employed by the Dupont family of Fermonde (Isabel Jeans) and her husband Charles (Melville Cooper) and their two children, Helene (Anita Louise) and Georges (Maurice Murphy). It is not the matter of who's going to discover them but a question of when. The title "Tovarich" as the movie is called is the Russian word for "comrade" or "friend". Basil Rathbone also stars as the Soviet commissar, Dimitri Gorotchenko.

Sometimes it is hard to enjoy a movie considering what's going on, both during the Stalin era and the Putin era.

Adapted from a French play authored by Jacques Deval, Tovarich had a successful run on Broadway the year before the film came out for 356 performances. Robert Sherwood did the adaption and for the screen, the talents of Casey Robinson were brought in to adapt Tovarich to another medium. Usually these collaborative efforts tend to dilute, but in the case of Tovarich, it's bright sophisticated comedy that gives both Charles Boyer and Claudette Colbert two of their best screen roles.

Boyer and Colbert play a couple of exiled Russian nobles living in genteel poverty in Paris as so many did after the Russian Revolution. She's a bit more noble than he, Colbert is actually a blood Romanov and Boyer only married into the royal family. Before he and the family were overthrown, Nicholas II gave Boyer a lot of Russian gold, smuggled out of the country which Boyer laundered to use the modern term and deposited in a French bank under his name. Although no one could have blamed him for occasionally dipping in just for the bare necessities, Boyer and Colbert have refused to do it.

What they're sitting on it for, who can tell. They refuse an a request for money from another exile Morris Carnovsky for some wild scheme to restore the Romanovs. Boyer and Colbert have woke up and smelled the coffee, the Romanov restoration just ain't happening. But what to do with that money, especially when you're living one meal to the next.

Colbert and Boyer take jobs as butler and maid to a wealthy Parisian family consisting of Melville Cooper, Isabel Jeans, Anita Louise, and Maurice Murphy. Reasoning after all that their former status has acquainted them somewhat with the finer things and how that life should be lived. It takes a bit of getting used to as far as the reversal of stations, but gradually they ingratiate themselves with the family.

The big test comes when a dinner party is given and a Commissar from the Soviet Union played by smooth Basil Rathbone is invited. He's got some history with the Romanovs and things get both funny and tense at the same time. A real achievement for director Anatole Litvak.

Tovarich was also the source of a Broadway musical from 1963 in which Vivien Leigh starred in the Claudette Colbert role.

If you think you've figured out who the good and bad people are than you are in for a surprise. Tovarich takes no sides in the politics, it presents the Bolsheviks and Romanovs with all the warts showing. It does it with sparkling humor as well. Try to catch it when broadcast next.

If anyone could see the scene of the Colbert and Boyer serving at a party and not laugh, I would like to meet him. This is a stylish comedy concerning two noble emigrees who are in possession of a Bank account worth 10 billion gold francs, and who sign on as butler and chambermaid to a Parisian couple and the adventures that ensue.