Occupe-toi d'Amélie..!

Screenplay based on Georges Feydeau's eponymous play.At the time ,Claude Autant-Lara was a rebel: sandwiched between "Le Diable Au Corps" and "L'Auberge Rouge" which displayed the director's hatred for the bourgeoisie,the army and the Church.Although "Amelie" is a farce,it's a fierce attack against marriage ,bourgeois hypocrisy and even military madness (the barracks is put in quarantine cause they all developed mumps).

Amelie is a Cocotte (=a tart);she trades on her charms,abetted by her father who plays a role generally delegated to mothers (Gremillon's "Gueule D'Amour" or Allégret's "Manèges" ).She is wooed by every Tom,Dick and Harry passing by.She's currently supported by a military man,courted by a foreign prince -who gives the equivalent of the French Legion D'Honneur to dad- ,and ,besides,she is to marry a young lad who covets his wealthy uncle's heritage: the necessary and sufficient condition for getting the dough is getting married.

Autant-Lara's adaptation is brilliant: there's a poster of the show on the wall of a theater where some of the scenes are played ,on stage or backstage (like Luis Bunuel would do in "Le Charme Discret De La Bourgeoisie ");the "audience" intervenes during the sequence of events ;And ,last but not least,there's a "advertisements interlude" ,as they could see one in the Belle Epoque days .

Danielle Darrieux shines as Amelie and Jean Dessailly is oddly cast against type.Acting is continuous overacting,which may repel some but which inspires the vital madness of the movie,which knows only one one tempo:accelerated.

A deliciously stupid and life-enhancing farce, and at the same time a nostalgic homage to farce, with lovely music by René Cloërec, and a clever, daring mixing-up of theatre stage and dressing-rooms and audience and film. After the slideshow adverts at the interval, the maid answers the phone while the stage hands are still preparing the scenery.

Their hands and feet are in a whirl, whether it's Julien Carette frenetically pedalling sideways down the stairs negotiating his medal, Jean Desailly trying to do his maths or Danielle Darrieux crossing the room like an overwound clockwork toy. There's a lovely moment when these three switch tableaux vivants depending on who they think is about to enter the room.

Gone are Darrieux' pre-war days of playing the young ingénue. Here she is the carefree centre ("Take your boots off, darling! Oh!") of lustful proceedings, as happy to accommodate the comically lecherous prince (Grégoire Aslan) as her supposed lover. Relish how she changes back into a submissive femme de chambre when she realises she's talking to her former mistress Irène (Louise Conte), or how she finds at the end, in a way that perhaps only Darrieux can, a magnetic moment of genuine sentiment.

I've never seen this play on stage, so I can't tell if it's a faithful translation into film, but I do know that the acting is very fine (even when done at an absolutely frenetic pace). Danielle Darrieux, whom I'd seen in dramatic roles in the past, shows a talent for rapid-fire comedy, and Julien Carette, that Renoir stalwart of the Thirties, is superb as Amelie's father. What a piece of uproarious comedy is the marriage scene, with the continual interruptions of Carette. Autant-Lara directs very capably--he said it was the favourite of all his films. The excellent decors are by Max Douy.