La bourse et la vie

Jean-Pierre Mocky was a very prolific filmmaker, director, writer, actor. His absolute masterpiece, in my humble opinion, is a film with Bourvil that I have seen countless times, "Heaven Sent" (1963) Un drôle de paroissien (original title). This "La bourse et la vie" it's a beginning movie, a comedy so light that you don't laugh at all. Fernandel, a quintessential comedian, struggles, the script doesn't help him at all. The great French actor Michel Galabru appears in a small role. Marilù Tolo, a beauty from the '60s, an honorable actress, also appears in a small role.

This Jean-Pierre Mocky mixes mischief, stinginess and cheapness around three characters. The first is Jean Poiret in the role of the money-hungry villain who uses two accountants in a company to transport money for his own benefit. These two accountants are a Marseillais played by Fernandel and an Alsatian (Heinz Rühmann, hilarious) in very different styles of course, who will have to transport this money together through the city of Bordeaux to the bank, and then by train to Paris. All this is based on misunderstandings and the fact that what is planned by the characters does not go as planned, which allows them to rub shoulders with and meet zany characters that we see regularly in Jean-Pierre Mocky. For example here Jean Carmet in the role of a blind priest and driver. It is also the team of binoculars to whom Jean Poiret must give his money, iconoclastic group whose role we do not understand well, but it does not matter, because they bring the exoticism that we expect from a film by Jean-Pierre Mocky. And it is also the extraordinary scene with their Parisian colleagues, where Darry Cowl's interpretation is brilliant, with Jacques Legras as a complement in the sequence. In the galleries of characters a little unusual, but typical of the Mockian bestiary, there is the president general director interpreted by a woman (Simone Duhart) behaving as a man with the resulting mise en abyme.

This is only slightly subversive, but all in all rather nice because there is a know-how of Jean-Pierre Mocky and his team around all this and also thanks to the fact that he has very good actors who therefore perfectly embody this gallery of oddballs.

Shameful, awful and miserable comedy (that is what it is supposed to be) in which the talents of both Heinz Rühmann and Fernandel are wasted; one feels pity for them. Badly directed with no timing of the already poor and crude "jokes", poor acting by anyone involved, poor cinematography, in fact poor everything. Rühmann already played in the 1931 adaptation of the play the film is based on: "Der brave Sünder"; the less said about thìs film, the better. (1/10)

"La Bourse Et La Vie " was Mocky's first color movie and he had strong assets : a big budget (French-German production) ,writer Marcel Aymé on hand to write the dialogs ,Fernandel and French stars in the making such as Jean Poiret and Claude Piéplu.Plus a nice score.There's a sung version - heard during the cast and credits at the end- of the main theme by pop star Richard Anthony .

For all that,the movie was a monumental flop ,and Fernandel -Bourvil had recommended Mocky to him- would not hear of this director anymore.Mocky is at his best when he mixes thriller and comedy ("solo" "L'Albatros" "Le Temoin" ,etc).His art is less palatable when he tries to do exclusively comic stuff.Fernandel's fan can have a look ,this is one of his most obscure movies.

I have seen this movie as a child. Maybe I am misguided by my memories, but I was quite impressed then of the adventures of two men who try to get back the money, they have lost in the streets of Paris. It is sort of a epical comedy, an odyssey through Paris. It adopts the rhythm of a road movie, which might appear to some as an unstructured failure, but which has a certain poetic atmosphere. It is one of the few Heinz Rühmann movies (the most important german comedian of the last century) which I really like and his teaming with famous french comedian Fernandel is really for the benefit of both. Not to forget Jean Poiret, one of those underrated actors whose company one enjoys almost without noticing the actors presence. There are many moments and scenes which are engraved in my memories. But maybe I shouldn´t try to see it again.