Le Petit Baigneur

Once upon a time, long before the raise of lousy actors such Christian Clavier and his VISITEURS crap, where you need some help to know when to laugh, there were excellent movies, with Louis De Funès for instance, really funy, full of gags and also chiseled by terrific dialogues and over the top acting. I am not fond of comedies, especially Frenchie ones, so corny, for only concerning fifties and early sixties, starring the likes of Darry Cowl and directed by such film makers as Raoul André, Andre Berthomieu, Jean Boyer, Jack Pinoteau...But directors such Robert Lamoureux, Jean Girault, Yves Robert or Robert Dhéry, especially starring Louis de Funès, that's another matter. Here, De Funès is the master of ceremony; without him Robert Dhéry would certainly have failed. But who cares, just enjoy and laugh. You'll know when to laugh, unlike LES VISITEURS.

What we generally call a guilty pleasure is a film we'd feel guilty to admit we like but we watch it anyway, I'm not sure I'd like to watch "The Little Bather" again but I'd feel guilty to criticize it. But I'd rather have a guilty pleasure than genuine annoyance.

This is obviously a product of its time that exploited the comedic talent of Louis de Funès, king of comedy and champ of French box-office since 1964, but all the comedic talent of the world can't carry a thin and plot-less story, one that can be summed up as a big and wacky chase across the French coast, one à la "Mad, Mad World" with less stars and less ambition.

Louis de Funès, plays one of his trademark role, a little man but a big shot, a local entrepreneur of French naval industry named Fourchaume. He fires his red-haired engineer Castagnet (Robert Dhéry) after his last prototype lamentably sunk during when the bottle of champagne was thrown by a Margaret Dumont-like baroness who apologized because she didn't know her strength. It's always a bad sign when the funniest gag of the film happens so early.

Bad timing causes Fourchaume to fire Castagnet just before he learns that an Italian businessman (Franco Fabrizi) wanted to buy the "Bather" after it had just won a famous race. Fourchaume tries to reach his fired worker to make amends and the rest is just a series of gags involving vehicles and transportation used during the trip, a running gag with Castagnet's step-brother played by Galabru and one with red-haired siblings that is so damn silly I'm actually glad they kept it.

The film isn't bad at all, it actually offers some visually dazzling locations and in its own right, it's a fun action film with a great mix of slapstick and good deal of escapism across beautiful landscape and there's a scene involving a barrier and a bike that plays like a touching tribute to Jacques Tati's "Jour de Fête". Robert Dhéry who directed the film and one of Funès' earlier successes in the 50's show his heritage and makes the most of it through the film, but there comes a point where the energy runs out and even Fufu who usually carries any role seems to be as lost as us.

The situations never really stop being funny but they betray a sort of desperation to make us laugh and that's rather cringe-worthy, as if the sights of men falling, screaming, or having their car cut in half was supposed to make anyone laugh. There's a sort of preconceived notion of comedy that seems outdated even by the standards of 1967. And I don't think the primarily concerned was oblivious to that as De Funès had often criticized the amateurship of some movies he's made and the lousiness of some scripts, I wonder if he had this film in mind.

It still did well in the box-office in 1968 but it reminded of "The Tattoo" directed by Denys de la Pattelière, successful but forgettable. De Funès worked with a few directors near the end of his career: Jean Girault, Gérard Oury, Edouard Molinaro and Claude Zidi, by his own admittance, he felt at ease with directors he knew so he could have some control over his work. This is a film consists on the same pattern and things getting out on control with all the characters as rather passive observers, it's overplaying to such a point that even the ending can't really save it.

You can tell it tries to play like "Oscar" with the final gag but actually, it made me realize that at least "Oscar" pushed its screwball concept to the limit of zaniness, I didn't like it much but it has a richness and consistency of its own. "The Little Bather" is a minor "De Funès", not his Top 10, but it has its moments, most of them before the first half hour is over. The visuals save the film, but surely you don't watch a De Funès film for them.

It took me years and years (and also some of my wife's persistence) to finally appreciate this movie for what it really is: an almost completely absurd, disjointed and surrealistic comedy, owing a lot to Jacques Tati ("Mon Oncle") and perhaps also to some Laurel & Hardy entries. I am thinking here of those Stan Laurel gags which defy logic, cinematographic or otherwise, which style I recognize here in scenes such as the hysterical one where De Funès "air-plays" some violin bit, which logically only the viewer can hear the in-sync sound of in the soundtrack, then accuses his wife of having actually played this music instead of him, since such things run in HER family… I think that viewers who cannot get or appreciate this kind of humor miss the point with this film because it relies a lot on such absurdity. And it is this absurdity which sets it apart uniquely in the De Funès filmography of this specific era.

The direction and editing superbly serve this style of screenplay – see the scene where De Funès destroys his boats in a tantrum and how he interacts with objects which do not appear to be controlled by any off-camera prop men… just by the laws of gravity and the like! The boat chase at the end is also a nice, pleasantly rural/natural relief from the traditional car, plane or chopper chases in some of those other De Funès films, and I love how the gags with the wakes and waves are built and shot!

Saw this movie many times in my childhood. Always a pleasure to see it once in a while.

Castagnier, a sailboat designer, wins the San Remo boat race with a revolutionary model. However, his boss, Fourchaume, a rather irate man more focused on money than awards, fires him for negligence about a poorly built yacht. However, the Italian San Remo boat-race organizer came to tell Fourchaume that the boat won and wanted copies to be built. It's now up to him to go to the Castagnier's seaside village and convince to come back, but with a master plan to take all advantage of the situation.

Lots of in-jokes (among one, the Castagniers are all redheads, even the priest), gags aplenty (the guy in the floating back-house, the walk up a tall lighthouse, the church which is crumbling, etc...), and Louis De Funes performance as Fourchaume are the must to see in this movie.

Robert Dhéry takes top billing for starring, directing and writing, but Louis De Funes takes the show here...

Louis de Funès will always remain the best French comedian there ever was. His mimics, his nervous character, his shouting and raging, I just can't get enough of it. I watched Le Petit Baigneur so many times, like all other movies with Louis de Funès, and it's still funny. It's the kind of comedies that remind me of my youth, when watching a movie with Louis de Funès was a family thing, a guarantee for a funny movie night. Le Petit Baigneur is probably not his best one, but it's certainly not the worst either. Even after more than fifty years later I still think about Castagnier every time I see a ginger head passing by. There are old movies that don't age well, but this one is not one of them, it's still as funny as the first time I watched it.