Patate

I didn't find much funny in this 40-year-old French comedy. Maybe it was funny when it was released, or maybe it was funny (is still funny?) mostly to the French. Maybe my sense of humor is warped.

The plot and circumstances of the characters in this movie reminded me of many comic operas I've seen. Without the great music, these operas would be trivial as art.

The `plot' centers on the relationship of two families. Leon `Patate' (potato) Rollo, a toy inventor, is married to Edith, a chic store owner. Leon and Edith have a teenage daughter, Alexa, the most popular girl in school. Noel Carradine, a former classmate of Leon, is a handsome, famous and rich industrialist. His wife, Veronique, is elegant and beautiful, but vulnerable to M. Carradine's philandering.

Leon and Noel did not get along well in school, and haven't since. However, Leon needs financing for his newest toy invention, and is willing to let bygones be bygones if Noel will loan him money. Noel, however, is not about to serve as `the Bank of France' for this old classmate.

Some of the `jokes' in this movie derive from Leon's inventions. There is a sausage slicer made from bicycle parts, a monkey doorbell, a calendar toothbrush, and several `Rube Goldberg' creations. Other `laughs' come from mistaken interpretations of phone calls and notes. There are several slapstick routines that you've seen done better elsewhere (e.g., Leon runs head on into a glass door, a `pistol' turns out to be a cigarette lighter).

This is a comic farce, but more farce than comic.

I reviewed this movie as part of a project at the Library of Congress. I've named the project FIFTY: 50 Notable Films Forgotten Within 50 Years. As best I can determine, this film, like the other forty-nine I've identified, has not been on video, telecast, or distributed in the U.S. since its original release.

"Patate" is the kind of material which works best on stage.It would have been great as part of "Au Théâtre Ce Soir" series.Marcel Achard's play was hardly a comedy and ,although the film often verges on farce ,some of its lines are bitter indeed.Thanks to a good cast,the movie survives a non-existent directing.

The subject is not so dumb:we all know someone who has brilliantly succeeded and whose favorite pastime is to put other people down,to humiliate them..

Pierre Dux portrays Leon ,nicknamed "Patate" ,a less-than-handsome man whose toys business needs money.He's got a faithful wife (Danielle Darrieux) and a naughty daughter (Sylvie Vartan,the first yeah yeah girl of the era ,then Johnny Hallyday's fiancée;she's also Michael Vartan's aunt).He has to ask his friend(??) handsome Noel (Jean Marais)who has got on in life thanks to his charm and whose wife (Anne Vernon) is a millionaire.He's also Patate's daughter's secret lover.

Like this?try this....

"Le Dîner De Cons " Francis Veber 1998

Like old pictures, it is support for emotions, memories, lovely links with another performances of Danielle Darieux , Anne Vernon, Jean Marais, Pierre Dux . a play in the skin of a film. easy comedy. nice, seductive, naive. and real useful. because it is a film about us. about relations, rivalries, idealism and love. about the wisdome as last solution for a crisis. sure, today, it seems be a modest film. or only a pure French one. but this is a precious virtue. and this detail is the only signifiant. so, see it !for a Jean Marais far by his roles of hero. for the beautiful performance of Pierre Dux. for the grace of Danielle Darieux . And, sure, for the young Sylvie Vartan in one of the roles of rebellious girls from the period.

Pierre Dux is an inventor of toys and games who has been trying for decades to have that big breakthrough. He's sustained by his wife, Danielle Darrieux, and his daughter, Sylvie Vartan. His friend since childhood is Jean Marais, who calls him "Spud" and is married to billionaire Anne Vernon. Marais is carrying on an affair with Miss Vartan.

And thus we have a big fat French farce, of the door-slamming variety, except they don't make as satisfying a noise as Dux finds the few certainties in his life ebbing away. He feels he has never had luck, that Marais has had it aplenty, and here he is, destroying that little.

Marais had been a major star for decades, and here he is, looking like a Venetian mask of his good looks of twenty years earlier. Dux is fine in the sort of shouty role that it's all too easy to imagine, say Louis de Funes in. Miss Darrieux is charming and gracious. The result is an enjoyable 80 minutes.