Maurice Cammage was par excellence the past master of the military coarse comedy :"vive la classe" , " la caserne en folie" , "les bleus de la marine" "la mariée du régiment " ....It took French stupidity to new limits in the thirties ,but one can have a good laugh with them even today when the military service has become a thing of the past.
"Le coq du régiment" recalls another film which depicts the joys of the grunts : "le tampon du capiston"(1930, remade in 1950); a case of mistaken identities .
Ménard (Fernandel ) and Lavirette are foster brothers ,only the former is a private ,the latter a lieutenant who is also a handsome womanizer ; as he has problems with his jealous wife, he takes his foster bro as an orderly ( allowing him to escape from the clutches of a wicked warrant officer -it's a pleonasm :in this kind of farce ,all the warrant officers are tyrants ). To solve the lieutenant's problems with his wife,mistress,and soon-to-be lover ,a friend of his suggests he change his uniform (and his rank) with his orderly and it brings about quiproquos and misunderstandings galore.
Fernandel was featured in numerous military farces; he never moved upstairs ; for once , he's a lieutenant ,a false one, but it's an improvement all the same !
