Gargousse

The bossy mayor of a small village wants to rule his citizens with an iron hand;there is not exactly general agreement about him.His worst enemy is Gargousse the station master ,who is also occasionally a poacher and a bone-setter/healer ,much to the local thespian's disgruntlement -unfair competition-;besides the mayor's sister ,a forty-something spinster sincerely believes the quack is in love with her;and to crown it all,Gargousse's daughter-in-law falls in love with the mayor's nephew,the village schoolteacher.

This is a pale imitation of Marcel Pagnol's style ,with actors who look the part :Saturnin Fabre as the mischievous "outlaw" ,Jeanne Fusier- Gir in her umpteenth part of an old maid ;but there is a certain passé charm in the depiction of the small community with their gossips,their rural policeman and their steam-powered local train.Note the naive latent racism we find in almost all the French comedies of yore:of course ,the black man,mistaken for a tourist,speaks pidgin French;and the way screenwriters focus excessively on Paris :it takes a bunch of revelers from the capital to enliven the one-horse place .

Director Henry Wulschleger had his own theater company,most of them (Bach,Fabre,Milly Mathis,Paul Olivier ..)were featured here.

Very simple comedy with very energic dialogues told by great excentric actors like unforgettable Saturnin Fabre (one of my favorite), Bach, Sinoël, Jeanne Fusier Gir,... The director is not known to me, but he directed Bach a few times before. This silly energic comedy surely let me have loud laughs and that's the main entertainment.