Quelle drôle de gosse! (1935) User Reviews

Funny girl

[dbdumonteil · 5/10 · 30 March 2008]

For the third time Danielle Darrieux played opposite Albert Préjean .(thanks Didier)They were to meet again in "Caprices" another harmless comedy by Leo Joannon who ended his career as a preachy director desperately trying to edify his audience ("le Défroqué" "Le Secret de Soeur Angèle" etc).

This is based on the same pattern as ,say, "New-York Miami" : a man and a girl spends the whole movie squabbling but in the end the love they make equals the hate they take.

So Préjean /Gable ,a lady killer who's got many a mistress (one of them being particularly jealous) ,saves a girl(Darrieux /Colbert) who wanted to commit suicide ,cause her boss she is in love with has fired her (because ,he tells his mother,"I want to marry her ,but I could not marry my secretary ,so I 've got to dismiss her!").

Lucie turns the house of the chic dandy upside down!She's really a nuisance to live with at home and WHY this man -who anyway could be her father;Darrieux was born in 1917 and Préjean in 1894- wants to marry her is the great mystery of a harmless little comedy,pleasant ,but not particularly memorable.

Mostly charming but...

[didierfort · 7/10 · 2 May 2015]

It was already the third time that Danielle Darrieux and Albert Préjean were opposed in a movie. (Sorry for this, Didier.)

They were the leads in the French cast of a multi-language German production, "Der Schlafwagenkontrolleur", "Le Contrôleur des Wagons-Lits" in its French version, directed by Richard Eichberg, released on February 1935.

And they were already opposite before (but not to end the movie together), sharing the lead with Mireille Perrey and Claude Dauphin, in René Guissart's "Dédé", released on December 1934, a mere six months before this "Drôle de Gosse". Yes, young Miss Darrieux, as soon as she was in the business, became very much in demand. (Nothing mysterious in this: just take a sip of five minutes of any of her early movies and you'll understand why producers and directors felt compelled to offer her leading parts).

But, to return to the present topic, this third association was the less convincing. The main reason, in my opinion, was the holes in the characterizations of the parts. As dbdumonteil has already underlined it, Préjean's behavior is somehow puzzling, which leads to problems with the other main character, Miss Darrieux's, who spends the second half of the movie in loud and erratic activities that almost embarrass the viewer.

Obviously, it's not the actors' ability but the writing which is in cause here. And I still wonder why I gave the movie a 7/10 mark... For what the notes are worth, yes, but... Maybe because I was under the influence of one of those recent French payed-by-TV-soon-on-TV pseudo-comedies that over-crowd big and little screen nowadays... So yes, in that respect, Joannon-Mirande's stuff is well worth a 7/10. But compared to "Dédé" or Eichberg's work, or what was to come... On an other side, Darrieux didn't always win, and some of her pre-WWII comedies were not half as good as this one --I'm thinking of "Mademoiselle ma Mère" (Decoin, 1937), for instance, which is far louder, heavier, and almost inept. Yes, Darrieux is human, after all, and could have a miss, even when filmed by her loving Decoin.

In Léo Joannon's filmography, this movie is one of his ups--he had many many downs, but nevertheless he is an interesting director to follow, along his very long career. (We'll talk of this another time, but to name one, his half-crazy and hallucinated "Le Défroqué" was one of his best movies and, thematically, a real UFO in the French cinema skies.)

But "Quelle drôle de gosse" is a let-down, though, minor but a let-down when compared to "Vous n'avez rien à déclarer?" (1937) of this same Joannon who desperately need a solid script and consistent dialogs when making a comedy. Allégret, Anouilh, Aurenche, Veber had delivered the goods then. Here, scenario and dialog are not up to the par.

C'est la vie.

(Didier_fort at homail.com)

Funny Girl, Funny Lady, Funny Kid

[writers_reign · 8/10 · 1 March 2009]

This was 18 year old Danielle Darrieux' seventeenth film in four years and if we accept that not that many teenagers get to make that many films it becomes apparent that she was more than just another 'cute' kid. The fact that her co-star, Albert Prejean had made his first film when Darrieux was just four years old illustrates something of a timeless problem in the movie business, while cute, pretty, attractive, gorgeous, sexy, or even beautiful teenage girls are crawling out of the woodwork at any one time the same, alas, cannot be said for the male of the species witness Audrey Hepburn's tally of leading men. Be that as it may this is yet another charmer designed to beat those Depression blues and send the audience out of the salles with a smile on its face albeit hunger in its stomach. Leo Joannon was a master at this genre although he did, in later years, get religion metaphorically speaking which caused him to turn out material best described as a poor man's Andre Cayatte, and he keeps the soufflé rising in this piece of fluff which sees Darrieux in love with a boss who reciprocates but couldn't dream of marrying one of his employees. Suitably miffed Darrieux Brodies off a bridge - taking care to select one with a handy set of steps close by. Playboy Prejean naturally chooses that moment to pass in his limo, spot the situation and save her. For his thanks Darrieux comes on like a male Boudu causing havoc in his household until it all ends just as we knew it would. This is a lovely example of 'bread-and-butter' domestic film-making in France midway through the first decade of sound. Seven years later Joannon would direct the pair again in Caprices and one year after that Prejean would be playing Maigret for Continental whilst Darrieux would have been married to and divorced from Henri Decoin but not before making six fine movies with him. What an era in French cinema.