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Le Couturier de ces dames
1956 Comedy
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Credits
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Director: Jean Boyer
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Script: Jean Boyer, Gérard Carlier, Jean Manse, Serge Véber
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Photo: Charles Suin
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Music: Paul Misraki
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Cast: Fernandel (Fernand Vignard),
Suzy Delair (Adrienne Vignard),
Fred Pasquali (Picrafos),
Françoise Fabian (Sophie),
André Bervil (Apollini),
Gaston Orbal (Le Comte de Treignac),
Robert Pizani (Le Baron),
Georges Chamarat (Maitre Plaisant),
Robert Destain (Zwertas),
Robert Lombard (Bernheim)
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Country: France
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Language: French
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Runtime: 95 min; B&W
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Aka: Fernandel the Dressmaker
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Summary
Modest Parisian tailor Fernand Vignard dreams of managing his own fashion house –
for women. His dreams comes true when a former mistress dies and leaves him her
maison de haute couture in her will. Although
the company is on the verge of bankruptcy, Fernand readily gives up his humdrum tailor’s
job to take the reins of what he hopes will become the most exclusive fashion house in
Paris. Fearing a spat with his jealous wife Adrienne, Fernand tries to keep all
this from her. Unfortunately, the cat soon manages to find a way out of the bag
– and the fur starts to fly…
Review
The incomparable – and still enormously popular
– Fernandel
finally finds his match in the form of Suzy Delair in this low-brow but hugely entertaining
farce. A popular actor and singer in the 1940s, Suzy Delair has a screen presence
that equals that of Fernandel, and it is indeed a rare treat to see two such equally matched
comic performers laying into each other with the vigour and sense of fun that we see in
Le Couturier de ces dames. A run-of-the-mill
storyline that replays all the old jokes about marital infidelity is really just a vehicle
for the Delair-Fernandel comic double act which, despite its predictability, still has
great entertainment value.
The film was directed by Jean Boyer, who made some of the most popular French film
comedies of the 1940s and 1950s, often working with some of the biggest names in French
cinema at the time. Prior to Le Couturier
de ces dames, Boyer had directed Fernandel in a similar film,
Coiffeur pour dames (1952), and the two
would collaborate on another six films.
Among the most memorable sequences in
Le Couturier de ces dames is the scene in which
Suzy Delair gate crashes a fashion show and ends up stripping down to some very sexy frilly
underwear – with surprising panache. In a parallel Universe, this film most
probably became a long-running sitcom. Sadly, in ours, this was to be the
one and only edition of the “Fernandel-Delair Show”.
© James Travers 2005
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