Drole de Drame

LOUIS JOUVET (left) is the stern bishop who doesn't know his cousin, played by Michael Simon, is actually a dreaded mystery writer in the French farce "Drole de Drame."
Life gets crazy in ‘Drole de Drame’

“Drole de Drame” is a film where everyone jumps to conclusions, all situations are exaggerated and nobody thinks logically.
It’s all one giant cartoon.
But that’s OK. It’s still a lot of fun.
The fact the film takes place in London in 1937, but is filmed in French makes it all the more bizarre.
You’re a bit taken back when one character gets on the phone and says “Get me Scotland Yard,” but in French.
“Drole de Drame” opens with a lecture by a serious and stern bishop of Bedford, played sanctimoniously by Louis Jouvet. He preaches the evils of one Felix Chapel, an example of all that is evil.
What did this Chapel guy do? Why write mystery novels in which people are dispatched from this world in violent ways.
The bishop even makes his hapless cousin, the scholarly yet befuddled botanist, Irwin Molyneux, played by Michael Simon, an example. He stands him up and asks what should happen to this Chapel. Irwin doesn’t know, he’s a botanist.
His life centers around the study of mimosa.
Also in the audience is a mass murderer, played by Jean-Louis Barrault, who decides he must kill the despicable Mr. Chapel.
Turns out Chapel is a pen name for the learned Mr. Molyneux, who has discovered his income as a botanist isn’t enough to satisfy his status-seeking wife, played by Francoise Rosay.
To make matters worse, Irwin steals story ideas from the fetching young maid Eva, played by Nadine Vogel.
Yes, this is a convoluted plot. It will remind you a little of the Marx Brothers.
Everybody jumps to conclusions. Nobody makes any sense.
The bishop has a passion for duck in orange sauce, which is the specialty of Irwin’s cook, so he invites himself to dinner.
Meanwhile, the cook quits so wife has to prepare the dinner. Cooking is below her status so Irwin tells the bishop his wife is away visiting relatives to cover for the fact she is actually in the kitchen cooking.
The bishop, who we learn frequents dance halls and loose women, gets the idea cousin has murdered his wife.
No body, no clues, but the cartoonish police chief, who looks like Chief Wiggum of “Simpsons” fame, agrees there must be a murder.
Beside the mass murderer, we have a milkman who is head-over-heals in love with Eva, the crime-writing maid. You can tell he is in love because the entire kitchen of the Molyneux home is covered with milk bottles.
So you have Molyneux and wife as fugitives, you have the stern bishop sneaking back in Molyneux’s house (which is crawling with cops), trying to find an autographed photo he left behind of a chorus girl, not to mention the mass murderer, not to mention the love-sick milkman.
There are other bizarre characters, like the journalist who gathers information by sleeping on the Molyneux couch. There’s also the elderly aunts, one of whom keeps looking for her dog, Canada, who died five years before. (At one point the hapless Molyneux is accused of poisoning the long-gone pooch.)
This is one of the movies where when the citizenry learn there might be a murder, they stand outside with nooses in their hands, shouting at those coming and going.
For all of its confusion, the film is a lot of fun. There are many nice touches, too. The bishop has a dozen kids. They all sit uniformly at the breakfast table. When it is time to go to school, he has a clicker. The kids move in their chairs at 45-degree angles with each click until they are facing opposite the table and can get up and head for the door.
It really is funny.
The director, Marcel Carne, went on to do the romantic melodrama “Enfants du Paradis” (Children of Paradise) seven years later, described as the French “Gone With the Wind.”
At more than three hours, I found “Enfants” overly long and overly distraught. “Drole de Drame,” also known as “Drole de Drame ou L’etrange aventure de Docteur Molyneux” is a lot sillier and a lot more fun.
Drole de Drame ou Le’
etrange
Aventure
• Directed by Marcel Carne
• Runtime: 94 minutes
• Not rated, but there is brief nudity
• 3 stars out of 4
This appeared in the Star Beacon WEEKENDER May 23, 2008.