Ces messieurs de la Santé (1934)
Directed by Pierre Colombier

Film Review

When it was released in March 1934, Ces messieurs de la Santé could not have been more topical, coming as it did in the wake of a series of high-profile financial scandals that rocked France in the early 1930s.  The most notorious of these was the Stavisky Affair which implicated numerous important society figures, including prominent politicians, in one of the most outrageous investment scams of all time.  The central character in the film, superbly portrayed by Raimu, is clearly based on the fraudster Serge Alexandre Stavisky, although the film tactfully avoids any direct reference to the Stavisky Affair as this was a highly contentious issue at the time.  (Speculation that the French government may have been implicated in Stavisky's apparent suicide was a factor that hastened the demise of the Third Republic a few years later).  It is worth noting that a contemporary American film based on the Stavisky Affair, Michael Curtiz's Stolen Holiday (1937), was never released in France.

Ces messieurs de la Santé differs from Curtiz's film in two main respects.  Firstly, it avoids any direct reference to the Stavisky Affair (had it done so, it would almost certainly have been banned outright by the government censor); secondly, it opts for a far more comedic approach.  Based on a stage play of the same title by Paul Armont and Léopold Marchand, the film makes light of one of the most serious themes of the time, the craze for making easy money through what are effectively no more than simple pyramid investment schemes.  Crooked characters like Stavisky would never have attained notoriety if there had not been a vast number of greedy, gullible individuals who were anxious to make a quick buck at a time when genuine investment opportunities were few and far between.  The Genissier family typifies this stratum of society, which the film savagely pokes fun at, showing the ease with which a group of seemingly decent, high-minded people can be corrupted and deceived by the smooth-talking confidence trickster who has nothing to sell but hot air (as he himself admits, il vend du vent...).

The film was directed by Pierre Colombier, one of the lesser known French film directors of the period who is remembered mainly through the films he made with Fernandel, such as Ignace (1937) and Les Rois du sport (1937).  Ces messieurs de la Santé is easily one of Colombier's better films (far superior to his lightweight Fernandel comedies), and is distinguished by the fluidity of its camera work, the quality of the acting and some stylish set design that gives an effective visual representation of the insane growth of an investment bubble (the hero starts out in a cramped shop selling women's underwear and ends up on what looks like an Art Deco version of the deck of the Starship Enterprise, complete with a revolving desk that is the acme of power and decadence).  The film is extremely well cast, Raimu being particularly well-suited to play the irresistible con-man Taffard.  A youthful Edwige Feuillère makes a memorable appearance, in one of the seductive, morally ambiguous roles that would become her stock in trade (a year on, she would court controversy by appearing topless in Abel Gance's Lucrèce Borgia).  Pauline Carton, one of the great but easily overlooked supporting artistes of French cinema, revels in one of her finest character performances, very nearly stealing the show as the hilariously gullible Madame Genissier. 

Watching Ces messieurs de la Santé today, eighty years since it was made, it is striking how relevant it still is.  It may not be as grand and artistically inspired as Marcel Lherbier's monumental L'Argent (1928), French cinema's most vehement assault on the sin of speculation, but it offers an effective satire and continues to have an enormous resonance, as pertinent to our own troubled times as it undoubtedly was at the height of the Great Depression.  Some things never change...

Film Synopsis

Shortly after being arrested for fraud, the discredited banker Jules Taffard manages to escape from the Santé prison.  He evades the police by hiding out in a small lingerie shop where his former mistress, Claire, works.  Adopting the name Gédéon, Taffard persuades the shop's owner, Madame Genissier, to offer him a job as a night watchman.  Taffard so impresses his employer with his business sense and honesty that she soon makes him her director of finance.  Taffard's speculative ventures prove to be staggeringly profitable and Madame Genissier and her son Hector rapidly find themselves the proud owners of an upmarket department store, blissfully unaware that their benefactor is doing a spot of gun-running on the side.  Taffard's ambitions apparently know no bounds and in no time at all the financial wizard has founded his own highly profitable bank, with the Genissiers his main shareholders.  But once again Taffard overreaches himself and his business empire threatens to implode when his most ambitious swindle begins to unravel...