Ces sacrées vacances (1956)
Directed by Robert Vernay

Film Review

Is there anything more sacred to the French than their summer holidays?  The annual ritual begins and ends with the motorway journey from Hell when just about every car owner in France hits the road and turns every square each of tarmac into a killing field.  In between, there are two weeks of unalloyed misery during which our happy holidaymakers get roasted alive in the sun, stung to death by mosquitoes,  food-poisoned every other day, fleeced by every crook within ten kilometres of a holiday resort, and driven to the limits of sanity by their entourage of constantly unsatisfied and endlessly screaming kids.  It's the kind of thing that makes an eternity in Hell appear like a blessed relief, and the only logical reason why the French subject themselves to this fortnight of excruciating torment every year is that it provides a kind of limbering up exercise for the afterlife.

Not only are the French addicted to their annual two weeks of self-inflicted martyrdom, they are equally incapable of resisting films that remind them how horrible holidays are.  Ces sacrées vacances was one of the first films of this kind, and it has been followed ever since by similar nightmarish visions that delight in reminding us that there is nothing that humanity has so far devised which is anywhere near as ghastly as the family summer holiday.

The film is based on a novel by Anne Drouet and was directed by Robert Vernay, the year after he had a notable hit with the comedy Sur le banc (1955).  Although Vernay helmed a number of comedies, he is best remembered today for his lavish period dramas, notably Le Comte de Monte Cristo (1943) and Le Père Goriot (1945). Ces sacrées vacances is one of Vernay's least memorable films, and were it not for the presence of so many notable comedy performers in its cast (Jean Tissier, Jean Carmet, Paulette Dubost, Henri Génès, Pauline Carton, Darry Cowl), it would probably have been forgotten long, long ago.

The comicbook escapades of an average family enduring the most disastrous holiday imagimable ensure that the film has limited entertainment value to discerning adults and appear to be targeted more at an easily pleased child audience.  The fact that the same formula has been repeated endlessly since makes Ces sacrées vacances appear more dated and pedestrian than it probably is, although a few of the gags just about manage to extract a laugh (albeit with as much finesse as a dentist extracting a molar with a croquet mallet).  It's mostly a tepid collation of all the things that can go wrong on a typical holiday, but it still manages to be more palatable than the even more facile films of its ilk that came along subsequently.  It's a strange thing that this kind of film always tend to do well at the French box office.  If there's one thing the French love more than holidays from Hell, it is films about holidays from Hell.

Film Synopsis

The long-awaited summer vacation upon them, the Pinsons can hardly wait to embark on their camping holiday on the Riviera.  Georges Pinson, a modest ceramicist, manages to scrape together enough money to buy an old second-hand car and he and his wife Claudette are soon enjoying the open road, with their two adorable little children happily whining their heads off in the backseat.  Georges is not the kind of man to let a roadster as clapped out as his own to overtake him, so the pleasant drive soon turns into a manic road duel.  Once they reach the coast, the Pinsons cannot find anywhere to spend the night, so they end up in a room above a rowdy night club.  Things do not improve when they finally get to the camp site.  Having managed to set fire to a forest and a house, the Pinsons find themselves blacklisted from every camp site in the area, and then they end up be mistaken for jewel thieves.  The fact that Georges has a large sum of money in his pocket, because he has just sold his graffiti-covered car to a wealthy American, counts against him, at least in the eyes of the policemen who promptly arrest him and his family.  Miraculously, the holiday turns out well in the end...