Cigalon (1935)
Directed by Marcel Pagnol

Film Review

A pleasing little film that deserves to be better known than it is, the tasty little morsel that is Cigalon is one of Marcel Pagnol's more accessible works, a piquant comedy that is both an amiable farce and a humorous fable - one with a cruel sting in its tail.  Pagnol was inspired to make the film after he met a pompous restaurateur in La Treille, on the outskirts of Marseille, who took an almost sadistic pleasure in being rude to his customers.  In the wake of the serious realist drama Angèle (1934), Pagnol was keen to make a comedy which would allow him to experiment with a new sound recording system.  Pagnol's first attempt to shoot Cigalon was not a success.  The sound system was shown to be highly defective and the director had no option but to shoot the film again, taking the opportunity to recast most of the roles.

In the film's remount, the principal role of Cigalon, a chef with the mother of all Napoleon complexes, went to Alexandre Arnaudy, replacing Henri Poupon who was re-cast as the penniless bon vivant.  A larger-than-life performer, Arnaudy had recently taken the lead in a stage production of Pagnol's play Topaze and would memorably reprise the role in the director's first screen version of the play in 1936.  Perfectly ensconced in the main female role, the formidable Madame Toffi, is the singer-actress Marguerite Chabert, who played Honorine in the original 1931 stage production of Fanny at the Théâtre de Paris.  Pagnol would later give Chabert a small but memorable role in Regain (1937).

After the immense success of Angèle, the film that established Pagnol as a film director, Cigalon was to prove a bitter flop.  The critics were unkind to Arnaudy, judging his performance to be excessive, and audiences failed to warm to Pagnol's idea of comedy.  Totally eclipsed by the string of masterpieces that Pagnol went on to make afterwards, Cigalon has long been considered a minor work in the director's oeuvre, yet it is not without charm.  A kind of 1930s Provençal version of Fawlty Towers (with a plot that spookily resembles one episode in the BBC series), Cigalon contains some of Pagnol's funniest lines and most colourful characters.  If nothing else, it is the perfect appetiser for Pagnol's more wholesome cinematic banquets.  Bon appetit!

Film Synopsis

Cigalon is the proud owner of a restaurant in a small town in Haute-Provence that is reputed to be one of the best in the region.  A chef with the highest opinion of himself, Cigalon regards gastronomy not as a business but as the most sacred of all the arts, which is why he takes so little effort to attract and keep his customers.  It is with abject horror and unmitigated contempt that he watches a former laundress named Madame Toffi open a restaurant next-door to his.  Madame Toffi has none of his reverence for food - she even has the temerity to serve meals to anyone who enters her establishment, no matter how pig ignorant they may be.  Cigalon is appalled, disgusted, revolted.  What is the world coming to when his restaurant remains empty whilst Madame Toffi's vile eatery is packed to the rafters with the gorging hoi polloi.  Realising that his reputation is at stake, Cigalon must swallow his pride and start catering for the needs of ordinary paying customers.  Things get off to a good start when a well-dressed man, clearly a man of breeding and refinement, arrives in a taxi outside his restaurant.  Seizing the moment, Cigalon guides the man into his den of culinary excellence and lays before him a feast fit for a king.  It is with horror that the chef discovers that his customer hasn't the means to pay for his gargantuan repast.  The sensible thing to do would be to alert the police, but by doing so Cigalon knows that he will only be signalling his defeat to that monstrous Toffi woman.  No, better to pretend he has been well remunerated by a customer of distinction than reveal to the world what a fool he has been...