Domino (1943)
Directed by Roger Richebé

Film Review

Marcel Achard's play Domino is effortlessly transposed to the big screen in this stylish romantic comedy by Roger Richebé, a film director who deserves far greater attention than he currently enjoys.  Whilst he comfortably handled a whole range of genres, from period drama (Madame Sans-Gêne) to thriller (La Tradition de minuit), Richebé was particularly adept at this kind of sophisticated, tightly woven comedy.  In contrast to the more boisterous comic diversions served up to French film audiences in the 1930s and '40s, Domino is much nearer to the American model and appears to have been cut from the same cloth as George Cukor's The Philadelphia Story (1940) and Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday (1940).

The film certainly boasts as seductive a trio of principals as we could ever hope to find in similar Hollywood fare - in the form of Fernand Gravey, Simone Renant and Bernard Blier.  Richebé had already worked with this talented threesome in Romance à trois (1942) and they make a sublime team with enough chemistry to open a pharmacy chain, ably supported by Yves Deniaud, Aimé Clariond and Suzet Maïs.  It's worth mentioning that Blier gave great value in two of Richebé's other comedies, L'Habit vert (1937) and Monseigneur (1949) - both highly recommended.  Marcel Archard preserves the humour and intimacy of his three-act play by adapting it with Jean Aurenche, one of the most highly regarded of French screenwriters, noted for his frequent collaborations with Pierre Bost on such enduring classics as L'Auberge rouge (1951) and Le Blé en herbe (1954).

Domino is not a film that doles out its humour with careless abandon. It takes a while for the plot to get off the starting block, but once Gravey has been roped into the most idiotic of schemes concocted by co-conspirators Renant and Blier the humour starts to flow as gracefully as a mountain stream, helped along by the sizzling rapport of the three leads.  Gravey was the smoothest actor in French cinema at the time (he could probably even out-smooth Cary Grant and James Stewart, given a chance) and his comic timing (as impeccable as his appearance) is exploited to the full by Richebé, a director who rarely failed to get the best from his actors.

Here Fernand Gravey has the perfect screen partner in the stunningly beautiful Simone Renant.  It's a match made in celluloid Heaven and both actors underplay Archard's subtle humour to devastating effect, leaving Blier to fulfil his role as the sad comedy stooge, a role he serves admirably.  Blier gets the best gag - a case of mistaken identity in which he tears a strip off Yves Deniaud for being less attractive to the female sex than he so obviously is - and shows a penchant for deadpan comedy that would be more vigorously exploited by subsequent directors.  Cleverly written and performed with panache, Domino avoids the scattergun silliness that was prevalent in French cinema at the time and is nothing less than a comedy tour de force.

Film Synopsis

François Dominique, alias Domino, returns to Paris with his best friend Mirandole, having failed to make his fortune in Africa.  All that Dominique has to show for his futile expedition is a wooden statue of a love goddess, which he decides to sell after putting an end to his relationship with his former mistress Jane.  To that end, he contacts Jacques Heller, a successful art dealer, and is promptly invited by Heller's wife Laurette to an exhibition by the artist François Cremonne.  Laurette sees in Dominique the ideal man to help her out of her present crisis.  Unbeknown to her husband, she has been carrying on an affair with Cremonne for some time, but Heller has recently discovered a letter addressed to his wife from a man called François and has drawn the obvious conclusion.  Laurette offers Dominque a substantial fee if he will pretend to be a former admirer, thereby diverting suspicion away from her present extramarital romance.  Naturally, the assignment is not without its risks, as Dominique finds out when Heller invites him to a hunting party.  It soon becomes apparent that Heller intends murdering his rival, once he has uncovered his identity...