La Boîte aux rêves (1945)
Directed by Yves Allégret, Jean Choux

Film Review

It's hard to believe, in the light of the series of sombre melodramas on which his reputation now rests, but Yves Allégret began his filmmaking career with three feature-length comedies.  The first of these, Tobie est un ange (1941), no longer exists, but from the two that do survive - Les Deux Timides (1943) and La Boîte aux rêves (1945) - it is evident that comedy is most definitely not Allégret's forte.  It is only when the director progressed to more serious subjects - Dédée d'Anvers (1948) and Une si jolie petite plage (1949) - that his talent for filmmaking became apparent.  Interestingly, the lead actors of these two films - Simone Signoret in the first, Gérard Philipe in the second - both made fleeting appearances in La Boîte aux rêves, at the invitation of Allégret's older brother, Marc.  Signoret and Allégret became an item not long after this film and would marry in 1948.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of La Boîte aux rêves is that it was scripted by Allégret in collaboration with his two principals, Viviane Romance and René Lefèvre.  A familiar actor of the 1930s, perhaps best known for playing the lead in Jean Renoir's Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (1936), Lefèvre found some success as a writer, turning to screenwriting in 1939 by adapting his popular novel Les Musiciens du ciel.  With a more inspired or experienced director in the driving seat, La Boîte aux rêves could have been an enjoyable romp, but Allégret struggles to make anything of it and, even with a highly capable cast, the film just cannot help being tediously plodding and anaemic.

Still, any film with the superlative Viviane Romance, French cinema's vamp par excellence, is worth watching, and, whilst the film hardly stretches her talents, her sultry presence is the one thing it has going for it.  Franck Villard is the only male member of the cast who is well-served by the lacklustre script, and you wonder why René Lefèvre bothered to saddle himself with a dull supporting role.  Palau and Marguerite Pierry are likewise wasted, but Signoret instantly grabs the attention when she shows up in her short but memorable scene.  Don't expect to see much of Gérard Philipe - he only appears as a silhouette.  La Boîte aux rêves promises much but delivers surprisingly little, although it makes an interesting contrast with the kind of films with which Yves Allégret is now associated, a touch of sun before the darkness.

Film Synopsis

Four students fall under the spell of an attractive young woman named Nicole and take her home with them.  In next to no time, she becomes their unpaid housekeeper and guardian angel, keeping from them the fact that she is the heiress to a fortune.  Jean is the one whom Nicole has fallen in love with, but when he shows no interest in her she feigns amnesia...