La Famille Cucuroux (1953)
Directed by Émile Couzinet

Film Review

Émile Couzinet is a name that is barely remembered today but in the 1940s and 50s he enjoyed success producing, scripting and directing a series of films, mostly low-grade popular comedies featuring what might politely be termed actors who had passed their prime.  Based on a play entitled Une femme dans un lit by Yves Mirande (a prolific writer who contributed to over a hundred films), La Famille Cucuroux is typical of Couzinet's oeuvre, a conventional-looking farce pepped up by some weird digressions towards the slightly surreal.  Don't look for any big name actors in the cast - Couzinet rarely, if ever, employed them.  Georges Rollin and Nathalie Nattier was as much star-power as he could afford, and they were probably grateful for the work.

Rollin was shaping up to be a fine actor in the mid-1940s - evidenced by his performance in Robert Vernay's Le Père Goriot (1945) - but a decade on his star was very much in the descendent, and this film did little to arrest his decline into obscurity.  Likewise Nattier is also visibly heading towards the door marked 'exit', despite the promise she had shown in Marcel Carné's Les Portes de la nuit (1946).  The film owes more to its brace of incomparable character actors - Jean Tissier, Pierre Larquey, Jeanne Fusier-Gir - the last two of whom had given immense value in Couzinet's previous comedy, Le Curé de Saint-Amour (1952).  The other notable personage in the cast is André Salvador, the older brother of the now iconic French singer Henri Salvador - amusing as he is, he is not remotely convincing as a Red Indian.  La Famille Cucuroux tries just a little too hard be funny and ends up looking rather feeble, but the full-throttle contributions from the likeable supporting artistes make it worth the effort, just.

Film Synopsis

To marry the daughter of the wealthy Monsieur Cucuroux, Gontran de Saint-Paul must first leave his mistress, which is not an easy undertaking as she is devotedly attached to him.  The evening when he thinks he has finally rid himself of his mistress, Gontran is surprised to find a complete stranger in his bed, a girl named Geneviève.  Gontran's mistress claims her revenge by revealing this fact to Cucuroux, who, to save face, pretends that Geneviève is his daughter.  The arrival of a Red Indian from the other side of the Atlantic complicates matters even further, but all turns out well in the end...