La Garnison amoureuse (1934)
Directed by Max de Vaucorbeil

Film Review

La Garnison amoureuse exemplifies the kind of military comedy that was enormously popular with French cinema audiences in the 1930s.  It was a genre with which rising star Fernandel became strongly associated.  He had already lent his talents to a number of such films - Maurice Tourneur's Les Gaîtés de l'escadron (1932), Maurice Cammage's Le Coq du régiment (1933), Victor Tourjansky's L'Ordonnance (1933) - and would appear in many others, most notably Christian-Jaque's Un de la légion (1935) and Les Dégourdis de la 11e (1937).  In La Garnison amoureuse Fernandel is teamed up with two other promising performers - Pierre Brasseur and Raymond Cordy.  The latter enjoyed a brief period of fame through his appearances in René Clair's early films, in particular À nous la liberté (1931), but Brasseur was only at the start of what would be a massive screen career, here playing the insouciant juvenile that could not be further from the sinister and lugubrious roles that he would gravitate towards in later years.  Neither Cordy nor Brasseur appears comfortable working alongside Fernandel, and it is the obvious lack of chemistry between these three very capable but very different performers that prevents the film from being as successful as it might.

Unlike a number of films of this ilk (which were often derived from existing stage plays), La Garnison amoureuse has an original scenario that was conceived by Jean Boyer, who would soon become one of France's most prolific directors of comedy films.  Boyer's many successes included Circonstances atténuantes (1939), L'Acrobate (1940) and Romance de Paris (1941).  Filled with gags that look as if they might have been lifted from a Marx Brothers film, Boyer's script can hardly fail to get the laughs, although it is Lucien Baroux, not the comedy trio Fernandel, Brasseur and Cordy, who is most successful in this department.  The scene in which Baroux's overly deferential colonel has a one-sided conversation with his superior (not realising he is in fact a waxwork replica) is a classic.

In the director's seat is the now all but forgotten Max de Vaucorbeil, who specialised in crowd-pleasing comedies of this kind.  Most of de Vaucorbeil's output was fairly undistinguished, although his subsequent comedy Alexis gentleman chauffeur (1938) is well worth seeing on account of its star turn from André Luguet.  Whilst La Garnison amoureuse hardly rates as a classic it is more lively and enjoyable than many French comedies of this era, and the presence of glamour girl Betty Stockfeld (an Australian actress posing as an American) can only add to its appeal.  If only someone had thought to excise the terrible musical numbers (including one performed by a badly dubbed Pierre Brasseur) the film might have fared a little better.

Film Synopsis

Frédéric, Paul and Pierre are three recent recruits in a cavalry regiment stationed in a small town in France in the 1920s.  Nothing impresses a woman more than a man in uniform, as this happy trio discover when they roam the town in the evenings in search of innocent and not-so-innocent distractions.  Whilst the lower ranks are busy flirting with the town's bored womenfolk at a funfair, the garrison's officers take their pleasure in more genteel surroundings.  Dora, an American belle, is a magnet to all military men, especially the general, who is particularly susceptible to her fragrant charms.  When the garrison's new colonel is repulsed by Dora, he decides that everyone else should be denied their fun. 

Making a show of his moral superiority, the colonel issues an edict to the effect that from now on every man under his command will be confined to barracks in the evening.  Naturally, Frédéric and his buddies have no intention of giving up their night-time amusements, so they take advantage of a hole being dug under the perimeter wall to escape from the garrison and resume their frivolous escapades.  When the time comes to return to barracks they find, to their horror, that the hole has been filled in.  They save the situation by stealing a fire engine.  Their next nocturnal adventure goes even more awry, but with the help of a waxwork replica of the general they manage to smuggle themselves back into the garrison.  Alas, their conniving goes badly awry when the general goes missing.  Luckily, the thoughtful Dora is there to save them from a court martial...