La Vie parisienne (1936)
Directed by Robert Siodmak

Film Review

Before his flight to Hollywood, where he directed such superlative films noirs as The Killers (1946) and Criss Cross (1946), Robert Siodmak spent six productive years in France, helming an odd mix of films which are very different in character to the ones for which he is now best known.  La Vie parisienne was the third of his French musical comedies - following La Crise est finie (1934) and Le Grand refrain (1936) - a frothy crowdpleaser adapted from a popular play by Ludovic Halévy and Henri Meilhac.  Even more unlikely that Robert Siodmak directed this film is the fact that one of the contributors to the script was Emeric Pressburger, not long before he made his journey to England to begin his fruitful collaboration with director Michael Powell on a series of cinematic gems that include A Matter of Life and Death (1946) and  The Red Shoes (1948).

La Vie parisienne is typical Depression-era fare whose chief delight is a typically over-the-top Max Dearly revelling in the role of an outlandish Brazilian billionaire - an echo of a similar part he had recently played for René Clair in Le Dernier milliardaire (1934).  Looking like a monstrously rakish parody of Maurice Chevalier (one with an extremely dodgy Hispanic accent), Dearly steals the show with an exuberant song and dance number, Offenbach's famous airs providing most of the musical accompaniment to jolly things up.  A magnificently cut together can-can sequence provides the film with its dazzling showstopper - the Moulin Rouge isn't named in the film, but its spirit is vividly evoked by the staggering quantity of high-kicking and frilly lingerie that Siodmak somehow manages to cram onto the screen.

Essentially, La Vie parisienne is a fairly routine romantic comedy with stock characters and an all-too-predictable narrative, and to say it hardly stretches Siodmak's capabilities as a filmmaker is putting it mildly.  Still, Max Dearly's larger than life comedy performance, capably supported by the highly photogenic Conchita Montenegro and Georges Rigaud, makes it an enjoyable little divertissement.  Michèle Morgan appears as an extra in the film, right at the start of her career, and it's also worth noting that Siodmak directed an English language version of the film entitled Parisian Life (using the same sets and lead actors), with future Dr Who William Hartnell cropping up in a minor role.  Le monde est bien petit.

Film Synopsis

In 1900, the wealthy Brazilian Ramiro Mendoza is enjoying his stay in Paris when he falls in love with Liane d'Ysigny, the star of a stage production of Jacques Offenbach's La Vie parisienne.  Thirty-six years later, Mendoza makes a return visit to the capital, accompanied by his son Jacques and his granddaughter.  The latter gets herself romantically involved with a young Frenchman, but her father refuses to allow the marriage.  In return for saving her fiancé from financial ruin, Jacques Mendoza extorts a promise from his daughter to break off her engagement and return to Brazil alone.  Remembering how he once lost the love of his life, Ramiro comes to his granddaughter's rescue...