Ne le criez pas sur les toits (1943)
Directed by Jacques Daniel-Norman

Film Review

By and large, Fernandel's film comedies of the 1940s show a significant departure from those of the previous decade.  More restrained and somewhat darker in tone, they show a move away from the madcap farce of the early years of the French talkie to something more akin to the better structured American comedy - more plot driven and less prone to vaudevillian excess, and with more believable characters.  Ne le criez pas sur les toits is a clear example of this and it bears a striking resemblance to Frank Capra's early films, most visibly Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1936).  American comedies had attracted large audiences in France in the late 1930s and would have an ever-increasing influence on French cinema during the 1940s and '50s as mainstream film producers sought to capitalise on the success of bigger budget Hollywood imports.

Ne le criez pas sur les toits is one of Jacques Daniel-Norman's more inspired cinematic offerings.  In the course of his two decade spanning career, Daniel-Norman put his name to around twenty films, virtually all of which have been lost to posterity, and deservedly so.  Derivative and often grimly lacking in humour, his soi-disant comedies often struggle to raise so much as a grudging titter and more often than not tend to provoke wild howls of derision or a sudden attack of catalepsy.  The next film he made, L'Aventure est au coin de la rue (1944), is probably the only other film directed by Daniel-Norman that stands up reasonably well today.  His subsequent work, in particular the hideously slushy Tino Rossi vehicle Son dernier Noël (1952), deserves a very wide berth and is only recommended for film fanatics with an extraordinarily high boredom threshold or chronic insomniacs.

Ne le criez pas sur les toits is one of the few Daniel-Norman films that you can sit through without wishing the universe had never been created. The film's second rate plot and the pretty dismal direction are admittedly hard to stomach but these are handsomely recompensed by the sheer gusto that the principal actors bring to their performances.  Fernandel is on cracking form and gets as much humour as he can from the mostly humourless script, without resorting to the excessive clowning about that we see in his early films.  Robert Le Vigan is hilarious as an over-ambitious boffin obsessed with developing a new super-fuel, becoming ever more deranged as he nears his goal - he goes completely over the top in a parodied trial scene (which ironically presages the grim fate that was in store for the actor just a few years later, once he had been fingered as a Nazi collaborator).

Jacques Varennes is, as ever, superb as the sly, sinister but hopelessly inept villain of the piece, his thwarted attempts to assassinate Fernandel providing the films with its best (running) gag.  As the feisty journalist who would not be out of place in an American screwball comedy, Meg Lemonnier proves to be the perfect playmate for Fernandel, holding her own with her glamour and comedic flair instead of just fading demurely into the background (as tended to happen to the majority of Fernandel female co-stars).  Robert Dalban pops up in a small but noticeable walk-on part (as a plumber) right at the start of his career, some years before he became virtually ubiquitous in French film comedy, notably the gangster parody.

Ne le criez pas sur les toits is hardly in the first (or even second) league of Fernandel comedies, but its ebullient performances give it the brisk sense of fun it needs to carry it through and freshen up its derivative, meandering storyline.  This better than average Daniel-Norman offering is definitely not a classic but it makes a fairly entertaining timewaster, even if it does at times look like a shameless snatch-and-grab raid of other Fernandel comedies - the opening sequence is virtually a carbon copy to that of Ferdinand le noceur (1935).  In a career as long and busy as Fernandel's, a degree of repetition was inevitable - and if a comedy icon can't plagiarise himself who can he plagiarise?  Just don't cry it from the rooftops...

Film Synopsis

Professor Moucherotte, a distinguished research chemist, is on the point of developing a revolutionary new fuel called Benzyl.  If he succeeds, his discovery could be the greatest boon to mankind, and there are many who stand to profit from his invention.  In his work, the professor is dutifully assisted by his pupil Vincent Fleuret, who is more interested in making flowers that last forever, but so far he has only succeeded in manufacturing dynamite.  Both men are provided with lodgings by the Noblets, a middleclass family who hope to reap a substantial windfall when Moucherotte achieves his objective.

Equally interested in the professor's work is a group of crooked financiers, who manage to smuggle a mole, Octave, into the household, in the guise of a butler.  When Moucherotte dies suddenly from a heart attack, he leaves a message that misleads the world into thinking that he has passed on his discovery to Vincent.  Before he knows it, Vincent is the focus of everyone's attention.  An attractive reporter, Renée Lancel, turns on her feminine charm in an attempt to wheedle out of him the formula of the new super-fuel, whilst Octave and his gun-toting henchmen do their best to put him in his grave.  Finally, Vincent falls into the hands of a rival scientist, Professor Bontagues, who is determined to steal Moucherotte's precious formula at any cost...