Sur le banc (1955)
Directed by Robert Vernay

Film Review

After La Famille Duraton, the most iconic French radio show of the 1950s was Sur le banc, a series of sketches featuring Raymond Souplex with Jane Sourza as a pair of philosophically minded Parisian tramps.  The series started out on Radio Cité in 1937 before moving to Radio Luxembourg after the war, where it ran from 1949 to 1963.  The show was such a hit that it could easily justify a film spin off, as La Famille Duraton had done, remarkably successfully, in 1940.  The problem was that the format of Sur le banc (two Boudu-like tramps putting the world to rights on a park bench) was more difficult to migrate to the big screen, so inevitably the film version looks more like a series of short episodes cobbled together rather than a coherent, well-structured narrative.

Another difficulty the film's authors faced is that stories about tramps are hard to come by, and so they fell back on the hoary old chestnut of an out-of-the-blue inheritance, an idea that had recently been used in Marc-Gilbert Sauvajon's Ma pomme (1950), starring Maurice Chevalier, and probably a score of films before then.  Sur le banc's main failing is that rather than attempt something original it opts for the the old 'rags-to-riches-and-then-back-to-rags' scenario.  It would doubtless have sunk without trace had it not been buoyed up by the immense popularity of the radio series and the indubitable comedic talents of its two stars.  Raymond Souplex with Jane Sourza had worked together for many years and were by this time one of France's most successful comedy partnerships, although their biggest successes were on radio.  After Sur le banc, they appeared together in another amiable comedy, Paul Mesnier's Bébés à gogo (1956), only to have their thunder stolen by up-and-coming star Louis de Funès.

Unlike the radio show that inspired it, the film version of Sur le banc was never going to end up a classic, but the combined talents of Souplex and Sourza, pepped up with a generous dash of Julien Carette, make it a pleasing enough timewaster for a dull afternoon.  Of the dozen or so comedies that Robert Vernay directed this is probably the most enjoyable, and one of the few that has the capacity to make you laugh (Vernay had more success with big budget literary adaptations than lowbrow crowdpleasers such as this, evidenced by his excellent 1943 version of Le Comte de Monte Cristo).  As Souplex had a hand in the script, he was bound to end up showing off his vocal talents at some point in the proceedings with a crowbarred-in musical number, but the film's real musical highlight is Carette and Sourza dancing to the tune of Sous les ponts de Paris, and making it look like a combat sport rather than something you'd ever want to witness on a dance floor.  Just a few years after this film, Raymond Souplex would go on to have his greatest success, as Inspector Bourrel in the long-running French television series Les Cinq dernières minutes.

Film Synopsis

Two middle-aged tramps, La Hurlette and Carmen, meet up every day on the same park bench in Paris.  La Hurlette enjoys the life of the vagabond but he is more than willing to give this up when, one day, he discovers that he has inherited a fortune.  Unfortunately, to claim his inheritance he must first prove that he has a fixed abode and a full-time job, neither of which he has at the moment.  With the help of Carmen and his friend Sosthène, La Hurlette finally manages to fulfil the conditions of the will, only to learn that, after taxes and other expenses have been deducted, he will receive only a modest legacy.  Not in the least disheartened, the tramp and his two friends head for the seaside town of Cabourg, where they are soon living the high life thanks to La Hurlette's luck at the roulette wheel.  Alas, luck has a tendency to run out sooner or later...