Preston Sturges' relationship with 20th Century Fox came to an end after both of his films underperformed, and Sturges was left trying to find work where he could, going from one script to another theatrical production with no success until he found French financiers for another film. Based on a novel by Pierre Daninos, The French, They are a Funny Race is a curious series of comic vignettes without anything close to a story to connect it all together. It's more of a survey of one prim Englishman's life in France and his attempts to make entertaining observations about the clash of cultures that he represents in the foreign country. It rises and falls entirely on its comedy, and the comedy is so uneven that the movie itself just gets dull as it plays out.
The Englishman is Major Thompson (Jack Buchanan) who is married to the French woman Martine (Martine Carol) and has a son. Most of Thompson's observations, though, revolve around his friend M. Taupin (Noel-Noel). The first major event is when Thompson asks Taupin about the catacombs which Taupin describes in grand but vague terms before he can't remember where they actually are. It's one of the funniest moments of the film when Taupin gets directions from a Chinese tourist with a map before coming back to the table in the café to act like he knew the whole time.
An interesting thing about the film is that it was filmed twice, once for French and once for English (it's the latest example of it I've seen the practice like on Hitchcock's Murder!, probably immediately preceding the general acceptance of subtitling). It also creates this question about the content of the film itself. The reported runtime of the film is one hour and forty-five minutes, but the English version (at least the one I've found, it's hard to track down) is only 80 minutes long. There are long sections in this film where Thompson narrates what happens on screen, and it amounts to little more than just description of what we see. Trying to read lips, it looks like they're just speaking French, so I wonder if there was a conscious effort to use voiceover to limit how much they had to shoot twice. The only thing that gives me pause in this is that there's a sequence with a joke that looks like it only works if the voiceover is present.
Thompson and Taupin go to a restaurant, and the point is Thompson explaining how the French hold themselves in the setting. There's a moment where Taupin asks about the state of the oysters and the restauranteur goes through three separate reactions, all narrated by Thompson. It's a funny moment, but it doesn't work without the narration meaning that it seems like it was filmed that way. If that's the case, why is this the only joke that actually takes advantage of that distance between the narrator and the action viewed. It's just more evidence that Sturges' had lost his edge.
The other major focus is mainly a flashback to how Thompson and Martine got together, and it has its moments. The contrast of their meeting on the field of a hunt and their first days of marriage is amusing. There's a running discussion about which view of history, especially around figures like Napoleon, their son should be raised with (Napoleon as monster or national hero). It's never hilarious, but it's slightly amusing to watch the restrained Brit explain to his over-emotional French wife the differences.
My main problem ends up being the film's ending. It doesn't really have an ending. There's stuff about Thompson and Martine having a fight that gets resolved somehow (recalling how things worked out in Unfaithfully Yours), but the story was never about the degradation of their relationship. There was no story. We did see the change from the early days to them arguing about education, but it was so broken up with other, disconnected vignettes of Thompson being witty at Taupin's expense that it shattered any sense of momentum within the little narrative playing out, which was playing out in non-linear fashion for some reason.
So, it's mostly a drag. There are funny bits (Taupin figuring out the variety of protective screens at a civil service office is visual comedy worthy of Harold Lloyd), but it's all disconnected and haphazardly delivered. This is probably Sturges' low point as a filmmaker, and it's how he went out. It took him several years to find funding for this misfire, and then he died less than four years later without getting funding for anything else.
That's sad, and the final film of a wonderful comedic talent ends up just unfunny and unfocused.
