Released in 1940,but made just before the war , a film about Le Tour De France ,the famous annual
cycle race,three weeks to complete in daily stages (étapes)of about miles ;the leading cyclist wears a yellow jersey ,le "maillot jaune" ; it's an excellent depiction of the tour just before the storm. Although the Nazis insisted the tour be kept , it was 1947 before they resumed the race .
Although apparently a comedy , "pour la maillot jaune" sometimes verges on drama or rather melodrama ,director Jean Stelli's forte .
The beginning is quite derivative: the champion Albert Bregeon ( Albert Préjean ,the surnames have almost similar pronunciations), adulated by the crowds and the female journalist who slags him off in her newspaper ,quarrels a la "it happened one night" .
But there's a darker side to the star of the tour : he's become lazy, does not train anymore, he is over the hill and his team is less than enthusiastic when it comes to supporting him ; one learns the star comes from a poor milieu ,that he often starved when he was young (cyclists , unlike tennismen,often come from humble backgrounds)
To get the yellow jersey when he enters the Parc Des Princes, he'll stop at nothing ,even drug use ,for there were no dope tests at the time (recently, a champion ,who won seven times the race ,was disqualified for drug abuse and lost all his victories);in spite of the moral ending, it was risqué to show a cyclist swallowing an illegal thing just before the start.
Albert Préjean was also a singer ,so he gets the de rigueur chanson "y'a des cailloux sur la route mais y'a des filles aussi" = (got stones in the road ,but got girls too....)
