Antoine, a lift attendant in a fashion store, learns that he has inherited a small fortune. By the time the tax man and the solicitors have had their share, the fortune is so small it fits into his back pocket, but he decides to use what's left to live like a king, or at least a count, for a few days. His girlfriend picks the name Obligado for his new identity because that's the name of her Métro stop on the way to work.
"Comte Obligado" is a film driven entirely by the energy of its star, Georges Milton, a music hall song-and-dance man who made several ventures into movies in the 1930s. His English equivalent would perhaps be Tommy Trinder or Arthur Askey; in Hollywood, maybe Wheeler and Woolsey. One of Milton's best known songs was "La Fille du Bédouin", a performance of which is shoehorned, none too smoothly, into this picture, along with a surprisingly acrobatic dance number.
In common with many French popular comedies of the period, the film has an anti-establishment theme. Antoine's superiors are greedy, conniving, arrogant and effete - ripe, in fact, for a downfall at the hands of the happy-go-lucky, working class hero and his hard-working, under-appreciated girlfriend (delightful Paulette Dubost, who also sings in the film). Along the way, there are numerous potshots at the foolishness and pretensions of French high society.
In one curious scene, Antoine attends the drawing of the national lottery numbers. Unless the producers hired a theatre packed with thousands of extras, this appears to have been shot during the real event, candid camera style, with Milton in character. This, along with a few street scenes, give a sense of time and place to what is largely a studio-based picture.
Good, simple fun, with catchy songs and an infectious joie de vivre.
