Whereas critics praise Jacques Tati to the skies, they generally neglect Robert Dhéry ;He was more popular ,more accessible ,therefore less appealing for the highbrows;hence the poor rating ,which does not reflect the value of his film ;Dhéry had his own troupe of actors,including his wife ,Colette Brosset ,here cast as a poacher's sister.
The soirée chantée is a tour de force ;it turns what would be ,for these whose taste does not run that way ,a bore to ends all bores , into a masterfully directed farce : he literally acts as an orchestra conductor, which is the last straw when his role was to turn the pages for the pianist .
Ditto for the scene is the police station ; the lazy gendarmes ,who do not care about what's happening in their region , predate ,with more finesse, the De Funès gendarmes saga ; Jean Richard portrays a dumber than dumb cop, not the Commissaire Maigret he would be in MTV series.
Dhéry himself is a tender-hearted gamekeeper,who hides the rabbits in his shack and make friends with the local poacher whose sister is not indifferent to him;nobody told him he's got the job because no one wanted it for the precedent gamekeeper was slain in mysterious circumstances ; very bad things happen beneath the ground of the forest ( superbly filmd by Henri Decae); the detective plot does not matter ,but it's astute , even the foreign virtuosos play a part in the illegal acts without them knowing it.
In this context,the presence of "Mademoiselle " Capucine may seem odd ;but the role of the haughty aristocratic chatelaine was tailor made for her ;she would continue an international career marred by her suicidal tendencies .
