User reviews

An Indochinese orphan (played by the lovely Foun-Sen) comes to Paris in search of the man she believes to be her father. All she knows about him is that his name is Paul Ménard, so she goes through the phone book with the intention of visiting the whole "collection" of Paul Ménards in Paris.

And an odd collection they are, too. It feels like every French character actor of the period was drafted in to do a comic turn in this film. So here we have Lucien Baroux as an eccentric museum curator, Marguerite Moreno as an eccentric author, Pierre Larquey as a mad doctor, Robert Le Vigan as a crazy old man, Jean Tissier, Suzy Prim...

Episodic stories like this can work very well with a decent script and believable performances. See, for example Duvivier's Un carnet de bal. But here, each character seems to have stepped straight out of a lunatic asylum, or a French stage farce. Only Foun-Sen brings a sense of realism and genuine emotion to the piece. Unfortunately, too many of her scenes find her paired with the exasperating Lucien Baroux, a deservedly forgotten comic actor of the time. Only completists of French Occupation cinema should add this one to their collection.

...but I never left you! A film which is anything but derivative but which in the end falls short of its goal.The script is often boring (I almost fell asleep halfway through),there are too few lovely or magical moments in "la Collection Ménard" .A far east young girl comes to Europa to find his father she 's never known..

Casting an Asiatic actress as the lead (Foun-Sen appeared in other FRench movies ,some of which very famous ("Drôle de Drame" ),but remained unnoticed) was quite original for the time (generally they used to make up outrageously a French thespian ).But Viot tried to imitate Jacques Prévert and it's his downfall:too few of his lines were really funny ,witty or moving,except in some scenes which are few and far between: -like the meeting with the senile old man listening to the old folk song (Written just before the FRench Revolution and thus a true omen of the things to come) "Il Pleut Bergère" ....

-Or Marguerite Moreno's short appearance as a novelist ..

-Or the scene in the registry office (the Public Records Office)where Jean Tissier asks people to be polite.

But it is an uneven film;the subject was excellent and the ending is nothing but conventional ,but neither the writer nor the director rise to the occasion.