Mon père avait raison / My Father Was Right (2018 Gaumont digital transfer)

FR 1936. PC: Cinéas. P: Serge Sandberg.
    D+SC: Sacha Guitry – from his play (1919). Ass: Guy Lacourt. Cin: Georges Benoît, ass: Philippe Agostini. M: Adolphe Borchard interprétée par le Quatuor Benedetti. S: Georges Leblond. ED: Myriam. CAST:
    Sacha Guitry : Charles Bellanger
    Betty Daussmond : Germaine Bellanger, son épouse
    Paul Bernard : Maurice Bellanger, leur fils adulte
    Serge Grave : Maurice Bellanger, enfant
    Gaston Dubosc : Adolphe Bellanger, père de Charles
    Jacqueline Delubac : Loulou, amie de Maurice
    Marcel Lévesque : le docteur Mourier
    Pauline Carton : Marie Ganion, domestique des Bellanger
    Robert Seller : Émile Perducau, domestique des Bellanger
    94 min
    Genre : Comédie, pièce filmée
    Date de sortie : 27 novembre 1936
    A Gaumont / Éclair digital restoration (2018).
    Corona lockdown viewings.
    Viewed from the MUBI platform, 95 minutes with English subtitles (n.c.), at a forest retreat in Punkaharju on a tv screen, 8 July 2020.

AA: Of the four films released by Sacha Guitry in his miraculous year 1936 (Le nouveau testament, Le Roman d'un tricheur, Mon père avait raison, Faisons un rêve) I like this one the best. It's been a while, though, since I last saw Le Roman d'un tricheur.

In the first act the wife leaves her husband via telephone. A discourse of misogyny is instantly established in three generations: the grandfather Adolphe (the excellent Gaston Dubosc), the father Charles (Sacha Guitry) and the 10-year old son Maurice (Serge Grave). During the telephone call we only hear Charles, but it becomes clear that life has become unbearable for his wife Germaine (Betty Daussmond). She would have left long ago, but she had not enough willpower.

We don't know why life had become unbearable, but one reason must be Charles's taste for interminable monologues. In his presence there is no airspace for others. His fundamental distrust in women and marriage Charles has learned from his father Adolphe, but otherwise Adolphe is not like him. Genuine dialogue seems possible with the older man.

Cut to 20 years later. Maurice is a dapper young man (Paul Bernard), and thanks to Charles's lectures "the subject of women is firmly engraved" in his mind. Marriage is out of the question. Women are for entertainment only.

Seeing in Maurice his own mirror image awakens in Charles serious doubts. They intensify when Charles meets Loulou (Jacqueline Delubac), Maurice's lovely girlfriend. "Life scares him" Loulou tells Charles who starts to reverse his opinions. He acknowledges that women become terrible when men treat them terribly. "To spare you unhappiness I kept you from being happy", he now lectures to Maurice. "I beg you to trust in life because its resources are inexhaustible".

The dialogue is full of paradoxes and contradictions. In his worst period Charles teaches sense when he says that "it's silly to live with illusions. Reality is better than illusion", and "Experience cannot be transmitted." Having reversed course in the finale he states, however: "I was like you, you'll be like me, mon père avait raison"

When in the finale Charles retires and plans a new life, his servants think he is getting crazy, and a doctor is called. He is played by none other than Marcel Lévesque whom we know as Mazamette and Cocantin in Feuillade's serials and Serpentin in Jean Durand's comedy series. Lévesque brings a droll and eccentric presence to the last act.

Changing furniture Charles switches to an even older period of antique and with "new" paintings invents a new set of "ancestors", lying about them blatantly. Out of the blue, his absentee wife Germaine appears. Her lover has died after 20 years together in Rio de Janeiro, the only happy years in her life. But Charles is not looking back, "a phone call every 20 years" is not enough.

In the beginning Charles was a callous man, dead alive. Germaine's leaving him was the best thing that has happened to him. Charles had been about to send Maurice to a boarding-school, but with Germaine gone, he changed his mind and became his true father and teacher. With Maurice, Charles learned to love, and meeting Loulou becomes a decisive stage in his transformation.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: THE MUBI INTRO, WIKIPEDIA SYNOPSIS:
BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: THE MUBI INTRO, WIKIPEDIA SYNOPSIS:

My Father Was Right
Mon père avait raison
Trailer
Directed by Sacha Guitry
France, 1936
Comedy

    95 min
    French
    Subtitles: English, Spanish

Synopsis

Charles Bellanger, after being left by his wife for another man, decides to take care of his son’s education, and raises him to be wary of women. He teaches him the virtues of selfishness, loneliness and everything that’s wrong in marriage.

Our take

Next in our series on the radically inventive cinema of Sacha Guitry is this heartwarming, screwball study of a a father-son relationship over the years. Rich in wordy, poignant dialogue, My Father Was Right offers a subtle look at parenthood and the painful yet rewarding act of growing up.

WIKIPEDIA SYNOPSIS:

La première scène justifie le titre de la pièce. Il s'agit d'un entretien entre Charles Bellanger, trente ans, et son père : Propos sur la vie, le bonheur, le mensonge et les femmes. Après le départ de son père, Charles confirme à son fils Maurice, âgé de onze ans, qu'il a décidé de le mettre en pension. À ce moment, son épouse Germaine lui apprend par téléphone qu'elle abandonne le domicile conjugal pour s'en aller vivre avec un autre homme. Charles alors se ravise et décide de prendre lui-même en charge l'éducation de son fils.

Vingt ans après, père et fils sont toujours très unis et Charles décide de se retirer professionnellement pour pouvoir vivre à sa guise. Il propose à Maurice de vivre désormais dans des habitations séparées et reçoit, sur ces entrefaites, un appel téléphonique de son épouse qui lui demande un rendez-vous. Alors qu'il l'attendait, se présente à l'improviste Loulou, la petite amie de son fils. Il se rend compte grâce à elle qu'il a induit chez son fils une trop grande méfiance vis-à-vis des femmes. Puis arrive l'épouse qui tente, en vain, de justifier son départ et ses vingt années d'absence. Charles change alors radicalement de vie.