Folies Bergère de Paris has become one of my favorite musical comedies of the period. It was Maurice Chevalier’s last American film before the end of World War II, and it’s one of his best. At the moment, I’d place it up there with Love Me Tonight. I’ve always taken Chevalier in small doses. His roles in the great Lubitsch films are so similar to each other that I like to leave a lot of space between them. Folies Bergère was directed by Roy Del Ruth, a director I grow to admire more with each viewing of his many comedies. Chevalier never strays from his basic types, but Del Ruth gets something special from him, as did Mamoulian in Love Me Tonight. A lot of it has to do with the script — on the surface a fairly conventional Vienna/Budapest boulevard sex farce based on mistaken high/low class identities, but delivered with great charm and spirit.
Like many romantic farces, it’s a foursome comedy: two couples that come close to serious, and seriously pleasurable, erotic transgressions with the wrong partner, all based on mistakes that feel good. Chevalier is introduced as a Folies Bergère cabaret star, Eugene Charlier (known by his stage name as Charlier), who’s partnered with his female co-star Mimi (Ann Sothern). She’s what Lee Tracy would call “a tamale.” Basically without preamble, we see them in a full-on Busby Berkeley-like number, singing and dancing to a Jack Stem-Jack Meskill number, “Rhythm of the Rain.” (The choreography is by Dave Gould, Berkeley’s only true contemporary peer in staging mass choral dances.)
In his next number, Charlier masterfully imitates the debonair Baron Fernand Cassini (also played by Chevalier, hence the mastery), a famous roué who happens to be attending the performance with his famously beautiful wife, the Baroness Geneviève (Merle Oberon). Backstage, Mimi throws a jealous fit against imaginary rivals, all to show that’s she’s a spitfire and that Charlier is a more faithful fellow than his performance as The Baron might lead one to believe.
The Baron is so impressed with the imposture that he goes backstage to congratulate Charlier, and dallies a bit to flirt with a chorine from his past. Mimi, thinking the Baron is actually Charlier — an easy mistake to make, since The Baron and Charlier-as-Baron are wearing exactly the same clothes, monocle, and moustache, à la The Comedy of Errors — berates him passionately, much to the Baron’s delight. As a classic soubrette, Mimi will not accept his rakish invitations, but she’d “like to.”
The scene is followed by its parallel, as Charlier meets the bored, reserved, and decorous Baroness, and impresses her with his skillful imitation of her husband. Worse, she’s impressed by how much more attentive, gallant, and flirtatious Charlier’s version is.
In the meantime, The Baron is informed that his finances are in ruinous shape after the collapse of his investment in a Mozambique mine. He tells his partners that he must find 20,000 francs to restore them. Since their busted position cannot be known outside their circle, he must disappear for a while to look for the money, and charges his partners to hold the fort. In despair, but showing remarkable chutzpah for high-end businessmen, the partners hatch a plot: they’ll hire Charlier to stand in for the Baron until the real one returns. I love this scene. Charlier declines at first, he doesn’t do hit jobs. When it’s clear it’s an acting gig, he accepts, but insists that the Baroness can’t know. It would make him nervous.
The Baron’s men agree to the condition, but they have an idea of their own. They inform the Baroness after all, but swear her to secrecy: she can’t let Charlier know that she knows he’s not the Baron. The pieces have been prepared and are now set in motion. Charlier thinks the Baroness does not know he’s her husband, so he — the cabaret bohemian — can act freely with her — the proud and glamorous aristocrat. She pretends that she believes it all, so she can play with the amusing chanteur who flirted with her so charmingly, something she has never experienced from her look-alike husband. We’re in a carnivalesque masked ball without masks. This is another great scene. Charlier savors his role (after all, he can use all his charm on her with impunity), but he can’t keep his artistic ego and self-regard from popping up like a jack-in-the-box, and the Baroness knows how to turn his handle. The smooth aristocrat and the conceited cabaret actor at odds in the same body. (This is the sort of thing that was perfect for Danny Kaye’s wheelhouse. It’s no wonder the film was remade in 1951 as On the Riviera with Kaye in the lead.)
Charlier has gone off to a party at the Baron’s house without informing Mimi; in a jealous rage, she impetuously decides to take up the Baron’s invitation that she visit him. What could go wrong?
Well, what goes wrong is that Mimi arrives for some revenge and fun with the Baron, mistakes Charlier for him, Charlier plays her to make her confess her love for her absent sweetheart (that is, him), but she’s simultaneously playing him because she’s figured out his true identity from the scratches she left on his hand from their last fight. They have a classic petit bourgeois reconciliation when Charlier informs her that he’s getting paid 50,000 Francs for the imposture. (This is also a great scene — Chevalier slides from slick Baron to animated Charlier so smoothly! I can’t have clips of every scene, can I?)
Meanwhile… the real Baron has returned home on the sly while the party is going on, and Charlier and Mimi flee the scene unseen. What could go wrong… again?
At first, the business partners mistake the Baron for Charlier, much to his amazement. But as soon as he gets the picture, he realizes that his cool wife has been unusually ardent with the faux Baron. He gets a glint in his eyes. He’ll pretend to be Charlier pretending to be him with the Baroness. It’s really amazing to me how rich these erotic mistaken identity plots can be in the hands of good writers. Feydeau, the greatest of all farceurs, called it “the algebra of farce.” Once you set the pieces in motion, they go crazy but never deviate from the logical possibilities. The simplest “equation” is parallel identity. When you add romantic psychology, the “logic” becomes euphoric. In an elevated mirror of the earlier scene between Charlier and Mimi, The Baron pretends to be Charlier with the Baroness just like Charlier played the Baron with Mimi — to elicit that they really love their true partners. But the Baroness goes the extra step. She figures it out, but won’t let on.
So, the Baron decides he’ll go back to the status quo ante. He reappears to the Baroness as himself, but she pretends not to believe him.
Naturally, it all works out in the end. (It’s complicated.) And the whole shebang ends with a bang, in one of Charlier’s and Mimi’s showstoppers replete with monumental straw boaters, choreographed by Gould, to the tune of Stern-Meskill’s “Singing a Happy Song.”
Folies Bergère de Paris is really a joyous thing. It combines the elegant haut bourgeois erotic comedy of manners with the petit bourgeois impostor-servant farces with an impressive sense of romance that’s rare. It’s also a wonderful movie. It was originally a play, but the film is a great example of how much more comic and romantic magic a film can deliver than a stage performance. There’s no doubt that Lubitsch and Mamoulian influenced it. You can’t ask for better influences. Old fashioned as it is on paper, the joy in it is pure 1935 — a good year for Hollywood comedies.
Final note: it’s impossible to find a good print of this film. Almost every one I’ve seen has been duped from a VHS copy. On my list of films from this zone that should be remastered and released in good shape, this one is near the top.