In French un petite choux - literally a small cabbage - is used as an endearment but I use it here to designate a minor film from journeyman director Jean Choux who turned out around thirty bread-and-butter movies and was here more or less filming a stage play by Marcel Archard which had enjoyed a modest success. Of the two, writer and director, Archard enjoyed the more distinguished career, chalking up several successes on both stage and screen. As Sound took its first tentative steps in French Cinema (and this was made in 1931) it was something of the norm to turn to the stage for material - think Marius, Fanny, etc - and this story of a fickle girl, Marcelline, who can't stop flirting even after marrying the eponymous florist, Jean de la lune, may well have been much worse if it hadn't had the benefit of Madeleine Renaud, a great now almost unknown actress who peaked in the thirties and forties, as Marcelline and Michel Simon an equally great actor, on the threshold of international recognition as the eponymous Boudu in Renoir's masterpiece. There was a third well-known French actor in the cast but Jean-Pierre Aumont wasn't really in the same class despite appearing in classics like Carne's Hotel du Nord and several Hollywood films. On balance a fascinating curio.
Review of Jean de la Lune
