Let's Make a Dream (1936) User Reviews (5)

A rather remarkable film

[richard-1787 · 8/10 · 28 April 2012]

This is really a rather remarkable film.

In one sense, it is the typical boulevard comedy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the story of a man who seduces another man's wife away from him and then finds a way of getting him out of the picture. That goes back at least to Molière, and probably before. Granted, the three actors involved, Guitry as the seducer, Raimu as the husband, and Pauline Delubac as the ravishingly beautiful and beautifully clever wife, play these stereotypical roles as well as they have ever been played. And Guitry's dialogue has some magnificent lines. But the situation is not new or remarkable.

What is remarkable, however, is the delivery of the dialogue, especially by Guitry. Raimu takes his lines with the pace of a southerner, exaggerated and funny. Delubac delivers hers with astounding wit and charm. But Guitry delivers his, which after all he wrote for himself and performed nightly in the theater before making the movie, at an astounding speed. Astounding, because he also delivers them with the utmost clarity. They go flying by at a speed that would put Katherine Hepburn in "Bringing up baby" to shame, and yet you don't miss one of them. It is, among other things, a remarkable lesson in theatrical diction.

There are plenty of great lines to keep you laughing. But don't overlook the fact that you catch them all even when they are delivered at a sometimes astounding speed.

An Oscar Wilde Bedroom Farce

[MogwaiMovieReviews · 8/10 · 17 May 2018]

I'm still shocked at how few reviews there are of Sacha Guitry's films here on IMDB, so feel duty bound to add another, even if I don't have much in the way of fresh information to contribute.

This one is really little more than a bedroom farce - very stagey and confined almost entirely to a single set, but the dialogue is so quick and witty and energetic, and the chemistry between Guitry and his ravishing real life lover Jacqueline Delubac so good, that never feels a limitation. Needless cutaways to fjords and train stations and alien landing sites would be a distraction, in fact, from what is best about it, and only slow the movie down.

As another reviewer here noted, Michel Simon appears (uncredited) very briefly in the opening scene - I was surprised at this as I was convinced Guitry had never worked with him before 1951's La Poison - he even says so (at some length) in the film itself(!)

Once again the English subtitles on every version I could find were poor, sometimes obscuring a joke or making no sense at all, so I ended up creating my own subtitle file for it by comparing the original French and using some common sense. The title, too, "Let's Make A Dream" is better as a simple straight translation than some of the other attempts.

Anyhow and regardless, this was a delight: cheeky and incisive and dazzlingly fast - one of Guitry's best. His enthusiastic touch elevates what could have been just a creaky old potboiler into something that can probably best be described as an Oscar Wilde bedroom farce.

Perchance To Dream

[writers_reign · 8/10 · 8 April 2007]

In terms of films as opposed to plays the 1930s were Guitry's most fruitful decade yielding an even dozen titles; the 1950s threatened to eclipse that but he died in 1957 having completed eleven films whilst in between there were another nine in the 1940s and one Silent in 1915.

For a playwright and a verbose one at that Guitry knew how to make the camera move fluidly as in this case when it pans rather than cuts around a salon swooping on groups of two or three before moving on. Nor has he lost his knack of arresting openings witness the Gypsy sextet who open proceedings with a short medley before the Opening Credits, one of them playing what appears to be a form of zither. As he often did Guitry casts his wife of the time, Jacqueline Delubac, as his leading lady, marries her off to Raimu,casts himself as the lover and lest we forget he is a man of words as well as images he proceeds to divide the film into duologues perming any two from three and even throws in a tour de force monologue for himself, For talent spotters in the salles he supplies cameos for Arletty, Michel Simon and Claude Dauphin and the finished product is everything you expect from this Renaissance man.

"Whenever I want you,all I have to do is, Dream,dream,dream."

[morrison-dylan-fan · 6/10 · 19 April 2018]

On what has up to now been the hottest day of the year in the UK,I started planning on ending the night with a French film viewing. Recently seeing the first 2 in the set,I decided it was time to stop dreaming,and watch the third title in Arrow's Guitry collection.

View on the film:

By far their best presentation of the first 3 in the box set,Arrow delivers a spotless picture (with a lot less grain than the other 2) and a largely clean soundtrack.

Bringing another of his own plays to screen,the style that lead actor/writer/director Sacha Guitry & cinematographer Georges Benoît appears as a halfway house of New Testament and My Father Was Right, via the enticing opening being an extended panning shot, (that offers an eyeful of cameos from Michel Simon and Arletty!)across a number of tables at a gathering that expand on the relaxed feeling Guitry had shown towards cinema in Father, that becomes rolled into the stage-bound,extended takes of New Testament,with Guitry keeping the camera restrained as he performs his own monologue.

Dusting off a play from 20 years ago and completely changing the third act in this adaptation, Raimu as Mari gives the dialogue a refreshing lightness in his exchanges with Guitry's L'amant,thanks to both of them spinning the playful one-liners with the speed of a Screwball Comedy dream.

More Than A Lifetime

[boblipton · 8/10 · 5 January 2023]

It begins with a gypsy band playing tunes. Eventually they are joined by a party, with the camera roving lightly from one bon mot to the next, pausing only to let a waiter sneak some food. Sacha Guitry asks Jacqueline Delubac and her husband, Raimu, to come to his apartment at 3:45 the next afternoon; he wants to show them something. They arrive, discuss things amusingly, and Raimu departs for, as he says, a business appointment with a South American. Guitry emerges from the bath room, where he has been washing his hands for ten minutes and eavesdropping, to ask Mlle Delubac to be his mistress.

It's a light, frothy farce, with Guitry babbling almost non-stop for more than half an hour. Although it's essentially a three-person stage piece -- by Guitry -- the camerawork by Georges Benoît keeps things moving, and Mlle Delubac has little to do but pose smiling and occasionally say something so the camera set-up can be changed. Raimu offers a wonderfully plodding pace to his lines, and Arletty, Claude Dauphin, and Michel Simon each get a witty line at the party.