Coeur de coq (1946) User Reviews (3)

What a cock!

[dbdumonteil · 10 August 2010]

A special case in Fernandel's filmography ...And in Maurice Cloche's too...

"Coeur De Coq" begins as a comedy :Tulipe (sic) works in a printing house and he is in love with the owner's daughter.She is going to make a money match ,on account of the economy -and her dad's business:the fiancé is a middle age man (so is Fernandel anyway),he stutters and the girl does not love him .Tulipe is so desperate he considers suicide .When his friends come to wake him,he believes he's in Heaven ...for a short while.

The second part is unusual for it is sci-fi ,a genre unknown in France of the thirties and the forties (to my knowledge ,only some of Abel Gance's works,the appalling "Croisieres Siderales" and the overlooked " Le Monde Tremblera" were attempt in that direction.Here the plot deals with heart transplant ,two decades before Professor Barnard ;but you are given an animal's heart transplant ,not another human heart!Tulipe chooses the cock (check the title)because "Un Coq De Village" means a womanizer .

In the last part,the director completely changes his style;there's only a few lines ,some time in a pasteboard Venice ,complete with Bel Canto, masks,costumes ,gondolas and Farandoles ;the dreamlike atmosphere makes the movie fall into the fantasy genre.

Some may complain about the final "unexpected end" ,but the audience is given clues all along the movie:the news item about this scientist who makes cock's hearts transplants ,Cloche's cinematography -so conventional usually - becomes inventive in the second part with an interesting use of shadows and lights which makes the scientist almost threatening.

Except for the Venitian's song ,the other ditties get in the way and are mostly filler.Although released just after WW2,"Coeur De Coq " is not unlike these "escapist movies" of the occupation

Wonderful Fernandel

[bob998 · 5/10 · 19 October 2005]

I wrote about Forbidden Fruit in May; this is a wonderful vehicle for Fernandel, one of the greatest actors in movie history. Coeur de coq isn't nearly as good: it was ground out to a formula by a hack director. A man is too timid to ask a girl out, decides to kill himself by lying down in the road and waiting for a car to come along... A doctor finds him, offers to transplant a rooster's heart into the man which will make him irresistible to women.

Even as science fiction this is silly, but with Fernandel singing, the scenes shot in Venice, the pretty women, it's all so entertaining. I can't get enough of this guy.

Immortal Fernandel

[benoit-3 · 10/10 · 3 July 2006]

"Coeur de Coq" played last night on TFO (Télévision française en Ontario), a local state-sponsored channel that revives a seemingly endless stream of forgotten and newly-restored French films. I admit I had never seen it. It is from a motley period of Fernandel's career where he kept experimenting with various genres and various distinguished directors, from Sacha Guitry's filmed theatre ("Tu m'as sauvé la vie", 1951) to Carlo Rim's experimental macabre comedy "L'Armoire volante" (1948), before his career was definitely given a boost by Julien's Duvivier's "Le Retour de Don Camillo", a comedy that definitely established him as a first-rate actor and a living legend.

Having been, perhaps luckily, ignored by the New Wave critics, he was unfortunately also passed over by overseas success, although the prestige of the Don Camillo movies made waves all the way to Italy, Germany and Soviet Russia and insured more and more substantial parts until the end of his life.

This little trifle is a made-to-measure musical comedy about a humble typesetter who sets his sight on the boss's daughter, who must marry a business associate of her father. A failed suicide attempt leads him to a mad scientist who decides to transplant a rooster's heart in the man, transforming him into a cocky seducer and superstud that must certainly have inspired Jerry Lewis's "Mister Love" in his "Nutty Professor".

The film is a mad hodge-podge of sentimental comedy, science fiction satire, dream-like escapades into a back-lot Venice, dancing girls, fantasy and whimsy, all neatly tied up into a traditional happy-end.

It was almost traditional for Fernandel comedies, by this time, for him to get the girl at the end, but this one goes one step further by presenting him as an irresistible Casanova, which his success had probably made him in real life, whether he liked it or not. The effect is most liberating as Fernandel's seductive powers have always been immense.

The film is not a masterpiece by a long shot, but it does not have a single tepid moment and goes merrily along its happy way in a somewhat dated but characteristic fashion. And Fernandel can always be counted on to deliver the charm, the musicianship, the humour, the wit and the laughs (with a special accolade to the mysterious Robert Rouzeaud - whom I suspect is a pseudonym for Paul Azaïs in a double role - as his Italian Mephisto).