Toi, c'est moi (1936)

Jacques Pills and Georges Tabet were two singers who formed a duet in 1932;Pills is mainly remembered as one of Edith Piaf's husbands today.

"Toi C'est Moi " (you ,it's me) is a delicious guilty pleasure :based on an operetta ,hence a musical where they sing every fifteen minutes, notably the title track ,which has remained rather peppy in spite of its age .

Full of good lines, of mistakes and misunderstandings , it's really entertaining stuff;you should see Pauline Carton, the wealthy auntie ,naked in her bath tub , or on a plane for the first time where everything around her is reeling ;her naughty nephew and his pal ,revelling and making the respectable lady believe they're giving gym lessons to their girls ;the letter in which auntie asks her foreman to make her nephew slave away , with its very funny consequences;the West Indies recreated in studio where the white men actually make the natives work as slaves .

An obvious racism will not be lost on the contemporary viewer : the foreman and the governor sip their punch when the natives sweat profusely to get the plantation work done ;although one of the boys flirts with a young black girl, he has the nerve to make her work for him whilst he is snoozing under the mangroves.And marriage ,that's out of the question! The poor native will have to be content with the aunt's homely secretary who finally rejects her.

That said, the story is so far-fetched that Guibert's and Duvallon 's misadventures are much fun to watch ;although as thick as thieves , they're playing tricks on each other all along the movie ;when one of the guys swims in the nude (in 1936,you read well) with his squeeze , his pal and his native flirt hide their clothes ,forcing them to dress as Adam and Eve (but a short glimpse of the girl's breast seems to have escaped the censorship's notice ).And hats off to Cicero,the stout black henchman,who makes it rough all over the place for the poor would be nephew by using water pails to refresh his memory

In brief,if you want to have fun ,you should watch that ; another Pills- and- Tabet 's collaboration ,"prends la route" (hit the road),hailed by Bertrand Tavernier in his "Voyage Dans Le Cinema Français" ,is worth a watch too .