50 Million Frenchmen

50 Million Frenchmen (1931)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Your tolerance level of Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson will certainly determine how much you enjoy this comedy from director Lloyd Bacon. In the film they play two dumb Americans who find themselves in Paris trying to track down a certain woman. Along the way they manage to drive many people crazy including the viewers of the film. 50 MILLION FRENCHMEN is a pretty bad movie on several levels. I understand that comedy is very subjective but the Olsen and Johnson routine just didn't win me over here. In fact, I thought it was quite annoying at times and especially the Johnson laugh, which just made me want to throw myself in front of a moving bus. Even if you do enjoy their routine you're still going to be left with a rather poorly made movie. This was one of those early talkies where it's clear that most of the people involved just didn't know what they were doing yet. Just check out the opening scene with the woman and watch her performance. She's all over the place and appears to be looking off camera at the director trying to get some sort of help. Others throughout the cast also appears to be struggling in front of the camera but it doesn't stop here because the cinematography is bad and the entire film just has a very cheap look. Bela Lugosi fans might want to skip through some of the film to find his uncredited performance. It's funny to note that this film opened the same date as Dracula.

Hardcore fans of Olsen and Johnson and/or Bela Lugosi will need no persuading, but others may find Fifty Million Frenchmen a pretty heavy slog. It's one of those early talkies where the actors hadn't quite figured out how to adjust their body language or their vocal intonations to suit the new medium, and it's at times awkwardly paced and badly shot. Nonetheless there are some inspired moments of Olson and Johnson lunacy, especially when the boys disguise themselves as the assistants of a stage magician and end up on stage performing a deadly sword trick. The romantic subplots are unnecessary and uninteresting and Johnson's maniacal laughter soon gets irksome.

The title suggests a saucy, sophisticated pre-Code bonbon, but oh dear. Oh Dear, Oh Dear...

Warner Bros. Had bankrolled the 1929 Broadway original of this production, but by the time it went before the cameras in August 1930 the public had had enough of musicals and the studio in desperation completely cut out the Cole Porter score (only 'You Do Something to Me' is heard on the soundtrack as incidental music) and instead tried to turn it into a vehicle for Olsen & Johnson. After pretending it might just all go away, Warner Bros. Eventually slipped it into cinemas in February 1931 where it swiftly died at the box office (although it was released abroad still with its songs intact, in a version now lost).

At least in 1931 the thing was in Technicolor, but now lacking even that embellishment it just looks cheap and tawdry and the hotel setting stagey and drab. (The most obvious remaining evidence that it was ever in colour is a joke by Johnson about a parrot blushing, and the heavy makeup worn by leading man William Gaxton). Gaxton has been saddled with playing that tired old cliché, a millionaire playboy talked into temporarily giving up his millionaire lifestyle for a wager; not that the film does much with the idea.

For anybody hoping for pre-Code raciness, the humour is just coarse, with a creepy amount of lingering on ladies' underwear; and the gruesome sight of Olsen & Johnson modelling a pair of nighties. Several other reviewers have already commented on Johnson's laugh; which grows on you like fingernails down a blackboard. Bela Lugosi makes a fleeting appearance as a magician; but if you blinked you'd miss him.

"50 Million Frenchman" was originally a stage musical. And, apart from completely missing the songs*, it plays exactly like a stage production. It's very episodic with lots of Vaudeville-style humor. While it nominally stars the comedy team of Olsen and Johnson, they really are relegated to supporting roles where they walk on and do tiny comedy bits--bits that often seem to have NOTHING to do with the film's plot. As for the plot, it's about an American who meets a nice girl in France and falls for her BUT he accidentally loses his money and is forced to get a job. However, he IS rich and has bet another man that he can win the woman's heart without spending a fortune on her. Will she love him for who he is or will the man's friend win her, as he ISN'T pretending to be poor?

Back to Olsen and Johnson. Although this team is practically unknown today, they were quite successful on stage and made a few movies. Most of the ones I've seen were only fair, but their film "Hellzapoppin" is a terrific comedy. "50 Million Frenchmen" is NOT brilliant--mostly because Olsen and Johnson's material is pretty bad. Too often they weren't very funny and were quite corny--and the team laughed uproariously like every line was hilarious...which only reinforced how unfunny they were. In fact, the entire film is flat and unfunny and has not aged well. My feeling is that the film would have been much better without the comedy OR if they gave up entirely on the plot and just had a lot of zaniness (which is exactly why "Hellzapoppin" was such a good film). The other problem is that the film is simply too talky--as if the folks making the film didn't really understand the new medium of talking pictures.

Look carefully at Orizon the Magician. Underneath the beard and the costume, that's Bela Lugosi! He made this bit appearance before making his breakout film, "Dracula". However, as "50 Million Frenchmen" was held about a year before it was released, it turned out both films were released the same day back in 1931!

*While musicals were THE rage in the very early days of talking pictures, within only a couple years, the genre was pretty stale and box office receipts for these films dropped. So, while the Best Picture Oscar went to "Broadway Melody" in 1930, but around 1931 the films appeared to be passé. Because of this, studio execs ordered all the songs removed from "50 Million Frenchmen" before it was released. By about 1933-34, musicals were suddenly popular once again. Why the change? I have always assumed it's because the sound technology improvements enabled the musicals to sound a lot better and weren't inhibited by primitive microphones and flat sound. Additionally, the studios simply refined their style and plots enough that they once again were appealing to Depression-era audiences.

This is the second of the Ole Olsen & Chic Johnson movies I've seen after Ghost Catchers last October. They're a bit funnier here and Johnson's constant laugh does get a bit irritating though not so much that I didn't find it funny again at the end. This was originally a musical with Cole Porter songs but by the time this was adapted for the screen, the vogue for movie musicals had cooled a bit and wouldn't become popular again until 42nd Street a couple years later so only an Olsen & Johnson number is all that's left of the songs though some instrumental versions of those tunes serve as the underscore. Like I said, the team are quite hilarious here especially when they disguise themselves as magicians after stealing the real one-Bela Lugosi's-clothes! By the way, this came out the same day as Lugosi's Dracula so it wouldn't be long before the Hungarian actor became a household name. So on that note, 50 Million Frenchmen is worth a look for fans of movie comedy and of the comedy team.