Tout ça ne vaut pas l'amour

Notable as the first film directed by Jaques Tourneur still in the shadow of the father, whose fame his own would surpass, this plodding early French sound film has very little else going for it.

Direction is certainly competent, even advanced for it's day. Jean Gabin is already second billed for a small part and he and the ill fated Gael make a presentable set of juveniles but the rest of the cast are grossly theatrical - and occasionally gross as well.

We get one striking sequence in the visit to Gael's father's factory, where Tourneur and the designers spring to life, but the rest is a succession of often elaborately staged, unfunny comic tableaux in which chemist lead Marcel Lévesque (from the Feuillade serials) humiliates himself trying to win the girl he has befriended.

The film does have an odd place in history as the one scheduled for screening the night of the Cinémathèque riot.