Amour et publicité

This early French talkie somehow manages to prophecy the arrival of the era of the reality show more than sixty years before it arrived with it's subject matter of people living almost constantly in the view of the public.

A shop owner decides to replace his store-front mannequins with staff members who will play out simple stories while modelling various items from the store. However, the story begins to increasingly resemble reality when a jealous colleague of the staff members portraying a married couple begins to meddle.

Had it been made in the late twentieth century it would be tempting to describe this as a cute allegory about the pressures modern-day celebrity place on those living constantly in the public eye - especially those who attempt to deceive the public about such things as the state of their marriage. It might even be that this was the intention of the film's makers back in '33, although the cult of celebrity was not then recognisable in it's present-day form. Apart from this neat idea, the rest of this short film is fairly ordinary although it possesses a certain charm thanks to it's Gallic flavour.