Having emerged from Marcel Pagnol's 'Angele' in 1934 as a great tragicomic artiste, Fernandel's working relationship with that director proved to be a marriage made in heaven.
During exterior shots for that film, a young man suffering from delusions of grandeur was kidded along by the crew and made to sign a bogus contract. Pagnol took this amusing anecdote and made it the basis for 'Le Schpountz' four years later with the title role written specifically for Fernandel and filmed simultaneously, for technical and budgetary reasons, with another of their collaborations, 'Regain'. By all accounts it was Pagnol's regular cinematographer Willy(Frankovitch) who came up with the title which derives from Slavonic argot meaning a 'simple or screwy person'. How on earth the film acquired the title 'Heartbeat' is anyone's guess.
Unlike some of his contemporaries Pagnol welcomed the coming of sound and this is one of his most brilliant scripts. It is by turns ironic, amusing and endearing as well as being a satire on film-making, complete with a self-important leading actor, a neurotic immigrant director and a producer allegedly based on Louis B. Mayer(delicious performance by Léon Belieres) whose depiction was deemed in some quarters to be anti-Semitic!
Superlative support from Pagnol's sine qua non Fernand Charpin and the fascinating Orane Demazis for whom Pagnol created the iconic role of Fanny and who also bore him a son. She has a particularly fine speech in which she invokes Moliere and Chaplin to show that Comedy is the equal of Tragedy and not an inferior genre.
This film is a gem from French cinema's Golden Age that offers a splendid vehicle for Fernandel whilst his priceless rendition of the death sentence from the Penal Code in varying registers is justly renowned.
During exterior shots for that film, a young man suffering from delusions of grandeur was kidded along by the crew and made to sign a bogus contract. Pagnol took this amusing anecdote and made it the basis for 'Le Schpountz' four years later with the title role written specifically for Fernandel and filmed simultaneously, for technical and budgetary reasons, with another of their collaborations, 'Regain'. By all accounts it was Pagnol's regular cinematographer Willy(Frankovitch) who came up with the title which derives from Slavonic argot meaning a 'simple or screwy person'. How on earth the film acquired the title 'Heartbeat' is anyone's guess.
Unlike some of his contemporaries Pagnol welcomed the coming of sound and this is one of his most brilliant scripts. It is by turns ironic, amusing and endearing as well as being a satire on film-making, complete with a self-important leading actor, a neurotic immigrant director and a producer allegedly based on Louis B. Mayer(delicious performance by Léon Belieres) whose depiction was deemed in some quarters to be anti-Semitic!
Superlative support from Pagnol's sine qua non Fernand Charpin and the fascinating Orane Demazis for whom Pagnol created the iconic role of Fanny and who also bore him a son. She has a particularly fine speech in which she invokes Moliere and Chaplin to show that Comedy is the equal of Tragedy and not an inferior genre.
This film is a gem from French cinema's Golden Age that offers a splendid vehicle for Fernandel whilst his priceless rendition of the death sentence from the Penal Code in varying registers is justly renowned.