Louis Cuny began his career what his best effort about famous pilot Mermoz ,then worked his way down : extravagant melodramas '"étrange destin" , mediocre thrillers ("la femme en rouge" ) ,inept musicals ("plume au vent" ) ;one can save,at a pinch his swansong "bonjour toubib" saved by Noel-Noel .
"Le beau voyage' in its first part , bears more than a slight resemblance to Marcel Carné's "quai des brumes"(1938),but it's a far cry from it : the orphan,mistreated by her wicked boss ,in love with a hoodlum who ends up in jail for a short time ; both long for the islands in the sun ,where you can live happily ever after ,just like the before-WW2 characters ; soon the man leaves the lugubrious Anvers harbor for the broader horizons of South America ;after making enough money to pay her second-class ticket on a liner ,she heads for her love's new home in the sun three years after.
On the ship,she meets a wistful piano virtuoso , who was given a rough ride by life too;Sadly no chemistry between bland Pierre -Richard Willm and Renée Saint-Cyr his new flame (the actress was a regular of the director's movies) ; this beau voyage is dull ,besides the expected ending does nothing to rectify it ,in spite of the desperate attempts of the director to enliven it:the ceremony (rather crude) which takes place when the ship sails across the equator (it still exists today ,and you get a diploma!).
The best remains the early scenes with the depiction of the cul de sac represented by the smoky misty Anvers harbor;but the script is rather desultory ,the scenes do not hang together well and one can wonder why this was restored when so many French films are waiting for this treatment?
