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Monday 4/4/11

Midnight Turner Classic Movies
Le Schpountz (1938 FRA): Do you remember where you were when you first heard The Beatles or The Sex Pistols? How about when JFK was shot? The moon landing? The day you realized Sarah Palin really could become President? Well, I recently had one of those moments when everything changes. I discovered Fernandel.

Fernandel was a hugely popular French screen comic of the 1930s and '40s, but — perhaps due to the fact that he looked like the result of a midnight tryst between Rondo Hatton and a horse — he remains virtually unknown to Anglophone film fans. In fact, other than a thankless cameo in Michael Todd's bloated Around the World in 80 Days and Paris Holiday, a lame Bob Hope film no one's ever seen, Fernandel never made an English-language film.

Le Schpountz is one of five films the actor made with director Marcel Pagnol, and it's a revelation. Fernandel plays Irenee Fabre, a backwoods son of a shopkeeper whose dreams of cinema stardom apparently come to fruition when a film crew needs to borrow a saucepan from the family store. Bored and in need of distraction, the crew sign Irenee to a blatantly phony contract (he gets a bonus for performing in temperatures above 45 Celsius, or if he develops leprosy whilst working on their film) — but their clueless mark takes it absolutely seriously, and is soon wreaking havoc on the back-lots of a Parisian studio.

It's a delightful film, but it wouldn't be anything special without Fernandel, who seems almost as adept at straight drama as at broad comedy. More, please, TCM!

1:35 AM Starz C
O’Horten (2007 NOR): The occasion of a railway worker's retirement is the focus of this episodic Norwegian comedy-drama from delightfully named director Bent Hamer. Bard Owe stars as O(dd) Horten, now 67 and regretfully confronting retirement: he has no friends, never partakes in any extracurricular activities, and must end his conjugal relationship with the nice lady at the end of the Oslo-Bergen run. If you're favorably inclined towards Scandinavian quirkiness, give O'Horten a look: if you find it twee and annoying (or find the idea of senior citizen sexual intercourse disturbing), change the channel.

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