Drole de Drame (Bizarre Bizarre) (Drôle de drame ou L'étrange aventure du Docteur Molyneux) (1939)
Movie Info
Cast
as Archibald Soper Bishop of Bedford
as Margaret Molyneux
as Irwin Molyneux/Felix Chapel
as Billy
as William Kramps
as Eva
as Detective
as Man in Mourning
as Buffington
Critic Reviews for Drole de Drame (Bizarre Bizarre) (Drôle de drame ou L'étrange aventure du Docteur Molyneux)
All Critics (9) | Top Critics (3) | Fresh (7) | Rotten (2) | DVD (3)
There are plenty of piquant absurdities.
[A] hilarious black comedy.
Marcel Carne's direction is much too innately stodgy for this kind of free-form exercise, but it's enough, really, for him to simply train his camera on his enthusiastic cast.
Amusing French farce.
...an acerbic screwball satire aimed ostensibly at the English mania for detective fiction, though other targets too slow to get out of the way are the Anglican Church, Scotland Yard, and English elite society's preoccupation with reputation.
Comic riffs on the corrupt values in a class system and the malleability of individual identity provide the backbone of the film's ideas and its best examples of humour.
Audience Reviews for Drole de Drame (Bizarre Bizarre) (Drôle de drame ou L'étrange aventure du Docteur Molyneux)
"Drole de Drame"("Bizarre Bizarre" is the American title) starts at a mostly empty meeting led by the Bishop of Bedford(Louis Jouvet) condemning the mystery novels written by Felix Chapel as immoral. William Kramps(Jean-Louis Barrault), a serial killer, simply wants to kill Chapel. That worries Irwin Molyneux(Michel Simon), a cousin of Bedford's, more than anything else since he is secretly Chapel. What worries his wife Margaret(Francoise Rosay) is her cook and butler finally quitting, forcing her to make dinner for that night's visit by the bishop. At least, Eva(Nadine Vogel), the young maid, has not quit which makes Billy(Jean-Pierre Aumont), the milkman, very happy. Margaret has to stay out of sight to complete the meal for which Irwin comes up with a weak excuse for. So, the bishop comes to the only rational conclusion that he can which is that Irwin killed his wife... Set in Victorian London, "Drole de Drame" is a breezy, silly and darkly funny farce about why some times too much milk can be a bad thing. Seriously, it is about social status, as Margaret worries too much about hers to come clean which leads to unforeseen consequences for everybody. Along these same lines, the characters have more than their share of hypocrisies, not just the wealthy, but also the mob. For example, Kramps is an animal lover and that while Bedford is a man of god and father of a very large family, he is also a fan of showgirls. All of this is accomplished without somehow resorting to caricature.
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