So Sud Me
by Adam Dawtrey9 July 2010 - this article originally appeared in Finch’s Quarterly Review Issue 8
'T0 Catch A Thief' poster - Cary Grant, Grace Kelly 1955
Adam Dawtrey focuses on films set in the South of France
The Cannes Film Festival means that the South of France is indelibly associated with the movies. Yet surprisingly few films have actually been set there. Here are the best – and one or two of the worst.
To Catch A Thief. Cary Grant and Grace Kelly play cat and mouse around Monaco’s hairpin bends. Hitchcock’s classic is the epitome of Côte d’Azur cool. Contrary to myth, Kelly didn’t actually meet Prince Rainier while shooting To Catch A Thief in 1954, but the following year during the Cannes Film Festival. Reader, she married him, and golden Grace was lost to the silver screen forever.
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. You could make a case for the underrated Bowfinger, also directed by Frank Oz, but Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is the last unarguable classic in Steve Martin’s canon, and it’s a long time ago. Martin and Michael Caine are rival conmen in the fictional Mediterranean resort of Beaumont-sur-Mer. Martin pretending to be the retarded Prince Ruprecht is comedy gold. By the way, if you watch the recent Pink Panther 2, you realise that Martin is still funny; it’s just that his choice of films became terrible.
The French Connection I & II. The dirty underbelly of Marseilles is about as far from the glamour of French Riviera as you could get. Gene Hackman plays the magnificently incorrect narcotics cop Popeye Doyle pursuing a suave Gallic drug smuggler, first through the mean streets of New York and then back to Marseilles in the sequel.
'Dirty Rotten Scoundrels' - Michael Caine, Steve Martin 1988
La Cage Aux Folles. Set in St Tropez, this French farce was released in the same year that Harvey Milk was assassinated. Back in 1978, it was extraordinary for such a flamboyantly gay story to become a mainstream hit. By the time it was remade in 1996 as The Birdcage, the subject matter had become safe enough for the Hollywood treatment, which was social progress, if not a cinematic advance.
Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources. Claude Berri’s lavish two-part version of Marcel Pagnol’s 1966 novel brought tourists flocking to Provence, gorgeously captured by the lens of DP Bruno Nuytten. Curiously, Pagnol’s bestseller, entitled Manon des Sources, was actually a novelisation of his own 1952 film of the same name. Pagnol was so dissatisfied with the way his original film was butchered by its distributor that he decided to retell the whole story in print.
And God Created Woman. And Roger Vadim created Brigitte Bardot. The starlet in and out of her bikini on the beach is a Cannes cliché, but Bardot was the original, and never surpassed. The provocative film which made her a global star was set down the road in St Tropez, where she played a teenage orphan of decidedly loose morals who gets the town’s menfolk all steamed up. It’s a museum piece now, but at the time this was explosive stuff.
Day For Night. The legendary Victorine studio in Nice is where Michael Powell learned his trade working for Rex Ingram in the 1920s. It’s also where François Truffaut shot and set La nuit americaine (Day For Night), his 1973 movie about the making of a movie, a great love poem to the act of filmmaking. Truffaut himself plays the director beset with crisis on and off the set and he struggles to realise his vision.
'That Riviera Touch' - Morecambe and Wise
The Good Thief. Neil Jordan relocated Jean-Pierre Melville’s heist thriller Bob Le Flambeur from Paris to Monte Carlo. Nick Nolte plays the ageing gambler who assembles a motley gang for one last shot to rip off a casino.
Mr Bean’s Holiday. Rowan Atkinson tips his hat to Jacques Tati in this homage to M Hulot’s seaside misadventures. The haplessly destructive Bean wins a vacation in Cannes. His holiday video somehow gets entered into the Festival, and is proclaimed a masterpiece. A silly film for kids, perhaps, but laugh-out-loud in places, and Willem Defoe’s pretentious American auteur is delicious.
That Riviera Touch. Morecambe and Wise are national treasures, but even their greatest fan might struggle to crack a smile at their feeble effort to become film stars. Eric and Ernie take a holiday in the French Riviera (sound familiar?) and get tangled up with jewel thieves.
Adam Dawtrey is Finch’s Quarterly Review film critic
Tags: And God Created Women, Day For Night, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, La Cage Aux Folles, The French Connection, To Catch a Thief
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