L’Auberge Rouge [The Red Inn] **** (1951, Fernandel, Françoise Rosay, Julien Carette, Marie-Claire Olivia) – Classic Movie Review 4946

Fernandel’s 1951 classic movie is a gloriously macabre piece of French Grand Guignol black comedy, crisply written by the screen-writing team of Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost, and expertly handled by director Claude Autant-Lara, who delivers some big, uncomfortable laughs.

Their story tells what happens when a group of 19th-century stagecoach passengers rest up at for the night at a lonely isolated inn in the Pyrénées mountains that turns out to be a Gallic equivalent of the Bates Motel run by a couple of murderous thieves.

Fernandel plays the Monk who finds out that the innkeeper (Julien Carette) and his wife (Françoise Rosay) are killing and robbing travellers for their possessions, when the innkeeper confesses to the Monk that he regularly serves sleep-inducing soup to his guests, to rob them and bury them in his backyard.

The Monk now tries to save the lives of the coachload of idiotic innocent guest without violating the holy secrecy of the confession. It helps that, though the innkeeper wants to kill and rob them all, his wife refuses to harm the Monk.

Fernandel shows his brilliant comic timing and breathless energy in a wonderful, and remarkably subtle, display of the farce player’s art. He is given the greatest of star support by Rosay and Carette as the killers.

Fernandel disliked the film and refused to speak to Autant-Lara again. But it was a huge hit and was shown successfully internationally. The movie is based on a true story crime case at the Peyrebeille Inn, where the film is set in 1833. It’s a black comedy but would make a great horror thriller too.

Also in the cast are Jean-Roger Caussimon, Nane Germon, Didier d’Yd, Marie-Claire Olivia, Lud Germain, Jacques Charon, Andrée Viala, Robert Berri and Grégoire Aslan. Yves Montand sings on the soundtrack.

It runs 98 minutes, is produced by Memnon and Cocinor, is shot in black and white by André Bac, is scored by René Cloërec and designed by Max Douy.

It was remade in 2007 by director Gérard Krawczyk, starring Christian Clavier, Josiane Balasko, and Gérard Jugnot.

Fernand Joseph Désiré Contandin (born 8 May 1903) died on 26 February 1971, aged 67. He was so attentive to his wife that his mother-in-law jokingly referred to him as Fernand d’elle (her Fernand), or Fernandel.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 4946

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