Alex Joffé was never considered an important director,but he made a handful of good movies ,which are still pleasant to Watch,and sometimes far from being derivative.
"Six Heures A Perdre"(1946)in which a man is mistaken for another one ;a traveler who is just passing by and plays the part of another one;a story with an unexpected end.
"Les Fanatiques",a film in real time ,dealing with terrorism and some kind of disaster movie ,ahead of its time
"Fortunat" ,one of Bourvil's best part ,and in some sequences a hymn to friendship between an average French and a Jewish family ,during the Occupation.
"Les Cracks " ,his final work,featured a young girl dressed up as a boy, a subject which you also find in "Pas Question Le Samedi" .
"Pas Question Le Samedi " :you shall not work on Sabbath . This 1964 comedy (which went unnoticed the very year when "Le Corniaud" became one of France's biggest blockbusters) borrows from Capra ("It's a wonderful life: the divine intervention,the dad/son exchange,the final sequence , recalls sometimes George and his guarding angel),Wilder (the tango scene directly comes from "some like it hot" if we reverse the sexes )
But it is Robert Hirsh's tour de force :he plays twelve (you read well) different characters,including a woman ,equalling Alec Guiness ,Jerry Lewis ,and his illustrious compatriots Fernandel and Michel Simon;like them ,he can inject emotion in a scene :you will be moved when the son whose father died in a concentration camp is not interested in money anymore (thus smashing to pieces a cliché about Jews).
The screenplay is often funny,witty ,sometimes a bit muddled ,but there is never a dull moment.By fusing Tourneur's "Péchés De Jeunesse" (1941),Lubitsch's "Heaven can wait" (1943)and the classic story of the search for heirs ,Alex Joffé ,in his own modest way,brings it all back home.
