Fun in the Barracks

It was a genre which was very popular in the early thirties in France .Two other good examples are "Les Dégourdis De La Onzième" and "Ignace" where Fernandel was featured too.Here he is only supporting as is Jean Gabin.

The "crazy barracks" style is really an acquired taste.This kind of comedy is terribly dated.Even with Raimu who plays Captain Hurluru, a military man who seems to make it rough all over the place and who finally is a good man,with a great heart who pays for the headcheese his squaddies have stolen.It's occasionally funny,notably when the general comes for the review and punctuates every captain's gaffe with a terse "it does not really matter" .In those lovely barracks,you can sing,smoke ,drink and eat headcheese in the prisons.

Based on Georges Courteline's work,a writer who wrote spoofs on the army and their iron discipline.

Under their aging captain Raimu, a disorganized force of cavalrymen await an inspection by the general.

I wasn't surprised to see Raimu as the bow-legged, kind-hearted lush in charge in this service comedy, nor Fernandel as a private, constantly beset by conflicting orders that continually add to his days in detention. Jean Gabin, however, is another matter, in concert with René Donnio (best remembered for playing Quixote) as two insubordinate, thieving, lazy low-lives.

It's based on a novel by Georges Courteline, and at times seems more contemptible than funny. As so often, it's up to Raimu to hold together its disparate pieces with irony and sadness that in the end make it work under the direction of Maurice Tourneur. Raimu plays a man risen from the ranks, who has never forgotten his humanity and men he went war with, and cannot bring himself to impose any sort of discipline. Do they steal from the local innkeeper? He pays out of his pocket. Are two men AWOL? He spills ink on the page to hide their malfeasance. He hopes for promotion to colonel, but knows he will never get it, and that's all right. As he does elsewhere, he plays a character both contemptible and lovable.

He died in 1946, age 62.