Classic Film Review: Fernandel gives the 1952 Mademoiselles the “French Touch (Coiffeur pour Dames)”
“French Touch,” aka “An Artist with the Ladies” and titled “Coiffeur pour Dames” in its native France, is a screen comedy adapted from a stage play that could have been tailor-made for its star.
The French vaudeville singer and comic Fernandel plays a lowly sheep-shearer who clips his way to hair styling stardom in post-war Paris by giving scalp “massages” that are catnip to the ladies. That points him and us towards a marriage-threatening, client-clinging, teen daughter seducing finale that screams out for something bawdier than the mild-mannered 1950s would allow.
But more importantly, as our anti-hero Mario juggles the wife (Blanchette Brunoy), the many upper class clients and the somewhat smitten 18 year-old daughter of a client (Françoise Soulié) he has massaged his way into, dodging husbands and fathers as he bounces from office to salon to apartment along the way, you miss the doors he should be slamming behind him or getting slammed in his face.
Marius the sheep shearer (Fernandel) has a gift, something the ladies of his village pick up on straight away.
“You’ll go far with those hands!”
Whatever leering accompanied that on the stage, it’s largely brushed past in this not-particularly-bawdy comedy. Because in a few too-quick scenes, we watch Marius work his way from sheep and dressing up horse tails for contests at county fairs, to dog grooming and hair-styling for plastic dolls in Marseilles, where he meets Aline (Brunoy) and talks her into marrying him and following him to Paris as he pursues his dream.
Even in a tiny salon working for somebody else, “Mario” as he now calls himself, becomes famous for “fingers that speak.” To clients, “each hair is a violin string” (in French with English subtitles) for this “virtuoso” of the scissors, shampoo and hair dryer.
He seems destined for glory, and not just for mastering the basics. The hairdresser is “everyone’s confidante and father confessor.” The ladies want his coiffeur adorning their heads and his fingers working their scalps into relaxing release.
“Your profession’s so gay,” one client swoons, in a pre-Stonewall use of the word. Mario is simply irresistible.
The first client to truly cross the line is kept woman Edmonde (Arlette Poirier). She demands that he come to her apartment to prep her for an evening at the theater with her married lover, and they get so carried away that the next thing you know, they’re in bed together.
How he knew to keep a pair of pajamas with him at all times is why he is French and you and I are not.
But it isn’t until Mario clips 20 years off the wife of the kept woman’s paramour that his world changes. He saves Mme Brochard’s (Renée Devillers) marriage, and she sets him up in his own salon. Soon, every posh Parisienne is at his fingertips. Literally.
Naturally, our Icarus flies too close to the sun…or daughter, in this case, Mme. Brochard’s hip teen daughter (Françoise Soulié).
Yes, modern viewers are allowed to say “Ewww” here. Even accounting for the difference in eras, that wasn’t Miss Austen’s Empire waistline England and 18 paired with a stout, grinning hair-dyed fop of his late 40s isn’t played for the big laughs it might have delivered. Not that young Denise seems over the moon about the hairdresser who pines for her.
That goes for much of this Jean Boyer film. Whatever his earlier reputation, this outing seems muted and muzzled, watered down even for its era. He is best-known for his pre-war films, although he worked steadily up until his death in 1965. “Un mauvais garçon,” “Virginie” and “We Go to Monte Carlo” might be his most famous credits, although as a writer and composer, he had a tune on the “Chocolat” soundtrack decades after his passing.
Still, Fernandel is in fine form and the framework of this follicle-friendly farce holds it all together. It’s not a great French sex comedy, even of its era, but it’s well worth checking out, if for nothing else than considering how it might be remade, even today.
A bawdier version where they don’t forget to slam a few doors could still play.
The fabulous Juliette Greco in Tokyo concert 1961
Juliette Gréco : Recorded at Tokyo Kosei-Nenkin Hall in 1961 20 chansons COMPLET
- Paname ( Léo Ferré )
- Je suis comme je suis ( Jacques prévert – Joseh Kosma )
- Java partout (Léo Ferré )
- Les enfants qui s’aiment (Jacques Prévert – Joseph Kosma )
- le chant de Barbara ( André mauprey – Kurt Well )
- L’ ombre ( François Mauriac – Luc poret )
- La rue des Branc Manteaux ( Jean-Paul sartre – Joseph Kosma )
- La cuisine (Jean drejac )
- Sous le ciel de Paris ( Jean dréjac – Hubert Giraud )
- Il n’y a plus d’apres (Guy Béart )
- Chanson de Margaret ( Pierre MacOrlan – Marceau )
- L’ amour a la papa ( Serge Gainsbourg )
- C’etait bien – le petitbal perdu (Robert Nyel – Gaby Verlor )
- Jolie mome ( Léo Ferré )
- Si tu t’imagine ( Raymond Queneau – Joseph Kosma )
- Je hais les dimanches ( Charles Aznavour – Florence Véran )
- Coin de rue ( Charles Trenet )
- La Fourmi ( Robert Desnos – Joseph kosma )
- Les feuilles mortes ( Jacques Prévert – Joseph Kosma )
- Paris-Canaille ( Léo Ferré )
Tino Rossi “C’est Trop Beau”
Constantin “Tino” Rossi (29 April 1907 – 26 September 1983) was a French singer and film actor. Born in Ajaccio, Corsica, was gifted with a voice well suited for opera. He became a tenor in the French cabaret style. Later, he appeared in various movies.
During his career it is reported he recorded over 2000 songs and he appeared in more than 25 films.
Among his most famous hits, Petit Papa Noel sold over 30 million copies worldwide. Over the course of his 50-year singing career, Tino Rossi recorded over 2000 songs and sold over 200 million albums making him one of the best selling (and mostly forgotten) artists of all time.
Chanson Du Jour: “It Must Be Him”
By Michael Stevenson
I’ve always loved the hilariously desperate song “It Must Be Him” performed by Vikki Carr. The song sold over 1 million copies in 1967 and millions more since.
Vikki Carr remains a very under-appreciated vocalist, one who gets unfairly lumped-in with her white bread contemporaries dominating that woeful/golden era of 1960s MOR (Middle of the Road) radio. 
On trips in the Stevenson family station wagon, my dad would play this musical spam on the car radio, punching in the dreaded WLKW button, while we kids in the back seat begged for DJ Joe Thomas playing Beatles, Beach Boys and Motown on WICE. But alas – this was elevator music without doors that open and let you out.
It was in the back seat of the Pontiac Tempest, that I learned Vicki Carr sang ‘grown-up” music that I actually liked. Eventually I saw her perform on TV with Merv, Johnny and Mike, where she was always beautiful, charming, and singing brilliantly. Still later, I became the odd used record customer who purchased both Vikki’s Greatest Hits album AND Moby Grape’s groovy debut (sans “flipping the bird”) while shopping at In Your Ear. Has anyone else ever purchased these two records together? No? Hooray for me.
Born Florencia Bisenta de Casillas-Martinez Cardona before opting for the anglicized stage name, Vikki Carr eventually enjoyed great success in the Latin music world, winning Grammy Awards for Best Mexican-American Performance in 1986.
This version of her hit song “It Must Be Him” is performed in Spanish, but the original song was sung in neither English nor Spanish, but in French – a reworking of Gilbert Becaud’s “Seul Sur Son Etoile.”
In 1971, she established the Vikki Carr Scholarship Foundation, dedicated to offering college scholarships to Hispanic students in California and Texas. To date, the Foundation has awarded more than 280 scholarships totaling over a quarter of a million dollars.
Such a lovely woman.
Though the lyrics to this song are quite dated (“Hello? Hello?…my dear God!”) when this tune is performed, let it not be sung by Jerry Vale, Jack Jones or Edie Gorme. Let it please be Vikki Carr!
Picasso and his muse
Pas De Merde 