Occupe-toi d’Amélie! begins in a wild rush. Victor Guyau hurries from the street to the theater; once he finally makes it to his dressing room, he quickly gets ready to play the part of wealthy Van Putzeboum, and then he is on stage, that is, in the world of Feydeau’s story. Claude Autant-Lara’s film also ends in a rush: the departing train with Amélie and Marcel, happily in love without the bonds of marriage. Fast paced movement connects the film’s three spaces – the reality of the street, behind the scenes at the theater and the imaginary world of the play – in a single breath, expressing Feydeau’s light touch, liveliness and caustic wit.
Autant-Lara and screenwriters Aurenche and Bost turn up the play’s perfect and subtle dynamics with a seemingly paradoxical solution: the film leads the viewer into the world of make believe, reveals its gimmicks but captures the audience by expanding the theatrical illusion so that it absorbs reality within the play. The film blurs the line between the magic on stage and the reality surrounding it: the individuals, like puppets, lie, dissimulate and act in both dimensions. Occupe-toi d’Amélie! is an amusing merry-go-round that Autant-Lara spins at a rapid pace, accentuating the play’s spirited sarcasm (which, let’s not forget, often alludes to the vendibility of a girl’s charm) in order to mock the hypocrisy, corruption and cynicism of the middle class, the army, aristocrats and priests but without losing the open-minded appeal and lighthearted charm of Feydeau’s text.
“Take a vaudeville show, like what we did with Occupe-toi d’Amélie!, take it all apart, putting each piece on a table, and then put the machine back together knowing that you have to make it work again with the same elements but in a different climate, a different temperature, a different world where time and space do not have the same dimensions; that means letting film have all its possibilities and preserve all its rights,” said the director (“Protocole du 4e CICI”, 1964). In fact, this is not the filming of a theater performance; this is filmmaking during Autant-Lara’s golden period (Douce, Sylvie et le fantôme, with Tati, Le Diable au corps, L’Auberge rouge). Originally, he had wanted to do an adaptation of La Dame de chez Maxim’s. The film’s impeccable “choreographic” meter unfolds brilliantly in Max Douy’s splendid sets with the class and humor of superb actors (Danielle Darrieux, Jean Desailly and Carette).

Roberto Chiesi