Françoise's idea [Robert Saidreau - Chapter 13]

To read the previous chapter of this essay on the work of director Robert Saidreau, click here.

The Plot

This film is the second adaptation of a comic play by Paul Gavault, after that of Émile Chautard, produced barely 9 years earlier. This is the first collaboration between the writer and Robert Saidreau, who will then adapt Ma Tante d'Honfleur, by the same Gavault.
Le Siècle reveals the plot on April 21, 1923: the patriarchs of a family that their frivolity has ruined want to marry one of their daughters to a party as rich as it is old to replenish the coffers. Françoise devotes herself to sparing her sister. "This is a family comedy of a fairly smooth flow".

Gina Palerme & Mlle Reiss

Casting and shooting

The shooting of the comedy The Idea of ​​Françoise at the Éclair studio in Épinay-sur-Seine, supposed to start on June 14, 1922, was announced the day before by Comœdia, which specifies the participation of Dolly Davis (the spared sister), Gina Palerme (Françoise), André Dubosc (their father). But among the main performers, we also find Pierre Etcheparre, in the second role of a short but intense collaboration with Saidreau and Thérèse Cernay in the role of the mother, very active theater actress since 1891, who apparently returns to the screen here for the first and last time since the war. The actress, whose real name is Thérèse Caillet, reveals on July 7, 1923 to Le Petit Journal Amusant that her pseudonym is due to chance when she pierced a phone book with a hairpin as deep as the locality of Cernay.
The two main female performers had unsuspected success in the 1920s. Dolly Davis was only at the start of a long career and Gina Palerme, although she had not make more films than Davis by then, was very famous thanks in particular to the music hall which tore her away from the 5-year parenthesis of her great screen hits. Robert Darthez, singer and actor already popular on stage since 1915 and decorated with the Croix de Guerre following his injury on October 24, 1917 on the Italian front, seems to be taking his first steps in cinema here. Saidreau is definitely a talent scout!
The film benefits from a large cast of famous extras including Suzanne Bianchetti and her husband René Jeanne for a casino scene. For this sequence, Robert Saidreau notably asked the star of his previous film Denise Legeay, to appear in the crowd, which she probably accepted with joy given her recent experience.

Yves Martel, Gina Palerme & André Dubosc

Release and critic

The press presentation took place on January 9, 1923 at the Marivaux and the film was released (renamed in the pages of the newspaper Comœdia "The ideas of Françoise") on April 20, 1923 at the Electric Palace, the Ciné St Paul and the Métropole.

Lucien Doublon of Cinémagazine lacks enthusiasm for the film, regretting that it is an adaptation but reports that the film will make people laugh. André Tinchant follows suit in the same magazine on April 20 for the same reasons but is full of praise for the performers and the director. Le Petit Journal considers the film "very amusing".
Ciné Pour Tous retains the release date of May 4, 1923, and reports that it is André Dubosc who plays the role of La perlière and Pégram who plays Duvernet. Insofar as this last attribution seems false (it is the opposite), one begins to doubt the veracity of the date as well.

To read the next chapter on the work of director Robert Saidreau, click here.

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That's all for today folks! See you soon !