Let's Make a Dream

It begins with a gypsy band playing tunes. Eventually they are joined by a party, with the camera roving lightly from one bon mot to the next, pausing only to let a waiter sneak some food. Sacha Guitry asks Jacqueline Delubac and her husband, Raimu, to come to his apartment at 3:45 the next afternoon; he wants to show them something. They arrive, discuss things amusingly, and Raimu departs for, as he says, a business appointment with a South American. Guitry emerges from the bath room, where he has been washing his hands for ten minutes and eavesdropping, to ask Mlle Delubac to be his mistress.

It's a light, frothy farce, with Guitry babbling almost non-stop for more than half an hour. Although it's essentially a three-person stage piece -- by Guitry -- the camerawork by Georges Benoît keeps things moving, and Mlle Delubac has little to do but pose smiling and occasionally say something so the camera set-up can be changed. Raimu offers a wonderfully plodding pace to his lines, and Arletty, Claude Dauphin, and Michel Simon each get a witty line at the party.