Les Duraton

"La Famille Duraton " was a comic radio broadcast ,which began in 1937 ,when TV sitcoms did not exist,for a good reason;it continued through the following decades,and finally called it a day in 1966!It spawned two French movies ("La Famille Duraton" 1939 and this movie) and yes! one American one,"True to life" ,directed by George Marshall in 1943 starring Franchot Tone.

The broadcast has been running for ten years before a small town is at last able to pick up the programme :sadly, for the senior high school principal,he called himself Duraton,and ,overnight ,he becomes,he and his family the laughingstock of the town:his students laugh at their headmaster,his son loses his fiancée (not a serious loss,for the parents ,the count and countess Kerfelus are snobs) and his wife (the irresistible Jeanne Sourza) is ridiculed in every shop she visits. On the verge of a nervous breakdown ,after a chief education officer's visit,the unfortunate teacher decides to sue Radiomonde which broadcasts the sitcom.

During the trial,they meet one of the actors of the programme (the excellent Jean Carmet) who makes friend with the real Duraton boy;thus the line between truth and fiction is rather tenuous .

This is by no means a masterpiece,by a long shot,but the lines are sometimes funny if pretty low- brow :there is a welcome madness which continues in the court scenes,when the two lawyers do not do what their clients are expecting from them.The solemn ending ,however,full of finer feelings ,is a bit stodgy ,but the hero enlivens things a little with his interminable speech.

And its moral has a contemporary feel:even today ,real people are compared to less-than-attractive fiction heroes ,mainly when they bear their names.

NB :some of the actors were featured in the radio programme and in the movie.