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Tuesday, April 9, 2019

TOPAZE (1933)

Exceptional. Charming & gently funny, a Shavian social comedy from French dramatist (and filmmaker) Marcel Pagnol about a middle-aged innocent, a Holy Fool/Boys’ School professor who fails up after being fired for flunking a rich man’s son. But when the boy’s entrepreneurial father needs a scientific flunky to help market his Sparkling Water Tonic, Professor Topaze is just the patsy for the job, vain & naive behind pince-nez & pointy beard. Complications? Well, the rich man’s mistress grows fond of the academic sucker. (A lovely, Myrna Loy, starting her rise from exotics & bad girls to warm-blooded leads.) Then there’s the usual suspicious wife; the former fake scientist who’d been fronting the old brand of bubbly; and most of all, the professor himself and his new found sense of worth. He’s innocent, not dumb, and knowledge is power, non? In a role that’s proved irresistible to Louis Jouvet, Peter Sellers, Fernandel & Frank Morgan, John Barrymore (in his miracle years: 1932 - 1934) shows his deft touch with character comedy, somehow physically shrinking to fit, and keeping up with director Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast’s jaunty pace. And what a piece of dramatic compression in Ben Hecht’s script. One of the few sophisticated comedies of the period to stand comparison with Ernst Lubitsch, and with a wonderfully distinctive art moderne look working in contrast to the dull school world Topaze leaves behind.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Reginald Mason, one of B’way’s busiest actors, gets a rare chance to show his wares on film as father/ entrepreneur. And doesn’t miss a trick against Loy’s blasé mistress.

DOUBLE-BILL: The older, lesser Barrymore brought a similar touch to THE GREAT MAN VOTES/’39.

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