Johnny Frenchman ** (1945, Françoise Rosay, Tom Walls, Patricia Roc, Paul Dupuis, Ralph Michael, Frederick Piper, Arthur Hambling, Richard George, Bill Blewitt) – Classic Movie Review 4694

Director Charles Frend’s well-meaning 1945 wartime drama is an unusually weak Ealing Studios production – one of their rare disappointments – about fishing rivalry between Cornish and Breton fishermen in the English or French Channel, depending on which side you are on. The rivalry is greatly intensified by the announced marriage of a Breton boy to a Cornish girl.

T E B Clarke’s good-hearted screenplay makes plenty of stock comments about the French as he pursues the course of a fairly tiresome romance, production designer Duncan Sutherland sends in the painted backcloths and Frend supplies the low-voltage, under-powered direction.

Françoise Rosay, though, does make a strong impression as the powerful Frenchwoman, Lanec Florrie. It also stars a canny cast headed by Tom Walls, Patricia Roc, Paul Dupuis, Ralph Michael, Frederick Piper, Arthur Hambling, Richard George, and Bill Blewitt.

The film’s uneasy World War Two propaganda element starts when English and French sink their traditional animosity to fight the war together.

Also in the cast are James Harcourt, Richard Harrison, Stanley Pasken, James Knight, Leslie Harcourt, John Stone, George Hirste, Carol O’Connor, Franklyn Bennett, Bernard Fishwick, Herbert Thomas, Alfie Bass, Denver Hall, Vincent Holman, Grace Arnold, Beatrice Varley, Judith Furse, Drusilla Wills, Paul Bonifas, Henri Bollinger, Jean-Marie Balcon, Louis Gournay, Charles Jezequel, Jean-Marie Nacry and Joseph Menou.

Although it was largely made in Ealing Studios, London, there was some location filming as Mevagissey, Cornwall, England.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4694

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