Sylvie et le fantôme

TCM ran a day of Jacques Tati films some time back, and I think that may be where I recorded a movie where he's well down the credits but has an important role. That film is Sylvie and the Ghost.

At a chateau in one of the rural parts of France, Sylvie (Odette Joyeux) is about to turn 16. It's a place with history, as hanging on one of the walls is a portrait of one of Sylvie's ancestors from a couple of generations back, Alain. Well, OK, Alain himself wasn't an ancestor so much as he was in love with Sylvie's grandmother. For this, Grandpa felt his honor besmirched and challened Alain to a duel which was fatal to Alain. Sylvie finds all this romantic, and insists that Alain has to be a ghost haunting the chateau, although nobody has ever seen said ghost.

Meanwhile, the family is falling on hard times. (Although the movie was released in early 1946, there are no references to World War II, so I'd guess the movie is supposed to be set sometime in the 1930s.) In need of money, Dad decides he's going to sell that portrait of Alain to make money. Sylvie is going to be heartbroken, and Frederick, the son of the art dealer who is coming over to help remove the portrait, understands this, and falls in love with Sylvie along the way trying to make her feel better about it. Once the portrait is removed, we learn that there really is a ghost (played by Tati through a reflection trick) who will now be roaming about the chateau since he doesn't have that portrait to stay in any longer.

With a 16th birthday party coming up, Dad gets an idea. Maybe he can put Sylvie's mind at ease by hiring an actor to play a ghost, getting from the employment agency an older man who has a reputation for playing the ghost of the dead king from Hamlet. Howevever, before that man can show up, Frederick returns, hoping to woo Sylvie. And then a thief shows up in the chateau because he's on the run from the police and figured ducking into a building would be a good idea. The servants don't know who is expected to play the part of the ghost, so figure both of these men are the man for the job, with the actual man eventually showing up as well. All three eventually put on the ghostly robes but have different personalities to confuse the rest of the people. The fact that the thief falls in love with Sylvie also complicates matters. And then there's the real ghost who, seeing that these actors have robes on, figures he can take the robes from them and go around the house. But the laws of cartoon physics don't always allow this.

I've said quite often that I don't always care for the foreign films that have big reputations among the movie critic set largely because such films have a tendency to be pretentious. But give me a movie with an interesting or fun premise and I'll give it a chance regardless of whether it's Hollywood or foreign. Sylvie and the Ghost falls into that latter group. It definitely has a different feel from a Hollywood movie, but for the most part it's a delightful little romp. Then again, it's also from the days before the Cahiers du Cinema brought about the French New Wave, which may have something to do with why there's a lot less of the arthouse feel here.

In any case, Sylvie and the Ghost is a fun little movie that definitely deserves to be seen and better known.