Cinema: Fizzled Farce

ONCE IN PARIS Directed and Written by Frank D. Gilroy

Uncloudable sunniness of mood is what is required to sit through this decorative but unsubstantial comedy without snarling. A viewer whose child, hitherto an incorrigible hubcap thief, had just won a full scholarship to Harvard might be in the proper frame of mind. Playwright Frank D. Gilroy (The Subject Was Roses) should have been able to manage something sturdier than this weak story, a trifle about a naive and virtuous American screenwriter—snickers begin here —who is called to Paris to rescue a bogged script. This pilgrim, played amiably and unseriously by Wayne Rogers, arrives with a red, white and blue jogging suit, but soon, heartland morality notwithstanding, is taking his exercise indoors with a beautiful English businesswoman (Gayle Hunnicutt).

The agent of his undoing is Jean-Paul, a roguish Parisian chauffeur (Jack Lenoir) who sees that the screenwriter is too cubical to make a move toward the very available Hunnicutt character and who does the necessary maneuvering himself. He is a scampish servant of classical comedy, who cleverly manages his master’s life without neglecting his own comfort. At the film’s end, when the screenwriter threatens to violate the rules of worldliness by falling in love, Jean-Paul saves him from the folly of earnestness by bedding the lady himself. The writer does not take this kindness well, but of course Jean-Paul knows best. Sure enough, after an obligatory and unconvincing fight (since this is not classical comedy, the master cannot simply beat the erring servant with a cane), Rogers’ inconvenient love dissipates, the two men make up, and all is well.

The film’s precarious appeal depends on the attractiveness of Rogers and Hunnicutt, who are pleasant to watch even when they are delivering empty speeches, the dependable duty of Paris and the presence of Jack Lenoir, who makes a great chauffeur and rogue.

Once in Paris might have been a tolerably good romantic farce with this cast, but Gilroy’s dialogue is not very funny, and character development depends entirely on the acting and camera work since the script does not offer any. We learn nothing of the Hunnicutt character, for instance, except that she is sophisticated and looks fine in percale. And although the errant husband played by Rogers telephones hearty lies back to America each evening, nothing is established about his betrayed wife. Is she dull, interesting, ugly, beautiful, loyal, faithless, a drudge, a scholar, a rock guitarist? To know these things would be to know much more about her husband, and a line or two would have provided a sketch of her.

But lines are what Gilroy has not provided, and the film’s failure to be better than mediocre is the clear result of his slovenliness. — John Skow