Cinema: Get-a-Horse Laugh

La Belle Américaine (Continental) is the latest French offering for motor-minded moviegoers: a souped-up export model, skaty-eight sillynders and loaded with hi-octane hilarity, that despite occasional wheezes will undoubtedly transport hordes of moviegoers with merriment. At the wheel is Robert Dhéry, a 40-year-old writer-director whose Broadway revue of 1958, La Plume de Ma Tante, is still humming along on the road. If he rolls on at this rate, he will soon be giving the incomparable Jacques Tati (Mr. Hulot’s Holiday) a run for the funny money on the art film circuit.

The title is Dhéry’s first gag. La Belle Américaine is not a dame but an automobile: a custom-built 1958 Olds convertible complete with bar, refrigerator, automatic everything and six blast-your-eyes-out headlights. This insolent chariot is sold to Hero Dhéry, a boob in the tube works, for the preposterous price of $100. Reason: the owner in his will bequeathed the price of the car to his mistress, but authorized his wife to make the sale.

Looking like a Dauphine that has just swallowed a Cadillac, the hero tools home to the alley he lives in: hardly room to park. Then he takes half the quartier out for a spin; runs out of gas. Next day he drives to work. When the boss gets a load of that showboat parked next to his own heap, he fires the hero on the spot. Two days later, Dhéry gets a new job as a chauffeur: his boss is the mistress, who promptly locks the poor lunk in the trunk, drives by the wife’s house and hollers yoo-hoo. After 20 hours in the trunk, the hero escapes, recaptures the car, on the way home stops for gas. But it isn’t just a gas station; it’s a car-wash too—and Dhéry has the top down.

So it goes for 100 minutes of almost continuous get-a-horse laughs. They may not take it kindly in Detroit, but it sure is a merry Oldsmobile.