Allô, Mademoiselle! (1932) - Screechy French comedy fluff

You should only watch this if you are a massive nerd for early 1930s French cinema or just really like people yelling into old-timey phones. Normal humans will probably turn it off after ten minutes because the sound quality is like a tin can on a string. 📞

It is basically a very loud farce about mistaken identities. Dolly Davis plays the lead, and she is cute but man does she talk fast.

The plot is basically non-existent. It is all about people getting wrong numbers, running up stairs, and slamming wooden doors.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Allô, Mademoiselle! (1932) through its definitive frames.

Félix Oudart is in this too. He has this incredibly round face and spends the whole movie looking like he is about to pop a vein from shouting.

Sometimes the camera just stands there. Like, the director forgot they could move it, probably because they were terrified of the giant microphones hidden in the flower pots.

It feels so different from stylish silent films like The Rat. Here, sound is the new toy, and they just won't shut up.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Allô, Mademoiselle! (1932) through its definitive frames.

There is one scene where Jeanne Fusier-Gir does this weird squeaky laugh. It went on for so long it made my dog bark at the TV.

Also, the subtitles on my copy were pretty bad. Half the time they just gave up translating the fast French slang.

Odd things I noticed:

• The giant, clunky telephones that look like medieval weapons.
• That one extra who just stands in the background of the office scene looking directly at the camera.
• The music is way too loud and randomly drowns out the dialogue.

Is it a masterpiece? Absolutely not.

But it has this weird, frantic energy that you don't really see anymore. I fell asleep for about five minutes in the middle and didn't miss a single plot point, which is honestly fine by me.