La bonne aventure: A dusty little French romp

If you have any patience for films that feel like they were made in someone’s living room on a Tuesday afternoon, you might get a kick out of La bonne aventure. It is not for the person who needs a tight script or high-stakes drama. If you want something that feels like a historical artifact that nobody bothered to polish, you're in the right place.

Henri Diamant-Berger clearly wasn't aiming for the history books here. The whole thing has this loose, shaggy quality that makes me think the actors were just having a grand time, regardless of whether the camera was actually catching the good side of the scene. Sometimes, that's enough.

Louis-Jacques Boucot is bouncing around the frame like he’s trying to catch a fly. It’s funny in that specific, twitchy way that early comedy actors had down to a science. You watch him and you realize how much physical effort went into making a simple joke land back then. No CGI, just a man, a hat, and a very precise amount of panic.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of La bonne aventure (1932) through its definitive frames.

The small stuff

• The background extras in the café scene look like they were told to 'just act French' and nothing else.
• There is a door that squeaks in every single shot it appears in. I wonder if they ever fixed it.
• The editing feels like it was done with a pair of rusty kitchen scissors.

It’s funny how a movie this old can feel so much more 'human' than something like The Winged Horseman. That one had all the polish, but this one has a weird, rattling heartbeat. It’s messy, sure. It’s also very short, which is a mercy.

There’s a moment near the middle where the dialogue just... stops. Everyone just stands there looking at each other, and you can tell the sound recording equipment probably acted up or someone forgot their next line. I kind of loved that. It reminds you that this was just a job for these people, not a sacred mission to define cinema for the next hundred years. 🤷‍♂️

Don’t go in expecting a masterpiece. Go in expecting to watch some folks from the 1920s try to make each other laugh. It works more often than you'd think, even if the plot makes about as much sense as a dream you had on a train.

Also, the lighting in the third act is genuinely baffling. It’s like they turned the lamps off and just hoped the moon would help out. It didn't. 🌙