Word: jourdain
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Dates: during 1955-1955
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...from Molière something so relatively familiar and so lightly entertaining as Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. Far from the great Molière of Le Misanthrope, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme is indeed not only broad Molière, but also broad comedy. Its picture of the rich, gullible upstart M. Jourdain, who desires, with the most impassioned fatuousness, to live like-and among-persons of quality, is a sort of satiric-strip characterization. There is a delightful absurdity about him, whether in the family scenes, or with the lackeys he yells for "just to see if they heard...
Molière's joking is broad, but his character sense is broad-bottomed; somehow, though M. Jourdain's head swims with wild delusions, his clumsy feet stay on the ground. And the Comédie Franchise's Louis Seigner keeps him that way, makes him seem human while remaining idiotic, and so childish as to be likable. Actor Seigner's would-be gentleman becomes a solid center round which revolve a succession of sideshows...