French Touch 1952 written by Serge Véber and Jean Boyer, directed by Jean Boyer. A French comedy film called Coffeur Pour Dames over there.
Fernanal had a career that started in 1931, his last picture was in 1970, he passed away the following year. He was fairly popular but I've think the only picture of his that I've seen is the 1956 Around The World In 80 Days where he played a French footman. I don't remember anything about that role and it's most likely that I will have forgotten to keep an eye out for him by the time I see the movie again.
In French Touch, a man, played by Fernandel, works his way from being a sheep shearer on a farm to being the most important hairdresser in France. It takes him a while to do it and there are several stages, at one point he's a dog groomer, later he's styling doll's hair. His power over women goes to his head and his life takes a beating.
I enjoyed it for the most part, it's got some jokes of the rather broad and old and tied varieties. It's rather misogynistic but considering the era it's not unexpected. I took a chance picking up the DVD on Hamilton Books, it's a no company name DVDr, that's the cover above. Lucky for me it's watchable, it was 6 bucks, rather steep now that I've seen it. It's since disappeared from Hamilton's list in the last month and it doesn't seem to be on Amazon that I could find. You can watch a fairly decent subtitled copy on the Internet Archive.
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