As a student of irony it pleases me immensely to know that even as Jacques Prevert was inventing the concept of poetic realism with director Marcel Carne - Quai des Brumes was written back to back with Ernest le Rebelle - he was also writing Ernest le Rebelle which is about as far from realism, poetic or otherwise, as you can get. Fernandel was a great comic actor who made 150 films all told none of which had more than a nodding acquaintance with reality; this time around he is an accordionist (note: in England we distinguish between a concertina which does not have keys and an accordion which does, ergo in Englnd he would be playing a concertina) on a cruise ship and already in Dutch with at least one irate husband. In port he spends the night in a hotel and is 'rolled' for his trouble, waking to find both his passport and the liner long gone. You don't really need to know how he winds up in a banana republic with a group of what today we would call 'freedom fighters', all you do need to know is the formula: Jacques Prevert + Christian Jacques + Fernandel = Escapism.
Review of Ernest le rebelle
