Typed letter, dated and signed in blue ink by Fernandel, addressed to his close friend Carlo Rim, the Provençal writer, caricaturist and filmmaker who was also his biographer, concerning their joint film, L'Armoire volante.

One page on Fernandel's letterhead.

Some light soiling and folds from mailing.

A document that sheds light, through the exchange between an actor and his director, on the inner workings of French film production in the late 1940s.

On 7 April 1948, Fernandel was working on his role as Alfred Puc in L'Armoire volante, a black comedy written and directed by Carlo Rim, which was released in cinemas on 29 October of the same year. It was the third film in which Carlo Rim directed Fernandel. Although shooting had begun in March, the actor was still, in April, at the stage of reflection: in this letter, he proposes to the director "to shoot this film with a moustache, for a change from the characters of [his] recent productions". The letter also reveals how scant the material at his disposal was: in the absence of a screenplay, Carlo Rim had sent him a synopsis, supplemented by the shooting script, a document setting out the staging of the film shot by shot. Fernandel is, on the other hand, delighted to have Antonin Berval as his partner, with whom he had just made Si ça peut vous faire plaisir, and whom he describes as "a thoroughly decent fellow and, what is more, a talented artist". Finally, he returns to the difficulties encountered with his stand-in who, "for all his goodwill, was unable to pull it off", leaving him no choice but to reshoot his scenes himself. On this subject, the actor displays a delightful self-satisfaction: "It is true that if he could replace me, he would be an artist and that is not a gift given to everyone".

Between these remarks on the production, Fernandel slips in a more allusive paragraph on what, in his eyes, was at stake in the success of L'Armoire volante, at a time of crisis for French cinema:

"This film must succeed; first for our own sake, then for the others. They are waiting for you to slip up, and I want the film-world menagerie to acknowledge that it is possible, in friendship -and with talent-, to succeed in France, despite the growing number of detractors, in making a production worthy of this country; which remains, in spite of everything and against all comers, one of the foremost in the film industry."

Fernandel is here echoing a topical issue: the decline of French cinema in the face of the influx of American films. In May 1946, the Blum-Byrnes agreements, signed in Washington, had opened French screens wide to Hollywood productions, reserving only four weeks of screen time out of every thirteen for domestic films. Between 1946 and 1948, American films thus accounted for more than half of all films released in France, provoking a vigorous response from the profession.

Founded in December 1947 on the initiative of Claude Autant-Lara among others, with the backing of the Communist Party and the CGT trade union, the Comité de défense du cinéma français (Committee for the Defence of French Cinema) organised a demonstration on the grands boulevards of Paris on 4 January 1948. Thousands of film workers, technicians, filmmakers and filmgoers marched alongside stars such as Jean Marais and Simone Signoret. In referring to the "detractors" of French cinema, Fernandel may have had in mind certain members of the profession itself. Many distributors and exhibitors had indeed taken advantage of the new import regime to programme American films on a massive scale, as these were available in large numbers and often on more favourable terms than French films, a practice regularly denounced by the Defence Committee. The profession's mobilisation met with partial success: in September 1948, the agreements were revised, a fifth week per quarter being reserved for French films and the number of dubbed American films capped at one hundred and twenty-one per year. At the same time, the law on temporary aid to the film industry introduced a levy on every ticket sold, whatever the film's origin: this was the forerunner of the French film support system, the CNC.

A letter that reveals as much about the creative process of an actor fully aware of his talent as about the crisis French cinema had been going through for the previous two years.