Jean Boyer's Coiffeur pour dames (1952)

Mario (Ferdandel) is a highly sought after women's hairdresser in a small shop in Provence who works with Gaëtan (Manuel Gary). But Gaëtan is shunned by most of the women because Mario has the magic touch with women's hair, turning his job into an art form. And although he's married to Aline (Blanchette Brunoy), all the women find him sexually attractive, and on one occasion he's forced out of bed with Edmonde (Arlette Poirier) onto the cold balcony in pyjamas hiding from Edmonde's married lover M. Brochant (Georges Lannes), who's unexpectedly turned up at her apartment.

But Mario dreams of moving to Paris where he can exercise his skills in an expensive environment, and fortunately his cleverness with a pair of scissors is matched to his psychological cunning: he's able to manipulate women's minds as well as their hair, his craftwork soon brings M. Brochant and Geneviève (Renée Devillers) back together, and as she's stinking rich he soon has a thriving salon on the Champs-Élysées.

However, he's the victim of his own success, and his women are falling over themselves for his favours. And such is his overweening egotism that he thinks he can divorce from Aline and marry the Brochants' twenty-year-old daughter Denise (Françoise Soulié). But he soon realises he's being stupid, risking his health and decides to go on a second honeymoon: with Aline in Provence!

A light comedy as irresistable as women find Mario, although I can't help thinking that this is aimed at Ferdandel's own egotism, or is there some self-parody that he's playing to?

Jean Boyer's Garou-Garou, le passe-muraille | Le Passe-muraille | Mr Peek-a-boo (1951)

Wow, does that American title make you cringe! The film itself though – unless it's the appalling dubbed version which turns it into a French-American (mis)adventure, is very different, being the first time Bourvil (as minor clerk Léon Dutilleul) truly earns his acting stripes. This is based on the short story 'Le Passe-muraille', and of course the sculpture of author Marcel Aymé is in tribute trapped beween two walls is in Montmartre. Léon first tells his friend the artist Gen-Paul (Raymond Souplex playing the real man (1875-1975)), who of course doesn't believe him when he says that he has the power to walk through walls.

At first Léon simply plays games on his tyrannical boss, and is slow to discover the true power he holds. She discovers that the English 'Lady' Susan Brockson (Joan Greenwood) is in fact not an aristocrat but a cat-burglar working in accomplice with Maurice (the future film director Gérard Oury), and returns a highly valuable pearl necklace that Susan has stolen back to its owner.

But Léon is hardly handsome and poor, so how can he win Susan, with whom he's now become obsessed? Obviously by carrying out impossible bank raids and robberies, by means of which he earns her great admiration, and although he's now in prison he can of course escape just by walking through the walls. But, on trying to escape with Susan, he pushes her through a wall but then loses his powers: the special effects here are brilliant for their time, but it would have perhaps been difficult to freeze him into a wall as in Aymé's story.

Jean Boyer's Le Chômeur de Clochemerle | Easiest Profession (1957)

No comment on the ridiculous English translation of the title of this film set in the fictitious Clochemerle. Fernandel (here Tistin) almost always plays the part of the good, constantly smiling toothy, gummy guy, as in this film, where he's at first a tramplike poacher avoiding the gamekeeper Beausoleil (Marcel Perès), who nevertheless enjoys an illegal rabbit stew with Tistin. And then Tistin has a brilliant idea: in a place of full employment, he applies to be a paid member of the unemployed, and succeeds.

He achieves this by the mayor M. Piechut (Henri Vilbert) rigging the vote because he believes that this places Clochemerle at the forefront of social justice, for which Tistin is paid 10,000 francs a month, or the equivalent of over 20,000 euros in today's figures: not a bad haul for doing nothing. But unfortunately the villagers strongly object to Tistin being paid to do nothing, and soon almost everyone is against him.

Until, that is, he starts to do any odd jobs asked of him, and the villagers reward him for it, which he eventually puts in a bank account to the benefit of the village. Result? He's awarded a medal and marries his beloved Jeanette (Maria Mauban). It's all good fun, although I'd have preferred an ending similar to Renoir's Boudu sauvé des eaux.

This film is based on novels by Gabriel Chevallier, who based Clochemerle on Vaux-en-Beaujolais, which now rejoices in the representation with a house with murals of Chevallier's characters, a pissotière, a Clochmerle trail, etc.

Jean Boyer in Aix-en-Provence, Bouches-du-Rhône (13)

'Jean BOYER

Conservateur en Chef du patrimone,

historien d'Aix-en-Provence,

Maître d'œuvre du Félibrige, 1914–2004'

Among Jean Boyer's publications are L'Architecture religieuse de l'époque classique à Aix-en-Provence (1972) and Architecture et urbanisme à Aix-en-Provence aux XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles du cours à carrosses au cours Mirabeau (2004).