Léontine

Léontine goes on a dish-breaking rampage to protest her parents’ boring rules, so they kick her to the curb. She proceeds to terrorize the neighbors, tripping two men hauling large cartons by ensnaring them with pieces of string. She drops a pumpkin on a shopkeeper’s head, ties someone’s furniture to a moving vehicle, and then explodes fireworks inside a plumber’s protruding drainpipe. He puts out the flames in a tailspin by jumping into the river.

Accomplished musician Blanche Ladoré (played by “Léontine”) places a personal ad in the paper wishing to marry an “equally talented musician.” Rémi Lacroche responds to her call. They meet in public, she with her trombone and he with his bass drum. It’s love at first sight but public noise disturbance to all within earshot. They wreak such havoc they end up in the police station!

In a playful, reflexive take on the familiar “last-minute rescue” formula, a woman and her housekeeper left alone at home miss-read shadows projected from the street outside and fear a violent assault. Male police officers dispatched to rescue them correctly diagnose the situation, with hilarious results, including a late gender reveal. Notable for its early use of triptych.

Rosalie and Léontine go to the theater and are swept away by big emotions.

A jolly housekeeper brings new meaning to the notion of “home entertainment” with a handsome new portable phonograph that causes people, furniture, and buildings to rock and roll through the magic of stop-motion animation. (MoMA)