Renoir's first sound film is best known for one sound in particular: the flushing of a toilet, something that rarely makes it into a sound track, even today. But On Purge Bébé is all about the fact that, underneath their three-piece suits and bodiced dresses, middle-class people have bodies, and those bodies must occasionally defecate. So that, in its own way, this parlor comedy shot on the cheap is a necessary link in the chain leading to Boudu Saved from Drowning, with its belches and sexual innuendo, and to Rules of the Game and the discreet qualms of its bourgeoisie. It concerns a mother's attempts to administer a laxative to her tenaciously, if understandably, resistant seven-year-old who "hasn't been," and to draw her reluctant husband into the fray. Then there is the small matter of Papa's porcelain business and the sale of chamber pots to a buyer for the military. This gentleman arrives just in time to render his views on plumbing, irrigation and hygiene, and he is none other than Michel Simon, mugging with a monocle. Marguerite Pierry is a Lucille Ball prototype as the desultory wife who resists both propriety and the military, remaining in robe and curlers throughout. Our rare print is shown in French with a detailed written English synopsis that retains the humor of the dialogue.