Marcel Pagnol's comic play, adapted for the screen by Ben Hecht, provided John Barrymore with a role quite unlike anything he had attempted before: a naive, impeccably honest French schoolteacher, Auguste Topaze, who is thrust into the world of sex, wealth and crooked business when he unwittingly becomes a pawn in a wealthy baron's game. Myrna Loy is delightful as Coco, the baron's mistress and the first target of Topaze after his metamorphosis from honest mouse into cynical man.