French Without Tears

THE BEST CARTOONS FROM FRANCE (120 pp.) -- Collected by Edna Bennett --Simon & Schuster ($2.95).

THE TATTOOED SAILOR (115 pp.)--Andre Franc,ois--Knopf ($2.95).

French humor prides itself on its elegantly turned irony (Anatole France) and the clean bite of its wit (Voltaire, Moliere), but it also has a more modern and less celebrated side: what Parisian slang calls loufoque--zany. The practitioners of this form of Gallic humor consist of a small army of chansonniers, moviemakers, Left Bank beachcombers and cartoonists. The cartoonists have now formed an avant-garde to invade the U.S. cartoon market. Some are funny enough to get through, but most will succeed only if they catch Americans with their advance guards down, their sleeves rolled up and their funny bones exposed.

The Best Cartoons from France is a collection of pictorial comment by two score cartoonists on art, women, children and other forms of human folly. It is more zany than sane, but often makes sound Gallic sense anyway. When a young girl proves too bashful to take off her clothes for the artist painting a nude of her, the painter displays exquisite French delicacy by discreetly peeking into her dress. When a young man is happily reading a book in bed, the source of his contentment is clear from the trophy on the wall: crossed rifle and sword topped by the mounted head of his wife. The trouble with Best Cartoons is that most of them are second best. Too many contributors are serving up Coca-Cola instead of champagne, with pale imitations of such cartoonists as Charles Addams. Peter Arno, and Steinberg. A comparable enterprise might be exporting California Burgundies to France.

The Tattooed Sailor, on the other hand, is vintage humor. It is a hilarious one-man cartoon show by Rumanian-born Andre Franc,ois who sounds an unmistakably original note in the cacophony of cartoon comedy. Cartoonist Franc,ois humor is pointed, whimsical, completely loufoque and never unkind. His sailor hero has been tattooed into a state of ineffable euphoria, making him inseparable from his lovely Lilly and probably inadmissible to the U.S., but only on moral grounds.

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