Comment qu’elle est! (1960) - film review

FBI agent Lemmy Caution arrives from the USA, his mission to uncover a dangerous spy named Varley.  The French secret services, led by the anti-American General Rupert, are engaged on the same assignment and agree reluctantly to work with him.  Caution’s investigation leads him to a seductive woman art dealer, just as a fellow agent, Charlie Ribban, is murdered.  When he realises Varley’s identity, the redoubtable FBI agent lays a trap to capture him, with the help of the General’s niece…

Just as French cinema was going through its most significant upheaval for decades, FBI agent Lemmy Caution made a welcome return to cinema screens after an absence of nearly five years.  Forget the French New Wave; we are back in the safe, familiar world of sauve secret agents, svelte and seductive women, guns and fist fights.  In short, welcome back to the camp-macho world of the American B-movie, custom-made for a French audience.

Eddy Constantine clearly relishes the part he made his own, an indestructible, indefatiguable, relentlessly insouchiant action hero with a disarming smile and an almost surreal sense of irony.  In contrast to the earlier films in the Lemmy Caution series, Comment qu’elle est!  has no pretensions of being a serious thriller and spends most of its time laughing at itself, and indeed the policier genre in general.  The film manages to retain some of the old B-movie magic but also has enough comedy to make it entertaining without becoming overtly silly.

Lemmy Caution would not escape the attentions of the New Wave directors for long, however.   Five years later, a certain Monsieur Jean-Luc Godard would give him his most bizarre assignment ever... Now how improbable is that?

© James Travers 2004

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