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Overview
Don Camillo en Russie is an Italian-French film comedy first released in 1965,
directed by Luigi Comencini.
The film stars Fernandel, Gino Cervi, Leda Gloria, Gianni Garko and Saro Urzì.
It has also been released under the title: Il Compagno Don Camillo.
Our overall rating for this film is: very poor.
Synopsis
Don Camillo is outraged when his long-standing rival Peppone announces that their small
Italian town is to be twinned with a town in Communist Russia. When various attempts
to overturn this decision fail, Don Camillo manages to persuade his superiors to allow
him to accompany Peppone on his ceremonial visit to the Russian town. There, the
Catholic priest is surprised that the country is not so religiously atheistic as he had
imagined…
Film Review
Fernandel appears for the last time in this fifth episode in the long-running Don Camillo
saga. Ill-health prevented the actor from reprising the role for yet another film,
which is probably just as well as the series had well and truly run out of steam by this
time. Only the pleasing on-screen rapport between Fernandel and his co-star Gino
Cervi prevents this entry in the series from being unbearably tiresome and stale, although
it is doubtful whether anyone other than die-hard fans of Fernandel will actually enjoy
the film. Its portrayal of Soviet Russia is about as cliché-riddled as it
could be and offers few opportunities for any real comedy. The script is one of
the weakest in the Don Camillo series, with the plot making very little sense. However,
the screenwriters do somehow manage to come up with a decent ending for the film, one
which suggests there may have been much more to the Don Camillo-Peppone relationship than
we really want to know about...
© James Travers 2005 Write a review for this film... User Comments
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Related links
More French ComedyRecent DVD releases |
Credits
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