Faut pas prendre les enfants du bon Dieu pour des canards sauvages (1968) - film review

Rita is the beautiful mistress of a gangster named Fred, whom she met in St. Tropez.  She decides to help Fred in a daring gold bullion robbery of the French Lebanese bank.  After the robbery, Rita hides the gold in her apartment but instead of passing it onto Fred she gives it to Charles, another gang leader.  Rita is understandably surprised and angry when she discovers that Charles has no intention of sharing the gold with her.  So incensed is she that she turns to her Aunt Leontine, who is well-known and greatly respected by the mobsters.  When Charles is abandoned by his gang, who are afraid of Leontine, he decides to go it along alone and blow up the hotel where Leontine and Rita are staying.  This is his first big mistake...
© Willems Henri (Brussels, Belgium)

A film that opens with a luxuriatingly slow pan of Marlène Jobert, lying naked on a sun bed, is not one to be dismissed lightly.  Michel Audiard had established himself as one of France’s leading screenwriters by the time he made his directing debut with this totally unhinged comedy gangster film.  The film’s unrelenting daftness is reflected in its title, Faut pas prendre les enfants du bon Dieu pour des canards sauvages, which started a craze for ludicrously long film titles that lasted well into the mid-70s, making life Hell for poster designers.

Since Audiard’s biggest successes as a script writer were in the comedy thriller genre - Les Tontons flingueurs (1963), Les Barbouzes (1964) and Ne nous fâchons pas (1966) - it seems natural that he would begin his directing career with a film in the same genre.  The problem was that this once highly popular kind of film was becoming passé by the late 1960s, owing partly to the increasingly violent nature of organised crime in real life.  Gangsters were no longer considered sympathetic rogues but a scourge of society (something which the film acknowledges in its faux vox pop sequence).  Faut pas prendre les enfants... is an effective entry in a once much-loved genre, but it missed the boat by at least three years.  Today, the film is even more dated by its ugly chauvinism - its portrayal of homosexuals as mincing queens and women as mere sex objects.  

The superlative cast includes stars such as Françoise Rosay (in one of her last film appearances) and Bernard Blier, who absolutely relish their roles as rival gangsters.  In her first leading role, Marlène Jobert is stunning, although Audiard uses her shamelessly as a sex kitten when she really deserves much better.  This film also marks the screenwriting debut of Jean-Marie Poiré (son of the film’s producer Alain Poiré); he would go on to direct some of the best loved French film comedies, including Papy fait de la résistance (1983) and Les Visiteurs (1993).

Faut pas prendre les enfants... is certainly one of the craziest films that French cinema has given us.  The opening credit sequence packs in more laughs than is good for it and gives a taste of what is to come - an unbridled helter-skelter of zany lunacy.  Structurally, the film is a complete mess and its inability to take itself seriously for a second does become a little tiring by the midpoint.  Fortunately, Audiard’s penchant for unpredictable humour keeps this comedy juggernaut on the road, even if it clearly lacks something in the way of a driver.

© James Travers 2010

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