L’Oeil du monocle (1962) - film review

Dromard, an agent of the French secret service, is charged with recovering a priceless treasure which is hidden in the sea somewhere off the coast of Corsica.  The only man who can help him is a former German soldier, the sole survivor of the commando unit which hid the treasure during World war II.  However, this lead is soon disposed of by rival English and Russian agents, who are after the same thing as Dromard...

After the success of Le Monocle noir (1961), Paul Meurisse was bound to return as special agent Théobald Dromard for another humorous action-packed espionage adventure, courtesy of Georges Lautner.  L’Oeil du monocle (1962) follows the parodic formula of the preceding film, except that on this occasion Dromard, easily cinema’s most elegant secret agent, is pitted against enemy agents from at least three countries in an attempt to recover a lost Nazi treasure.  The film was ahead of its time in recognising all the clichés because today it feels like a spoof of the James Bond and OSS 117 spy films that were subsequently made in the 1960s.  It is also an obvious forerunner of Lautner’s more celebrated thriller parodies, Les Tontons flingueurs (1963) and Les Barbouzes (1964).  

Whilst the pace flags in a few places and it is sometimes hard to keep with all the twists and turns, L’Oeil du monocle is a highly entertaining romp in which Paul Meurisse gives what is almost certainly his funniest performance (I defy anyone to watch the scene in which he takes to the dance floor and starts swinging his hips without laughing).  As he did with all of his comedy thrillers, Lautner directs the film as though it were a straight thriller, and does so with considerable flair (some of the scenes could easily have come out of an American 1950s film noir).  The underwater fight sequence at the end of the film is particularly well realised and manages to be far more exciting than the one that features in the later James Bond film Thunderball (1965).   L’Oeil du monocle was such a hit that Meurisse was persuaded to reprise his character for one final entry in the series, Le Monocle rit jaune (1964).

© James Travers 2011

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