Le Grand blond avec une chaussure noire (1972) - film review

The chief of the French secret service, Louis Toulouse, is more preoccupied with fending off his rival, Milan, than with the machinations of enemy agents.  Determined to rid himself of his rival, he devises an ingenious plan, which involves sending him after a man randomly chosen in a crowd of people.  The man, Milan is informed, is a dangerous spy, who must be apprehended at all costs.  In reality, he is François Perrin, a harmless, bumbling musician. Perrin’s ineptitude convinces Milan that he is indeed a clever and dangerous secret agent...

Indisputably a French comedy classic, Le Grand blond avec une chaussure noire exemplifies the thriller parody that was hugely popular in France in the 60s and 70s and which can still be relied upon to attract a massive audience when shown on French television.  By the early 1970s, when this film was released, the comédie policière was one of the most popular genres in French cinema, and Le Grand blond was seen by three and half million spectators on its first release.  Georges Lautner is the director who is most closely associated with this kind of film - he established the genre with such films as Les Tontons flingueurs (1963) and Ne nous fâchons pas (1966) - but other filmmakers were not slow to cash in on the success of the comedy thriller.  Le Grand blond specifically parodies the spy thrillers that had become enormously popular by the late 1960s, mainly through the success of the James Bond films, and most of its humour derives from its appropriation of the familiar clichés for comic effect.  The film was directed (with great panache) by Yves Robert, who had previously scored a major hit with La Guerre des boutons (1962) and would go on to direct the acclaimed diptych La Gloire de mon père / Le Château de ma mère in 1990.  Robert was also an accomplished actor and makes a cameo appearance in this film (as the conductor of an orchestra which appears determined to murder and ritually disembowel Mozart’s Symphony No. 40).

Screenwriter Francis Veber was near to the start of his career when he scripted this film, which saw the first appearance of his trademark everyman character François Perrin / Pignon.  Veber’s flair for situation and visual comedy is as evident in Le Grand blond as it is in his subsequent comedies, which include such classics as L’Emmerdeur (1973), La Chèvre (1981) and Le Dîner de cons (1998).  Veber’s success lies in his ability to find humour in the commonplace - he take a familiar situation and gives it a slight nudge towards the surreal, so that what could very nearly have been a straight drama or thriller is immediately transformed into a comedy joy ride of non-stop hilarity.  Le Grand blond perfectly illustrates Veber’s technique - most of the humour stems from that mainstay of French farce, a simple case of mistaken identity.  It helps that the main protagonist is played by a comedy genius, Pierre Richard, who fits so perfectly into Veber’s madcap universe that it seems hard to believe he was ever allowed to leave it.  Richard would return as François Perrin in the film’s immediate sequel , the equally enjoyable Le Retour du grand blond (1974), and then subsequently in Le Jouet (1976) and La Chèvre (1981).  

Starring opposite Pierre Richard is another icon of French cinema, the magnificent Bernard Blier.   Despite his long and varied filmography, Blier featured most prominently in this kind of film, almost invariably cast as the implacable villainous ’boss’, whose dastardly schemes would generally be foiled not by the courage and skill of his opponents but by the sheer bloody-minded incompetence of his underlings.  The excellent supporting cast includes some other very well-known actors of the period, including Jean Rochefort (impeccable as the Machiavellian security chief who is so smooth you feel he should be in a Cinzano ad), Mireille Darc (stunning in a cheeky reverse décolleté number that should have started a fashion revolution) and Jean Carmet (at his funniest as Richard’s comedy stooge).  The combination of Veber’s unfalteringly funny script and the faultless contributions from such a great cast make Le Grand blond avec une chaussure noire one of the enduring delights of French film comedy.  The 1985 American film The Man with One Red Shoe, which starred Tom hanks, was a remake of this film, but it was nothing like as successful as the original - partly because it dispensed with most of the best gags, but mainly because Tom Hanks is not Pierre Richard.

© James Travers 2011

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