Une ravissante idiote (1964)

Une ravissante idiote is a French comedy thriller film first released in 1964, directed by Edouard Molinaro.  The film is based on a novel by Charles Exbrayat and stars Brigitte Bardot, Anthony Perkins, Grégoire Aslan, Jean-Marc Tennberg and Hans Verner.  It has also been released under the title: Adorable Idiot.  Our overall rating for this film is: mediocre.


When Harry Compton loses his job with a bank in London, he decides to follow the career of his father and become a Russian spy.  He is engaged to steal some top secret documents from the safe of Sir Reginald Dunfrey.  What he doesn’t know is that the documents are fake, a ruse by the British Secret Services to unmask the head of a spy ring.   In his mission, Harry is assisted by Penelope Lightfeather, a ravishing blonde who seems to have the brain of a kitten…

Edouard Molinaro began his career as a film director with a number of conventional crime-thrillers before gravitating towards the kind of film for which is now better known – mainstream comedy.  Une ravissante idiote is one of his earliest comic films, an ebullient parody spy thriller, a genre that was popular in France at the time thanks to director Georges Lautner ( Les Tontons flinguers).  The film brings together two icons of the 1960s, Brigitte Bardot and Anthony Perkins – both of whom appear to be wasted in this lowbrow farce.   Whilst there is some great comedy in the film, there is a sense that Molinaro is trying just a bit too hard for the laughs and the film becomes very silly at times.  Whilst Perkins struggles to show he can do comedy, Bardot seems happy to cultivate her dumb blonde image – it’s all light-hearted fun but it still feels like the thespian equivalent of prostitution.

© James Travers 2006

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