Une ravissante idiote (1964) - film review

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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