L'Auvergnat et l'autobus (1969)
Directed by Guy Lefranc

Film Review

L'Auvergnat et l'Autobus is by far the daftest of the four films that the comic actor Fernand Reynaud and director Guy Lefranc made together, but it is also the funniest.  It was also, sadly, the last film that Reynaud appeared in, although he continued to attract large audiences with his one-man shows right up until his untimely death in 1973.  For his cinematic swansong, Reynaud resorts to an extreme caricature of his customary gump-like persona, the kind who thinks he can get rich quick by buying a bus from (of all people) a bus conductor and win a girl's heart by writing her name on said bus.

The plot is as idiotic as it sounds but Reynaud's unflagging flair for comedy, together with some pleasing turns from Julien Guiomar, Michel Galabru and Pierre Tornade, helps to distract us from the film's abject silliness and makes it an engaging little romp.  The French city of Strasbourg, filmed at the time of year (mid-winter) when it is at its most enchanting,  makes an attractive, almost fairytale-like setting - indeed it's hard to think of another French film in which Strasbourg features so prominently (even the famous cathedral gets a joke).  Most of the scripted gags that are not bus-related seem to have an egg theme - "Ils ont cassé mon Neuf!" - although it's the visual gags which get the biggest laughs, and buses are a goldmine for this kind of humour.  As great a personality as Fernand Reynaud undoubtedly was, even he cannot avoid being upstaged by a big red bus.

Film Synopsis

Julien Brûlebois, a modest farmer from the Auvergne region of France, is delighted with the news that he has inherited a small fortune after a relative of his has died.  Without delay, he travels to Strasbourg to collect his inheritance and is soon confronted with the problem of what to do with his lucky windfall.  Seeing how crowded buses are in the Alsatian capital, he decides to buy a bus, thinking he will soon get back his investment in ticket revenues.  A bus conductor is happy to take the three million francs that Julien offers him in exchange for his bus, but Julien is surprised when the conductor does not show up for work the next day.  Not suspecting for a moment that he has been conned out of his fortune, Julien takes possession of his bus, confident he will soon be a wealthy man.