Le Sicilien (1958)
Directed by Pierre Chevalier

Film Review

After starting his directorial career with two fairly undistinguished thrillers - Les Impures (1955) and Vous pigez? (1955) - Pierre Chevalier had greater success with film comedy by teaming up with Fernand Raynaud, one of France's most popular comedians in the 1950s and '60s.  Raynaud's short-lived film career had got off to a flying start with two films directed by Guy Lefranc - La Bande à papa (1955) and Fernand Cow-boy (1956).  After first working with the talented comedian on Fernand clochard (1957) Chevalier hooked up with him again for Le Sicilien, a potty parody of the gangster film that was enjoying a surge of popularity in France after the success of Jacques Becker's Touchez pas au grisbi (1954) and Jules Dassin's Du Rififi chez les hommes (1955).

Le Sicilien is one of Fernand Raynaud's most successful screen outings (many of his other films are badly written and fail to do justice to the comedian's talents).  Even though the plot is obviously recycled and many of the gags a little too predictable, Raynaud makes the film an enjoyable romp, bringing to it the eccentricity, goofy charm and unflagging flair for comedy that made him such a well-loved stage performer.  There are no showy stars to distract from the lead actor (except for the glamorous Pascale Roberts, a perfect femme fatale for the idiot couturier who is mistaken for a paid killer), so Raynaud is the film's focus throughout, and for the most part it feels like a one-man show, of the kind that made him such a big star in France.

Low on original plot ideas but brimming with gags, which are brilliantly executed by Raynaud, the script is owed to Jean Girault, who later became one of France's most commercially successful film directors through his many associations with a subsequent comedy icon, Louis de Funès, including Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez (1964).  Some of the madness that takes over several de Funès comedies is to be found in Le Sicilien, which has echoes of another de Funès vehicle, Le Corniad (1965).  The gangster parody became a hugely popular genre in French cinema of the 1960s, thanks mainly to the success of Georges Lautner's Les Tontons flingueurs (1963).  It is curious that whilst Le Sicilien predates this much lauded comedy classic by five years and serves up a similar humour-laden pastiche, it is all but forgotten.

Fernand Raynaud's star faded too quickly after his untimely death in 1973.  Whilst his films rarely showed him at his best, they continue to be good family entertainment and help to preserve the memory of one of France's best-loved comedy performers.  The sequence in the restaurant, in which Raynaud is forced to down two four-course meals whilst zipping back and forth between two tables (to the ever-growing consternation of Paul Préboist) would have been tedious if played by a less capable comic, but Raynaud turns it into a comedy tour de force.  Unfairly overlooked for too long, Le Sicilien definitely deserves a fresh reappraisal.

Film Synopsis

In Paris, a criminal gang led by Monsieur Bruno is awaiting the arrival of an Italian hitman who is known only as the Sicilian.  Unfortunately, the professional killer is arrested as soon as he gets off the train at the Gare de Lyon and his distinctive white hat is unwittingly picked up by a fellow passenger.  The latter is Fernand, a fashion designer from Lyon who has come to Paris to present his new collection.  He had arranged to be picked up at the station by his friend Henri, the brother of his fiancée Josée, but instead he is met by a strange young woman, Olga.  Mistaking him for the Sicilian, Olga forces him into her car and takes him to meet her criminal associates at their den, a seedy Parisian bar named Le Rouge Gorge.

Convinced that this is to be the venue for his fashion show, Fernand immediately enlists the hoodlums' help in redecorating it.  Still convinced that Fernand is Italy's most deadly paid assassin, the crooks do as they are instructed, believing that the renovated bar is to be the perfect cover for what will become Paris's biggest drugs distribution centre.  The mutual misunderstanding continues for several days, and it is only after meeting with Bruno's rival gangster Beau-Parleur that Fernand begins to suspect something is amiss.  This is the point at which the real Sicilian shows up, and his temper is not helped when he learns that someone has been impersonating him.  It is only by pretending to be an even nastier piece of work that Fernand will escape with his pride and his internal organs intact...