Les Hussards (1955)
Directed by Alex Joffé

Film Review

By moving from a contemporary to a period setting, Bourvil was able, progressively, to break away from the naive goon-type role in which he started his film career and migrate towards more complex character portrayals.   After two lively swashbucklers - Les Trois Mousquetaires (1953) and Cadet Rousselle (1954) - Bourvil finds himself mixed up in the Napoleonic wars, in a film that, coincidentally, was released just a few months after Sacha Guitry's epic Napoléon (1955).   Filmed in black and white and set mostly in one location, Les Hussards looks positively modest compared with Guitry's colourful blockbuster but it makes a fairly successful stage-to-screen transposition of Pierre-Aristide Bréal's play of the same title, allowing Bourvil to put his comedic talents to good use whilst taking on a more dramatic role than usual.

Here Bourvil is effectively partnered with another icon of French cinema, Bernard Blier.  Whilst the double act doesn't have the magical quality that Bourvil's later pairing with Louis de Funès would have, in Le Corniaud (1965) and La Grande vadrouille (1966), there's some amusement to be had in watching two very different comic performers spar off one another, in a film in which the comedy is downplayed and surfaces sporadically.  À propos, de Funès also crops in the film, hilarious, as ever, as a cowardly priest.  The film's other star, Georges Wilson, also gives great entertainment value as a self-important officer who becomes ever more ludicrous as he attempts to impose his idea of authority.   Prominent in the Italian side of the cast is Virna Lisi, who is now probably best known for playing a thoroughly wicked Catherine de Medici in Patrice Chéreau's La Reine Margot (1994).  After this amiable historical romp (a far from unsubtle allusion to France's recent period of Occupation), Alex Joffé would work with Bourvil on five more films, including Fortunat (1969) and Le Tracassin (1961).

Film Synopsis

Under Bonaparte, the French army begins its campaign in Italy.  Two soldiers, Flicot and Le Gouce, are sent on a reconnaissance mission, but they manage to lose their horses when they encounter a pair of Italian lovers.  Whilst looking for their horses, the two soldiers arrives in the village of San Angelo, which is almost deserted because of the fighting.  Meanwhile, the captain who sent our two heroes on their mission is half-convinced they have deserted and sets out to look for them.  When the captain and his men arrive in San Angelo, Flicot and Le Gouce fabricate an implausible story in which they fought a brave battle against the hostile locals.  The two soldiers are fêted as heroes, until their deception is revealed...