This is not a comedy. It has funny parts, yet that is not enough to have a comedy. What makes things worse is de Funes' fame. Himself a great actor, yet the audience is used to see him as a funny man. So used that people just don't understand what they are seeing with their own eyes. After all, they read de Funes on the poster so they paid to be amused, so in a way it's not their fault. It's the typecasting Hollywood actors try so much to avoid.
This is both a drama and a portrait of the post Second World War (post deGaulle to be more precise). I wouldn't go as far say it's the drama of the french society after the boom of the '60s. These are not regular characters, these are types. And the few funny scenes are only to make the pill easier to swallow. And not every scene is funny, even if the audience laughs - the scenes when de Funes' character escapes certain death are not funny, are terribly real.
You have almost everything here: the influence of cheap entertainment (the TV movie preview), the influence of news media (both the fact that the ones to be saved are finding out from TV what is going on and the crowd drawn up by the publicity), the unfaithful young wife looking for temporary relief, the socialist young man looking for adventure, the big corporation doing something else than declared, the big corporation ready to do anything to reach its estimated profits, the church, the honorable wife, the 20th century entertainment, etc. Even the fact that although everybody is working hard to justify their job, nobody is helping in any way and the rush for cheap thrills experienced through a third party as people want to know how does it feel, yet nobody is ready to trying for themselves, not even the guy sent to the rescue.
This is a must see, but leave the comedy expectations as theater door.
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