Under this title, reportedly a huge success in the US ; a fraud in the French national lottery is a pretext for a film made up of sketches, a genre very popular in France where the unsurpassed Julien Duvivier lent credibility to.
Prologue :Jacques Baumer ,Bernard Lajarrige, Louis De Funès .
A journalist is on trial for falsifying a ticket number to win the jackpot ;the victims of his swindle come to the bar to testify ; Louis de Funès,as the lawyer ,has not a single line to say (you read well)!
Segment One : Yves Deniaud ,Max Ferol.
A bum spends his time in the café and gets drunk every day ;he livs on a barge with his pal but is tired of life and wants to throw himself into the Seine ; but the winning ticket can make a difference :"now,we can own our cafe". Alas, the newspaper ruins their plans.
Segment 2 :Gaby Morlay , Jean Brochard .
Sociologically ,the most interesting sketch : it speaks volumes about the woman's position,at a time they had just acquired the right to vote (1946) ,much to the macho husband's displeasure (they are clueless as far as politics are concerned ) who thinks they should be relegated to cooking, house-cleaning ,mending and sewing.... Few of them used to work and the husband was allmighty .
Segment 3 :Ginette Leclerc, Pierre Brasseur : the weakest link; this story of gangster on the lam and his treacherous moll has been seen by the average viewer a hundred times or more ; only originality :Leclerc arrives in the courthouse handcuffed to a gendarme though she's only a witness for the prosecution.
Segment 4 :Pierre Larquey ,Gabriello
Fortunately,they saved the best till last; heavily made up ,Larquey plays a centenarian (106 and a half to be precise) ,the treasure of Villeneuve town for the mayor who thinks that their mineral water is the secret to longevity and wants to use the very old man to attract the tourists ; unfortunately ,when a stateman comes to town to decorate the centenarian , this old man has disappeared and attends a marriage where he shows he's still young and crazy after all those years; so the mayor has to play on time , delivering an interminable speech which makes his audience yawn their head off.
Three good sketches out of four,you effortlessly made it on the percentages!
