The two main actors in this film, Lino Ventura and Bourvil could indeed lead the prospective viewer to actually believe he/she was in for something exciting. Erreur !! I'm sorry to say, at over 2 hours this really was one of the most laborious and soporific adventure films I have seen. Even the beauty of of the Vosges mountains and the lovely face of Marie Dubois can't save the day. The main problem is the plot, which is hopelessly limited. Bourvil returns to the Vosges mountains, in Eastern France to take over the sawmill run by his late father. One of the locals want's to buy out the said sawmill but Bourvil holds out on his own ( he's not a Norman for nothing !!! ). But he needs workers. Enter Lino Ventura and a friend, recently out of prison and looking for work. They get taken on by Bourvil and get other prisoners on parole to work there. This is not just kindess on the part of Ventura, he hopes to get one of his deadly enemies from prison to work there so that he can exact revenge and kill him.
The blessed chap in question never actually turns up, we don't know why and Ventura never accomplishes his project. Bourvil ends up setting fire to the saw mill and throwing in the towel. This totally uninteresting little plot wastes 2 hours of your time and you really wonder where the scriptwriter was intending to go with all that. It's really a shame such great actors/actresses wasting their time on a corny plot like this.
Picture quality is passable for mid sixties but I found the colors to be rather washed out and over whitish. Rather a shame when you know that the area in question ( I've been there myself and can vouch for its scenic beauty ) is so beautiful.
After about 30 minutes of watching this film you begin to realize that the whole this is starting to s...a....g !! At the end, it just fizzles out and you wonder why you wasted two hours of your time on it. This is one I CERTAINLY won't have the courage to watch a second time !!
