La giumenta verde

I'm scratching my head, trying to understand how a couple of reviewers have called Bourvil 'miscast' in this film. The part of Honore suits him to a T; he mostly played peasants, shopkeepers and a few small time criminals (La traversee de Paris, one of his very best films). One look at that long head, the slightly stunned expression, and you know he's no mental giant. The story is not the finest to come out of France; this is not a Renoir or Carne subject. Autant-Lara gets enough mileage out of satirizing the inbred life of the peasants (the bull mounting the cow gets a few laughs from the cast), but this is no classic. Bourvil, Francis Blanche as his brother Ferdinand, and Valerie Lagrange as Honore's daughter Juliette are all effective.