User reviews

A very good classic french comedy with famous french actors, I mean, Fernandel and Louis de Funes. Fernandel is a star here, he plays 6 different people in this film, and different people of different age! It's easy to understand what a great comedy actor he is! Funes is also play great part here... (and here he still has his hair:). This film contain many very well-filmed moments and it is,of course,a good family movie( it contains a little nudity, but it's very gentle).And in conclusion I must say that it isn't funny from A to Z, it's just a clever film that is very good for old cinema lovers...So, have a good time.And also watch Public enemy n.1 (1953) with Fernandel. It's worth a look!!! P.S (Later Mister Pitkin uses jokes and tricks that Fernandel do in this one...)

French comic Fernandel occupies basically the same niche as Jerry Lewis and Norman Wisdom do in American and British cinema respectively: his immense popularity is as much a mystery to this viewer as his particular brand of fooling – prone to excessive mugging and with pathos never too far away – is resistible. To be fair to him, he tried his hand more regularly at serious fare, finding a congenial rapport with such luminaries as Marcel Pagnol, Julien Duvivier (who also started the star off on the series revolving around his signature role of Don Camillo – which even gets a delightful lampoon here, but more on this later) and the director of this film.

A favourite premise with star comedians is their showing off in multiple roles: in fact, Fernandel here plays a family patriarch and his five offsprings; frankly, I was surprised he did not include a female impersonation among the lot – but the characters are, in any case, sufficiently differentiated between them. Typically, some get more attention than others: however, this eventually pays off here when one of them himself becomes the father of sextuplets (to go along with the four he already had!).

The narrative follows a necessarily episodic structure, which invariably yields hits and misses throughout; still, the highlights are pretty memorable: the bucolic old man's noisy disapproval of a highbrow play being staged inside an amphitheatre; the ne'er-do-well family man's tenure with creepy funeral director Louis De Funes (who would grow to similar stardom by the next decade) – on the other hand, his brushes with a celebrated beautician sibling are less successful...but do feature a surprising amount of nudity!; a journalist, reduced to serving as "Agony Aunt" on a magazine, is mistaken for a young woman's wealthy but middle-aged intended when he goes to visit her stuffy family actually bearing the news of the man's sudden death; a 'salty dog' engages first in routine card-play with various shifty types and then, after he loses everything (including the ship's cargo), an intense game of chance involving a fly and two pieces of sugar in an effort to retrieve his losses and make a 'killing' besides (this, too, is a fairly risqué scene – showing a girl in the skimpiest of South Sea attires!); a curate has become reclusive because the locals do not take him seriously on account of him being a dead-ringer for the afore-mentioned Don Camillo!

The movie received an Oscar nomination for the heavily-credited story, following its 1955 U.S. release; incidentally, an unspecified prize did go its way at the Locarno International Film Festival. To be honest, having watched this, I am willing to cut Fernandel some slack by approaching his filmography with more of an open mind (I do own a fair amount to tide me over) – if anything, I ought to give his "Don Camillo" outings a glance at long last...having missed out on them countless times on Italian TV ever since my childhood days!

Fernandel is brilliant in multiple roles that stretch his abilities as a wonderful comedic actor with the "horse faced" grin. The story concept is clever with a delightful "surprise" conclusion, yet it is the episodic statements that give full bloom to this wonderful film; especially the sequence aboard the tramp steamer when a gambling game involves the reaction of its players to a housefly.

This is the movie where the famous French comic Fernandel plays six different roles. It certainly shows his versatility. Kudos to him. Problem is, none of his six characters are amusing (though one of them, a priest who is getting confused with a movie priest, Don Camillo, also played by Fernandel in other movies, is certainly very meta!). Some fleeting female nudity (in a commercial comedy) makes you assume that the censorship laws were much more lax in France at the time, but otherwise the movie is also paced like an ancient fossil; it is strictly for Fernandel fans. *1/2 out of 4.

A favourite French comedy that admirably showcases the artistry of Fernandel. The episode involving - inter alia - a fly and a most comely young lady, remains one of my fond adolescent memories of subtitled 1950's French cinema at the local cinema. Recommended if you want to revisit (or visit) a magic time in French cinema or see a great comedic artist at work in other than the Don Camillo guise most non - French viewers know.

I am not a great comedies fan, especially French ones, but the French comedy tradition in the fifties and sixties , with the likes of Bourvil, Fernandel, Louis De Funès, was purely as excellent, terrific as the American style and the Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope, Laurel and Hardy period...So this very one is a great great job, given by a young future great French director: Henri Verneuil, whose filmography will certainly not be known for its comedies: LE CLAN DES SICILIENS, PEUR SUR LA VILLE, LE CASSE, MELODIE EN SOUS SOL.... So early in his career - Verneuil did not belong to the French Nouvelle Vague nor the same period film makers such as Philippe de Broca, Pierre Granier Deferre, George Lautner, Jacques Deray - So early, Verneuil showed his talent, his skills, despite the fact that he was a commercial director, not a true artist - unlike Jean-Pierre Melville, for instance. This story is stunning, thanks to Fernandel and his incredible performance. An outstanding French comedy gem.