I'd seen this and Mon Oncle many decades ago, so was happily expecting to enjoy seeing it again as a more mature man with a keener perspective. But seeing it this time, I had to continually say to myself (and wife) "Hang in there, it'll make sense at some point." It never did.
I consider myself somewhat of a film aficionado, able to appreciate a movie on multiple levels, and accept it for what it was trying to be to various audiences. But this is one weak film, regardless of what you are trying to get out of it. Not only was there no plot, there could not possibly have been a script or storyboard. Only in the vaguest sense did one scene follow another. If fact, I can't think of a single scene that couldn't have been placed anywhere else randomly in the film with no loss of continuity or context, because there was none to begin with.
Virtually every scene went absolutely nowhere, despite plenty of opportunity. I'd bet any amount of money that they just starting filming one day, stopped a week later, then pieced together whatever wasn't grossly overexposed, grossly underexposed, or grossly out-of-focus the best they could in a few days, and called it a film. The cinematography and editing is atrocious, given what was possible in the early 1950's.
To call this film hilarious, or a masterpiece, or a devastating political satire, is saying more about the reviewer's prior expectations than about this film. Perhaps the French laughed aloud watching this in 1954 - hey, they love Jerry Lewis, and life was much simpler then - but unless you're trying to relive your youth, you're going to say "What the..." when the closing credits appear.
We did get a chuckle out of the fox stuck to the boot...
I consider myself somewhat of a film aficionado, able to appreciate a movie on multiple levels, and accept it for what it was trying to be to various audiences. But this is one weak film, regardless of what you are trying to get out of it. Not only was there no plot, there could not possibly have been a script or storyboard. Only in the vaguest sense did one scene follow another. If fact, I can't think of a single scene that couldn't have been placed anywhere else randomly in the film with no loss of continuity or context, because there was none to begin with.
Virtually every scene went absolutely nowhere, despite plenty of opportunity. I'd bet any amount of money that they just starting filming one day, stopped a week later, then pieced together whatever wasn't grossly overexposed, grossly underexposed, or grossly out-of-focus the best they could in a few days, and called it a film. The cinematography and editing is atrocious, given what was possible in the early 1950's.
To call this film hilarious, or a masterpiece, or a devastating political satire, is saying more about the reviewer's prior expectations than about this film. Perhaps the French laughed aloud watching this in 1954 - hey, they love Jerry Lewis, and life was much simpler then - but unless you're trying to relive your youth, you're going to say "What the..." when the closing credits appear.
We did get a chuckle out of the fox stuck to the boot...