Bernard Blier

Bernard Blier's thirty-five films here spread between 1938 and 1986 and every one of them carries an acting credit. Lucy Sante, in her Criterion appreciation of Jenny Lamour, introduces the Maurice Martineau he plays as the salaried accompanist of a Tin Pan Alley song publisher, adding that American audiences might take him for a plump Bob Newhart. On the same account his wife is naive enough to be taken in by the promises of Brignon, a rich and hunchbacked lecher. Sante describes Maurice, who had threatened Brignon in front of witnesses, finding the body, after which Dora arrives at the scene and wipes the fingerprints away. He appears in the casts of four of Mario Monicelli's films here, and he played in Buffet Froid, which his son Bertrand Blier directed.