Oscar

Bertrand Barnier is a wealthy industrialist whose day opens with his accountant asking for a raise. To get it, the man confesses he has been stealing from his boss for years, and then asks for his daughter's hand as well. Add a scheming maid, two swapped suitcases and a household where nobody knows who is engaged to whom. What the film is really about is not the money. It is a man losing authority in his own house minute by minute. Barnier learns something in every scene, and every new fact shrinks him a little further. The form is unashamedly theatrical: almost everything happens in one drawing room, doors function like stage doors, and the traffic of entrances and exits runs on farce rhythm. Claude Magnier's 1958 play flopped on first staging. It only took off when Louis de Funes assumed the lead in 1959; he went on to perform it more than six hundred times on stage. The film is built on top of that accumulated rehearsal, which is why every twitch of his hand lands on a beat that had already been polished for years. The same play later became the 1991 American remake with Sylvester Stallone. Directed by Edouard Molinaro, with Claude Rich opposite him and Agathe Natanson as the daughter. Who it is for: anyone with a tolerance for French vaudeville and for comedy played with facial muscles. Who it is not for: viewers wanting a comedy that moves, travels and changes location; this one deliberately locks itself into a single room.