The Seventh Company Has Been Found

The second film in the series, with an odd structure: its events sit between the last two scenes of the first film, making it less a sequel than an episode wedged inside. France in 1940, three soldiers lost in a disintegrating army, and a sergeant looking for them. Robert Lamoureux both directs and appears. Jean Lefebvre, Pierre Mondy and Henri Guybet are in the cast. One production detail changed the series: Aldo Maccione, who had appeared in the first film, demanded a substantial raise for the second and was replaced at short notice by Henri Guybet. The humour is built on hierarchy rather than on war; the soldiers are not incompetent, only people who have never worked out what a chain of command is for. In France the trilogy is rerun on television every summer and is among the films watched in the same houses across generations. It opened on 10 December 1975 and sold three million seven hundred and forty thousand tickets, the third most attended French film of the year. The final part of the trilogy came in 1977. Who it is for: viewers who like French popular comedy and wartime farce. Who it is not for: anyone who has not seen the first film, or who wants a serious view of history.