The Sucker

Antoine Maréchal is setting off on holiday when his car is destroyed in a crash. Saroyan, the businessman who caused it, makes him an offer: drive a Cadillac from Naples to Bordeaux with all expenses paid. Antoine takes it for a kindness. There are diamonds in the bumpers, gold bars in the wings and drugs in the door panels. Saroyan believes he has found the ideal innocent, and then spends the journey crawling along behind him. Gérard Oury directed. Bourvil plays Antoine and Louis de Funès plays Saroyan. It opened on 24 March 1965. The result was a box office nobody expected: 11,739,783 admissions and the top French film of 1965, the highest figure a French film had reached to that point. After decades in small parts, it settled de Funès as a star. The success convinced Oury to make a second film with the same pair, La Grande Vadrouille, which would stand for years as the most-seen French film ever made. Who it is for: viewers who like sixties French popular comedy and road pictures. Who it is not for: anyone after subtlety. The humour rests entirely on the contrast between Bourvil's innocence and de Funès's rages, and it repeats.