Mon pote le gitan (1959)
Directed by François Gir

Comedy

Film Review

Abstract picture representing Mon pote le gitan (1959)
Louis de Funès had appeared in over a hundred films, mostly in walk-on parts, before film directors and producers started offering him substantial roles worthy of his talents as an actor and comic performer.   Mon pote le gitan was one of the first films in which de Funès had, effectively, the lead role, although he received second billing after the more established comic actor Jean Richard.  In this film, which is based on Michel Duran's stage play Les Pittuiti's, de Funès perfects the character for which he would become best known in his years of celebrity, that of the mean-spirited petit bourgeois businessman.  To say that de Funès nails the part from the first scene is understating matters.  It is a comedy tour de force, guaranteed to make you laugh, and without it the film would scarcely be worth watching.

It was no accident that Louis de Funès was given the main role in the film - it was his brother-in-law (his sister's husband) François Gir who directed it.  Gir, the son of the esteemed character actress Jeanne Fusier-Gir, made only one film for cinema, this one; for most of his career, he worked for French television, directing over twenty TV movies.  He started out by working as an assistant on several films by another prominent relative of his, Sacha Guitry, including La Poison (1951) and Si Versailles m'était conté (1954).  With his cinematic debut, Gir shows immense promise, his film being very different in style from most popular French comedies of its time.  Indeed, bizarrely, it tends towards Italian neo-realism in places, particularly in its authentic depiction of a gypsy community.  The opening sequence over which the credits are laid could well have been lifted from a neo-realist drama by Pasolini or De Sica.

Whilst Louis de Funès is unquestionably the star of the film (you can hardly wait for him to return every time he goes out of camera shot), the cast includes some other notable names.  Jean Richard was a popular comic actor of the time, famous for his collaborations with director Jean Bastia, including Nous autres à Champignol (1957), although he is now best remembered for playing Inspector Maigret in a French television series that ran for twenty years.  Convincingly cast as a juvenile gypsy with literary aspirations is a young Michel Subor, who would earn lasting fame when Jean-Luc Godard gave him the lead role in his controversial political drama Le Petit soldat (1963).  By contrast, Brigitte Auber's best years were already behind her - previously given a substantial part in Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief (1955), she is relegated to a minor role in this film.  It could be argued that Mon pote le gitan was Louis de Funès's springboard to stardom.  Within a decade, he would become France's best known and most bankable comic actor, the years of obscurity finally at an end.
© James Travers 2015
The above content is owned by frenchfilms.org and must not be copied.

Film Synopsis

The Védrines are a perfectly respectable middleclass family who lead a perfectly respectable middleclass life - until the rebellious son Théo manages to get a gypsy girl pregnant.  The girl's father, Pittuiti, is incensed and, according to the traditions of his people, it is only fair that his son Bruno should put the Védrines' daughter Gisèle in the family way.  Bruno pays a personal call on Monsieur Védrine, a successful publisher, hoping to secure a literary prize that will allow him to make his name as a writer.  Védrine is more than willing to offer him the money, if it will keep him and his sister out of his hair, but he soon discovers that money cannot solve every problem...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by frenchfilms.org and must not be copied.


Film Credits

  • Director: François Gir
  • Script: Alain Blancel, François Gir, Guy Lionel, Michel Duran (dialogue)
  • Cinematographer: Michel Rocca
  • Music: Marc Heyral
  • Cast: Jean Richard (Pittuiti), Louis de Funès (Védrines), Gregori Chmara (Le pépé), Michel Subor (Bruno Pittuiti), Guy Bertil (Théo Védrines), Lila Kedrova (La Choute), Simone Paris (Madame Védrines), Anne Doat (Gisèle Védrines), Brigitte Auber (Odette), Jacqueline Caurat (La reporter), Teresa Dimitri (Zita), François Bonnefois, Monique Dagand, Robert Destain, Luce Fabiole, Eliane Martel, Odile Poisson, Joseph Reinhardt, Jacques Verrières
  • Country: France
  • Language: French
  • Support: Black and White
  • Runtime: 87 min

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