La rapina di Montparnasse

The film begins with a scene in which there is the famous DS Citroën,

the car used by the gangsters in many french movies of the 55-65 period.

The DS production started in 1955, and was a revolution in the automobile world,

because its frankly audacious and futuristic look,

not to mention all its technical innovation like the semi-automatic gears system,

assisted direction and disk brakes, e.g., all new to European cars on that time.

The DS quickly became the must have for movie stars,

the officials members of the French Republic, as well as

Général de Gaulle himself adopted it as presidential car.

The plot of the movie is about a professor of Philosophy, Fernandel,

unintentionally involved and against his will in a bloody adventure

where the settling of accounts between crooks are,

as a result of various misunderstandings,

that made him a dreaded big fish of the underworld.

Fernandel is good, Barbara Laage speaks a lot of slang (one of the interesting point)

quiet pleasant to look at, but to me the whole movie is not getting very "high",

not very engrossing...

The really funny situations or dialogs are not so many.

On Fernandel's great list of movie, I would say it's a second rate.

He's one of my favorite french actor, but unfortunately still would say :

instead going out to theatre, because you're lazy, on a rainy evening...

6,5/10

Fric-Frac (1939), also a gangster comedy, (only 7,0 on IMDb) is way much funnier.

A bachelor philosophy professor, while traveling on the train, is forced to take a bag full of robbed money by the robber, who is also pursued by a rival criminal gang. After the robber is being assassinated, the professor is thought to be a mob by all concerned.

Scrappy, undistinguished but surprisingly witty and entertaining crime-comedy caper, with neat plot twists and both stars (Fernandel and Barbara Laage) in excellent form.