Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Les Barbouzes (1964)


Directed by Georges Lautner, Les Barbouzes is an amusing movie about spies. In the opening scene we see someone is murdered on a train, and the murderer is murdered, the 2nd murdered is murdered by another man, etc - until there is no one left but the winner. Bernarshah is an arm dealer who buys patents of dangerous arms, so there are not too many people die for he needs both buyers and suppliers. One day, Bernarshah dies in a whorehouse in France and to give impression that he dies honourably, the police sends agent Francis Lagneau (Lino Ventura) to deliver the body to his widow (Mireille Darc) who lives across the border. There, Lagneau meets spies from all around the world who want the patents of the arms.
The movie is in black and white. This spy movie is perhaps to follow James Bond's success. I like best the part where Amaranthe (Darc) tells Lagneau every time she sees a bearded man. Is it obvious that spies wear false beard? They will be kicked out of the train and car hitchhike. The car driver's face gets irritated as he gets more and more passengers. If you like movies about spies and want a nice laugh, don't miss this. I've never seen so many gadgets in one movie. Also never realized that one agent can have so many aliases.

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