Le cerveau
Gérard Oury
France – 1969
Screenplay: Marcel Jullian, Gérard Oury, Danièle Thompson
Cinematography: Wladimir Ivanov
Production: Gaumont International, Dino de Laurentiis Cinematografica
Language: French, English, German
Duration: 110 min
Color: Color
Synopsis: Two clumsy French thieves, Anatole and Arthur, plan a spectacular heist: to rob a freight train which carries secret NATO funds from Paris to Brussels. They do not know that another team is planning the same raid, a band of experienced criminals that had earlier executed the Glasgow-London Great Train Robbery. That other team is headed by ‘The Brain’, a British criminal mastermind whose massive brain is so heavy that, when he has a strong emotion, he cannot keep his head upright. As it happens, for this exploit, The Brain has partnered up with the Sicilian mafia.
Notes:
As the director of the greatest French box-office triumph of all times, La Grande Vadrouille (Don’t Look Now… We’re Being Shot At, 1966), Gérard Oury holds a secure place in the history of French cinema, though perhaps not in the cinephilic pantheon. Born into an artistic Parisian milieu, Oury trained as an actor and started out at the Comédie-Française in the late 1930s. After a wartime interruption when, as a Jew, he was obliged to flee, he resumed acting on stage and then appeared in such films as Jacques Becker’s Antoine et Antoinette (1947). Success eluded him and he shifted to directing, but here too his first thrillers failed to win audiences. His luck turned when in The Sucker (1965) and then in La Grande Vadrouille, set during the German occupation, he teamed the small, aggressively cantankerous and relatively unknown comic actor Louis de Funès with the shy, indolent comic star Bourvil and found astounding success: La Grande Vadrouille, with 17 million cinema spectators, still ranks as the most popular French film ever.
Oury’s comedies were gently ironic adventures that exploited the drawing power of stars and the spectacular potential of cinema: colour, widescreen, music and stunning landscapes. Following La Grande Vadrouille he concentrated on a few big productions: The Brain (1969), Delusions of Grandeur (1971), The Adventures of Rabbi Jacob (1973). With the exception of Ace of Aces (1982), his subsequent films were less notable, but thanks to his mid-1960s comic triumphs he remains a cult director.
Excerpt from Vincendeau, Ginette. “Gérard Oury (Max-Gérard Houry Tannenbaum).” Sight & Sound, March 2007, 32.