La Grande Vadrouille
La Grande Vadrouille (French pronunciation: [la ɡʁɑ̃d vaˈdʁuj]; literally "The Great Stroll"; originally released in the United States as Don't Look Now... We're Being Shot At!) is a 1966 French comedy film about two ordinary Frenchmen helping the crew of a Royal Air Force bomber shot down over Paris make their way through German-occupied France to escape arrest.
| La Grande Vadrouille | |
|---|---|
French theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Gérard Oury |
| Produced by | Robert Dorfmann |
| Written by | Marcel Jullian Gérard Oury Danièle Thompson Georges Tabet André Tabet |
| Starring | Bourvil Louis de Funès Claudio Brook Terry-Thomas |
| Music by | Georges Auric Hector Berlioz |
| Cinematography | André Domage Alain Douarinou Claude Renoir |
| Edited by | Albert Jurgenson |
Release date | 1 December 1966 |
Running time | 132 minutes |
| Country | France United Kingdom |
| Language | French English German |
| Budget | $2.3 million |
| Box office | $33 million (France)[1] |
For over forty years La Grande Vadrouille was the most successful French film in France, topping the box office with over 17,200,000 cinema admissions. It remains the fifth most successful film ever in France (on the basis of admissions), of any nationality, behind the 1997 version of Titanic, French hits Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis (2008) and Intouchables (2011), which were seen by over 19,000,000 cinemagoers and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.[2][3]
Plot
Summer 1942. Over German-occupied France, a Royal Air Force bomber becomes lost after a mission and is shot down over Paris by German flak. Three of the crew, Sir Reginald, Peter Cunningham and Alan MacIntosh, parachute out over the city, where they run into and are hidden by a house painter, Augustin Bouvet, a puppet show operator, Juliette, and the grumbling conductor of the Opéra National de Paris, Stanislas Lefort. Involuntarily, Lefort, Juliette and Bouvet get themselves tangled up in the manhunt against the aviators led by Wehrmacht Major Achbach as they help the airmen to escape to the free zone with the help of Resistance fighters and sympathisers.
Cast
- André Bourvil as Augustin Bouvet
- Louis de Funès as Stanislas Lefort
- Terry-Thomas as Sir Reginald ("Big Moustache")
- Claudio Brook as Peter Cunningham
- Mike Marshall as Alan MacIntosh
- Marie Dubois as Juliette
- Pierre Bertin as Juliette's grandfather
- Andréa Parisy as Sister Marie-Odile
- Mary Marquet as The Mother Superior
- Benno Sterzenbach as Major Achbach
- Colette Brosset as Madame Germaine, hotel manager
- Guy Grosso as a musician
- Jean Droze as a musician
- Paul Préboist as a fisherman
Production
The film was made by the same team (Oury, Bourvil and de Funès) who did the enormously successful The Sucker (1965).[4]
Reception
The film was the most popular of 1966 at the French box office (and the most popular and highest-grossing of all-time) with admissions of 17,275,169 and a gross of $32,994,000.[1] (This was almost twice as much as the second most popular, Dr Zhivago, which had 9,816,305 admissions and a gross of $16,536,000.)[5][1]
The film features in the 2018 film Roma.
See also
References
- "Biggest Grossers In France Over The Last 18 Yrs". Variety. May 12, 1976. p. 268.
- Data on fr:Allociné
- "Les Ch'tis plus forts que La Grande vadrouille", Olivier Corriez, TF1
- "La Grande Vadrouille". Box Office Story.
- "1966 French box office". Box Office Story.