Five things to know about a taxi for Tobrouk (tonight on television)
Charles Aznavour and Lino Ventura chain cult replicas in this film dialogued by Michel Audiard.
A Taxi for Tobrouk, The immense popular success signed Denys de la Patellière in 1961 is to be reviewed this Friday evening on France 5, and streaming on the France Télévisions site.
An anti -militarist film
October 1942. In Tobrouk, port of the Libyan coast and theater of numerous battles during the Second World War, four French soldiers and their German prisoner will discover the meaning of the word solidarity, little in court, during this period. Three years after the signing of the Treaty of Rome, the idea of a finally pacified Europe is gradually imposed in our country. And by adapting René Havard’s novel, Denys de la Patellière avoids all anti-German clichés with an exponential increase in French cinema since the end of the Second World War. And he signs an anti -militarist work partly inspired by a true story: that experienced by two German and Danish soldiers, enemies associating to survive in 1943 in the heart of Greenland where they were lost.
Audiard’s language
“”When you are bent like you, you wear a sign, you warn“,”Two seated intellectuals go less far than a brute who works“,”I don’t like to think backwards. I leave that to lopes and crayfish“… we no longer count the replicas ofA Taxi for Tobrouk passed to posterity. And behind these, we find a master of the genre, Michel Audiard, particularly fertile in this early 1960s when he continued The Baron de l’Ecluse,, The old people of the day before,, The president… And the unforgettable A monkey in winter. With an inspiration never dried up.
A relocated shoot
A taxi for Tobrouk No matter how to be an anti -militarist advocacy, he suffered the full force of the colonial conflicts then underway in North Africa and in particular the Algerian war. No insurance company being ready to accompany a shoot in this region of the planet, that of Denys de la Patellière had to be relocated to the south-east of Spain, in a desert region close to Almeria, a place that will become the kingdom of Western Spaghetti and where David Lean posed his cameras the following year for Lawrence of Arabia.
Azavour on screen … and music
1960 is a flagship year in the career of Charles Aznavour actor since he continues two of his major roles: the pianist of bar Pull on the pianist of François Truffaut and Samuel Goldman, one of the two intellectuals of the French commando ofA Taxi for Tobrouk Faced with Lino Ventura and Maurice Biraud. And, on this occasion, he also wrote and interpreted the song The march of the angels Composed by the author of the BO of the film, Georges Garvarentz who is none other than … the husband of his sister Aïda. Together, shortly after, they will sign tubes like Hold back at night For Johnny Hallyday and The most beautiful to go dance For Sylvie Vartan.
A box in theaters
Grand Prix du Cinéma Français 1961, A taxi for Tobrouk brought together 4,946,000 spectators. Or the biggest French success of this year and the number 4 of the box office behind The 101 Dalmatians,, Navarone’s guns And The seven mercenaries. But in front Spartacus And Don Camillo Monseigneur.
