From de Funès to Godard: when all of French cinema went on holiday
The Gendarme of Saint-Tropez (1964)
By Jean Girault
With Louis de Funès, Michel Galabru, Jean Lefebvre…
Sergeant Cruchot is promoted to chief sergeant in Saint-Tropez. He will organize nudist hunts on the beach, while his young daughter Nicole joins the party-goers of Saint Tropez by inventing a billionaire father.
It’s not just Qualité Française that x-rays the holidays. Alongside its typically DeFunèsian comic spring (which plays with its usual genius a character stuck between a higher authority and incompetent subordinates), this great popular comedy also wants to capture a little of the spirit of the golden youth of the 60s in the PACA region. It doesn’t work well on that side, but it stays in the head (“Do you do you Saint-Tropez?”). Huge success, and first film in a series of six that would end in 1982 with the sinister Le Gendarme et les gendarmettes. De Funès died the following year.
Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (1953)
By Jacques Tati
With Jacques Tati, Louis Perrault, André Dubois…
It’s summer, and vacationers come to sunbathe on the beaches of a small seaside resort in Loire-Atlantique. Among them, the shy and clumsy Hulot whose clumsiness will not go unnoticed.
Since 1936, paid holidays have sent the French in increasing numbers to rest and sunbathe on the beaches. A break from everyday life conducive to idleness but also to adventure, of which cinema is a witness. In 1953, Tati documented this mass phenomenon by inventing his favorite character and announced the color from the title: in Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, it is this relatively new concept of holidays and its consequences on people that the filmmaker puts on stage.
Full Sun (1960)
By René Clément
With Alain Delon, Maurice Ronet, Marie Laforêt…
Tom Ripley is tasked by an American billionaire to bring back to the United States his son Philippe who is spending too long a vacation in Italy with his mistress Marge. But Tom, envious, kills Philippe and steals his identity.
With this adaptation of Patricia Highsmith, René Clément turns the holiday film into a thriller crushed by the sun. And puts an end to the “too long vacation” of the dilettante Greenleaf with a series of twists and turns.
The Summer Holiday (1967)
By Jean Girault
With Louis de Funès, Claude Gensac, Maurice Risch…
Charles Bosquier sends his dunce son to spend the summer holidays with the family of a whisky distiller to brush up on his English. But his son gets a friend to replace him so he can explore England at his leisure. His father goes looking for him.
Jean Girault’s fourth film with the great Louis, Les Grandes vacances seals the cinematic wedding of de Funès and Claude Gensac, who will play his wife seven times in total on the big screen. And after? What remains is a comedy where certain deliriums (the destruction of the distillery) announce the crazy De Funès/Zidi of the 70s.
Farewell Philippine (1962)
By Jacques Rozier
With Jean-Claude Aimini, Stefania Sabatini, Yveline Céry…
Two friends compete for the favors of a television machinist pretending to be a filmmaker. As he approaches his departure for Algeria and tired of the company of the two girls, he leaves for Corsica. Where they soon join him.
Rozier chooses to put the holidays, in the form of a great escape, at the heart of his first feature film, to capture the characters out of context, outside of their usual functions and occupations. Holidays once again become synonymous with suspension, emptiness, availability for something to finally happen. Or nothing.
Pierrot the Madman (1965)
By Jean-Luc Godard
With Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anna Karina, Graziella Galvani…
A young father, recently unemployed, flees with his babysitter to the South of France, on a grand journey involving arms trafficking, political plots and bucolic breaks.
More of a film about escape than a holiday, Pierrot le fou is nonetheless an escape, towards the blue (of the sea), towards a bit of beauty “in a world of morons” – the quest of the hero played by Belmondo – an escape from everyday life which, all things considered, insofar as it is strewn with criminal intrigues, allows romance and the romantic to flourish. For the duration of a summer.
The Sucker (1965)
By Gérard Oury
With Louis de Funès, Bourvil, Venantino Venantini…
A trafficker uses an honest trader to take a Cadillac full of heroin from Naples to Bordeaux.
After Pierrot le fou, Le Corniaud illustrates a certain idea of the French road trip, popular version. Bourvil embodies an archetype of the slightly redneck holidaymaker, with a bob, Bermuda shorts and a camera slung over his shoulder, who looks for holiday love in the campsites on the coast. And incidentally must escape all sorts of crooks who are after him.
The Swimming Pool (1969)
By Jacques Deray
With Alain Delon, Romy Schneider, Maurice Ronet, Jane Birkin…
An ideal couple lives happily in their villa in Saint-Tropez until the day a former lover arrives on the arm of their daughter, the arsonist Penelope, and disrupts this peaceful life.
Crushed by the midday sun, Jacques Deray’s legendary film, despite its increasing darkness, has imprinted on our retinas the image of class on vacation, of lazing around with style: Romy Schneider in a bikini and Delon’s lascivious poses lying by the pool are unforgettable, and known even to those who have not seen the film. We have clearly not done better to date in terms of stylish idleness since major brands still use images from the film for their advertising campaigns.
Claire’s Knee (1970)
By Eric Rohmer
With Jean-Claude Brialy, Laurence de Monaghan, Fabrice Luchini…
Ready to get married, Jérôme spends his last single vacation around Lake Annecy. He meets a writer friend who suggests that he be the subject of her next novel: a mature man who is the object of a teenage girl’s desire. And then comes young Claire who will become Jérôme’s obsession.
Fifth of Eric Rohmer’s Moral Tales – between The Collectionneuse and Love in the Afternoon – Claire’s Knee is, beyond its already outdated look when it came out (Brialy who has given himself the look of a Gibb brother), a very 18th century marivaudage, a reflection on love and fiction, and a film in sandals where the canvas of the holidays provides the framework of freedom where the plot can flourish. And above all the opportunity for Luchini in a supporting role to give a delirious performance of which he has the secret.