Dir. Claude Autant-Lara, 1956, 80 min

With Jean Gabin, Bourvil, Louis de Funès

In French and German with English subtitles

Winner, Best Actor (Bourvil) at the 1956 Venice Film Festival

Winner, Best Film at the 1958 French Syndicate of Cinema Critics

Two unlikely companions, the straightlaced Martin (Bourvil) and the bombastic Grandgil (Jean Gabin), must smuggle four suitcases filled with contraband pork across Nazi-occupied Paris. While Martin tries to make it through with workmanlike efficiency, Grandgil seems to create, and subsequently surmount, obstacles for the fun of it.

Richard Peña: “The wonderful comic actor Bourvil shines as Marcel, and Jean Gabin, as the painter Grandgil, enjoys one of his best late-career roles.”

“Explosively hilarious!” — The New Yorker

“Proves that perhaps the best way to elucidate on a country’s troubled, dark epoch is to use comedy and performance to provide the light.” — Slant