Carambolages (1963)
Directed by Marcel Bluwal

Film Review

Carambolages is quite a rare phenomenon in French cinema - an enjoyable mélange of black comedy and farce, seasoned with a generous helping of piquant social satire.  It's a curious potpourri of a film and you wonder if it is perhaps biting off more than it can chew. Still, the scattergun comedy mostly pays off, mainly because of the inspired pairing of comic legend Louis de Funès and Jean-Claude Brialy, the then darling of the French New Wave trying (perhaps a little too) hard to make a name for himself in mainstream cinema.   The plot is both chaotic and predictable, a tale of career advancement that owes something to the Ealing comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), but the humour is unflagging. It is worth watching the film just to see Brialy manically chasing after an implausibly agile frog.

When he made this film, Louis de Funès was far from being the national treasure that he was destined to become after his meteoritic elevation to stardom through the films Le Gendarme de St. Tropez (1964) and Fantômas (1964).  This was one of his pre-break-through triumphs, in which he perfected the persona for which he is now best known, the mean-spirited executive who ill-treats everyone around him (think of him as a mix of Alan Sugar and Caligula) and yet who somehow manages to retain our sympathy as the world conspires to give him his just deserts.   The De Funès we see in Carambolages is the one that French audience would later flock in their millions to watch in such films as Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob (1973) and L'Aile ou la cuisse (1976) - a supremely talented comic performer at the height of his game.

The nominal star of the film is not De Funès, however, but Jean-Claude Brialy, one of the bright young things who was most associated with La Nouvelle Vague through his appearances in films ranging from Claude Chabrol's Le Beau Serge (1958) to Jean-Luc Godard's Une femme est une femme (1961), via a cameo role in Truffaut's Les 400 coups (1959).  Brialy didn't quite have the mainstream appeal of other stars of the era, notably Alain Delon (who makes a brief but magnificent appearance at the end of this film), and he seems curiously out of place in frivolities of this kind.  Nevertheless, his natural flair for comedy sees him through and, with the collusion of screenwriter Michel Audiard, he turns in one of his most entertaining performances, and also one of his most chilling.  As he ascends the greasy pole, resorting to every drastic means to achieve his ambitions, Brialy displays sociopathic tendencies that would make even Delon's Tom Ripley blush.  Some fine supporting contributions from Michel Serrault and Sophie Daumier (a dead-ringer for Bardot) keep the comedy express chugging along nicely, and whilst the film doesn't come anywhere near to achieving its full comic potential, it is an enjoyable romp - even if most of the gags revolve around people falling from great heights to their deaths or else being blown up with homemade incendiary devices.  Fortunately, the cute little amphibians manage to get through this one relatively unscathed.

Film Synopsis

Paul Martin may be a lowly groundfloor employee of a leisure events company but he has big ambitions, and you can see why.  He has not one woman but two to keep - his mistress Solange and his fiancée Danielle - so he desperately needs a salary increase if he is to stave off bankruptcy.  By marrying the daughter of his boss, Monsieur Brossard, he hopes to replace him when the latter retires.  The news that Brossard intends delaying his retirement comes as a bitter blow and Paul has to rethink his plans.  Then he has it - he will make his way up the greasy pole by getting rid of his superiors.  First he writes an anonymous letter to the company's chairman Norbert Charolais accusing his general secretary Beaumanoir of having an affair with his wife.  When this fails to have the intended result Paul resorts to sending a box of exploding cigars - again to no avail.  Then a stroke of good fortune - Charolais accidentally plunges to his death.  Beaumanoir is next in line for the chairman's job, but he is arrested for his predecessor's murder by an over-enthusiastic police superintendent.  Soon the path is clear for Paul to achieve his ambition and take the top job in his company.  But just how long can he expect to stay in the post before one of his underlings tries to dethrone him...