Cent briques et des tuiles (1965)
Directed by Pierre Grimblat

Film Review

The English title of Pierre Grimblat's chaotic fourth feature is How Not to Rob a Department Store but it could equally be titled How Not to Make a Film Comedy or How to Completely Waste the Talents of a Great Cast on a Totally Futile Piece of Cinematic Over-Indulgence.  Pierre Grimblat made a far better job of his subsequent film with Serge Gainsbourg, Slogan (1969); Cent briques et des tuiles, by contrast, is a facile caper comedy that looks as if no thought went into it and blithely fails to see the difference between humour and abject silliness.  Just what lured such talented performers as Jean-Claude Brialy, Michel Serrault and Marie Laforêt into this cataclysmic comedy misfire we shall never know, but it's amazing they emerged from it with their reputations intact.

The plot (if you can call the careless pasting together of a succession of idiotic sketches) is pure comicbook, the kind that is more likely to appeal to eight-year-olds than grown adults.  It wouldn't be so bad if there were at least a few half-decent gags among the avalanche of dross, but sadly everything is played for the easiest laughs that the director, writers and cast thought they could extract from their audience.  To say the whole thing is silly beyond belief is putting it mildly.  The film is breathtakingly asinine, and unless you have a burning desire to see Jean-Claude Brialy struggling to fulfil a weird personal fantasy in which he plays a butch mustachioed comedy gangster it should be given a very wide berth, ideally one that extends as far as the Earth's diameter.

Watching paid actors running about like inept extras in a bad Mack Sennett farce, trying so desperately to be funny that you wonder their heads don't fall off, is a far from edifying experience.  It's torture, from start to finish, and only someone with the stamina of an Olympic athlete stands any chance of watching the film through without giving up or succumbing to the merciful release of a fatal cerebral aneurysm.  Cent briques et des tuiles is undiluted torture, and you wonder what is the point of the Geneva Convention on Human Rights when film producers blithely go about inflicting this kind of atrocity on an unsuspecting public.

Film Synopsis

Small-time crook Marcel finds himself in deep water when two heavies show up at his apartment after he has lost his gang's recent ill-gotten gains - twenty million francs.  Robbed of his apartment and his car, Marcel has just one week to recover the lost money, or else...  A chance encounter with his former associate Étienne gives Marcel a lifeline he hadn't dare to hope for.  By exercising their combined initiative, the two men are confident of walking away with the Christmas Eve takings at Paris's most up-market department store, the Galeries Lafayette - 100 million francs!  Having conceived a seemingly fool-proof plan, Étienne and Marcel convince a friend of theirs, Justin, and a crooked lift operator to lend their support.

The plan is that Marcel and Étienne will sneak into the store's back offices to help themselves to the money just after closing time, and to pass it on to Justin who, disguised as a Father Christmas, can slip away unnoticed.  The scheme goes awry when the stolen banknotes get soaked after Marcel unwittingly bursts a water pipe.  No sooner has Justin recuperated the sodden money than he collides with a gang of juvenile delinquents out on a pre-Christmas hold-up spree.  Too late does Justin realise that the gang has run off with the sack containing the stolen money.  When Marcel and his friends finally recover their booty they find that the banknotes are solidly stuck together.  They have come too far to be thwarted by this small setback...