Jaloux comme un tigre (1964)
Directed by Darry Cowl

Film Review

We should be grateful that Darry Cowl directed only one film.  Being a popular comedian doesn't mean you can't be a great director as well - Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Mel Brooks (to name just three) proved that funny men can also make perfectly competent filmmakers - but in most cases you can't help wishing the clown had stuck to the day job.  Cowl definitely belongs in the latter camp.  Jaloux comme un tigre is exactly the kind of film you would expect Cowl to direct - a scattergun mess of a film which goes to extraordinary lengths to be funny but isn't remotely (much like Cowl himself).  It feels like a throwback to the middle ages, where convicted criminals would be humiliated and savagely mutilated for public amusement.  In this instance, it is an ensemble of France's leading comic actors who get butchered, and amusement is most definitely not the 'mot juste'.  Jean Poiret, Michel Serrault, Dany Saval, Francis Blanche, Jean Yanne, Jean Richard, Michael Lonsdale...  One by one, the sadistic Cowl lures them into his demonic machine and slaughters them before our eyes.  It's the thespian equivalent of Halal butchery, only crueller, more degrading, not only for the victims but also for the on-looker.  From the most anodyne of pretexts (a jealous husband trying to prove to his wife that he loves her) Cowl concocts an overactive comedy atrocity that is excruciating to sit through.  You cannot possibly know the meaning of the word 'suffering' until you have endured every life-sapping microsecond of this cinematic horrror.

Film Synopsis

Henri and Sophie would seem to be the ideal couple, and they would be if it were not for the fact that Henri is pathologically jealous.  Fearing that his wife may be cheating on him, Henri constantly spies on her every move, which makes it hard for him to hold down a job.  Sophie resents her husband's lack of faith in her, but because they are so deeply in love Henri's obsession poses no real threat to their union.  Then, one day, Henri's boss, an inveterate Don Juan, meets Sophie at a tennis club.  Now Henri will soon have good reason to be a jealous...