On demande un assassin (1949)
Directed by Ernst Neubach

Film Review

The second of three films directed by the Austrian screenwriter-director Ernst Neubach during his brief stay in France in the late 1940s, early 50s, is a typical Fernandel vehicle, very different from the brooding melodrama he had just made with Erich von Stroheim, Le Signal rouge (1949).  Whatever artistic qualities Neubach's first French film had are distinctly lacking from the unimaginative lowbrow comedy that followed it.  The plot is as predictable as the slew of gags that somehow prevent the film from being unbearably tedious - just as you would expect from a run-of-the-mill Ferandel comedy.

With regard to both its plot and its production values, On demande un assassin looks horribly dated today (you'd think it was made in the 1930s, not in the late 40s), but it was popular in its day and won the Grand Prix de Rire in 1949.  If you fast-forward past all the irritating scenes with Claude Chenard, the film just about passes muster as a mildly entertaining timewaster, most enjoyable when Armand Bernard (a far greater comic actor than Fernandel ever was) shows up.   The idiotic plot would later be reworked for another film, Comme un cheveu sur la soupe (1957), with Louis de Funès taking the Fernandel role, and doing a far better job of it.

Film Synopsis

Bob Laurent is at the end of his tether.  Ruined, rejected and generally disgusted with life, he hires a hoodlum, Willy le Boxeur, to kill him in two days' time.  But over those two days Bob's fortunes take a dramatic turn for the better.  His fiancée returns to him and his money worries are settled.  Just as he regains his zest for life, Bob remembers that a killer is after him...