My uncle the gangster

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Movie
German title My uncle the gangster
Original title Les Tontons flingueurs
Country of production France , Germany , Italy
original language French
Publishing year 1963
length 109 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Georges Lautner
script Georges Lautner
Albert Simonin
production Alain Poiré
Alexander Grüter
music Michel Magne
camera Maurice Fellous
cut Michelle David
occupation

My uncle, the gangster (original title: Les Tontons flingueurs ) is a Franco-German-Italian rogue comedy from 1963 with Lino Ventura and Sabine Sinjen in the leading roles.

action

Fernand Naudin is a rock-solid representative of agricultural machinery in the French province ( Montauban ). That was not always so. He was once a notorious underworld thug, but he has long since left those times behind. At least that's what he thinks. Because now his past is catching up with him again: His childhood friend and later partner in crime, Louis, better known under the dazzling pseudonym “the Mexicans”, has returned to Paris from his self-chosen exile. He asks Fernand to see him, as he is one of the few people "the Mexicans" trust today. Louis was the leader of a crime syndicate and is now terminally ill. He wants to be buried in France and therefore "bequeaths" Fernand the leadership of his organization. Fernand is anything but enthusiastic about it, because he once vowed never to dive into the underworld again. In addition, inheritance has a catch. Louis, "the Mexican" also has a lively, beautiful daughter named Patricia who knows absolutely nothing about the dark existence of Mr. Papa. And of all things, the heir is supposed to take care of them against his will. For the sake of Patricia, Fernand wants to take care of the inheritance because, according to Louis, she should be able to lead a sheltered life in the future. And besides, Patricia is unlikely to want to manage this disreputable corporate conglomerate, consisting of a gambling den, a booth and a veritable brothel.

This regulation in turn does not suit some gentlemen gangsters at all. Above all, the somewhat idiot brothers Raoul and Paul Volfoni, phenotypically like Pat and Patachon, grumble and are strictly against it, hoping to be able to follow in the footsteps of the dying syndicate sponsor themselves. So far, Monsieur Folace, Louis' house attorney and notary, has been worried about Patricia, and Fernand soon finds out that the young lady is cute and cute, but at the same time has it all behind her ears. She notoriously skips school, prefers to go to parties and, in Fernand's opinion, has a somewhat strange friend, Antoine Delafoy, a somewhat hushed artist who is floating in other spheres, a somewhat strange friend who is not at all into his rough gangster world fits. After all, that is Louis' will, his daughter should one day marry his daughter in a “middle-class” manner. While Fernand has his hands full to bring order to this general chaos, the scheming but intellectually not too alert Volfoni brothers try honestly to boot him out and to get control of the underworld organization. While the Volfonis struggle hard and unsuccessfully, Naudin also has to deal with a really nasty crook: Théo, an alcohol smuggler, wants to send Fernand to the afterlife and take over power in Louis' empire himself with his buddy Tomato. The assassination attempt is said to look like it was perpetrated by the Volfonis. Finally, the gang squabbles lead to a huge binge and to the wedding of Patricia ...

Production notes

Special in the film used or created words and terms that then part of French slang were

My uncle, the gangster was filmed in France in spring 1963 and premiered in Germany on October 4, 1963. The French premiere was on November 27, 1963.

The script, written by Albert Simonin and Georges Lautner , was based on Simonin's novel Grisbi or not grisbi .

Jean Mandaroux designed the film structures. The dialogue phrases typical for this film come from Michel Audiard .

My uncle the gangster was a huge hit in France. More than 3.3 million moviegoers attended the performances. In France, not least because of countless television appearances, the film has meanwhile achieved cult status. Certain idioms and terms have found their way into everyday French. Therefore, the film was released again in a restored version in French cinemas on September 10, 2009.

Reviews

"To be a gangster or not to be? This very turbulent French-German comedy from Paris revolves around this question. It lives from the acrobatic scenes that Albert Simonin wrote, from the funny dialogues of Michel Audiard and the director Georg Lautner, who delights in jokes. On his deathbed, a gangster bequeaths his former, now bourgeois friend not only his branched 'syndicate', but also his monastic but extremely idiosyncratic daughter. The legacy is inherited out of loyalty to a crook, and the 'powerful' turmoil about the new boss begins, which Lino Ventura puts in splendidly. All around him are rogue cavaliers who are played out with true delight by Bernard Blier and many others. Sabine Sinjen mimes the unsuspecting gangster daughter. (...) The last third of the film offers really stunningly comical scenes of the best Gallic humor, with crooks in the kitchen and a wedding under gunpowder smoke. "

- Hamburger Abendblatt dated November 21, 1963

In Films 1962/64 the following can be read: "Not always tasteful and witty, but sufficiently amusing parody of crook films."

“To this day, Les Tontons flingueurs is one of the classics of French cinema history. In addition to its charismatic actors, the film owes this success, above all, to the humorous interpretation of the gangster novel by Albert Simonin by director Georges Lautner. (...) The screenwriter Michel Audiard played a major role in the success of many of Lautner's films. In Les Tontons flingueurs, too, his dialogues play a major role in the comedic development of the characters and sometimes allude to a then still tense Franco-German relationship after the war. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Films 1962/64. Critical notes from three years of cinema and television. Handbook VII of the Catholic film criticism. Düsseldorf 1965, p. 114
  2. ↑ Les Tontons flingueurs on phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de