At the end of the 1950s, four humor specialists simultaneously experienced recognition. Fernandel with “The Cow and the Prisoner”, Bourvil with “The Hunchback”, Jacques Tati with “My Uncle” and Louis de Funès with “Oscar” at the theater. On the big screen or on stage, each of these artists has a unique style of humor. They are the kings of French comedy. But how did they manage to become true box office champions? How did they experience their immense popularity? How do they still influence the comedy genre? And above all, are- are they funny in life? Where is the line between their character in the cinema and their real personality?

September 23, 2022 marks the 52nd anniversary of the death of Bourvil (1917-1970). Radio, sketches, boulevard theater, operetta, cinema, songs whimsical or tender, Bourvil is present in all areas of popular culture. Carried by the voice of Valérie Lemercier, this portrait of the artist allows us to rediscover his most beautiful songs, from Les Crayons to La Tendresse, and the highlights of his filmography, from the cult scenes of La Traversée de Paris, Le Corniaud and La Grande Vadrouille to Le Cercle rouge. We also rediscover the richness of his career as a singer and actor, with some little known nuggets. The testimony of Bourvil's two sons, unpublished family films and numerous archives tell the story of the all too brief life of this endearing man.

Clodo, a gentle mongrel dog, isn't having much luck. His shaggy appearance has earned him the name of hobo. Often scolded by his Parisian masters for being a nuisance, his only consolation is Cathy, his youngest daughter. Unfortunately, she can't stop her parents from abandoning Clodo at vacation time. Fabien, a young farmer, takes the dog in, despite the hostility of his family. Fabien is secretly in love with his childhood friend, Arlène, "la demoiselle du château", who has left to study in Paris. But she returns home after a disappointment. Their relationship resumes.

When French criminal Corey gets released from prison, he resolves to never return. He is quickly pulled back into the underworld, however, after a chance encounter with escaped murderer Vogel. Along with former policeman and current alcoholic Jansen, they plot an intricate jewel heist. All the while, quirky Police Commissioner Mattei, who was the one to lose custody of Vogel, is determined to find him.

1944. Léon Duchemin owns a restaurant with his sister. His clients are Germans, Résistance et black marketeers. Léon unwillingly joins the Résistance when a British pilot is shot down and hides in his attic and, through a series of mishaps, he accidentally steals the plans for Hitler's V1 missiles.

Veterinary surgeon William Chaminade is having a peaceful holiday in the South of France when he is witness to an event that will change not only his life but the destiny of France! A young woman tries to kill herself by jumping from the upstairs window of the hotel where he is staying. Thanks to the services of a passing athlete, the woman is unharmed, and she reveals that her distress is down to her husband’s apparent lack of interest in her. Immediately, Chaminade has a brainwave. He will open a special centre for people like this unfortunate young woman, who will be able to satisfy their romantic needs, at the tax payers’ expense. All is well until this innovative ’pleasure centre’ draws the attention of an over-zealous tax inspector, Dupuis...

A French-American millionaire, his girlfriend and his war buddy try to grant his dying son's every wish.

Sequel to "Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines". This time an international car rally from England to Monte Carlo provides the comedic farce.

Arthur and Anatole are two little robbers. They want to rob money, money that will travel in a special train from Paris to Bruxelles. They don't know that other people have planned to do the same thing.

Sickened to see his students always sleeping in class, a teacher with a colleague and an anarchist start a war against the television. They climbed on Paris roofs to coat the T.V. antennas with a special product cutting the signal reception.

A story about inventor who invented a cool bike and goes on racing competition but has a lot of problems on his way.

In the sunny landscapes of Provence, Henri Arnaud is a conscientious law student who's got a lovely girlfriend, Tina. The person who used to pay for his studies dies and the poor young man's disposable funds are low. He asks an antique dealer if he can lend him some money. This shady guy agrees, but in return for homosexual relations. Henri kills him and runs away. Fortunately, a good judge, who bears the same name as him, comes to his rescue.

During World War II, two French civilians and a downed British Bomber Crew set out from Paris to cross the demarcation line between Nazi-occupied Northern France and the South. From there they will be able to escape to England. First, they must avoid German troops - and the consequences of their own blunders.

A man falsely recognize two teenagers and one child as his own children in order to avoid jail so his life becomes more and more chaotic.

Hector Valentin returns to France from Canada when he inherits a small sawmill. He has difficulties restarting the run-down operation which has inefficient workers and is hampered by the dirty tactics of its bigger...

Louis Bourdin est employé à la RATP le jour, romancier la nuit, avec une forte prédilection pour le genre policier. Un jour, il rédige un polar situé dans l'univers de la RATP, boudé par les éditeurs. Le livre parvient alors aux yeux d'une bande de criminels...

A U.S. intelligence general recalls three Cold War cases of Soviet, French and Italian spies.

In this Frenco-Italian gangster parody, a shop keeper on his way to an Italian holiday suffers a crash which totals his car. The culprit can only compensate his ruined trip by driving an American friends car from Napels to Bordeaux, but as it happens to be filled with such contraband as stolen money, jewelry and drugs, the involuntary and unwitting companions in crime soon attract all but recreational attention from the "milieu".

Émile and Fredo are two crooks who have just committed an armed robbery in a Paris bank. To escape the police, Émile, accompanied by his friend Lulu, takes refuge in the apartment of Antoine Perrin, a peaceful civil servant at the Ministry of Agriculture and amateur musician with the group Les Joyeux Colibris. Lulu offers to seduce him in order to prevent him from getting hit on the coffee pot.

Two police inspectors pursue a dangerous counterfeiter on the run.

After thirteen years in Germany, Fernand is coming back to his wife and his restaurant. But since his disparition, his wife as made her life with a norman chef, sympathetic but a specialist of butter's cooking when Fernand cook only with oil!

Bad financial conditions compel an aristocratic family to do strange work.

Justin, a lyricist by trade, and his friend Pierre, a composer, lead a bohemian life in Paris. Justin thinks his mother Josefa is richer than she appears, and decides to swindle her out of three million centimes by using Pierre as an intermediary in a case involving an insolvent check. Josefa uncovers the ruse and refuses to help her son. However, Pierre has discovered the identity of his friend's father, who had been unknown to him for twenty years. With the help of Justin's mother, the two friends do everything they can to extort the son's missing three million centimes from his ashamed and repentant father.

A lovely young nurse finds herself framed for the murder of a hospital patient who died after she administered an injection.

Antoine Rossi, a recidivist prisoner of war in Germany, manages to escape with the cowardly Fendard. Fendard does everything in his power to help him even though he is wounded, but Antoine tries to get rid of him as he boards the train to freedom.

Paul, a friendly Parisian cab driver, has two loves: music and his fiancée Virginie. After graduating from the Conservatoire with a first prize, he lives on hope, offering his classical works to publishers. One day, while driving customers to the races, he plays a "toquard": Maubeuge, who wins. With his friends, he celebrates the event and, for dessert, composes a song for the occasion: "Tout ça ne vaut pas un clair de lune à Maubeuge". Monique, a secretary at the radio station and one of the guests, had a record made of the tape recording. And this record, following a mistake, was broadcast on a religious music program. It's a runaway success: for Paul, it's fame and fortune. which he had obviously coveted, but more with his symphonies, opera and sonatas. No matter, the "Clair de lune à Maubeuge" (Moonlight in Maubeuge) allows two happily engaged couples to become happily married.

A well-to-do bourgeois, Tartarin lives in Tarascon, a small southern town, among friends who, like him, love hunting "à la casquette", gossip, aperitifs and thought-provoking journeys. Imaginative like all his compatriots, Tartarin ended up believing he had once been to Shanghai, so fervently did he recount his illusory adventures. It was even rumored that Tartarin was about to leave for Africa to hunt wild beasts, and this was so insistent that the brave man, urged on by his friends, was forced "for the sake of honor" to embark. He arrives in Casablanca, surprised to discover a modern city and not a single lion. But a charming Moorish woman, Baïa, seduces him, and Tartarin indulges in the "delights of Capua". This euphoria is short-lived: Baïa disappears, a false prince, mostly a swindler, finds a replacement and sets off on a hunting expedition in southern Morocco, which will only earn Tartarin the loss of his savings and a blind old lion dragged along by two beggars.

The retelling of June 6, 1944, from the perspectives of the Germans, US, British, Canadians, and the Free French. Marshall Erwin Rommel, touring the defenses being established as part of the Reich's Atlantic Wall, notes to his officers that when the Allied invasion comes they must be stopped on the beach. "For the Allies as well as the Germans, it will be the longest day"

André Loriot works for Dr Clairac in a laboratory producing euphoric pills. He searches in vain for an apartment where he can settle down and start a family with the woman who loves him, Juliette. To motivate himself and cope with the setbacks he encounters, he decides to swallow an excessive dose of euphoriants.

Businessman Victor Hardy wants to buy the entire area around the small village of Cabosse. He claims that he wants to return to nature, but he also intends to profit by selling the water from the village fountain, which is reputed to enhance longevity. However old farmer Mathieu and his sons don't want to sell...

During WW2, a posh bourgeois woman (Morgan)is compelled to live under the same room as a crude simple-minded yet big-hearted man.(Bourvil) Her husband was arrested by the Gestapo and she is a hunted woman.

Le capitan is a 1960 French-Italian swashbuckler film directed by André Hunebelle and starring Jean Marais, Bourvil, Elsa Martinelli and Lise Delamare. It is based on a novel by Michel Zévaco.

Duke Philippe de Nevers is an influential and popular man who is married to a beautiful wife called Aurore. His rival Philippe de Gonzague hates him enough to organise an attempt on him. The Duke is accompagnied by Henri de Lagardère when de Gonzague's henchmen altogether attack him. Lagardère cannot save his friend because the both of them are hopelessly outnumbered. He has to escape in order to save the Duke's daughter and swears revenge. Together with his old buddy Passepoil he raises the little girl in Spain. At the same time he returns frequently to France where he detects confronts his friend's murderers and puts them to the sword one by one until only their former leader is left. Finally he discovers that Philippe de Gonzague is the man for whom he is looking.

A green mare makes the fortune of her owner, the horse dealer Haudouin. Shortly after his death, war broke out in 1870. One day, his neighbor Zèphe Maloret denounces Honoré, Haudouin's son, a maverick, to the Prussians. Following this denunciation, their non-commissioned officer enters the Haudouin home and rapes the mother while Honoré is hidden under the bed. The resentment already existing between the Haudouin and Maloret families turns to hatred... A letter recalling the events is lost, which doesn't help matters.

This movie is a Marcel Aymé adaptation and it deals with the not-so-glorious side of the Occupation: black market, war profiteers, cracking open bottles of Champagne while most of the Parisians are almost starving.

Music seller and singer on occasion, Jacques Gardel learns from master Jérôme Quilleboeuf that he inherits oil fields located in Big Bend in Texas.

Jean Brevent still did not understand the departure of his wife, Danielle Darieux. It's been five years, but he still can't forget her. In spite of a work of writer originator in a newspaper, in which it tried to be invested completely, time did not make its work. One day, by chance, he meets her in the bus...

A teacher runs an ad in the newspaper to find a wife. Afraid of beautiful ladies, he weds an ugly woman. After a car accident, he meets a doctor who offers to reveal his wife's beauty.

In 19th century France, Jean Valjean, a man imprisoned for stealing bread, must flee a relentless policeman named Javert. The pursuit consumes both men's lives, and soon Valjean finds himself in the midst of the student revolutions in France.

Vincent Etchebar is spotted by the impresario Cartoni who gives him the opportunity to break into Paris. But nothing will go as planned.

Two unlikely companions must smuggle four suitcases filled with contraband pork across Nazi-occupied Paris.

Brigadier Le Gouce and Private Flicot lose their horses during a campaign in Italy. To avoid looking ridiculous, the two hussars cross the country in search of their mounts. But when they are mistaken for deserters, their regiment gives chase.

Count Fernand du Bois d'Enghien typifies the pleasure seeker and as such he has a mistress of course, star singer Lucette Gauthier. But now Fernand feels it is time for him to tie the knot. For that, pretty Viviane Duverger is the ideal prey. The trouble is that the explosive Lucette does not hear it that way. Fortunately for Bois d'Enghien, Urugua, a rich South American general, falls in love with Lucette.

The Adventures of Cadet Rousselle that on the French Revolution left his hometown in search of fortune. He thinks he knows love with Violeta, a dancer in a band of comedians but ends up involved in a monarchist plot.

Emile is a good mechanic whose clientele is very loyal. A bit naive, he is bamboozled by a seller who manages to sell him the full trappings of the perfect fisherman. No sooner did he regret that he bought, frightened by his wife's reaction to such expenditure. But he plans to try it ...

Witty narration follows the history of Versailles Palace; founded by Louis XIII, enlarged by autocratic Louis XIV, whose personal affairs and amours, and those of his two successors, are followed in more detail to the start of the Revolution, after which the story is brought rapidly up to date. A huge cast plays mainly historical persons who appear briefly.

The umpteenth adaptation of Dumas' novel finds d'Artagnan and his friends promoting the love affairs of Anne of Austria and the Duke of Buckingham, incurring the wrath of the Cardinal and exposing themselves to the cold cruelty of Milady de Winter. Also featured are the tender Mme Bonacieux, the hilarious Planchet, the Queen's ferrets and Bethune's executioner, against a backdrop of clanging swords.

Philippe, an employee at the Bourdinet firm, having been caught kissing Jacqueline, his boss's daughter, is fired. Some time later, Bourdinet launches a radio quiz show to boost his business. Philippe then decides to compete in the hope of telling the thousands of listeners what he thinks of the industrialist. A blow on the head having given him a gift of second sight, the competitor becomes impeccable and wins astronomical sums to the great despair of Bourdinet. Everything will work out in the end and Philippe will be able to marry Jacqueline.

A comedy about a dimwitted man who must obtain a high-school diploma before he can inherit an inn.

Henri and Jeannette Milliard, a newly married couple from Normandy arrive in Paris where they intend to spend their honeymoon. Unforfunately a wicket gate in the metro separates the couple. In panic, Henri looks for his wife across the capital. He ends up finding her at the hotel they were to put up. But it looks as if Jeannette has gone through some distressing adventure.

A simple civil servant Léon, who has the unusual ability to walk through walls, falls madly in love with a hotel thief by the name of Susan. He poses as Garou-Garou, a dangerous gangster to attempt to woo her affections, but is arrested and sent to jail. While in jail he annoys the guards by walking in and out of his cell, and keeps persuading Susan to cease her criminal way of life. As fundamentally being an honest and law-abiding citizen, he eventually handles back everything he has stolen, is acquitted by the court, and becomes famous and respected. When he learns that Susan is planning to return to England and start a new life, he decides to confess to her his emotions. However, the couple is interrupted by a sudden rush of journalists. Trying to escape in a building, they get cornered on a corridor, and Léon pushes Susan through a nearby wall. But by doing this, he loses his own wall-walking ability, and the film concludes.

Madame Husson and her circle of holier-than-thou ladies (including an old maid Madame Cadenas)are looking for a chaste and pure girl who will win a hefty sum.

A provincial ingenue leaves her mother’s tobacco shop with dreams of a life in the Parisian theater, only to become entangled in relationships with a lecherous aristocrat, his starry-eyed nephew, and an old ham actor.

A policeman receives a fabulous inheritance. Thanks to this, he conquers the heart of Queen Marika. But crooks deprive him of his financial means

Léon Ménard, the village verger, is a decent young man whose hobby is to play the accordion. One day he is fired for having accompanied Mary Pinson, a singer deemed scandalous by the right-minded parishioners. Blinded by his love for Mary, Léon follows her to Paris where he becomes her plaything. With Mary's complicity, a gang of swindlers make him the puppet proprietor of a night club. But Léon can't live in a fool's paradise forever and soon finds himself on the street, forsaken and desperate. Luckily, the manager of a circus notices him while he is busking and he hires Léon at once. Not only will success come to him but he will win the love of sweet Solange.

Naive and good-hearted Léon Ménard arrives in Paris, determined to find work in the capital. In a café, he meets Bob, a seedy guy, who helps him to get a job. On cloud nine, the ingenuous young man, does is unaware of how Bob manipulates him. Having become the night concierge of a hotel, the thankful Léon lets Bob and his accomplices get into the pace. Jewels are stolen as a result.When he is accused, Leon refuses to incriminate his "friend". Fortunately, Charlotte, Léon's fiancé, manages to find evidence of Bob's guilt and thanks to a premium paid by the diamond dealer the two lovebirds can buy a grocer's shop and tie the knot.

Gaston, nicknamed Pilou, has left his native village and Yvette, the girl of his heart, to go to Paris where he has found work as a painter. He is a naive good-natured man who, like most of his fellow-workers, favors a little song or two while he works. For the time being he is busy repainting the exterior of a block of flats and, when he does not sing to pass the time, he looks through the windows, observing the tenants in their daily lives. As time goes by, he goes as far as intervening and changing the course of their lives. In the end, despite having found a lookalike of his fiancée, he returns to her.

Léon Ménard, a farmer and an apparently simple man of the country, is invited to visit his uncle Henri Ménard, a prosperous industrialist. He encounters a number of people scheming to marry into the Ménard family for the sake of money. Ménard discovers and thwart the plots and manages to unite a young couple who truly are in love. The romantic comedy ends happily with a double marriage. Henri's daughter Nicole marries Didier, and Ménard marries his new-found love Rosine. It turns out that Léon is "not so stupid" after all.

A large farm in Vendée. The father is dying and the three brothers and sister swear not to marry not to break up the field. Months pass. Francis, the eldest, took things in hand. For him, the promise to their father is sacred. So he does everything for his brothers and his sister Amanda are not tempted. However, the latter lets himself courted by a young man from the neighboring village ...

Martine, who has become a major star of the song in Paris, wants to return to visit her hometown. Confronted with Merlerault, a very haughty and noble character who wants to teach her how to live, she succumbs after a time of anger, to the charms of the gentleman. They get married but she forgot to tell her husband that her father is in fact the most famous poacher in the area.

Robert and Françoise Monier make a hot air balloon to fly to the stratosphere. After a visit to Venus, they return home, but have only aged 15 days whereas 25 years have passed on Earth.