A dead scientist who's not dead, five accidental murder confessions, and one very confused bum — French farce at its finest.
Elisabeth is persuaded to have killed her noisy upstairs neighbor, scientist Charles Magne. To save her, Mr. Matheu, Elisabeth's father, accuses himself while Pierrot, Elisabeth's fiancé gets rid of the body in order to save father and daughter. For his part, a gangster also believes he has killed the scientist but he gets shot down by a taxidermist, who runs for life. The girl, her daddy and her boyfriend also run away. But Magne is not dead. A bum is mistaken for him and a police inspector makes everyone believe that he is the one who shot the gangster. At the end of this crazy chain of events all the protagonists are reunited at the station house and everybody dances to express their relief.
Acting
Francis Blanche and Mischa Auer serve committed chaos energy throughout.
Writing
Rube Goldberg plot mechanics — every wrong confession compounds perfectly.
Costume
1957 French fashion on the run — trench coats and terror never looked better.
Director
Raoul André
Francis Blanche
un voisin
Jean Lefebvre
l'inspecteur Martial
Pascale Audret
Elisabeth Matheu
Mischa Auer
Charles Magne
Gaby Basset
La trompettiste
Simone Berthier
La bonne de Matheu
René Blancard
M. Matheu, le père d'Elisabeth
Alain Bouvette
Gaston, le livreur
Pierre Dac
l'homme en caleçon au commissariat
Claude Rich
Pierrot, le fiancé d'Elisabeth
Jacques Dynam
le camionneur boulanger
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This is pure 'comédie policière,' a distinctly French genre mixing crime and slapstick that peaked in the 1950s.
Mischa Auer, playing the not-dead scientist, was a Hollywood refugee who fled McCarthy-era blacklisting — his manic energy here feels genuinely liberated.
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