James Bond à la OSS 117: A Laugh A Minute!
Paul Stevens
James Bond ? la OSS 117: A Laugh A Minute!
All Rights Reserved ? 2014 Paul Stevens
An Article in the Steve's LOL! Series
Also by this Author
You know, like most of us I've seen a lot of movies in my time, but none have really motivated me to sit down and put some comment down on paper. I'm finding I'm watching more and more foreign movies. Somehow they are more realistic, more stylish, or more just plain damn funny that mainstream UK and US productions. It's in that context that I want to draw your attention to a little French gem that gave me tons of belly laughs. I watched it the first time over half a bottle of wine, which meant I may have missed some of the jokes. So I watched it again stone cold sober and it produced a completely new set of belly laughs as well. I should warn you this movie is definitely not PC, aka known as Politically Correct. But that's what makes it hilarious. I'm hoping that after reading this brief article you will go away and watch it on Netflix or some other platform and have a solid 90 minutes of entertainment. In fact, I can promise you 3 hours of entertainment because there is a sister movie "OS117: Cairo Nest of Spies." In the Rio movies the Jews and the Nazis aren't spared from the sick humor and similar punishment is meted out to Islam in the Cairo movie. The movies brilliantly recreate the atmosphere of the 60's. When the opening credits came on, one of the production houses was Mandarin Cinema. You've got to be kidding me not so, but it's true, and a whole batch of Chinese is featured in the opening scene. Incidentally the opening dance scene in the movie is really enjoyable. I have sort of got addicted to it and it never fails to produce smiles all round.
As to the plot, Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, aka OSS 117, superbly played by Jean Dujardin, is the French spy considered by his superiors to be the best in the business.
Jean Dujardin
Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath is described as being an American Colonel from Louisiana of French descent. After service in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), de La Bath worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), then the National Security Council. The year is 1967 - he's been sent on a mission to Rio de Janeiro, to find a former high-ranking Nazi who went into exile in South America after the war. His eventful investigation takes him all across Brazil, from Rio to Brasilia and the Iguazu Falls, accompanied by a deadpan lady Mossad agent (Louise Monot) who is also looking for the Nazi all set to the catchy strains of the Bossa Nova.
Louise Monot
Jean Dujardin became the first French actor to win the Best Actor in a Leading Role Academy Award for his performance in The Artist (2011) on February 26, 2012. The man has panache and has a remarkable resemblance to Sean Connery and he's in very good shape too. He has mastered a wicked grin mixed with the ?lan needed for a dashing secret agent, supposedly the best in France. He corrects people, he is not OSS 117, as in double one seven, or even one one seven, but One Hundred and Seventeen). The man is a comic genius, right up there with Peter Sellers and Austin Powers.
These films by director Michel Hazanavicius are an homage to the action films and spy movies of the 1950s and 1960s (particularly Sean Connery's portrayal of James Bond, Alfred Hitchcock films, and to a lesser extent, the earlier serious adaptations of OSS 's Andr? Hunebelle ). The character of OSS 117, played by Jean Dujardin, is shown as quintessentially "franchouillard" (typically French.) He often creates awkward social situations by his colonial ideology, staunch French patriotism, reinforced chauvinism and machismo, but is just as often the ideal secret agent: intelligent, handsome, physically adept (he loves fighting and dances everything from the mambo to the twist), and he is of course able to use his charm with the women he meets as well. Incidentally the French author Jean Bruce wrote no less than 88 OSS 117 novels for the French publishing house Fleuve Noir Espionnage series beginning with Tu parles d'une ing?nue (Ici OSS 117) in 1949, predating Ian Fleming's James Bond 007 by four years. After Jean Bruce died in a car accident in 1963, his wife Josette Bruce (signing as "J.Bruce") wrote 143 OSS 117 novels before retiring in 1985. Starting in 1987, Bruce's daughter Martine and her husband Fran?ois wrote 23 more OSS 117 books. The last published novel was O.S.S. 117 prend le large in 1992. (Wikipedia)
Here's a batch of viewer's comments:
"The first OSS 117 movie made fun of the Middle Eastern majority culture, and outsider ignorance of their beliefs, in ways that a mainstream US movie never could. THIS movie makes fun of Jews and outsider ignorance, again in ways a mainstream US movie never could. In both movies, believers maintain their dignity and set OSS 117 straight. He is also a charming male chauvinist who is often stopped in his tracks by poised, confident women. This non PC approach is balanced, refreshing, and most important, funny. To quote Kip Addotta, if you don't think God has a sense of humor, just look at the person sitting next to you".
"I just streamed this from Netflix...it had subtitles. Luckily I speak a bit of French, but the subtitles caught most of the humor. There's plenty here to laugh about".
"Of course, the same puns don't work in both languages. For instance, at the end there's a lot of punning on the Chinese name Lee. Lee sounds exactly like "lit" which means bed in French. The translator did a fairly good job coming up with some corny English jokes."
"I loved this film. I hear there's another one coming soon. I can't wait."
"When I read the comment where the author said he did not understand why the code name "No?l Flantier" is so hilarious, I felt that I must explain it. In France, we say "No?l" for "Christmas", but No?l is also a first name. It is a way to make a lot of stupid puns until the big one : "les boules de No?l" => the No?l's balls => the Christmas' balls. We use this expression for Christmas tree's decoration. But in this situation, No?l is a name and not the celebration. So it's a joke about De la Bath's balls! The really funny situation is not this pun but the fact that the author felt so proud of this joke that he had to phone in France in the middle of his investigation to tell it to his boss."
"I also loved it. It definitely had a wit about it not very common in American cinema."
"I loved this movie (although I liked "Cairo ..." a bit more), and one of the best things was the outstanding job they did of recreating the look of the 60s. Some of it was film technique, but the set design played a big part, too. The interiors of the hotels, especially, were note-perfect recreations of the style of the period. The bright colors, the Space-Age design of the furniture ... all were done very well. It's rare to see a movie set in the past that actually looks like a movie made in the past, but OSS 117: Lost in Rio pulls it off beautifully."
"Indeed. A remarkable recreation of atmosphere... Most 60s spoofs make fun of the style & design of the era - this one recalled and enlivened the look and concentrated on the humor of the characters..."
Did I say there was another OSS One Hundred and Seventeen Movie? Indeed, here is a review by Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian, Nov 2008:
OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies, 2006, directed by Michel Hazanavicius, starring Jean Dujardin
"Perhaps I shouldn't have laughed as much I did, but this French spy spoof by Michel Hazanavicius punches out cheeky gags and incorrect humor with the gusto of Zucker/Abrahams or Mike Myers in his Austin Powers heyday. There's a far higher comedy-factor than the dull Get Smart, and it's incidentally the most lovingly detailed period pastiche since Todd Haynes's Far from Heaven. In a week of overblown, unappetizing or disappointing films, this makes a refreshing change. And how interesting to be offered a French movie that doesn't come straight from the "arthouse" stable.
OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies
It is an affectionate send up of a pulp-fiction character known as the "
French Bond": Agent OSS-117, Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, star of innumerable, deadly serious postwar thrillers by prolific author Jean Bruce. (The character actually predates Ian Fleming's creation, though I confess that, before this, I had never heard of him.) It superbly recreates a 50s/60s look, and Jean Dujardin plays the supercool hero as a smug, preposterous type with Clouseauesque pretensions. He is a French chauvinist-patriot with a ridiculous hero-worship of his nation's uninspired statesman, President Ren? Coty, given to handing out photographs of Coty as ill-advised gifts to the inhabitants of France's seething colonies. It is a little like a 1990s MI6 man having a crush on John Major.
With his sculpted, receding hair and light tailored suits, Dujardin resembles the young Connery in From Russia With Love. The year is 1955, and OSS-117 has been sent to Cairo to monitor the growing Suez crisis, make contact with a beautiful agent Larmina, played by B?r?nice Bejo, and generally promote French power, a mission he accepts with glassy-eyed fervour. His superiors see him as a "specialist in the Arabo-Muslim world", an assessment that turns out to be horrifically wrong, when OSS-117 smirkingly informs the natives that Islam is a foolish religion: "You'll grow tired of it - it won't last long." OSS-117's fantastically crass views of the Arab and Muslim world - though probably not too far from the real opinions of the 1950s colonial power - cause him to be regularly ridiculed and beaten up, but somehow his essential self-belief never falters.
Out in Cairo, our hero enjoys many romantic conquests: one is the cue for an excellent sight gag in which the camera pans coyly away from the embracing couple on the hotel bed to some roses in a vase, only to catch a tactless view of them in the mirror.
This is the kind of "stupid" comedy that can only be pulled off by very smart comics. OSS-117 has been such a box-office hit in France that, like Peter Sellers, Jean Dujardin may well be tied to this single role in a string of decreasingly funny films. Never mind. This one delivers unpretentious comedy, with surprisingly chancy satire. The production design and sets by Maamar Ech-Cheikh and Sonia Kalaydjian are great, and the closing credits, incidentally, are presented in a curtain-call style, reminiscent of British TV sitcom geniuses Jimmy Perry and David Croft."
The one scene in this scene that really split my sides was where OS117 couldn't get any sleep because of a call to prayer by a muezzin from a neighboring minaret which was equipped with a loudspeaker and microphone. He gets out of bed and proceeds to beat up the muezzin so causing a national furor. I don't think they could make this movie now. Like Salman Rusdie a fatwa would be issued against Dujardin in no time at all.
Look, these movies aren't ever going to get 5 stars. But if you have an offbeat sense of humor, or at least appreciate it, here's 3 hours of fun for you. Be sure to enjoy them with a glass or two of your favorite tipple.
These two go on my personal list of Cult Classics.
Enjoy!
PS: here's a fun 12 minute segment on You Tube "OSS117 Bloopers" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W437qqLZPf4.
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About the Author
There is a favorite line from my novella Dinner Party For Eight in which Angela asks Harry:
?"What do you think I am?"
Harry considered this for a moment. What was she actually?
?"Well I suppose you are a very beautiful cook."
So if I have to answer the same question what am I actually? I would also need to consider this for a moment. I would like to say I'm an ex astronaut, have more degrees than a thermometer, have competed in the Tour de France without any EPO, surfed Teahupoo in Tahiti and emerged unscathed, sailed round the world, am an ace Alpine skier, am a member of Mensa, have a beauty queen wife and gorgeous kids, and started my own corporation which has listed on NASDAQ. I could go on but like Arnold Schwarzenegger I don't want to boast.
Well to be honest, I have gone some of the way towards all those things. I do have a letter from Wernher von Braun, I do have three degrees in Physics, I have flown in a jet plane (Emirates Air), I do cycle the mega steep hills here where I live but unfortunately can't get EPO anywhere, I am a keen surfer who has almost managed to break his neck, I am an ocean going skipper and I did own my own yacht though if it was me I wouldn't sail with me as captain, I do ski but you need to get out of the way, I do have a beautiful wife (though her agreeing to marry me has to be my biggest piece of luck ever) and two great kids, I do have my own software business but no stock exchanges alas and I would like to take the Mensa test but I'm pretty sure I would fail and then I wouldn't be able to live with that so I would rather rationalize. I live in that sapphire city - Cape Town.
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