A very good classic french comedy with famous french actors, I mean, Fernandel and Louis de Funes. Fernandel is a star here, he plays 6 different people in this film, and different people of different age! It's easy to understand what a great comedy actor he is! Funes is also play great part here... (and here he still has his hair:). This film contain many very well-filmed moments and it is,of course,a good family movie( it contains a little nudity, but it's very gentle).And in conclusion I must say that it isn't funny from A to Z, it's just a clever film that is very good for old cinema lovers...So, have a good time.And also watch Public enemy n.1 (1953) with Fernandel. It's worth a look!!! P.S (Later Mister Pitkin uses jokes and tricks that Fernandel do in this one...)
6 Reviews
THE SHEEP HAS FIVE LEGS (Henri Verneuil, 1954) ***
Bunuel197614 February 2014
French comic Fernandel occupies basically the same niche as Jerry Lewis and Norman Wisdom do in American and British cinema respectively: his immense popularity is as much a mystery to this viewer as his particular brand of fooling – prone to excessive mugging and with pathos never too far away – is resistible. To be fair to him, he tried his hand more regularly at serious fare, finding a congenial rapport with such luminaries as Marcel Pagnol, Julien Duvivier (who also started the star off on the series revolving around his signature role of Don Camillo – which even gets a delightful lampoon here, but more on this later) and the director of this film.
A favourite premise with star comedians is their showing off in multiple roles: in fact, Fernandel here plays a family patriarch and his five offsprings; frankly, I was surprised he did not include a female impersonation among the lot – but the characters are, in any case, sufficiently differentiated between them. Typically, some get more attention than others: however, this eventually pays off here when one of them himself becomes the father of sextuplets (to go along with the four he already had!).
The narrative follows a necessarily episodic structure, which invariably yields hits and misses throughout; still, the highlights are pretty memorable: the bucolic old man's noisy disapproval of a highbrow play being staged inside an amphitheatre; the ne'er-do-well family man's tenure with creepy funeral director Louis De Funes (who would grow to similar stardom by the next decade) – on the other hand, his brushes with a celebrated beautician sibling are less successful...but do feature a surprising amount of nudity!; a journalist, reduced to serving as "Agony Aunt" on a magazine, is mistaken for a young woman's wealthy but middle-aged intended when he goes to visit her stuffy family actually bearing the news of the man's sudden death; a 'salty dog' engages first in routine card-play with various shifty types and then, after he loses everything (including the ship's cargo), an intense game of chance involving a fly and two pieces of sugar in an effort to retrieve his losses and make a 'killing' besides (this, too, is a fairly risqué scene – showing a girl in the skimpiest of South Sea attires!); a curate has become reclusive because the locals do not take him seriously on account of him being a dead-ringer for the afore-mentioned Don Camillo!
The movie received an Oscar nomination for the heavily-credited story, following its 1955 U.S. release; incidentally, an unspecified prize did go its way at the Locarno International Film Festival. To be honest, having watched this, I am willing to cut Fernandel some slack by approaching his filmography with more of an open mind (I do own a fair amount to tide me over) – if anything, I ought to give his "Don Camillo" outings a glance at long last...having missed out on them countless times on Italian TV ever since my childhood days!
A favourite premise with star comedians is their showing off in multiple roles: in fact, Fernandel here plays a family patriarch and his five offsprings; frankly, I was surprised he did not include a female impersonation among the lot – but the characters are, in any case, sufficiently differentiated between them. Typically, some get more attention than others: however, this eventually pays off here when one of them himself becomes the father of sextuplets (to go along with the four he already had!).
The narrative follows a necessarily episodic structure, which invariably yields hits and misses throughout; still, the highlights are pretty memorable: the bucolic old man's noisy disapproval of a highbrow play being staged inside an amphitheatre; the ne'er-do-well family man's tenure with creepy funeral director Louis De Funes (who would grow to similar stardom by the next decade) – on the other hand, his brushes with a celebrated beautician sibling are less successful...but do feature a surprising amount of nudity!; a journalist, reduced to serving as "Agony Aunt" on a magazine, is mistaken for a young woman's wealthy but middle-aged intended when he goes to visit her stuffy family actually bearing the news of the man's sudden death; a 'salty dog' engages first in routine card-play with various shifty types and then, after he loses everything (including the ship's cargo), an intense game of chance involving a fly and two pieces of sugar in an effort to retrieve his losses and make a 'killing' besides (this, too, is a fairly risqué scene – showing a girl in the skimpiest of South Sea attires!); a curate has become reclusive because the locals do not take him seriously on account of him being a dead-ringer for the afore-mentioned Don Camillo!
The movie received an Oscar nomination for the heavily-credited story, following its 1955 U.S. release; incidentally, an unspecified prize did go its way at the Locarno International Film Festival. To be honest, having watched this, I am willing to cut Fernandel some slack by approaching his filmography with more of an open mind (I do own a fair amount to tide me over) – if anything, I ought to give his "Don Camillo" outings a glance at long last...having missed out on them countless times on Italian TV ever since my childhood days!
A hidden gem that needs to be viewed by more cinema buffs.
Ken-11412 November 1998
Fernandel is brilliant in multiple roles that stretch his abilities as a wonderful comedic actor with the "horse faced" grin. The story concept is clever with a delightful "surprise" conclusion, yet it is the episodic statements that give full bloom to this wonderful film; especially the sequence aboard the tramp steamer when a gambling game involves the reaction of its players to a housefly.
Eat Your Heart Out, Alec
writers_reign31 October 2006
Warning: Spoilers
It would be both incorrect and foolish to suggest that Alec Guiness was anything less than a fine actor but in the area where he is arguably best remembered, multiple roles, Fernandel can give him cards and spades as well as illustrating that less is more. In Kind Hearts And Coronets - as fans never cease of reminding us - Guiness 'played' eight roles whilst here, playing only six, Fernandel wipes the floor with him. Perhaps we shouldn't be too harsh on Guiness, he was, after all, only as good as the script and all too often the script of Kind Hearts required him only to drag up, get his laugh and move on to the next cardboard character. Here, eschewing the cheap laughs of disguise, Fernandel offers more than superficial portraits of five quintuplets as well as their father. The father in question is an irascible vintner, miffed that his five sons long ago took it on the Jesse Owens and haven't darkened his door since and apparently haven't the least desire to do so. Given that they'll be forty years old any day now the local mayor senses welcome PR if they should be publicly reunited with the old man and to that end the local doctor is tapped to locate them. We're now in Duvivier territory and in fact Fernandel played one of the characters in Un Carnet du bal, another film comprised of sketches in the wake of a quest to find several - in this case - dance partners and it hardly needs to be said that Duvivier does it better but that is not to sneeze at Verneuil who turned out some decent stuff over the years. Most would agree that the second and third segments are slightly better in which Fernandel plays respectively a window washer with his own quartet of kids becoming slowly hypochondriac as the result of an agreement he struck with undertaker Louis de Funes, and the captain of a freighter gambling the cargo, to say nothing of his girl friend, on the perambulations of a fly. The last character, a cure, is largely a topical 'in' joke in which the cure has gone into virtual hiding because of his resemblance to the actor currently portraying Don Camillo in a series of movies based on the Giovanni Guareschi novels. The other characters are a 'Miss Lonleyhearts' journalist and a beautician, not a million miles away from the gay hairdresser played by Fernandel in Un Carnet du bal. This is arguably - together with L'Auberge rouge - Fernandel's best post-war film although The Cow And I, also directed by Verneuil is also in the running. An excellent comedy from an old Master.
6 x 0 = 0
gridoon202428 October 2019
This is the movie where the famous French comic Fernandel plays six different roles. It certainly shows his versatility. Kudos to him. Problem is, none of his six characters are amusing (though one of them, a priest who is getting confused with a movie priest, Don Camillo, also played by Fernandel in other movies, is certainly very meta!). Some fleeting female nudity (in a commercial comedy) makes you assume that the censorship laws were much more lax in France at the time, but otherwise the movie is also paced like an ancient fossil; it is strictly for Fernandel fans. *1/2 out of 4.
A Gallic Comedic Gem
monabe5 February 2000
A favourite French comedy that admirably showcases the artistry of Fernandel. The episode involving - inter alia - a fly and a most comely young lady, remains one of my fond adolescent memories of subtitled 1950's French cinema at the local cinema. Recommended if you want to revisit (or visit) a magic time in French cinema or see a great comedic artist at work in other than the Don Camillo guise most non - French viewers know.
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