Scemo di guerra

Michel Colucci (Coluche) was known as a fairly vulgar comedian. His performance in that movie puts him among the great actors. One thinks of Humphrey Bogart in "the Caine mutiny" when watching him create the role of the mentally disturbed army surgeon. In that particular role, I would even put Coluche ahead of Bogart.

I had never heard about this movie because I left Paris to live in Los Angeles in 1984. It seems that the bad prediction of Fatima in this movie seen in the cup of tea was really concerning you. You passed few months after acting in this movie in a so strange motorcycle accident. I saw this movie. This is not the best movie you could have done but somehow it is so much you. A racist defending the rights of every man and woman. A "new rich" defending all the "old poor". A pacifist defending all activists. A fat man attempting to give food to most of hungry men (Restos du Coeur). I have never been able to understand exactly who you were Coluche. One thing is sure, you died too early and every one of your warnings has been verified to be correct. The politicians from all sides in most countries are as you described them when you were alive. You were so right to make fun of all of them. As I am writing this note, TV5 International in its show "Envoye special" is reporting about Darfour and its horrors... Coluche, may be you are better off wherever you are now. Thank you anyway.

...in France where even people like me who do not go much for his stuff admire him for all that he did for the poor (and is still doing thanks to his wife Veronique and all their friends.)

Coluche should be best remembered for "Le Fou De Guerre" ,his most ambitious work.Now disturbing (and his soldiers have really a bad time),now almost crying like a motherless child (the scene of the psychological test where he wants the mom to come back to his little boy),now funny ("these drawings could be Romeo and Juliet").He runs the whole gamut.

We need more generous artists like Coluche during our trouble times.We miss him.