Un soir de bombe

Plot :a banker ,whose wife sleeps with his secretary ,receives death threats letters: if he does not pay one million francs , we wouldn't like to bet on your chances of survival:signed :"the taking hand "; after a third letter ,the frightened man goes to the police who give him protection in the shape of two detectives , some kind of Dumb and Dumber , or Hergé's les Dupondt (the Thompson twins) ,quickly put to sleep with drugged coffee ;but the wealthy man ,who does not trust these dim-witted cops at all , has already left Paris, en route to the south of France where he takes refuge in his sister's place . Meanwhile , the police find the banker again :it's a tramp ,the spitting image of the disappeared notable ;but this double cannot obviously recognize his so-called wife and secretary ; two doctors ,about as efficient as the two cops, diagnose amnesia .To make the matters worse ,he's kidnapped by "the taking hand " ,actually a gang .

A tour de force by Pierre Larquey,who pulls off a double part with gusto ; a good screenplay , full of sudden new developments , of hilarious scenes (the wife and her lover ,"pretending to kiss ", to give the amnesiac a shock to help him regain memory ) ,a shaggy-dog story which ends up in a loony bin .

Maurice Cammage was a past master in coarse comedies taking place in the barracks ,all of them eminently forgettable;but given a far-fetched but effective story, he would come up with an enjoyable little comedy such as this one or "une vie de chien" (1941).

"Un soir de bombe" is a must for Pierre Larquey fans, as he plays two characters, a rich and a poor. In both cases, it seems he has some Michel Simon intonations (and it reminds me of later Guitry "la Vie d'un honnête homme" with Simon playing 2 characters). Pierre Larquey is nearly omnipresent, and when his two characters are at the rich's house, one appears after the other disappears, like Droopy and Dreepy in a famous Tex Avery. But other actors mustn't be forgotten, they are all silly in their own way like the two cops looking like the Dupontds in Hergé's Tintin, the comparason is immediate when you see the cops. Old French quality entertainment.