Les Gaspards

Pierre "magic" Tchernia was a kind director who shot light and fun movies, "la Belle Américaine", "le Viager", "la Gueule de l'Autre", "Bonjour l'Angoisse". He also did so much entertaining works for television, like "Monsieur Cinema", a must helping people to love cinema. He was a nice entertainer.

"les Gaspards" is one of my favorite french movies, with a theme that is still current : the destruction of old picturesque districts (castles, mansions) to build awful towers or buildings. I just love Michel Serrault and Philippe Noiret characters living in the past, fighting against the destruction of french patrimoine which is more current nowadays than ever. At the time of "les Gaspards", the wheelers-dealers destructed old stations from XIXth century, castles, mansions to build a concrete jungle. Philippe Noiret's Gaspard lives in an incredible underworld and anarchic city struggling against nasty urban delopment, and it is a constant visual pleasure all through the movie. And what a casting, from Charles Denner (terrific as the nasty Minister of Public Works) to Jean Carmet and Gérard Depardieu (yet drinking red wine together).

This has got to be the weirdest film ever made about Paris. It is a wild fantasy comedy, much of which is very funny, but much else of which consists of humour only to be appreciated by the French. It is an outrageous plot, but one which works in its crazy way. The film starts with us seeing some leeks growing in a Paris garden, which suddenly are pulled downwards into the ground and vanish. It turns out that what is going on is that some people living underneath Paris harvest their vegetables in this manner. Yes, I told you it was crazy. But it gets better. Paris really does have a vast underworld, some mediaeval catacombs, tunnels that go on forever, the Metro of course, and mysterious caverns and underground lakes and rivers such as those referred to in THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. And speaking of that, I have with my own eyes seen the lake beneath the Palais Garnier in Paris, the old opera house, and the staff feed a tame catfish who lives there and comes up for food in the hole in the floor. (True, not made up.) So you have to understand that why the French liked this film was that it is based on a huge complex of tunnels under Paris which do really exist. Many of us saw and remember the film METRO (1985), released in English as SUBWAY, starring Isabelle Adjani and Christophe Lambert, one of Luc Besson's fantasies. It is about people living in the secret tunnels of the Paris Metro. But this film goes much further than that, and was made 11 years earlier. One of my favourite parts of subterranean Paris is the long and majestic underground tunnel with which the Canal St. Martin commences, as it wends it way northwards from the Seine. One of the scenes in this film is shot there, so not everything is a set, there are some real locations in the film. This film features Gerard Depardieu in a minor role as a postman, only three years after he began appearing in feature films. Another well-known actor in the film is Philippe Noiret. Lots of people keep disappearing into holes in the pavements, and 20 foreign tourists are abducted and held prisoner by the subterraneans, who have turned into terrorists because they are trying to stop the crazed Minister of Public Works (amusingly played by Charles Denner) from digging up and bulldozering old Paris. He wants to erect two modern skyscrapers on either side of Notre Dame and says that the Seine should be paved over to make an excellent highway to run right through the middle of Paris. The satire on modern developers is laid on in thick dollops and is merciless. The subterranean inhabitants don't like their life in the catacombs being disturbed, and they 'fight back'. They explode a huge bomb under the Ministry of Public Works, so that the building tilts and half of it descends below surface level. There are some very funny scenes where the Minister and the civil servants try to carry on regardless inside, despite the floors of the rooms all being at 45 degree angles, and everyone slipping and sliding and holding onto things. The hero is a quiet bookseller, played by Michel Serrault, who dons his hard hat, puts on his backpack, and descends into the depths to retrieve his daughter, who has fallen through one of the holes which suddenly opened in the street, along with her boyfriend and their two bicycles and been taken hostage. The film is complete anarchy and delightfully bonkers. It is what is known as 'a madcap comedy', and it really is entertaining and amusing, and of course, we can all agree that the Minister is crazy and must be stopped. The film was directed by Pierre Tchernia, who is now 85 years old, though whether he lives on the surface or in the Metro I cannot say.

A tremendously amusing film, where listing Gerard Depardieu as a star, knowingly a deterrent for some, is a misnomer. Possessing a small part in the film, Depardieu is almost unnoticeable as the story continues.

The film focuses on construction processes to "update" the city of Paris for a new industrial renaissance. The "villain", as it were, is the minister of public works, who "closes the Champs D'Elysee for blasting today", and proposed to build two skyscrapers on either side of Notre Dame. Played with a zeal for comedy is Charles Denner, and the hapless inspector Lalatte, trying so desperately to go on vacation, listing a series of disappearances (including 20 foreign tourists) as "escapades"-being young and in the city of Paris, an easy dismissal with an overbearing wife honking a car horn outside.

The symbolism in the film is tremendous-and by the end, you certainly wish for one or two things to have improved, but overall Rondin and Gaspard (the two lead roles) are played as dreamers, idealists in an era where such things are overlooked.

This film comes highly recommended.

The novel by Gaston Leroux depicted a mysterious secret society living in the catacombs of Paris ,the Talpa , speaking old French ;accustomed to living in the dark ,they became mutants:blind, a nose which has turned into a snout, twenty fingers ; their food is rats ;why "la double vie de Theophraste Longuet "? Because the famous brigand Cartouche has taken half of the hero's persona.

The film drastically wanders from the initial novel ; Tchernia and Asterix 's father Goscinny transferred the action to the seventies and opted for a comedy .Compared to their first effort ,"le viager" , it's perhaps less funny , more repetitive but not derivative in the contemporary cinema :using the same actors ( Serrault , Galabru,Carmet ) and adding colorful Noiret , this is definitely off the beaten track : in the seventies ,many mayors wanted their town modern ,not only in Paris. The civil engineering secretary (Charles Denner) has ambitious but questionable plans: to drain the river Seine to build a super highway which will cross Paris ;two buildings will surround Notre Dame De Paris! (the Middle Ages meet the twentieth century!)

The society who lives underground in Leroux 's novel will turn into champions of the old gai Paris ; hostage-taking (the bookseller's daughter, twenty tourists they use to produce electricity by riding bikes ) and blackmail :they will free them only if the politician give up their works which spoil the Parisian landscape ; gaspard is another word (invented in the film) for "rat ";but ,unlike in the novel,they do not eat rats ,but epicurean Noiret has good meals with his guests and he's a wine connoisseur.

The national heritage preservation is still relevant today ,that's why Tchernia's movie has worn well.

Leroux's novel was adapted as a more faithful miniseries by Yannick Andréi with Jean Carmet as the lead this time in the late seventies .