Broadcast this evening on France 2, the film Les Tontons Flingueurs remains one of the greatest classics of post-war French cinema. A cult that he owes to the interpretation of Lino Ventura and others, to the dialogues of Michel Audiard and to an unforgettable alcoholic scene …
Film adored by several generations of spectators, The Tontons gunslingers (1963) would not be the monument that it is without an anthology sequence that has done a lot for its pantheonization. An authentic eleven-minute piece of bravery that begins after an hour of film. The action of this scene takes place one evening in a villa where a surprise party is organized by Patricia (Sabine Sinjen), the daughter of the “Mexican” (a mobster). Before his death, the latter entrusted his “business” to his friend Fernand (the hitter with a big heart Lino Ventura). While a bunch of young yéyés dance the twist in the living room during this surboum, old gangsters (the priceless Lino Ventura, Bernard Blier, Jean Lefebvre and Francis Blanche) took refuge in the kitchen to have peace. Confined in this tiny room measuring three by two meters, they are reduced to buttering anchovy mashed sandwiches for the guests! Really funny situation.
Drunken night
Sitting around a table, the four men, initially antagonistic, gradually sympathize around a bottle of alcohol. “Here, did you take out the vitriol?” also notices the butler at the sight of the twist-gut (Robert Dalban, with his Fr English and his nose in the shape of a potato). A long drinking scene follows where the protagonists evoke the good old days. Raoul Volfoni (Blier) notably remembers a brothel in Saigon, just as Gabin remembered the Yang-Tsé-Kiang a year earlier in another ethylic comedy with dialogue by Michel Audiard, A monkey in winter. King of tailor-made, Michel Audiard has also succeeded in adapting his pen to the particular phrasing of each of the actors, to shape his dialogues to their own rhythm and personality.
Good words in bursts
There is a real jubilation among the actors to throw these tasty lines. Especially since the tempo of the scene is incredible! And when these very tipsy gentlemen decide to expel manu militari all the young revelers from the pavilion, we cry with laughter and we want to drink with them! Because the pleasure of this sequence is immense. The film has now passed into posterity. And we have to go back to Raimu’s card game in Marius (1931) by Marcel Pagnol to find such a legendary scene in the history of French cinema, with four men around a table.