With Louis de Funès as an unscrupulous upstart who tortures his valet Yves Montand to melodies composed by Michel Polnareff, Madness of grandeur is a sure value of French comedies. However, it is gold to return to this classic, because the tensions and thwarted destinies were not circumscribed within the scenario…
Les Miserables, The last days of a condemned man… Victor Hugo may be among the greatest French authors, but his work rarely exudes frank laughter. Even The man who laughs doesn’t live up to its name very well. The idea of drawing from his drama Ruy Blas a comedy appears at first sight as relevant as transforming Notre-Dame of Paris in a circus act.
So when Gérard Oury takes Louis de Funès into an adaptation with a humorous aim, we wonder what was going through his head. Especially since nothing seems too good for the film : with a budget of 18 million francs, enormous for the time, it had two stars in the cast, a Michel Polnareff at the height of his popularity and part of the filming at the Alhambra palace in Granada.
Ruy Blas, a undermined subject
Gérard Oury knows the piece perfectly Ruy Blasand for good reason: he personally performed the role of Sallust for the Comédie Française in 1960, the same year he launched into directing with The Warm Hand.
However, his discovery of the work was not an easy task: French members moderately appreciate this airdrop. That the artist devotes himself to cinema at the same time does not help matters, especially since he benefits from certain adjustments in his contract to favor his dual role.
Worse: Robert Hirsch, the interpreter of Don César, slams the curtain of rehearsals a week before the premiere, and holds Oury responsible for his defection. The two men come to blows. Next to it, Salluste and Blaze’s quarrels appear like friendly teasing…
But after all, the illustrious Victor Hugo himself faced strong resistance when he was released in 1838. The leader of romanticism found himself in the crosshairs of artists and critics of his timewho criticized him for transgressing the codes with his sometimes grotesque popular theater. Many of his plays need to be stopped early. Balzac lets loose on the subject of Ruy Blasevoking in a letter “an infamy in verse”.
And yet, slipped into Salluste’s clothes, Oury senses its comic potential. Every evening, while he waits to get up after having been murdered at the hands of Ruy Blas (we warned you that the original text was less funny), he reflects on the narrative mechanisms of the play. Misunderstandings, disguises, traps, an all-out duennaa finale in the form of a vaudeville-esque fool’s game that Feydeau would not deny: all the ingredients are there for a cinematic farce!
The director calls on the writer Marcel Jullian, already at work on The Big Mop et Le Corniaudand Danièle Thompson, her own daughter, to transform the drama into comedy. In the end, their scenario respects the main lines of the original textand offers De Funès, who returns to his theatrical roots, the role of “beautiful slut” that he requested.
Blaze, the thwarted role
What Gérard Oury wants is capitalize on the triumphs of the De Funès/Bourvil duowho gave him recognition with his first comedy Le Corniaud. If he only requested the latter for The brainhe intends to reform the couple to play the master and his valet in this new project provisionally titled The Dark Heroes.
Although Bourvil had rather toyed with the idea of a musical film with De Funès to exploit their respective skills in the field, both men were enthusiastic. Producers, the press and the public can only be enticed : all the lights would be green, if the worm was not already in the fruit.
If he did everything to hide his multiple myeloma, the director and his producer Alain Poiré cannot ignore that Bourvil’s days are numbered. They lock themselves into denial and continue hoping for a miracle. But after extremely grueling final shoots, the former music hall singer succumbed on September 23, 1970, abruptly interrupting numerous projects.
Gérard Oury is thinking of stopping everything. A few days after the funeral, while he attended a social evening in honor of the cinematographer Henri Decaë (who will take care of the photography of Madness of grandeurs), Simone Signoret approaches him and gives him an idea who will restart everything: hiring her husband, a certain Yves Montand.
The director is seduced. The very prolific actor has also shared the bill with the deceased in one of his very last appearances, The Red Circle by Jean-Pierre Melville. Montand accepts, helping to make the first name César a link in his filmography (Caesar and Rosalie, Jean de Florette…).
Except that the star doesn’t exude at all the same energy as Bourvil. The script is rewritten. From Sganarelle, the valet becomes a sort of Scapin, the type of seducer the queen can fall in love with at first sight. The film changes its name: after a duel with The greats of Spain, Madness of grandeur s’impose.
The problem is that the filming has to take place in Spain. A notorious communist, and from a family that fled fascist Italy, Montand is very reluctant to provide this indirect guarantee to the Franco regime. The actor links his fate to that of ETA militants recently sentenced to death. The dictator ends up pardoning them. The star’s honor is safe.
Which doesn’t stop the film crew from playing with fire, in a very literal way. In order to give heart to the dozing extras during the scene where the effigy of Sallust is burned, an assistant suggests that they imagine that it is Franco… For the rest, the collaboration between Montand and De Funès is going very well, the two men agreeing to come up with new gags. It is on the side of the female casting that things are less rosy.
The curse of female roles
In the role of the cantankerous guard, actress of Armenian origin Alice Sapritch seems to have hit the jackpot. Despite a very honorable filmography, which brought her into contact with Yves Montand (Prime Minister May), Louis de Funès (Sur un arbre why) and Gérard Oury (The Threat), the fifty-year-old had never really broken through.
In Madness of grandeurshe bursts onto the screen thanks to a key scene: its legendary stripping of leaves before the eyes of a stunned Montand. To do this, Oury, who was his classmate at the Conservatory, forced him to take striptease lessons from the Crazy Horse Saloon dancer Sophia Palladium.
In reality, this would also have been requested for overtaking the actress on certain gluteal movements. Sapritch will constantly downplay the role of the latter, limiting its contribution to a single course and some advice, and firmly contesting having been replaced by the image.
No matter: the same year, his composition of Folcoche in Viper in the fist for television helps to root his face in the minds of the general public. Alas, this late consecration will remain without follow-up: Sapritch will be confined for the rest of her career to minor workstrendy chickpeas.
The fate of the one she oversees in the film is even more tragic. Before landing the role of the queen, and with a few exceptions (the spaghetti western bell ringers by Sergio Corbucci) Karin Schubert is subscribes to erotic comedies which are experiencing their golden age in Italy.
But the collaboration went very badly with Oury, who inelegantly described it as “ worst pain in the ass he’s ever known“. It is rumored that the director made advances towards her, and is angry that the actress is asked to film in a nightgown.
The role, however, allowed him to obtain a little notoriety in France. She continued the following year with Bluebeard (alongside Raquel Welch) and The attack by Yves Boisset. But she does not abandon eroticism, appearing among others in the premonitory My God, how did I fall so low ?
The descent into hell took shape in the early 1980s: divorced, abandoned and forced to meet the needs of her drug-addict son, she lets herself be seduced by money from pornographic magazines. Trapped in the porn industry, she followed up with a slew of films hardcores interspersed with several suicide attempts.
If it is the delight of TV rebroadcasts, Madness of grandeur received 5 million admissions at the time, an honorable score, but disappointing compared to the 17 million The Big Mop. As for De Funès, it begins its twilight : he slows down the pace considerably, even demanding to turn more than with Gérard Oury (The Adventures of Rabbi Jacob), which will not save him from the extremely serious double heart attack which turns his career and his life upside down four years later.
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