Wonderful character development!

What makes it different from others?

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I first saw this movie in 1971. My brother and I liked it so much that we saw it twice (we still use lines from it in conversation). Wish it would be issued on DVD. When I saw it again after a lapse of over 30 years, I was delighted to see skits I had forgotten about. This movie is stuffed full of hilarious moments. I have a badly scratched VHS version (a former rental), but it's still a lot of fun to watch. Bourvil (Anatole) and Jean-Paul Belmondo (Arthur) have some memorable bits of dialog and wonderful on-screen rapport. David Niven (Colonel Matthews) is the dashing villain with the brain, and he delivers his usual polished performance. I was never much of a fan of Eli Wallach's movies, but he's pretty good here as a gangster guarding his sister's virginity.

Occasionally seen on TV in France, this film has now been issued on a double DVD in France with French subtitles only. Picture quality is superb ( THX Standard ). The film is extremely entertaining, to say the least, quite normal as the directer is the great Gérard Oury and on a par with such films as Le Corniaud or La Grande Vadrouille. I'm sure it's well known across the world, even if people don't know its title, if only because of David Niven's head that slants to one side because his brain's too heavy. There's a mixture of actors here, some French, some foreign and it has that light hearted happy-go-lucky-swinging-sixties look as typified by the Italian Job and other similar films. Knowing the perverse nature of things, now that this commentary has been written, the film will probably turn up on DVD in the coming months !! Let's hope so anyway !

It must be nearly twenty years since I last saw this film on tv and so I have only a vague memory of it. I do remember it as being highly entertaining.David Niven plays a master criminal called 'The Brain' who is so massively intelligent, one of the give away signs of his identity is that his massive brain occasionally causes his head to go off balance thus causing him to keep it upright in his hands (very gallic sense of humour as this film appears to be largely French made).He plans a major robbery whilst trying to avoid the attentions of Interpol. One of the gang members is the great French comedian, Bourvil who had parts in among others 'Monte Carlo or Bust' and the tv series 'The Flashing Blade'.I would love to see this come on the tv again and can only think its been left off for contractual reasons over ownership of the rights and for royalty purposes.

I saw this movie more than ten years ago but I still remember it as one of the funniest comedies I've ever seen. It's very close to the Pink Panther's type of comedy and has an excellent character played by David Niven. It is the type of humor that does not appeal to the grotesque or strictly obvious and very alike what you could call a Peter Sellers type of movie.