Simply Perfect

Excellent but underrated film

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

I sure enjoyed this film, not only for the actors, after all it is quite a cast, but it has a very good story, I would say the central character is Bourvil, playing a man who is getting on in age, and thinks he is too old for a sexy affair, but you never know... Alain Delon is his son who is still in school and has an affair with an older woman, Françoise Arnoul, who is very sexy, by only showing her legs she is more sexy than most actresses who nowadays get totally naked. Remarkable scene when she is painting a nylon stocking on her legs(the film takes place during the 2nd world war) including the back seam. Jean Claude Brialy plays a character he would play in other films, the young man who would not fall for a woman. Lino Ventura is Brialy's father.

That's what the title means.Like Autant-Lara's"la traversée de Paris",it's a Marcel Aymé adaptation and it deals with the not-so-glorious side of the Occupation:black market,war profiteers cracking open bottles of Champagne while most of the Parisians are almost starving.The conclusion is moral though.Michel Boisrond is a third-rate director and his movie is academic to a fault.What saves this work is the cast which is quite impressive:Bourvil,Alain Delon,Lino Ventura and Jean-Claude Brialy -who will meet again during their career .Best scene:Frenchie Pierre Mondy,in German uniform,telling Bourvil that Delon (Bourvil's son in the story)is wanted by the Gestapo;the parents think he is a Resistance fighter while their offspring is having a wild time.