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Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe (The) AKA Le grand blond avec une chaussure noire
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Film Movement Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (10th July 2015). |
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The Film
 The apprehending of a French citizen with heroin claiming to represent a division of the French Secret Service causes professional embarrassment for Colonel Toulouse (Jean Rochefort), who rightly suspects it to be a plot engineered by his professional rival Bernard Milan (Bernard Blier). Having discovered his home and office bugged, Toulouse concocts his own plot by letting Milan overhear details about the arrival of an agent who will be able to clear up the entire affair. He right hand man Perrache (Paul Le Person) to the airport to pick out a random citizen with the knowledge that he is being trailed by Milan's men. Scanning the crowd of arrivals, Perrache is drawn to violinist François Perrin (Pierre Richard), or rather the fact that he is wearing one black shoe. The shoe, so to speak, is soon on the other foot, as Perrache and his underlings surveil Milan and his underlings as they delve into Perrin's past, search his apartment, and monitor his personal life to see what he knows. Convinced that Perrin is a secret agent, they of course interpret the most mundane aspects of his life as a clever cover – including his affair with the wife (Colette Castel) of his best friend Maurice (Jean Carmet) – however, Perrin has enough eccentricities for Milan to believe he is a super agent. As Perrin bumbles about oblivious to the surveillance, Maurice is starting to believe that he is suffering a nervous breakdown. When Toulouse, who has been enjoying Milan's growing paranoia, adds another turn of the screw but setting up an imaginary appointment in which Perrin is supposed to file his report on the New York affair, Milan decides that he must be eliminated with the assistance of slinky agent Christine (Mireille Darc). With Milan's professional self-destruction imminent, Toulouse instructs Perrache to pull his men off the spy detail; but Perrache seems to be the only one concerned about what will happen to Perrin. Counter-espionage becomes light comedy in this deceptively simple yet elegantly-scripted and masterfully-staged effort from Yves Robert , who is perhaps better known to English-speaking audiences the pair of autobiographic Marcel Pagnol comedies My Father's Glory and My Mother's Castle. The comic set-pieces are well-modulated, starting with chuckle-inducing bits like the searching and bugging of Perrin's apartment (with one of Milan's men mystified by a set of Russian nesting dolls) and attempting to tail Perrin on his bike (the tires of which are in constant need of re-inflating) to the wonderfully choreographed symphony performance (with director Robert himself conducting and Perrin bobbing up and down with the notes while searching the orchestra pit for his lost bow). The highlight of the film finds Milan and his underlings fresh from the symphony in black tie as the sympathetic audience to the protracted foreplay of Perrin and Christine (which include Perrin getting assaulted by a bagpipe with a mind of its own and getting Christine's hair stuck in his zipper). The film does manage some suspense late in the film when Milan decides Perrin should be eliminated, but it a question of the ways in which the attempted assassination will be bungled rather than if he will survive to the end of the film. Many of the scripts (and directorial efforts) of writer Francis Veber have been remade stateside – including The Toy, The Dinner Game (as Dinner for Schmucks), The Fugitives (as Three Fugitives helmed by Veber himself), and of course La Cage Aux Folles as The Birdcage) – but steer clear of the awful 1985 Tom Hanks-vehicle remake The Man With One Red Shoe.
Video
Released stateside theatrically in 1973 in an English dub by Columbia Pictures (probably driected by Paulette Rubinstein who handled the dubbing of other arty fare for Columbia like Swept Away and Emmanuelle) and on VHS in 1981, the film did not have a subtitled release here until foreign film label Connoisseur issued it in 1990. Although the film has been available on DVD in Europe, Columbia/Tri-Star and then Sony decided not to renew their rights with Gaumont so the film remained unavailable on disc stateside until now. Film Movement's single-layer Blu-ray features a 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 pillarboxed transfer from Gaumont's new 2K scan which offers a solid presentation of the film. Colors are stable, detail is fine, and grain is finer; but it all serves to prove that underneath the heavier grain and washed-out colors of older transfers of this excellently staged comedy was always a drab visual experience owing to the late seventies clothing and overcast setting with only the blue of Maurice's sweat suit and red of his cap really assuring us of accurate color reproduction (our protagonist is a pasty symphony of beige and gray).
Audio
Although the back cover cites a Dolby Digital track, the French audio is actually in uncompressed LPCM 2.0 mono, and it is a strong track with the plucked strings and stabbing pan flute notes of Vladimir Cosma's playful score felt immediately. The optional English subtitles do have an annoying habit of sometimes lingering in the long silences between lines of dialogue (when scenes transition as well as the title translation remaining onscreen throughout the entirety of the opening credits).
Extras
Apart from the film's theatrical trailer (3:07) and trailers for other current and upcoming Film Movement titles (only three of which are Blu-ray), the only other extra is a booklet with an essay by Nick Pinkerton on the film in which he mentions that director Robert originally wanted Claude Rich for the lead.
Overall
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