Henri Verneuil's Un singe en hiver | A Monkey in Winter (1970)

Henri Vernueil's Un singe en hiver is of course a classic, full of highly memorable phrases, and largely set in Villerville, Calvados. Starring Jean Gabin (as Albert Quentin) and Jean-Paul Belmondo (as Gabriel Fouquet) it is highly amusing and the kind of film you can watch many times over, but then as it's based on Antoine Blondin's novel of the same name that's perhaps hardly surprising. I've watched a few video clips of Villerville, one being Belmondo's relatively recent return to the village, the other a collection of people watching a showing of the film, with many of them being able to repeat every line of it.

Un singe en hiver is a kind of buddy movie, but only in the second part. The first part shows France (OK, Tigreville (or Villerville, which now has both names)) under Nazi occupation, the village being bombed, and a drunken Albert in the cellar of their hotel/restaurant with his terrified wife. Albert vows that if they come out of the experience alive he'll never drink again.

And then the name of the street changes names from Pétain to De Gaulle and it's fifteen years later. Gabriel lands in a taxi one night in Tigreville and is put up at Hotel Stella (in reality L'Hôtel des Bains), but as there are no alcoholic drinks there he goes to the Cabaret Normand, gets drunk on Picon bière and when the locals start talking about the temperature in Normandy he gets up, does a flamenco and announces 'Ça, c'est le soleil !'. He staggers (or rather is thrown out) leaving the natives to their 'igloos' and 'banquises'. His ex-partner in Spain, he's mentally still in Spain (in spite of his daughter in Tigreville), and Albert mentally still in China, babbling about the length of the 'Yang-Tsé-Kiang' river. Gabriel later gives a daytime bullfight (à la Blondin) with the cars and is arrested for it (à la Blondin).

That Albert will briefly break his teetotal vow is inevitable when confronted by such a charismatic person as Gabriel, but after the fireworks Albert has to return to normality, to see his father's grave as he does every year, and Gabriel has to move on with his daughter. And the monkey? Well, in China in winter they leave the jungle for the town, where the people gather them to return on trains to their rightful place. True? It's truly a super movie.