Wow, does that American title make you cringe! The film itself though – unless it's the appalling dubbed version which turns it into a French-American (mis)adventure, is very different, being the first time Bourvil (as minor clerk Léon Dutilleul) truly earns his acting stripes. This is based on the short story 'Le Passe-muraille', and of course the sculpture of author Marcel Aymé is in tribute trapped beween two walls is in Montmartre. Léon first tells his friend the artist Gen-Paul (Raymond Souplex playing the real man (1875-1975)), who of course doesn't believe him when he says that he has the power to walk through walls.
At first Léon simply plays games on his tyrannical boss, and is slow to discover the true power he holds. She discovers that the English 'Lady' Susan Brockson (Joan Greenwood) is in fact not an aristocrat but a cat-burglar working in accomplice with Maurice (the future film director Gérard Oury), and returns a highly valuable pearl necklace that Susan has stolen back to its owner.
But Léon is hardly handsome and poor, so how can he win Susan, with whom he's now become obsessed? Obviously by carrying out impossible bank raids and robberies, by means of which he earns her great admiration, and although he's now in prison he can of course escape just by walking through the walls. But, on trying to escape with Susan, he pushes her through a wall but then loses his powers: the special effects here are brilliant for their time, but it would have perhaps been difficult to freeze him into a wall as in Aymé's story.
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