Jean-Pierre Mocky's Les Ballets écarlates (2007)

This film was in fact made in 2004 but initially banned by the culture minister of the time, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, because of the content of the film: an exposé of paedophilia. But it was eventually released not in the cinema but on DVD. Based on L'Affaire des ballets roses scandal in 1959, this work is very far from the best of Mocky's, although I feel that it's been unduly criticised. Certainly the running comments on paedophilia at the base of the screen, and the occasional interruption of the story to announce paedophilic activities in the past don't help the flow, but the film's heart is in the right place. This is the story of a ring of paedophiles from which young Éric (Florian Junique) escapes into the arms of Violaine (Patricia Barzyk), who mysteriously lost her son two years before. It takes Éric some time to allow Violaine to link his story to her son's, but with the aid of a few people (including Mathieu (Mocky himself)) she soon tracks the offenders down and massacres them.

Jean-Pierre Mocky's La Grande Frousse | La Cité de l'indicible peur | The Great Fear (1964)

Even by Jean-Pierre Mocky's standards, this is a crazy film, a swim into the absurdity of existence. Thematically part of the story is based on the fear caused by La Bête du Gévaudan in Lozère in the 1760s, although here part of the film was set in Salers (here called Barges) in the neighbouring département of Cantal. Initially called La Grande Frousse, Mocky changed the title to La Cité de l'indicible peur after the original title of Belgian Jean Ray's novel, on which it's based. Insane as the film may be, Mocky attracted a number of notable actors to play in it.

The forger Mickey le bénédictin (Marcel Pérès) escapes from the guillotine and as criminals are thought to return to the original scene of the crime, L'inspecteur Triquet (Bourvil) is sent to Barges, where everyone is terrified of the monster which supposedly comes out at night there, although Trinquet just calls it a legend; Saint Urodèle is said to have dealt with the creature.

It would be almost impossible to go into details of the 'plot' because there isn't really one, this is more a collection of eccentricities, and the film moves by visiting the quirks of the various characters, such as Trinquet himself, who originally goes to Barges ostensibly to hunt partridge and to look for a bald-headed man who may be wearing a wig and who hates cassoulet, and Trinquet moves in goat-like movements, partly running partly skipping. Franqui (Francis Blanche) spies on the town through binoculars and talks to his statue, a representation of Saint Urodèle; the village doctor Clabert (Victor Francen) is an alcoholic sometimes given to drinking pure medicinal alcohol; Paul (Roger Legris) is frightened of everything; the local cop Loupiac (Jean Poiret) seems more interested in how his hair looks than anything else, although it's normally covered in his képi; and the mayor Chabriant (Raymond Rouleau) has a strange tic of laughing at everything.

Eventually the beast is discovered (for some obscure reason) to be the butcher (René-Louis Lafforgue), although murders continue: first Franqui, then Douve (Jean-Louis Barrault) and finally the mayor. In the end it's discovered that the real criminal is Livina (Véronique Nordey), the mayor's secretary, not that that fact is of any importance in this detective story-cum-fantasy-cum-comedy-cum-satire. As Triquet's little one says as a closing line: 'Plus tard je ne veux être ni un bandit, ni un flic, je veux être un honnête homme': 'When I grow up I want to be neither cop nor robber, I want to be an honest man.'

Jean-Pierre Mocky's Les Vierges (1963)

Les Vierges is five short stories about young women losing their virginity.

In the first, Marie-Claude (Stefania Sandrelli) has two dragueurs chasing her, only to give herself to a stranger at a fair. (How many fairs have appeared in films?)

Geneviève (Catherine Diamant) is the daughter of the constipated banker Marchaix (Jean Poiret) and marries Robert (Jean-Pierre Honoré). Their honeymoon night is ruined for her when her husband leaves her with the feeling that she has been raped.

Christine (Anne-Marie Sauty) is the financée of Xavier (Gérard Blain), an idiot aristocrat who works for Marchaix. Christine plays games with him to spend the night with a painter.

Sophie (Josiane Rivarolla) loves Micky (Johnny Monteilhet), and although they can't find anywhere to have sex they end up in a luxurious bed.

Chemist Nora (Catherine Derlac) is in love with her boss Berthet (Charles Aznavour), who's in his forties and hoping to divorce and marry her. She loses her virginity to a stranger and suddenly Berthet is no longer interested.

This is of course France before the sexual revolution, although it seems to be a revolution just waiting to happen.

Jean-Pierre Mocky's Un drôle de paroissien | An Odd Parishioner (1963)

Jean-Pierre Mocky, who directed so many films but is often ignored by critics, is a kind of anarchist rebelling against virtually every institution. In Un drôle de paroissien his targets are the church, the aristocracy and the police. Georges Lachaunaye (Bourvil) is a member of an impoverished aristocratic family which needs money to live but of course doesn't want to work for it. He therefore has to think of something drastic in order for the family to survive. And then it comes to him: he'll rob the collection boxes in churches.

He puts a great deal of thought into the matter, at first just dangling sucked toffee on pieces of string, then progressing to a tiny kind of vacuum cleaner he conceals in his coat and hoovers up the money when no one is looking. But it's easy to be spotted in his work so he co-opts his friend Raoul (Jean Poiret) to work with him, eventually hiding in churches overnight so they can saw the boxes to make a louvred top which can be slid open and the money collected.

Unfortunately for thieves in churches, there's a section of the police force called the Brigade d'églises(!) trained to catch people in the act of stealing from collection boxes. The film becomes a cops-and-robbers story, with both sides confusingly adopting ecclesiastical disguises. This is my first Mocky, and I look forward to many more.