ONCE UPON A TIME… THE MAD ADVENTURES OF RABBI JACOB

Protagonists:

• Radu MIHAILEANU, director and scriptwriter
• Danièle THOMPSON, co-screenwriter
• Josy EISENBERG, co-screenwriter and rabbi
• Henri GUYBET, actor
• Gérard CHALIAND, sociologist
• Benjamin STORA, historian
• Vladimir COSMA, composer
• POPECK, actor

Portrait of a film : Gérard Oury directs The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob in 1973. Louis de Funès, incarnating his usual character – authoritarian and terrorizing everyone around him – a role exacerbated by racism and anti-Semitism, must conspire with an Arab leader and disguise himself as an orthodox rabbi. More than 7 million people bought a ticket to watch this fable about learning tolerance. After being called a pornographer, Gérard Oury had to renounce filming in New York in the orthodox Jewish quarter. He will also be forced to give up the rue des Rosiers in Paris for a neighbourhood in Saint-Denis.

Portrait of an era: the script is written at the time of airplane hijackings by the Palestinians and during the Munich Olympics hostage crisis. The film is released in October 73, two weeks after the start of the Yom Kippur War. The wife of film distributor Georges Cravenne, is opposed to the release of the film, attempts to hijack the Paris-Nice flight and is shot dead by the police.

Portrait of a filmmaker: Gérard Oury (1919-2006), who directed 17 films including Le Corniaud and La Grande Vadrouille, loved fables, vaudeville in cinema, and actors paired as antagonistic opposites.