A Monkey in Winter

In a Normandy coastal town toward the end of the German occupation, the hotel keeper Albert Quentin makes a promise to his wife during an air raid: if they survive, he will never drink again. Fifteen years on, his abstinence holds, and the hotel prospers. Then Gabriel Fouquet, a young advertising man with a taste for drink, takes a room while visiting his daughter at a local boarding school. The arrival stirs old appetites in Albert.

Henri Verneuil directed this 1962 French comedy-drama, working from a screenplay by Michel Audiard and François Boyer, with Jacques Bar producing. It followed Verneuil's The Cow and I, It Happened All Night and Love and the Frenchwoman, and came before Any Number Can Win. Jean Gabin plays Albert opposite Jean-Paul Belmondo as Gabriel, with Suzanne Flon as Albert's wife Suzanne, Gabrielle Dorziat as the school's director, Hella Petri as a bar owner and Marcelle Arnold as a nurse.

The pairing of Gabin and Belmondo, two actors of different generations, is central to the film's reputation. On IMDb it holds 7.4/10 from around 3,700 votes, and on TMDB 7.6/10 from roughly 240 votes, indicating a solid and fairly consistent audience reception rather than a sharply divisive one.