Umbrella Coup
Short description
Grégoire Lecomte is a struggling actor who spends more time chasing auditions than landing roles. When he sets out for what he believes is a screen test for the part of a killer, he walks into the wrong room and finds himself among gangsters. Both sides misread the situation: Grégoire takes the mob boss for a producer, while the gangsters take him for the hitman they were expecting. He signs what he assumes is a film contract and departs for Saint-Tropez, where he is to eliminate the arms dealer Otto Krampe with a rigged umbrella concealing a syringe. What Grégoire treats as a prop and a piece of staging is in fact the real assignment, and he has no idea of it.
Gérard Oury directed this 1980 French comedy, which came after The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob in his filmography. The screenplay is by Danièle Thompson and Oury. Pierre Richard heads the cast as Grégoire, with Valérie Mairesse, Christine Murillo, Gérard Jugnot, Gordon Mitchell and Roger Carel in supporting roles.
The film runs 95 minutes. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.6 from around 3,500 votes, while on TMDB it rates 6.9 from nearly 200 votes, indicating a modest but steady regard among viewers.
What's left behind the scenes
- The car used by Grégoire Lecomte is an "Alfa Romeo Berlina" (1968 model). Moskovich monitors Lecomte using a "Mercedes-Benz - 450 SEL" (1978 model). Lecomte, "Mouse," and Fredo with his family are going on vacation in a "Peugeot-404 Familiale" (1968 model). "The Doctor" drives a "Porsche-911 Carrera" (1972 model).
- Soviet distribution censors cut "unnecessary" scenes of violence: Moskovich killing a man in an express photograph, and Lefort attempting to strangle Lecomte in the toilet with wire. Furthermore, for understandable ideological reasons of "solidarity with the friendly peoples of Africa," the moment when Signor Barberini negotiates a contract with African representatives and leads them into an adjacent room behind a one-way mirror, so they can see everything, was removed; he later apologizes to the mirror for accidentally calling them savages. This not only removed risqué jokes but also somewhat crippled the plot: when showing the satisfied Krampe speeding on his yacht and towing Monsieur Boumaco on a fishing line, it's clear that he is one of the intermediaries. The full version makes it clear where and how he learned about the impending attempt on his life. Also cut were greasy, meaningful episodes: the scene of Fredo's wife talking to Lecomte (who cuckolded his friend), the scene where Josiane finds Raj Khan dead, carefully laid out by Moskovich in his hotel bed.
- The idea for the method of the crime in the film was based on the 1978 murder of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in London, carried out by an agent of Bulgarian intelligence services who used an umbrella with poison.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
