The American Beauty (1961)

Best movie ever!

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

I saw this one when it was new, in the 1960s, and with age it's only got better. The simple, lovable people of an idealized Parisian neighborhood have an additional layer of nostalgia value as we recall a country that appears to have found its feet again after wartime but has not yet been overwhelmed by globalization. The threat is certainly there, but in comical form. There's a hapless, primitive espresso machine. There's a lo-tech manufacturing machine that's replaced with a hi-tech one-- involving, by the way, a gag I remember from the 1960s version that wasn't in the version I downloaded from the web. And there's the Belle Américaine itself, a huge luxury convertible that is admired by all but something of a mixed blessing. Anyway, the script presents a charming little world and the story is full of well-scripted and well-performed comical episodes any one of which, if you put it into a comedy of the last couple of decades, would be the highlight of the movie.

-La Belle Américaine English: The American Beauty, is a French comedy film from 1961, directed by Robert Dhéry, written by Alfred Adam, starring Alfred Adam and Louis de Funès. The film was known under the titles: "La bella americana" (Italy), "The American Beauty" (English title), "Der tolle Amerikaner" (West Germany).Plot: -The wife of a rich man learns that her husband has an affair with a younger woman. She takes revenge on him by selling his beloved big car for little money. The worker Marcel Perrignon is very happy about this bargain but when his boss sees the car he envies him and Perrignon gets fired. This is the start of a number of mishaps for Perrignon.

Okay, I'm doing this from memory: i haven't seen this movie for 40 years, and it's not findable. But I remember it as seamlessly entertaining, with a simple plot device from which, in true comedic good form, the story flows effortlessly.A factory worker buys a cadillac for, like, $50 from a divorcée compelled in the settlement to sell it and give the proceeds to her hated husband. When he parks the car next to his boss's pathetic compact, the trouble starts.SPOILER ALERT you'll never find this jewel anyway, so I'm telling it.The funniest part of the movie, as I recall, is the running assembly-line joke. The factory is a small, one-room affair, with six or so people laboring around an old, noisy, falling-apart device of unknown function. After much hard labor massaging the machine just so, it's ready for output. But it always freezes, and one worker's job is to kick it in a certain exact place to get it going again. Everyone's moves are totally routinized, hilariously: when the pretty girl rolls up the cart to catch the final product (a one-foot rod of completely unspecific purpose) just as it comes out with a "puoit", the same worker pats her butt at the same identical moment in the process, in the same identical way.In the last scene, the company president invites the shareholders in to see the automated, completely workerless new plant, he flips a switch and the huge, featureless cube taking up 90% of the room begins to quietly hum. Just when it's clearly about to produce the product, it freezes, and the president has to give it a kick to get it to puoit the product out.

I said many times how much I like Robert Dhery, Colette Brosset and the whole team we find in each of their movies( Jacques Legras, Henri Rollin, jacques Fabri, and many others, not to forget Louis de Funès... who became later the great star everybody knows) This makes a good simple comedy, just for a laugh and for good old time nostalgy, with a good story, good playing and very good dialogues. Don't expect a great and brilliant masterpiece. Just comedy and good realistic dialogues. Colette Brosset is lovely as ever, and Jacques Legras shows once more he could do better than Candid camera.The story ? a man buys a (very) used motorcycle but his wife sees an ad in the paper selling a neat cadillac for the same price. So he buy the car, and his life change. no need to say more, the story itself is well written but not very important, the colourful characters and good dialogues are the goodie of this movie, as in others of Robert Dhery or Pierre Tchernia (whom we can see in this movie, during a scene shown on TV) If you watch some Robert Dhery or Branquignol's movies you'll notice the characters have the real name of the actors. For example, in this one, Jacques Balutin is the inspector Balutin. I recommend this movie to any people who like simple french comedies, want to sit in a comfortable armchair get a good time and forget all their problems during 1:25 hour If you like it see also ah, les belles bacchantes, allez France, Vos gueules les mouettes, Le petit Baigneur,le viager, pas de problème and most of Louis de Funès movies, as obviously he didn't forget to give a role to his old mates in later movies, when he was a star.