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.

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.

It doesn't exist on DVD, it hasn't even made it to VHS, and it never appears on broadcast or cable. So you should have no trouble believing me when I say that this movie I saw once 30 years ago is memorable.A slapstick commentary on class relationships, La Belle Américaine is propelled by the plans of a French manufacturer of a metal rod with no clear consumer or industrial function to update the manufacturing process and get rid of their quirky employees. It has a running joke: the pre-automation process utilizes a hilarious Rube Goldbergesque assembly line entailing a final stage where, in a cloud of steam, the machine jams up and dies, only to be revived by a swift kick in just the right place, after which it duly puoits out (that's the sound it makes) one of the mysterious rods. Post-automation, the bustling factory is replaced by a single huge drab and perfectly rectangular machine, which the company president demonstrates for a major stockholder. The new machine hums along peacefully, in contrast to the previous cacophonous process, but at the final stage it sputters and dies, just like the pre-automation machine; the president gives it a solid kick, and it puoits out the rod.

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.