Fernandel
Birthday: 1903-05-08 Place of Birth: Marseille, France
Synopsis
Fernand Joseph Désiré Contandin (8 May 1903 – 26 February 1971), better known as Fernandel, was a French actor and singer. Born in Marseille, France, to Désirée Bedouin and Denis Contandin, originating in Perosa Argentina, an Occitan town located in the province of Turin. He was a comedy star who first gained popularity in French vaudeville, operettas, and music-hall revues. His stage name originated from his marriage to Henriette Manse, the sister of his best friend and frequent cinematic collaborator Jean Manse. So attentive was he to his wife that his mother-in-law amusingly referred to him as Fernand d'elle ("Fernand of her"). (Wikipedia)
Acting
My Wife's Husband
After thirteen years in Germany, Fernand is coming back to his wife and his restaurant. But since his disparition, his wife as made her life with a norman chef, sympathetic but a specialist of butter's cooking when Fernand cook only with oil!
Good King Dagobert
Mr. Pelletan's rascal son Bébert son got another F for playing in class. His punishment is an essay on the Merovingian king Dagobert. All they know is he had eight wives and reunited Francia. The ignorant knave's irreverent imagination turns that into a harem and a ludicrous war without armies, loaded with anachronisms, in a race against rival king Charibert for the crown of Reims. The king's right hand, archbishop Eloi, the later patrons saint of carpentry, is portrayed as an inventor.
The Devil and the Ten Commandments
The film consists of seven roughly 15 minute episodes, each showing what will happen if one or more of the Ten Commandments will be broken: Jérome Chambard is warned that he will lose his job if he continues to swear; Françoise Beaufort enamored of a stripper calls on her only to find her married to a janitor who doesn't know what kind of dancing his wife performs; Denis, a Jesuit novice, leaves the order to avenge his sister's suicide, which was provoked by Garigny, who seduced her into prostitution and drug addiction; Philip buys a necklace for Micheline though he is bored with her; a young man find out that his real mother is not Madeleine, but actress Clarisse Ardant; Didier Marin, cashier of a bank, was fired by his boss; the Devil appears as a serpent for Jérome Chambard and the bishop are eating.
Don Camillo: Monsignor
Don Camillo (now bishop) and Peppone (now senator) return to the town of Brescello and rekindle their friendly rivalry.
The Cow and I
In 1942, a French prisonner of war in Germany decide to escape to France using a cow hold by a lunge as a decoy. He cross all Germany in this way.
The Man in the Raincoat
In the absence of his wife, a clarinet player is induced by a friend to meet a call girl, but arrived after a crime. Perceived by some people leaving the scene of the crime covered by his raincoat, he became the only suspect for the police. His only hope is to discover the murderer before is name is mentionned publicly, specially in front of his wife.
The Law Is the Law
Assola is an imaginary village on the border between Italy and France and the borderline crosses the village itself. The French customs agent Ferdinand is always trying to catch the Italian smuggler Giuseppe. Giuseppe discovers that Ferdinand was actually born in Italy and therefore he can't be a French customs agent.
Paris Holiday
Comedian Bob Hunter is aided by his French counterpart Fernydel and two beautiful blondes when he is targeted for death by a powerful European counterfeiting ring.
Life Together
The writer Pierre Carot became rich and famous with his book "Life as a Couple", which was based on the loving relationships of four couples. Now he's setting up his will and wants to leave his wealth to the couples among the four, which are still as deeply in love - if any: else, his companions get the money. He sends them out to visit the couples and test their love.
Fernandel the Dressmaker
A modest taylor the women found irresistible inherit a Maison de couture in financial difficulty. Decided to save it he prepare a great collection. But when his wife discovered his relations with one of the mannequin, how would he prevent the scandale without loosing... both of them?!
Don Camillo's Last Round
Bewildered, Don Camillo learns that Peppone intends to stand for parliament. Determined to thwart his ambitions, the good priest, ignoring the recommendations of the Lord, decides to campaign against him.
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
A lord’s servant, Ali Baba, is sent to retrieve a slave for his master, but ends up on an adventure filled with gold, mischief, love, and forty famous thieves instead.
The Sheep Has Five Legs
A publicity-minded French mayor reunites quintuplets and their earthy father, all six played by Fernandel.
The Return of Don Camillo
Energetic priest Don Camillo returns to the town of Brescello for more political and personal duels with Communist mayor Peppone.
The Cupboard Was Bare
The aunt of Alfred Puc, a meek tax-collector in Paris, dies while riding in a moving van. The driver, not wishing to be bothered by a police interrogation, hides her corpse in a cupboard before notifying Alfred. But the van is stolen. Alfred, being the heir of a rich lady, begins a frantic search to locate the missing van and the cupboard because one can't claim an inheritance if there is no 'corpus delecti.' In his search, he gets caught up in an underworld web and finds the body of a murdered gangster in his room. He finally locates the cupboard but promptly loses it again. But, wait, it isn't "finis' time, yet.
The Little World of Don Camillo
In a village of the Po valley where the earth is hard and life miserly, the priest and the communist mayor are always fighting to be the head of the community. If in secret, they admired and liked each other, politics still divided them as it is dividing the country. And when the mayor wants his "People's House"; the priest wants his "Garden City" for the poor. Division exist between the richest and the poorest, the pious and the atheists and even between lovers. But if the people are hard as the country, they are good in the bottom of there heart.
The Red Inn
A group of travelers, including a monk, stay in a lonely inn in the mountains. The host confesses the monk his habit of serving poisoned soup to the guests, to rob their possessions and to bury them in the backyard.
The Sleepwalker
Victor Boniface's life is not exactly a rest cure. Just imagine: Victor is both a store detective and a ... shoplifter (only when he walks in his sleep, mind you)! And falling in love while sleepwalking is no bed of roses either, as the good-natured man simply forgets everything after waking up. Fortunately love wins the game in the end. Does that mean that life will become as easy as pie ? Certainly not: the little Bonifaces will be sleepwalkers just like their daddy!
Three Feet in a Bed
In spite of his failures as a peddler, Casimir guaranteed his fiance that this time the vacuum cleaners will work for good. But he's still unsuccessful until he go to the appartment of Paul-Andre, a painter who was engaged by correspondence to a rich south-American woman. That's exactly when she arrive armed with a gun infuriated after she had received a rupture letter from the man she had never seen. She mistakenly took Casimir as her painter lover. Casimir his ready to flee until he learned she owned many hotels, a thousand rooms in fact. "A thousand rooms, a thousand vacuum cleaners", he suddenly think.
The Heroic Mr. Boniface
A simple man gets involved in an implausible story of gangsters in the wake of the discovery of a criminal's dead body in his own bed.
The Well-Digger's Daughter
A rural maiden's two suitors go off to war, leaving her pregnant.
The Acrobat
After a deadbeat patron at his restaurant gets special care from the cops who think the man has amnesia, the maitre d'hotel decides to pretend he too has amnesia. He is claimed in turn by an aristocrat family and by trapeze artists.
Ernest the Rebel
In South America anything can happen: the consul might give you as a snack to the sharks, you can wind up as a working man (slave) in a banana plantation or as a recruit in the governor's navy. And there's always a fire squad waiting for you so you 'd better start a revolution! It takes all Fernandel's talent to go through this eventful journey.
Heartbeat
A pompous grocer’s assistant in Marseille annoys a visiting film crew so much that they prank him with a phony acting contract; believing it to be real, the “schpountz” heads to Paris for his new career.
