Jean-Paul Belmondo as a legionnaire in The Morphalo
The eighth might not have been the best Henri Verneuil and Jean-Paul Belmondo. With The Morfalo (1984)the director and the actor met again after French and love (1960), A monkey in winter (1962), One Hundred Thousand Dollars in the Sun (1964), Weekend in Zuydcoote (1964), The robbery (1971), Fear in the city (1975) and The body of my enemy (1976). In addition to equaling Fernandel in the number of collaborations with the filmmaker, Jean-Paul Belmondo also found in this film Marie Laforêtfive years later Cop or criminal (1979), and a few months before happy Easter (1984). The cast of the feature film also includes Michel Constantin, Michel Creton and Jacques Villeret. However, nothing happens. Mayonnaise never works. The Morfalo.
The film is set in North Africa during World War II, in 1943. The legionnaires must provide the convoy of six billion francs in gold bars from the El Ksour bank in Sfax. But the German soldiers do not intend to allow it. After a clash, only four legionnaires and the bank manager’s wife manage to escape. Some of the remaining soldiers will consider keeping the cargo for themselves, which will create conflicts within their group. The film is then a succession of plots and betrayals.
A success for”an absolute turnip“
Due to its many similarities, The Morfalo it appears as a remake American film Gold for the brave (1970) by Brian G. Hutton, brought by Clint Eastwood. It is not the first time that Jean-Paul Belmondo finds things in common with the American star. However, the success has been much greater on the French side. If Gold for the brave has only 661,768 registrations in France, The Morfalo has accumulated more than 3.4 million. Although this is a good score, it remains much lower than Belmondo’s previous films, which in the early 1980s exceeded 5 million viewers.
Also, the press feedback was quite negative. And also Michel Audiardco-author of the film with Pierre Siniac, and who proposed a total of seven versions of the screenplay, estimated “this copy like a bad movie” says Guillaume Evin in Belmondo – The book knocks, knocks, badaboum!. The author of the book goes even further by writing “eight months of writing for an absolute turnip“, or even”a shocking score for such a failure” evoking the more than honorable box office of the feature film. In short, The Morfalo can be considered as”the Verneuil too” for Jean-Paul Belmondo. It is in any case one of his films that we remember least, due in particular to a poorly managed mixture of action and comedy, which means that we never really have anything to dance to.
Source: Cine Serie
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