A hapless orchestra player becomes an unwitting pawn of rival factions within the French secret service after he is chosen as a decoy by being identified as a super secret agent.The film was remade in English as "The Man with One Red Shoe", which makes me want to see that version -- I never really had an interest before. This version is quite good, and I especially love the score. It is whimsical and light, keeping the material fun.The topic of secret agencies against themselves sort of suggests a Kafka-type plot, but it never reaches that level. Because of the humor involved, it might be closer to compare this to a Peter Sellers film. Certainly more deserving of attention than it generally receives.

This was a pretty inventive French film that I really wanted to like. I picked up the video because it starred Pierre Richard, who I really liked in La Chèvre. However, unlike this later film, Le Grand blond avec une chaussure noire wasn't really the wacky film I hoped it would be and I found Richard's performance to be a bit too restrained. In other words, the film was billed as a wacky parody of spy films but it just didn't get wacky enough--I expected something more. And, while Richard was occasionally clumsy or a little dim, his performance really wasn't all that funny. As a result, to me it's really just a time-passer.The actual story idea is pretty creative. Two rivals within the French intelligence agency are at odds with each other. One decides to try and outwit the other by pretending to have a top agent who has incriminating information on his rival--hoping to get his rival to believe that some sap chosen at random is actually this agent. And, the supposed top agent is Richard. While I could go on and describe the plot further, it's probably best you just see the film. One highlight I really DID like was Richard's friend who kept seeing dead people at the end of the film. Yet each time he tried to show Richard, the bodies disappeared...making him seriously doubt his sanity. This was pretty funny, though the rest just seemed to miss the mark somehow.

This film was one of the most successful crossover French films of the 70's, and for very good reason. It is a delightful spoof of the spy genre, with a hapless musician unknowingly caught in the middle of a war between two factions of the French secret service. The plotting is extremely funny, the directing tight, the music (played by Zamphir on the pan pipe!) unforgettable, and above all the ensemble acting by a stellar cast will have you watching this again and again. Pierre Richard, playing the title character, brings an unusual elegance and sense of class to what would otherwise be a Woody Allen-esque role (it was played by Tom Hanks in the American re-make). Mireille Darc is the femme fatale, and there were quite few teenage boys in the 70's who never got over the image of her in a jaw-dropping backless dress. The rest of the group, from the cool head of the Secret Service, to the efficient but misguided spies, to the bumbling best friend and his wife, all leave indelible memories. Thirty years after having seen this film for the first time, I can remember everything with crystal clarity, and my own kids have found it just as delightful. Go ahead and rent this one for truly fun evening, you will love it!

Many, many years ago -- the mid-70s, in fact, this movie was on TV in our local area. It was one of the few times I'd seen my dad really excited about a movie, and watched it with him.It's stuck with me ever since.This is a brilliant piece of film-making, satisfying as both a comedy and a spy movie. Pierre Richard has a masterful sense of comedic timing, on par with Buster Keaton.If you get a chance to see this, do.