The Brain

Le cerveau

France, Italy

1969

115 Min

Color

2.35:1

French, English, German

Currently 3.3/5 Stars.
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SCR Gérard Oury, Marcel Jullian, Danièle Thompson

CAST Jean-Paul Belmondo, Bourvil, David Niven, Eli Wallach, Silvia Monti, Raymond Gérôme, Jacques Balutin, Henri Attal, Yves Barsacq, Jacques Ciron, Robert Dalban, Mario David, Raoul Delfosse, Tommy Duggan, Henri Génès, Trevor A. Stephens

Two clumsy French thieves, Anatole and Arthur, plan a spectacular heist : the attack of a freight train which carries from Paris to Brussels the secret funds of NATO. They don’t know that another team is planning the same attack, the same one which performed the Glasgow-London Great Train Robbery; the team is headed by “The Brain” (David Niven), a British criminal mastermind whose massive brain is so heavy that, when he has a strong emotion, he cannot keep his head upright. The Brain has also a deal with the Sicilian mafia. —Wikipedia

Director

Gérard Oury

Gérard Oury (29 April 1919, Paris – 20 July 2006, Saint-Tropez) was a French film director, actor and writer. His real name was Max-Gérard Houry Tannenbaum.

The son of Serge Tannenbaum, a violinist, and Marcelle Houry, a journalist, Oury studied at Lycée Janson de Sailly and at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Art. He became a member of the Comédie-Française just one year before World War II, but fled to Switzerland to escape the anti-Jewish laws decreed by the Vichy government.

After 1945 he re-started his career as an actor, performing in the theatre and in supporting roles in the cinema. Oury became a movie director in 1959 (The Itchy Palm) and gained his first success in 1961 with Crime Does Not Pay (Le crime ne paie pas).

Joining André Bourvil and Louis de Funès as a comic duo, he burst into commercial filmmaking with 1965’s The Sucker (Le corniaud). The following year, Don’t Look Now… We’re Being Shot At! (La Grande Vadrouille) was even more successful… read more