The wealthy editor Pierre Brochant and his friends have a weekly competition where each invites the most foolish man he can find for dinner. Tonight Brochant is ecstatic, for he has found the ultimate idiot. But his guest, tax official Francois Pignon, is a master in bringing on catastrophe.

In an award-winning farce that inspired no fewer than four remakes worldwide, the cluelessness of others has become social capital among a misanthropic elite. Rich in comic blunders from a chorus line of fools, the film doesn’t forget to point a finger at the perversities of the upper classes too.