"A Monkey in Winter" is a 1962 French film based on a novel by Antoine Blondin. The most interesting thing about this film is the opening scenes during World War II and the German occupation of the town, Tigreville. It's actually Villerville, a Normandy vacation spot on the English Channel near L'Havre.
The scenic shots of the locale are impressive and interesting. But the aerial scenes of Allied bombers look very strange - as though they might have been cutouts or models filmed. They just don't look real. Obviously, though, the producers obtained some aerial combat film footage from the war that is interspersed here and there.
The plot of two sots in the first part, and then one sot with a returned sot in the second half, wasn't at all entertaining to me. Nor can I imagine why this would be of such interest or entertainment to anyone else. The aspect of Albert Quentin being a day-dreaming dipsomaniac is noted, but for what point or entertainment? This film hardly has anything comical for a supposed comedy-drama.
I know that Jean Gabin and Jean-Paul Belmondo were two great French actors. They made some very good films in their day. And, they are okay with their roles here. But with a plot that is little more than a few days in the lives of a couple of people, with boozing shown as escapism, "A Monkey in Winter" is more of a downer than entertainment. This seemed much like the TV soap series that became popular during that time.
Apparently this was considered something special by French audiences of the day, and the village of Villerville actually has a historical marker from the making of this movie. The one very implausible scene is the huge fireworks display supposedly set off by just three men who carry a few boxes of fireworks from a store and set up and light a huge display on the beach. Another questionable scene is townspeople (it's the off-season so there aren't many visitors) cheering Belmondo's Gabriel Fouquet who stands in the middle of the main traffic square into town and acts as a bull-fighter with a cape to oncoming cars.
I can think of many places where people would think such a guy was nuts, but they surely wouldn't be cheering him on. I spent time in France in 1963 and 1964, but that sort of "humor" wasn't evident along the French Riviera. And, I have had French friends and several acquaintances. Could this be a regional type of humor - of those from Northern France (where Paris is located, of course)? One thinks of the period of the French Revolution when spectators cheered and applauded as people lost their heads in quite another literal way at the guillotine.
One of the townspeople in a cabaret tells Fouquet that "they call this place the California of Normandy." The best lines are a simple exchange between Gabin's Albert Quentin and his wife, Suzanne (played by Suzanne Flon). She says, "Weird hour to arrive, especially in this weather." And, Albert replies, "Travelers are made to travel. The weather doesn't count."
This just isn't much of a film that many might find entertaining.
