1960s

La Grande Vadrouille

A scene from La Grande Vadrouille. [Photo/Mtime]

La Grande Vadrouille is a 1966 French comedy film directed by Gérard Oury. It tells a story of two ordinary Frenchmen helping the crew of a Royal Air Force bomber shot down over Paris.

In the summer of 1941, over Nazi-occupied France, a Royal Air Force B17 Flying Fortress gets lost after a mission and is shot down over Paris by German flak. The crew, Sir Reginald, Peter Cunningham and Alan MacIntosh, parachute out over the city, where they run into and are hidden by a house painter, Augustin Bouvet, and the grumbling conductor of the Opéra National de Paris, Stanislas Lefort. Involuntarily, Lefort and Bouvet get themselves tangled up in the manhunt against the aviators led by Wehrmacht Major Achbach as they help the airmen escape to the free zone with the help of Resistance fighters and sympathizers.

For over 40 years, La Grande Vadrouille was the most successful French film in France.