LES AVENURIERS (1967) is one of my favourite films, at least French films or Alain Delon flicks, even though I haven't seen it in my childhood, Only in the late 90's !!!
It puts together with great effect Alain Delon with Lino Ventura, as they were reuntited as opposites in Le Clan des siciliens two years later, another masterwork which I yearned all my childhood to see and only saw in my twenties.
Based on a novel by the great Jose Giovanni (
Le Trou, Le deuxieme Souffle as screenwiter, later on a directror on its own ramge), from which Enrico used only the 1st part (Giovanni used the second part as his directorial debut, next year, La Loi du Survivant).
A young woman encounters two excentric friends, Manu and Roland, one an aviator, another one a car enthusiast. After many (mis)adventures, they stumble into a plot of a loot, a lost plane, submerged somewhere near Congo, with a treasure in it, diamonds and gold.
So, in brief, it's a one of a kind, and one of the greatest films no one got to see. In English it was called The Last Adventure and was released in the US by Universal as a double bill, so it went totally unnoticed.
I saw it has 10 critic reviews on
imdb, so this would be the 11th cos I nee to write about this, especailly with the love for the director,
Robert Enrico, whose son, Jerome, also a director I meeet many years ago (well, no so many, in 2012 or 2013 in Cluj, at Comedy Cluj festival, and we spent an entire night tight to the bar discussing the films of his father, also The Old Gun/Le Vieux Fusil, which I saw as a kind on Romanian communist Television, Great and tough war movie and revenge film, And Le Boulevard du Rhum, also with Lino Venura. And Les Grandes Gueules, with Lino Ventura :) and Bourvil !
greatness, found the Romanian posters of the film, Robert Enrico is billed Roberto on both of them !
and the alternative poster too, still Roberto !!!
One of the major ingredients in the film is the wonderful music by
Francois de Roubaix, a marvelous French composer who died very young, in a diving accident in 1975 when he was only 36 years old. The coincidence with the diving scenes in this film, they were done by his father, here credited with special effects (his only credit of this sort, as he did the underwater scenes), short educational film director (and producer) Paul De Roubainx, who survived him and died at 90 in 2004 !
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Les Aventuriers has a very curious and particular pace, sort of a Nouvelle Vague rhythm, and a triangle relationship between Delon, Ventura and a very young Joanna Shimkus, a la Jules and Jim, maybe lifted from there and here by William Goldman for the script of Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid-always thought that Kathrine Ross' character is a lift from the French films.
Canadian Joanna Shimkus, who went to become Sidney Poitier's wife, was cast as the title character Zita in the next Enrico film, in 1968, Tante Zita.
Also the film features Serge Regianni as the pilot and Euro-character actor Hans Meyer as the mercenary. The final and climatic act is shot in the now famous Fort Boyard (due to the TV show), which I always wanted to see just because of this movie !
10 out of 10, 5 stars out of FIVE
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I heard this was remade in Japan in 1974 as
The Homeless/Yadonashi, though Giovanni is not credited. Also in Russia in 2014 as
The Adventurers/ Avantyuristi. But like that it was lifted also for Into the Blue (2005), another sunken cargo /airplane film.
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It also has a sort of sequel, in Le Ruffian, made by Jose Giovanni in 1983, also with Lino Ventura, about a sunken treasure, this time in Canada.
