Food @fps.com continues.
On Friday, October 15, 2010, at 7PM, in  Harvard’s Center for European Studies at 27 Kirkland St,  we will show  Louis de Funes’  L’Aile Ou La Cuisse

The film will be introduced by Tom Conley of Harvard University and Chef Raymond Ost of Sandrine Restuarant on Holyoke St. in Harvard Square.

An unknown great De Funes
6 March 2010 | by semiotechlab-658-95444 (United States) – See all my reviews

After having landed a world-success with Gerard Oury’s “The mad adventures of Rabbi Jacob” (1975), Louis De Funes suffered his first severe heart attack. Nevertheless, only one year later, he starred in another great success: “The Wing or the Thigh” (1976). However, while Rabbi Jacob became world-famous and is since long available as one the deplorably very few De Funes movies on DVD, “L’Aile Ou La Cuisse” never reached the stardom of his predecessor. About the reasons one can only speculate. So, De Funes suggested to put Coluche’s name on the advertisements posters, Coluche who plays De Funes’ son and was one of the greatest French stars of comedy, circus, TV and politics – but unknown to a greater audience outside of France. Moreover, the topic of this movie is the beginning of “Convenience Food” (so the official term) in France in the mindst-70ies. In the US, however, frozen food in the form of “TV dinners” and other convenient forms of thawing or reheating pasteurized meals had already a long tradition at that time. Obviously, the producers were afraid that “L’Aile Ou La Cuisse” would not be understood outside of Europe. But nevertheless, Louis De Funes, although pale-looking and quieter than in his earlier works, can show all registers of his gigantic comic talent in this movie. In Coluche, he has a quite non-fitting partner, but one who was wise enough not to upstage De Funes, but to persuade with his soft or even tacit humor. As usual for all De Funes movies, the plot is coherent and convincing from A to Z, the topic is still not dusty, because meanwhile our world has been over-rolled by successors of Monsieur Tricatel from the movie, and Louis De Funes is, as he ever was, the most sympathetic heroic anti-hero, bourgeois anti-bourgeois and military anti-militarist how he can perhaps only exist in France.

More information is available about the series at

http://www.food24fps.com/