Directed by Gerard Oury, starring Louis de Funès, Suzy Delair, Marcel Dalio, Claude Giraud, Claude Pieplu, Henri Guybet, Miou Miou. France, 1973, in color, 93 minutes. To order this film online click here.

 

 

     Victor Pivert, a rich French industrialist, is a very tolerant man, providing you are white, Catholic and French. To everyone else he is a shameless racist who believes foreigners should stay where they come from. But God has decided to teach him a lesson.

     In the spirit of tolerance, atonement and pardon Rabbi Jacob was scheduled to be released the week of Yom Kippur, 1973. Unfortunately, that was just the time when the festering conflict between the Muslims and the Jews came to a head. The Suez Canal was invaded and the oil embargo ensued. And in France the wife of one of the film's publicists hijacked an Air France flight to protest "Rabbi Jacob's" release. She was killed when police retook the aircraft. The director's desire was to poke fun at bigotry and get people to laugh. But current events gave the film a whole different dimension.

     Nonetheless audiences laughed so hard that Rabbi Jacob became an enormous hit in France. It was the only Louis de Funes film that was ever released theatrically in the United States and along with La Grande Vadrouille  it remains the actor's most well-known picture.