Le magot de Josefa (1963)

English title: Josefa's Loot

*spoilers ahead*

 A young poet (Justin) has a compositional partnership with an older musician (Pierre). Justin employs Pierre in a scheme to defraud Justin's mother (Josefa) of money. Pierre travels to the small town where Josefa lives and owns a grocery store cum bar, and tells her that Justin has bought a car from him with a bad cheque, and then wrecked the car in an accident. Josefa refuses to compensate for her son's misdeed, even after Pierre threatens to send Justin to jail. It so happens that Josefa, an Italian immigrant widow who had previously lived in the U.S.A, is not the rich person she pretends to be. Pierre learns that the town's mayor, whom he had seen harassing Josefa for her attention, is Justin's biological father and, after his failure to extort the money from Josefa, he tries his luck with the mayor. Concurrently to all that, Josefa has some troubles with a group of noisy customers who on top of their bad behavior will not pay her. During her absence from the bar premises, those customers, emboldened by some reckless words spoken by the mayor in a moment of anger, break into the building and accidentally set it on fire. Everything is finally settled after Pierre threatens to bring the mayor to justice on the count of incitement to disorder. The mayor pays for Josefa's destroyed property and Josefa leaves town with Pierre. The two are in very good terms with each other.

Comedy which depicts some aspects of life in a small town in France. The leading actress is very funny in this; she finally found a comedic outlet for her indefectible portrayal of a stereotypical Italian woman. The plot becomes somewhat convoluted (and implausible) when the female protagonist's past life  is told verbally in a long exposition, but aside from that the film flows well. One might also question the film's ultimate point: it seems to side with Parisian crooks over small town people, which it paints as bigoted and morally lax. Overall, however, the humor is gentle and there are some really good sequences, e.g., the priest dancing the tango at the bar, the gravedigger and Pierre talking at the graveyard, Pierre and Josefa in the church talking and listening to his song, etc.

Rating: 56