Jo (1971)

• Year: 1971
• Released: 01 Sep 1971
• Country: France
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067274/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/jo
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: French, English
• Genre: Comedy, Crime, Thriller
• Runtime: 85 min
• Writer: Alec Coppel, Myra Coppel, Claude Magnier
• Director: Jean Girault
• Cast: Louis de Funès, Claude Gensac, Michel Galabru
• Keywords: police, blackmail, author, firearm, hidden corpse,

7.1/10

Jo Storyline

Antoine Brisebard, a famous comedy playwright, is struggling with financial difficulties and is preparing to sell his country villa to an English couple. What no one knows, however, is that Brisebard is actually a victim of blackmail since his wife Sylvie, a famous actress, is the daughter of a notorious robber-murderer. His extortionist is a malevolent criminal only known as Jo, who visits him often to pick up his hush money. But faced with certain ruin, Brisebard is preparing to do away with Jo once and for all, planning his deed under the guise of him trying to write the script for a crime play and consulting his friend, attorney Colas, for ideas of how to efficiently get rid of the body. He finally takes up the offer of one Tonelotti to erect a garden pavillon, whose foundation would provide the ideal hiding place for the corpse. On the night Jo is scheduled to arrive for his next payment, Brisebard awaits the arrival with a gun but is not able to pull the trigger, drops the gun to the floor which results in a shot accidentally killing Jo. But it is only then that things turn really difficult: police inspector Ducros, who has found out about Jo’s operation and Brisebard’s involvement in it, starts noseying around, telling Brisebard that Jo had already been murdered at the time he was supposed to come to the villa (the man Brisebard shot is eventually revealed as Riri, a criminal associate of Jo’s); the pavillon foundation proves to be too shoddy, forcing Brisebard to hide the body elsewhere; a lot of unwanted houseguests keep coming and going; and finally, Riri’s body stubbornly refuses to remain hidden. Even with the help of his wife, to whom he finally tells everything, the task of getting rid of the body becomes an outright daunting – and nerve-wracking – one.

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Jo Movie Reviews

Louis de Funès is always funny whatever movie he plays in.

Jo might not be the funniest movie with Louis de Funès but I still enjoy it as much as the first time I watched it. To me there are no bad movies starring Louis de Funès. He’s by far the best comedian France as ever had, the man with 40 different facial expressions per minute, always very energetic and a delight to watch. Jo has flaws like most French comedies from the seventies but the cast makes this movie enjoyable to watch. Louis de Funès, Claude Gensac, Bernard Blier and Michel Galabru, all comedians that everybody liked, are almost a guarantee for a funny movie. Claude Gensac played again the wife of Louis de Funès, she would do that ten times in her career, a thing we were all familiar with after awhile. Her collaboration with Louis de Funès always worked. Louis de Funès can make any movie good as his energy, screen presence and great sense of humor are always very enjoyable to watch. The story in Jo isn’t perfect, that’s obvious, but even those minor faults can’t bring the quality of this movie down. When I watch a movie like this one I just want to watch more movies starring Louis de Funès, he has that kind of charisma you never get enough of.

Film Review – Jo (1971) 6.2/10

“In JO, de Funès plays comedy playwright Antoine Brisebard, who has been blackmailed for years by the titular Jo, a shady figure who has been asking Antoine for hush money for a secret concerning the latter’s actress wife Sylvie (Gensac). Facing financial ruins, Antoine hatches a plan to croak Jo once and for all, the foundation of the gazebo Sylvie just ordered for his birthday fits like a perfect locale to bury the body. But comedy of errors and a bird-dogging Inspector Ducros (Blier) prevent his plan from going swimmingly, Antoine even doesn’t know the identity of the man he accidentally shoots, before soon the film is debased to a monomaniac slapstick about “how to hide the stiff?”, Antoine and Sylvie’s concerted endeavor wears thin quickly, while the hustling and bustling supporting cast doesn’t help either (as the roughly manhandled maid, Christiane Muller’s forced laughter is squirm-inducing), this quasi-single-location farce eventually fizzles out with more cheap knockabouts than boffola laughter.”

read my full review on my blog: cinema omnivore, thanks

When it’s bad, it’s really bad … but when it’s funny, it’s really funny …

“Jo” is a strange comedy, it indulges to so many embarrassingly bad moments, even by 60’s- 70’s French standards, yet it contains probably three of the most brilliant comedic moments from any film. Now, I’m wondering: is “Jo” a hilarious film with some bad moments, or an unfunny film with a few good moments?

I’m decided not to provide a definite answer to that question, out of my love and admiration to Louis de Funès, who deserves a spot in the Top 10 funniest actors who ever lived. If there ever was a Pantheon erected for comical legends, De Funès deserves a place among Chaplin, Keaton and peers. His mimics, mannerisms and body language possessed that unique timeless and universal appeal that prevented all his films to be branded as ‘dated’, even when they were.

At the end, even De Funès’ detractors had a sentimental weakness for him and reckon that his talent could redeem the lousiest plots or any displays of bad acting, film-making or editing that could damage his films. But once you got De Funès on screen, you knew you were onto something that will draw a big smile in your face. Well,I smiled a lot with “Jo” but I laughed too, and I mean belly laughs hurting my stomach. So, if only for three hilarious sight-gags, I’m ready to concede that the film deserves to be watched, especially since it features, for the second time, Louis de Funès and Bernard Blier, perfect as the harassing no non-sense inspector Ducros.

To please your curiosity, one of the three laugh-out-loud moments is a hilarious running gag involving a couch. There are two but the best one consists on making Funès’ character sitting next to the police officer and no matter the spot he chooses, he looks incredibly small. The scene is even more hilarious since Blier wasn’t much taller than De Funès. The gag in itself is cute but its second using is the icing on the cake, De Funès sits with his real estate agent, an elderly small woman and yet she towers him with pride. Then he gets up and realizes he’s shorter than her and his wife, and leaves the scene totally devastated. De Funès’ short stature has always been a comedic asset but no film has exploited it with such amusing cruelty than “Jo”.

The second gag is visual too, De Funès slide the hand rail, only to notice the presence of Ducros and gets back upstairs the ‘Mary Poppins’ way. The third gag is as random, but so are De Funès’ funniest moments, a police officer (Paul Préboist) ostensibly courts his wife, De Funès’ reaction imitating the sound of a cat are incredibly hilarious. I wish more Americans would be familiar with the work of De Funès, if only to have the privilege to enjoy such moments and thank God some websites like Youtube to break the frontiers of comedy. These are the three greatest gags of the film, many others involve a cadaver that can’t be put straight under a couch and some irresistible exchanges between Ducros and De Funès that I’m afraid, will be lost in translation.

Now, need I to describe the plot? I’ll give a few elements since I used the word ‘cadaver’. The film is about a rich playwright, Antoine Brisebard, rehearses the perfect crime with his friend; pretending it’s for a new script. But he has a man in his minds, a blackmailer named “Jo”. The theme is surprisingly dark for a De Funès’ film, but it works since Antoine is so hassled from beginning to end that we can’t help but feel sorry for him. His misadventures start when he tries to bury a hole under the foundations of the future bandstand, except that the builder was so upset by the new hole in his hole he filled it again.

And after digging a new hole and putting the corpse, Antoine finds out the day after that that the foundations, supposed to resist for 200 centuries wouldn’t survive a stormy night, so he must find a new way to hide the corpse, wrapped un in a bath curtain (the bandstand builder is played by Michel Galabru, another typical acolyte of De Funès). The following day is marked by zaniness and qui proquos, but the only actors who are believable are De Funès, Blier and Claude Gensac who played Funès’ wife in about ten films, and again, she’s of a scene-stealing delight. The lawyer plays his part very well, but Lord, what was with the actress who played the maid constantly laughing at any macabre scene? Since she witnessed the first false killing, she thought that anything else was a set-up. But the gag was so repeated it became quickly annoying.

The plot isn’t to blame, not the main cast, but the director Jean Girault, should have paid more attention to these little details and re-shoot a few scenes that didn’t involve De Funès. Although Girault is the director who directed De Funès the most, he wasn’t on the same league as Molinaro (“Oscar” and “La Cage aux Folles”) or Gérard Oury who signed De Funès’ most acclaimed comedies (“La Grande Vadrouille” and “The Mad Aventures of Rabbi Jacob”), and it shows in “Jo”, sometimes, very painfully. And I was bewildered at a film that could have allowed so many cheap moments where it featured so much comedic brilliance.

At the end, “Jo” is a mixed result, it’s very funny when it’s funny, but reaches so many lows that we only forgive because of the many laughs we had. But there’s one thing that the film needed is a great ending, the perfect punch-line for a not-to-be-taken seriously story, but it was treated hastily as the rest of the plot, a pity because the film could have been one of De Funès’ greatest films but it seemed that the director embraced the same stressful impulsiveness than his character.