- dir. PHILIPPE DE BROCA
- year. 1964
- country. FRANCE
- run-time. 120min
- rating. N/A
- distributor. LES PRODUCTIONS ARTISTES ASSOCIES
£5.00 (£3.50 conc.)
Doors 7.00PM - Film 8.00PM
Courtesy of the Institut Français du Royaume-Uni
That Man from Rio, 1964, is an unequaled canonical film of French adventure cinema. […].
The film is the cinematographic counterpart of Hergé’s adventures of Tintin: clear production design and photography that enhance the Brazilian natural scenery and urban settings, between colorful favelas, lavish jungle and the modern and monumental architecture of the city of Brasilia; non-stop adventures, chases and action that lug our hero around between Paris and Rio in search of his fiancée that was abducted by mysterious individuals; McGuffin (the theft of precious archeological objects), an excuse to spark an engaging storyline with stunts and villains worth those of the best James Bond films […]; a female character as shocking as she is irresistible (the beautiful Françoise Dorléac) and who reminds both of the misogyny of the Nouvelle Vague […] and of the eccentric ingénues of Hollywood screwball comedies. In France, this coming-and-going between the dandyism of the Parisian borough of Saint-Germain and tributes to American cinema, B movies and comic strip, and between virtuosity and popular appeal was acclaimed nowhere but in the other films of Philippe de Broca, almost as good as L’Homme de Rio, such as Tribulations of a Chinaman in China or The Man from Acapulco. Nonetheless, almost twenty years after, Spielberg will draw his inspiration from L’Homme de Rio in the making of Raiders of the Lost Ark, which borrows some episodes of it, themselves inspired of American series of the 1940s. […] Only, L’Homme de Rio is much more gracious, full of twists and amusing than the first of the adventures of Indiana Jones, and every moment […] is a source of pleasure and delight. (Olivier Père, March 2017)