Sonsenfrancais - OSS 117

My favourite French comedy actor is Jean Dujardin, who is often seen on television in the little series he did with his wife Alexandra Lamy in Un gars et une fille. His films range from Brice de Nice, adolescent humour, to 99 francs, a blackly comic view of the world of advertising.

A particular pleasure, though, is the series of films based on OSS 117. I have French friends who think that the character of OSS 117 was invented as a parody of James Bond. Not so. In fact OSS 117 is the French precursor of James Bond. He is Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, invented by the French writer Jean Bruce in 1949 - four years before Fleming produced the first Bond novel. In Bruce's novels he works first for the American OSS, then for the CIA. The English and the French special agents are so similar in their descriptions, that one wonders if Fleming consciously imitated the French model.

I'm going to offer on this page some magnificently funny clips from the Jean Dujardin OSS films, but also a film made on the original Jean Bruce character

*Click on the top half of the picture for the video and the lower half for the text*
	In OSS117 Rio ne répond pas, (2009) Dujardin plays Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath. Like Bond, Hubert's life is a series of encounters with beaut iful women. In Dujardin's parodies though, the Bond character is enlivened by the endearing stupidity, male chavinism and - in this film - ant-semitism of Hubert
	OSS 117 Caire, nid d'espions, is the first of the OSS 117 parodies made by Jean Dujardin in 2006. This extract is a classic. Wonderfully funny. The dialogue is not so easy to follow. A good exercise.
	And finally, here is a film made in 1967 on the original OSS 117 of Jean Bruce, Banco à Bangkok pour OSS 117. It is a French film, but the leading actor is an American, Kerwin Mathews.