A look back at a legendary sequence from the film “Hibernatus” in which Louis de Funès goes crazy screaming at the poor hibernator.
Louis de Funès is a comic reference, as evidenced by the 4.73 million French people who once again enjoyed watching La Grande vadrouille, broadcast on TF1 on November 10. And if he works wonders opposite Bourvil, De Funès is also at his best in several solo films, including the famous Hibernatus.
Hubert de Tartas loses his temper
Gaumont Bernard Alane (Paul Fournier)
Hibernatus is adapted from a vaudeville by Jean Bernard-Luc, and directed by Edouard Molinaro, with whom De Funès had already filmed Oscar three years previously. The actor plays Hubert de Tartas, an industrialist who discovers that his wife’s grandfather, Paul Fournier, who was thought to have died at the age of 25, is found frozen in a block of ice. He survives his “thaw”, and doctors recommend that they live in a familiar environment, that of the early 1900s.
We therefore recreate the private mansion of Paul Fournier, who thinks he lives at the beginning of the 20th century and little by little, the latter wishes to take over the business of De Tartas – which in reality belongs to his wife, granddaughter of the hibernated man – and begins to seduce Evelyne, the fiancée of Didier de Tartas.
After having made a lot of compromises, and feeling that the situation was getting out of hand, Hubert decided, exasperated, to reveal the whole truth to the “hibernate person”, he was not going to go easy on himself and, while the doctors told him film class that telling him anything would kill poor Paul, Hubert decides despite everything to take the plunge, for an anthology scene.
“Edmée, Edmée”!
Among the first revelations, there is obviously the real date (1970) but above all that the one he takes for his mother Clémentine “Her name is not Clémentine, her name is Edmée! Edmée, Edmée!”all accompanied by small polka steps, betraying that Hubert has been driven crazy by this grotesque situation. A moment that remains in the annals of comedy:
And all this for what? The hibernated person does not believe a word of his interlocutor’s long revelations and even urges him to be taken to the doctor. But when he turns on the television, he realizes that Hubert had told him the pure truth.
Behind the scenes, the scene was an ordeal to shoot, as Edouard Molinaro confided in the book Louis de Funès, grimaces and glory by Bertrand Dicale, quoted by Télé Loisirs: “The day she was on the filming schedule, we did a few takes but Louis wasn’t really into it. After a while, he asked that we stop because he couldn’t find anything (… ) We all went home at three in the afternoon.”
“The next day, we shot other scenes. De Funès asked to reshoot the day after and there, in a few takes, there was an explosion of genius.” A moment of genius that will be remembered forever.
