His films were extremely popular. So popular that a street in Nantes was named Rue des Tontons Flingueurs after his film of the same title (Crooks in Clover)



In the last year, Tuškanac has organized several programs of extraordinary French films (by directors Olivier Assayas, Philippe Garrel, Claire Denis). But its big screen rarely showed popular films that flirt with mainstream. One of such authors is Georges Lautner, systematically ignored by Cannes until an homage was organized in 2012, with the screening of the restored version of his seminal Les Barbouzes, better known as The Great Spy Chase, starring the genius Lino Venturo. His films were extremely popular. So popular that a street in Nantes was named Rue des Tontons Flingueurs after his film with the same title (Crooks in Clover), and only because a certain Lulu la Nantaise (Lulu of Nantes) was mentioned in the film. The kitchen scene from this film achieved a cult status. The French simply call it 'scene de la cuisine' and in it Lino Ventura says his famous line: 'Idiots dare everything. That's how we recognise them', which has become one of the most quoted lines among the French cinema audiences. Primarily it should be accredited to Lautner's loyal assistant screenwriter Michel Audiard, namely father of the well-known director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet), who skilfully played with the street aesthetic of the French jargon. One of Lautner's interesting films which at least for a moment ventured away from director's obsession with cops and thieves, is the delicate drama The Black Monocle. It is a free adaptation of Gilbert Renault’s of memoirs. He is better known as Colonel Remy, and was a famous French World War II secret agent. It is seasoned by a sufficient dose of the author’s recognizable eccentric humour and due to its popularity, Lautner made two sequels. In them he created utterly bizarre Bond-like situations, so in Le Monocle rit jeune the hero is faced with vicious Asian terrorists who plan to blow up an American nuclear carrier. Surely, the director is much more at home on the French turf, especially in his seminal work such as the film Pasha starring the excellent Jean Gabin as a police inspector. Two years later he made his only film in the English language, a bizarre story of incest and mistaken identities (Road to Salina). It was filmed on the Canary Islands, and is packed with sexual and explicit scenes, starring the queen of gialla Mimsy Farmer and Rita Hayworth as her mother. No wonder that this insane combination revealed true grindhouse potential to Tarantino, who used one of the tracks from Lautner's Road to Salina in his Kill Bill Volume 2. (Dragan Rubeša)