Jean-Paul Belmondo
Jean-Paul Charles Belmondo (; 9 April 19336 September 2021) was a French actor and producer. Initially associated with the New Wave of the 1960s, he was a major French film star for several decades from the 1960s onward. His best known credits ...
and Raquel Welch. It was distributed in the United States by Analysis Film Releasing Corp under the title ''Stuntwoman''.
Plot
Mike Gauché (
Jean-Paul Belmondo
Jean-Paul Charles Belmondo (; 9 April 19336 September 2021) was a French actor and producer. Initially associated with the New Wave of the 1960s, he was a major French film star for several decades from the 1960s onward. His best known credits ...
) is a professional film stuntman who works with his fiancée Jane Gardner ( Raquel Welch). However minutes before their long planned marriage they are called to perform a car stunt for a movie but it goes wrong, as a brake problem causes their car to fall and they end up in a hospital with bruises and broken legs. Exasperated by the behavior of her fiancé, Jane decides to leave. After his recovery Mike is no longer able to find work in the movie business and is forced to simulate mental retardation and to invent a family to receive Social Security benefits. One day his stuntman friend Santos asks him to replace him from time to time at his job which involves dressing up as a gorilla for advertising pasta at a supermarket.
Mike's luck begins to improve as he gets offered a high salary to do the stunts of an effeminate movie star Bruno Ferrari (
Jean-Paul Belmondo
Jean-Paul Charles Belmondo (; 9 April 19336 September 2021) was a French actor and producer. Initially associated with the New Wave of the 1960s, he was a major French film star for several decades from the 1960s onward. His best known credits ...
) whom he proves to be a dead ringer to. Ferrari, while filming an action movie, suffers from vertigo and finds himself unable to perform dangerous sequences. Mike does not hesitate to get rid of his new stunt partner in order to replace her with Jane, who is enamored with the Count of Saint-Prix (
Raymond Gérôme
Raymond Gérôme (17 May 1920 — 3 February 2002) was a Belgian-born, French stage and screen actor.
Gérôme was born as Raymond Joseph Léon De Backer in Koekelberg. He made his first stage appearance in 1946, in a stage production of ''Jeanne ...
). Having heard the news Mike goes to the Count while impersonating a server in order to propose the offer to Jane. When he hears that the Count has asked to marry Jane he manically sabotages the dinner and makes Jane promise to do the film.
Desperate to regain Jane, Mike impersonates Ferrari who turns out to be gay, to seduce her. However the young woman is not fooled. Mike must perform a dangerous stunt on the wing of an airplane to an audience of journalists who think they are seeing Ferrari, where his life is saved from the accident by Jane, who is to marry the Count very soon. Meanwhile, the press discovers that Ferrari is not doing his own stunts.
While the wedding ceremony takes place at the castle of the Count, Mike arrives disguised as a gorilla, scaring guests with animals from the property, and takes Jane, who refuses to marry Count of Saint-Prix, preferring to live her life with Mike.
Cast
*
Jean-Paul Belmondo
Jean-Paul Charles Belmondo (; 9 April 19336 September 2021) was a French actor and producer. Initially associated with the New Wave of the 1960s, he was a major French film star for several decades from the 1960s onward. His best known credits ...
as Mike Gaucher / Bruno Ferrari
* Raquel Welch as Jane
*
Aldo Maccione
Aldo Maccione (born 27 November 1935) is an Italian film actor and singer who is a member of the Italian comedy rock band Brutos. He has appeared in more than 50 films since 1964. He was born in Turin, Italy.
Filmography
* '' La Grande maffia ...
as Sergio Campanese
*
Dany Saval
Dany Saval (born Danielle Nadine Suzanne Savalle; 5 January 1942) is a French former actress.
Her career flourished during the 1950s and 1960s. Best known in America as one of a trio of airline stewardesses being shuffled around by Tony Curtis ...
as Doris
*
Raymond Gérôme
Raymond Gérôme (17 May 1920 — 3 February 2002) was a Belgian-born, French stage and screen actor.
Gérôme was born as Raymond Joseph Léon De Backer in Koekelberg. He made his first stage appearance in 1946, in a stage production of ''Jeanne ...
as Count of Saint-Prix
*
Henri Génès
Henri Génès (2 July 1919 – 22 August 2005) was a French singer and actor who appeared in such films as '' The Sucker'', ''La Grande Vadrouille'', ''The Brain'', '' The Counterfeit Constable'', and '' The Little Bather''. He was born in Tarbe ...
: as Camille, café owner
*
Claude Chabrol
Claude Henri Jean Chabrol (; 24 June 1930 – 12 September 2010) was a French film director and a member of the French New Wave (''nouvelle vague'') group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s. Like his colleagues an ...
Didier Flamand
Didier Flamand (born 12 March 1947) is a French actor and theatre director. He has appeared in more than 200 films and television shows since 1973. He starred in Raúl Ruiz's 1978 film ''The Suspended Vocation
''The Suspended Vocation'' (fre ...
Jacques Alric
Ancient and noble French family names, Jacques, Jacq, or James are believed to originate from the Middle Ages in the historic northwest Brittany region in France, and have since spread around the world over the centuries. To date, there are over ...
Jane Birkin
Jane Mallory Birkin, Order of British Empire, OBE (born 14 December 1946) is an English-French singer and actress. She attained international fame and notability for her decade-long musical and romantic partnership with Serge Gainsbourg. She als ...
as The Female Star (cameo appearance)
*
Johnny Hallyday
Jean-Philippe Léo Smet (; 15 June 1943 – 5 December 2017), better known by his stage name Johnny Hallyday, was a French rock and roll and pop singer and actor, credited for having brought rock and roll to France.
During a career spanning 57 ...
as The Male Star (cameo appearance)
*
Maurice Auzel Maurice may refer to:
People
*Saint Maurice (died 287), Roman legionary and Christian martyr
*Maurice (emperor) or Flavius Mauricius Tiberius Augustus (539–602), Byzantine emperor
*Maurice (bishop of London) (died 1107), Lord Chancellor and Lo ...
*
Maurice Bénichou
Maurice Bénichou (23 January 1943 in Tlemcen, French Algeria – 14 June 2019) was a French actor. His best known roles include three collaborations with director Michael Haneke ('' Code inconnu'', ''Le Temps du Loup'', and '' Caché''), and a ...
Paul Bisciglia
Paul Antoine Alphonse Bisciglia (30 July 1928 – 18 April 2010) was a French film actor.
Career
Throughout his acting career, Bisciglia appeared in more than one hundred feature films. He made his debut in the 1950 film ''Trois télégram ...
Anne-Marie Coffinet
Anne-Marie Rose Nicholson (born 7 April 1991) is an English singer. She has attained charting singles on the UK Singles Chart, including Clean Bandit's " Rockabye", which peaked at number one, as well as "Alarm", "Ciao Adios", "Friends", "2002 ...
Martine Ferrière
Martine is a feminine given name and a surname.
Given name
* Martine Aubry (born 1950), French politician
* Martine Audet (born 1961), Canadian poet
* Martine Aurillac (born 1939), French politician
* Martine Baay-Timmerman (born 1958), Dutch po ...
*
Jean-Jacques Jean-Jacques is a French name, equivalent to "John James" in English. Since the second half of 18th century, Jean Jacques Rousseau was widely known as Jean Jacques. Notable people bearing this name include:
Given name
* Jean-Jacques Annaud (born 1 ...
*
Jean-Jacques Moreau
Jean Jacques Moreau (31 July 1923 – 9 January 2014) was a French mathematician and mechanician. He normally published under the name J. J. Moreau.
Moreau was born in Blaye. He received his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Paris, ...
*
Gilles Kohler Gilles Kohler is a French actor, born November 18, 1948
Former Model, Gilles Kohler started out in 1974 as the blonde angel Jean in Marcel Carné's ''La Merveilleuse visite''. Two years later he plays Jean-Pierre, a lover between two women (Claude ...
*
Yves Mourousi
Yves Mourousi (20 July 1942 – 7 April 1998) was a French television and radio news presenter and journalist. He was the TF1 midday news anchor between 1975 and 1988.
Information
During the 1980s, Mourousi was a member of the Association ...
Most of the stunts in the film were done by Belmondo himself. This caused him multiple injuries; a dislocated ankle after the scene on the steps of Sacré-Cœur, dislocation and a penetrating wound after the scene in which he is tumbling down the stairs, a chewed up ear after the fight scene with a tiger. Because the insurance companies refused to insure aerial stunts they had to be filmed last. Everything went off without incident, and the actor was able to realize his childhood dream of personally standing on the wing of a flying airplane, a Fieseler Fi 156.
Box Office
The film sold over 3 million tickets in France. It grossed a total of $7,196,268 million at the worldwide box office.