Here are two examples:
The late French stuntman Antoine Baud (see above) declared in an interview that he “above all keeps a painful memory of Louis de Funès”, who had worked with him in Le Capitaine Fracasse (1961), Fantômas se dédélés (1965). ), Fantômas contre Scotland Yard and Les Grandes Vacances (both released in 1967). And by painful, he does not mean that they had serious arguments – or even disagreements – on the set, but rather it is “a tasty anecdote” as he recounts for himself:
In a scene [from Captain Fracasse ], I was fighting with [de Funès] and he had to knock me out. After rehearsals, we shoot the scene. I find myself on the ground and, to knock me out, he grabs a vase within his reach and breaks it over my head. Except that it was not a dummy object prepared by the props designer, but a real vase! Carried away by the scene, he was wrong! I then fell down some stairs, half stunned. When the director said “Cut”, everyone came to lift me up to congratulate me because I had played the scene well, they did not understand that I had not pretended and that I was knocked out. !
Here’s the scene in question (and it ‘s hilarious!):
Featured in the hit British TV series Fawlty Towers(1975–1979), the late Andrew Sachs, who played the clumsy Spanish waiter Manuel, twice committed to painful action to make his scenes funnier:
The first time concerns a scene from the episode The Wedding Party , where Basil Fawlty – the protagonist of the series, played by the famous comedian John Cleese – knocks Manuel over the head with a frying pan . Initially, this pan was to be a rubber accessory; but suddenly, according to Sachs in an interview with the Daily Mail
[ 2 ], there was confusion when the scene was recorded live in front of an audience, because the pan Cleese was supposed to pick up turned out to be metal instead of the intended prop! Therefore, without knowing it, Cleese hit Sachs with such force that the latter eventually lost consciousness …
The second time almost turned into a tragedy. The scene in question, where Manuel’s jacket and the hotel kitchen catch fire following one of his many stupidities (see video below, from 0:00 to 0:25) , takes place in the last episode of the first season, The Germans (“The Germans” in French). Seeing the character raise his burnt hands, flailing in all directions and shouting: “ Fuego! Fuego! » (“fire” in Spanish) – gestures reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin – we can’t help but laugh; but out of the spotlight, things could have gotten worse: in fact, the fire we see in the scene is indeed real , it is not computer-generated images! Thus, Andrew Sachs had to suffer serious burns, but he was ultimately compensated.
In any case, it is these actions – although painful – which made the scenes funnier, because they are part of all the comic farce from which Fawlty Towers and the films of Louis de Funès stand out.