Squeak-squeak

Pouic-Pouic (1963) is a French comedy directed by Jean Girault, available to watch online on iFILM. Louis de Funès stars as Léonard Monestier, a respectable bourgeois whose wife has just sunk the family fortune into oil concessions along the Orinoco — concessions that turn out to be entirely fictional.

Rather than despair, Léonard immediately starts hunting for a buyer to offload the worthless paperwork. Enter Antoine, a besotted billionaire who would sign almost anything to get close to Léonard's daughter Patricia, played by Mireille Darc. Patricia can't stand Antoine and decides to spite everyone by marrying the first man she sees — the young chauffeur who just delivered one of his gifts. The household promptly falls apart.

De Funès is in full-throttle mode here: elastic face, rapid-fire panic, mood swings that last about half a second. This came out in 1963, before the Gendarme and Fantômas franchises made him a French institution, but the timing and the chaos are already completely his. Stream Pouic-Pouic online on iFILM.