Plantiana Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

gradyharp The British films have their flavor with mysteries but the French have the Gallic way of infusing humor in the most unlikely manner that the mysteries become terrific platforms of French humor at its finest. Film Movement is re-releasing this 1972 gem of a film and it hasn't lost a bit of its allure. Written by Francis Veber and writer/director Yves Robert this little pastiche is a treasure. Two factions of the French Secret Service (Jean Rochefort and Bernard Blier) involve a seemingly normal but hapless orchestra player, François Pignon (Pierre Richard), into their battle as one side uses him as a decoy by being identified as a super secret agent.. Soon, agents are all over the place, and one of them, Christine (Mireille Darc), is sent to seduce François. Meanwhile, François has his own problems, tangled up in an affair with his best friend's wife.This is French comedy/mystery at its best and it is just as radiant today as it was in 1972!

wvisser-leusden 'Le grand blond avec une chaussure noire' is French for 'the tall blond man with one black shoe'.Standing out in this spy-comedy is Mireille Darc's spectacular classy black dress -- adding at least 10% value. While covering Mireille's front side up to her throat, it reveals her bare back all the way down.In her 2005-autobiography 'Tant que battra mon coeur' ('this is the way my heart beats') Mireille tells: "At the front side I show with an impeccable elegance, in this floating black dress of a superb classic design .... it made a tour around the world". The impact of this dress evokes a comparison with Marilyn Monroe's famous scene in 'A seven year itch'.One may well say that this dress took the film along. Apart from it, 'Le grand blond avec une chaussure noire' just shows no flaws. Its rich, well-timed tongue-in-cheek humor is as fresh as it must have been in 1972.

Galina This comedy/mystery is simply delightful. You can call it a masterpiece of its genre(s) or you can just enjoy its great timing, hilarious physical comedy, its story that involves spies, murders, and a sexy blonde (Mireille Darc) in a dress you have to see to believe. Pierre Richar is excellent as the blond man of the title who one day became a "person of great interest" for two rival departments in the French secret service. As we know, it is very difficult to find a black cat in a dark room especially if the cat is not in the room and that's what the experienced employees of the secret service try to do - to find the sense in the routine activities of a man they are convinced is an important spy and who is in reality an absent-minded and oblivious violinist and the object of the practical jokes by his fellow musicians.If it is not enough, there is a soundtrack written by Vladimir Cosma and performed by the King of Pan Flute, a famous Romanian musician Gheorghe Zamfir. Cosma recalls that when he was composing the music for The Tall Blond Man, he was thinking of the movie "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" and he wanted to use the elements of the Eastern European music. His idea to use the themes of Romanian doinas played by Zamfir was a stroke of genius. Once you hear the melodies, you won't be able to forget them.YES to the movie and YES!! to the soundtrack

writers_reign Although an early work - actually only his fifth credited screenplay - this Francis Veber script is only marginally behind his later output and he would, of course, go on to work with Pierre Richard again and again and memorably. Richard here is not quite the complete klutz of Le Chevre but neither is he a candidate for Mensa; he's not unlike those likable goofs Danny Kaye used to play and in fact the premise of an innocent dupe getting mixed up in murder and mayhem is not a million miles from The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty. Richard IS a dope - the title is explained by the fact that his colleagues in the orchestra with which he tours the world nailed his shoes to the floor thus obliging him to wear two different colours to return to Paris - but not SUCH a dope that he can't ball a colleague's wife or have the government agent Christine (Mirielle Darc) speak glowingly of his prowess in the sack after bedding him in the name of duty. I don't know what the French made of their Secret Service being portrayed as childish and largely inept overgrown schoolboys but for non-partisan viewers this is another great French comedy.