It’s a big, fat shonda that this 1973 comedy classic isn’t more easily available on home video here in the US. I saw it for the first time as a kid at the movies when it was initially released, then a few times on cable in the 80’s before it vanished. I’d thought it gone for good from circulation until I went to France in 1995 with a few friends and our luggage got accidentally put on another flight from Heathrow during the connection from New York (Oops!).

While waiting around the place we were staying for the airport van to arrive with our bags, I decided to turn on the TV just to see what Parisians watch when they’re not outside at some nice cafe sipping whatever and smoking Gauloises and people watching (which is a fine sport in Paris). Guess what was on? That’s right, and even more amusing, I found out soon enough that the film is something of a national treasure there. Even funnier was during the time I was in France, the two other times I walked past a TV that was on, the film was playing, which led me to believe that there was either a Rabbi Jacob channel running this on a loop 24 hours a day or whomever was in charge of network programming had a rather single-minded sense of humor…
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