"Les Aventures De Rabbi Jacob" (1973) is actually based on two very different plot lines: The movie starts in New York, showing children playing in a street somewhere in Lower East Side and waiting to say good-bye to their revered Rabbi Jacob, who, after more then thirty years, returns to his native France in occasion of the Bar-Mitzwah of his nephew David. However, before the Rabbi and a good dozen of his friends make it - all together in one single taxi can - to the airport, the movie starts, so-to-say a second time, showing the industrial Mr. Pivert (Louis De Funes) and his chauffeur Salomon rushing home to Paris for the wedding of Pivert's daughter. But not enough with these two main lines: There is a third one interwoven: The trip of Mohammed Larbi Slimane (Claude Giraud) on the flight of his henchmen under the lead of the Colonel Fares (Renzo Montagnani). Now, the second plot-line with Pivert and Salomon breaks insofar apart, as Pivert fires his chauffeur Salomon because he is refusing to help his boss out of a misery that he (Salomon) caused, driving their car into a lake - because it is Shabbes. However, again, the fact that Salomon is Jewish, is a little side-line again to the real Rabbi Jacob, who turns out to be his uncle. Therefore, from the second plot-line, only Pivert remains, and he soon meets Slimane, so that the second and the third plot-line merge. After a long and funny trip, they arrive just at Orly Airport where the real Rabbi Jacob and his assistant arrive (merging of the second and third with the first plot-line). And at this point, the road-movie goes over into a screwball comedy, because the Jewish grand-mother, the sister-in-law of the real Rabbi Jacob, takes Pivert and Slimane for the real couple, because they had themselves to disguise as rabbis on their flight from the Colonel Fares and his henchmen and are at that time in Orly, when the real Rabbi and his assistant are scheduled to arrive. Thus, Pivert and Slimane, neither Rabbis nor even familiar with basic Jewish customs, have to play their newly overtaken roles as good as it gets in order to escape Fares and the henchmen. Furthermore, another confusion is caused by the jealous wife of Pivert, Germaine (Suzy Delair), and her trial to get to her husband whom she suspects to have left her at the day of the marriage of their daughter with a "Therese Leduc", is also conceived in the form of road-trip, thus here we have a forth plot-line. One really has to watch this movie several times - not because it is so complicated, but because in order to scoop out the tremendous potential of truly effective humor that is in it. This film is doubtlessly De Funes greatest performance ever, he pulls out all the stops which he commands, there are even people saying that "Rabbi Jacob" remains to be the greatest French comedy made ever.
