Some movies want to tell you a story. "Le Bossu" does not fall into that category : it clearly was made because it represented a safe financial investment and because it worked as a star vehicle for Bourvil and Marais. Technically speaking this is a well-made movie with slick direction, high production values and some fun performances, but it lacks drive and conviction. At times it's like watching enormously expensive paint dry.

The central romance, between a hot-blooded yet decent knight-errant and his lovely young ward, has always struck me as unpleasantly inappropriate. It carries disquieting undertones of incest or pedophilia, even when the movie goes out of its way to indicate that the knight-errant never treated the girl with anything less than the most courteous benevolence.

Bourvil provides the necessary comic relief while Marais does well as the said knight-errant. What a strange life Marais must have had : in his private life he was gay, while he earned his money by portraying he-man heroes of the "Step back, you villainous cur ! Would you dare to annoy a young lady of good family ?" variety.

Paul Féval's source novel is better : it has far more wit, bite, fire and imagination, masterfully evoking a world of court intrigues, financial capers and swashbuckling adventures. Still, it is so clearly a "cape and dagger" novel that its appeal will be limited to people who, like me, enjoy the genre. (One gets born - or not - with this trait, one does not acquire it. It is purely genetic, like the ability to digest milk at an adult age.)

Fun tip : the movie's story involves a baby girl of noble blood, growing up in anonimity. At the end of the movie the girl has become a charming beauty, about three or four years younger than her mother.