The Sheep Has Five Legs

Sheep never appear in this comedy, but Fernandel does, everywhere. In The Sheep Has Five Legs there is plentiful proof that the French are fertile and that Fernandel is versatile, for offspring abound, and all of them are Fernandel. Obviously designed solely to set off his virtuosity, the movie is merely a series of disconnected situations, which come off largely because of his personality and broadly smiling mug.

Fernandel first appears as Edouard Saint Forget, the father of quintuplets, named in order of birth, Alain, Bernard, Charles, Desire, and Etienne. When they are forty years old and widely scattered, their godfather sets out to reunite them, with an eye toward enhancing the glory, and the commercial success, of a village fair. Their personalities, naturally, all prove to be completely different, and most of them have strange occupations. One is the most famous beautician in France. Another is a lonely hearts journalist, writing under the name Aunt Nicole. The others are a ship captain, a priest, and a window-washer.

The Sheep Has Five Legs offers not only a variety of situations, but a great diversity in the types of humor which it employs. Sometimes the situations themselves are hysterical, but usually they are only mildly whimsical, with Fernandel himself supplying what humor there is. Throughout there is a very casual air; Director Henri Vernuil makes no attempt to create a laugh-per-minute tempo, with the result that none of the humor seems forced. In fact, one often has the feeling that humor is deliberately being withheld from him. At times the audience sits, wanting to laugh at Fernandel's lugubrious countenance, but, for long minutes, potentially ludicrous situations remain tantalizingly un-laughable. When these scenes finally reach a point of saturation, however, they are doubly humorous for the wait.

With its use of one man in a number of roles, The Sheep Has Five Legs would seem to be merely a copy of Kind Hearts and Coronets. Yet Fernandel is very French and very funny. Besides, this movie has a distinctly French twist--its emphasis on procreation. It is, as the village mayor says of an especially prolific crop of Saint Forget grandchildren, "a tribute to the Saint Forget vigor and the bounty of our native soil."