Au Service de la France

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This is a French comedy series about France in 1960 (Season 1) and 1961(Season 2) featuring spies navigating the Cold War, decolonization, and a changing society. It mocks everything: French attitudes then and now, American and Russian arrogance, and just about anything else you can think of. Yes, it’s very French.

De Gaulle is President and Algeria is a officially a part of France. Here is a typical scene mocking algerie francaise:
Two Frenchmen in suits sitting in a outdoor cafe look out on an Algiers street where they see men dressed in djeballas, street vendors crying out in Arabic, camels, and hear Arab women ululating in the distance. One turns to the other and says
‘France is so beautiful.’ :lol:

In the second season there is a putsch in Algeria and the spies perform an ad hoc mission to recover the Green Jerboa atomic bomb that was about to be tested in the desert. They load it onto the roof of a Citroen 2-CV and take off into the desert, a ridiculous sight meant to mock little France’s grand nuclear ambitions.

Here is a funny scene of mutual cultural incomprehension as puritanical American CIA agents try to explain to perplexed Frenchmen why having mistresses and sleeping around is a bad thing...


This may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I encourage you to check it out if you like foreign light comedy with a message.
Based on an actual French Cold War era intelligence agency: Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage
On Netflix, where it was given the lame American title “A Very Secret Service”. Subtitled.
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Re: Au Service de la France

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HuckleberryFun wrote: Wed Sep 05, 2018 2:21 pm
YankeeTarheel wrote: Wed Sep 05, 2018 1:49 pm It's a Djellaba, not "Djeballa", pronounced "Je" as in "Jeb", "lobba" like "lob a curve'.
Thank you. I guess I should have known that. I spent a couple weeks in Morocco.
I drank a lot of mint tea and bought some rugs, but no djellabas.
So much for my career as an Arabist.
:beer2:

A long time ago, a friend studying in Belgium went to Morocco. He bought a djellaba and walking down the street, recognized as an American had a vendor sing out:
"Hey, American! You bought one djellaba, You want to buy another djellaba?"
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

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