Rabbi Jacob: Are you planning a sequel to De Funès’ cult film?
Released in 1973, this cult film told the story of a racist and anti-Semitic industrialist whose lines have become public knowledge. Have current mores become too sensitive to a liberty of humor too polemical to accept a continuation of this work?
Louis de Funès, in the role of Victor Pivert in Rabbi JacobHe did not hide his racism and anti-Semitism and showed it proudly without turning pale. Certainly, some of the iconic lines of this film could no longer appear on our screens without offending viewers’ sensibilities and the almost automatic censorship of black humor.
The sequel, planned since 2018, should tell the life of the children and grandchildren of the protagonists Slimane, Salomon and Victor Pivert. The role of the famous actor Louis de Funeswould have been replaced by a woman, in Rabbi Jacob. Which is finally more than questioned…
In the TV show ” Sunday, 8:30 p.m “, the director Danielle Thompson announced on the occasion of the promotion of the series BARDOTthat the French film would certainly not have a sequel…
She “questions the guilt of censorship on the set of the show and at a time when good intentions and prudence are paramount,” “It’s the kind of censorship that’s in place today.” It’s with his father Gerard Oury that the screenwriter created the first part, she now blames the “unfreedom” of this time, which no longer allows laughing at the same things as before.
Yet many recent French films play with racism to make audiences laugh, exacerbating it to show its ridiculousness, such as ” What the hell have we done? “. But even if ” The Adventures of Rabbi Jacob » After being a huge success when it was released in 1973, as evidenced by the 7.2 million cinema viewers, the project for a sequel seems to have been abandoned before it even saw the light of day.