For “The Adventures of Rabbi Jacob”, Gérard Oury only decided at the last moment to perform the dance scene with Louis de Funès, which has nevertheless become legendary. It was not at all planned in the film!
In 1973, director Gérard Oury reunited with actor Louis de Funès for the fifth time for Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob, their new comedy confronting an irascible and xenophobic businessman with a terrorist group. But did you know that the famous dance scene from the film was totally improvised?
Today it seems crazy so much the scene is inseparable from the feature film, but that’s what choreographer Ilan Zaoui says in the show One day, one fate dedicated to Gérard Oury:
It’s funny to think that this moment of cinema which marked so much was not in the scenario.
Indeed, Gérard Oury was looking for an idea to mark the arrival of the false Rabbi Jacob in the middle of Shabbat. “Something had to happen on rue des Rosiers”, adds the choreographer.
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Louis de Funès gives everything for Rabbi Jacob’s Hasidic dance
Originally, De Funès simply had to play the violin in the scene, and that was the only reason for Ilan Zaoui’s arrival on the set, to form the king comedian of the box office. Once there, Zaoui tells the film crew that he is part of a dance company performing a dance performance on Jewish traditions.
Discovering the show, Gérard Oury’s blood only turns: this is what he lacked for his scene on rue des Rosiers. The violin scene goes to the trash and Oury has the company’s dance reworked so that its main actor, Louis de Funès, 59, can perform it, to original music by Vladimir Cosma.
This music has entered the ears of the French forever, and has become as cult as the choreography that now accompanies it forever.
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