Les Tontons Flingueurs


Les Tontons Flingueurs (sometimes known as Crooks in Clover in English) is a cult French film by Georges Lautner released in 1963, and whose memorable screenplay was the work of Michel Audiard. The cast includes Lino Ventura, Bernard Blier and Francis Blanche.

"You gotta admit it's a man's drink."

Fernand, a former mobster, returns to Paris at the urging of a dying friend, "the Mexican", who anoints him his successor at the head of a criminal gang. However, the Mexican's former henchmen resent Fernand's promotion and try to get rid of him. But even more problematic, Fernand finds himself saddled with the Mexican's daughter Patricia, a flighty and playful young woman whom he now has to care for.


Tropes used in Les Tontons Flingueurs include:


  • Adaptation Displacement: The film was adapted from the novel Grisbi or not Grisbi by Albert Simonin, but is much more famous than the original work.
  • Anti-Hero: Fernand.
  • Blond Guys Are Evil: Theo (who's also a Gayngster).
  • Entendre Failure: Patricia was told by her father that "Fernand got me out of deep water", which she assumes involved rescue from drowning.
  • Everybody Smokes
  • Gargle Blaster: The film contains an extremely famous (to French audiences, anyway) example of this trope, in which the various characters partake of a bootleg hooch their gang used to distribute. "We had to stop making it," one of them explains, "because consumers were going blind. It got us in no end of trouble."
  • Gratuitous English: Various untranslated English phrases (usually horribly mispronounced) pepper the dialogues, and Jean the majordomo affects to speak English in order to look more like a British butler.
  • Hollywood Silencer: It actually doesn't even make a "fwip" sound, but a barely audible "beep".
  • Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: The Volfoni brothers.
  • Reformed Criminal: The majordomo is a former burglar, whom the Mexican caught red-handed as he was trying to force open his safe. In compensation, he was forced to work for a while as unpaid help, and when the time was up, decided to keep the job.
  • Shout-Out: The kitchen scene is a reference to Key Largo.
  • Sounding It Out: Fernand with the Mexican's telegram.
  • Wild Teen Party: Patricia throws one with her friends, which explains why the house is out of regular booze by the time the kitchen scene takes place.