This Thursday, December 22, 2022, France 3 is broadcasting “The Wing or the Thigh”. Claude Zidi’s cult film released in 1976 and brought to the screen by Coluche and Louis de Funès. The latter had also delivered yet another successful performance, drawing a little more the contours of his genius. However, at this time, the public notices that something is not going as well as usual. Like a missing flame in the eye of Louis de Funès. And for good reason…
“Wing or thigh”, it is the story of Charles Duchemin, formidable and dreaded food critic, who intends to pass the torch to his son, Gérard. Downside: the latter does not intend (at all) to marry the same destiny as his father, aspiring rather to a career… as a clown. And then there are all these stories with Tricatel, boss of a large synthetic food chain. You will have understood it: there are all the ingredients there to create the cult, as almost always with the films of Louis de Funes. For “The Wing or the Thigh”, if his comic duet with Coluche had made the French public laugh a lot, the actor had caused a lot of concern. Since on the set, his health was already declining…
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Two heart attacks and a long hospital stay
Just two years before the release of “The Wing or the Thigh” in 1976, Louis de Funès embarked on a new adventure led by director Gérard Oury, with whom he had worked on the film “The Adventures of Rabbi Jacob”. This time, the filmmaker is directing “The Crocodile”. Louis de Funès signs immediately, and the start of filming is expected in the spring of 1975. Everything is settled like clockwork… and everything collapses in one day. On March 20, 1975, Louis de Funès has a heart attack. Taken care of quickly, his entourage wants to be reassuring. Unfortunately, 10 days later, he suffered a new heart attack. The doctors are worried and are formal: Louis de Funès will not be able to shoot.
And in general, his state of health has not indicated anything good for several years now. It must be said that at this time, the actor leads a crazy pace, between theater, cinema and television, he is everywhere. Following his two heart attacks, he spent several months at the Necker hospital in Paris, and stayed away from the spotlight…until 1976, for “L’Aile ou la thigh”. “This immense fatigue that I had to overcome is a wake-up call. You have to have the wisdom to listen to it,” he confided two years earlier. Thus, on the set of Claude Zidi’s film, Louis de Funès changed many habits.
Louis de Funès “on a drastic diet”
In “The Wing or the Thigh”, Louis de Funès observes a reserve that we hardly knew about him at the time. Far from his legendary agitation on the big screen, his angry outbursts and his hilarious facial expressions, the actor delivers something more nuanced. As if to save yourself. And his physique, emaciated, weakened, challenges the public. In 1976, he was even medically assisted on the set of the film. He must observe the greatest vigilance, because a heat wave hits France in the summer of 1976. And then in parallel, Louis de Funès has already made radical changes in his personal life. “On a diet”, he no longer drinks, neither wine nor coffee, and is very careful about what he eats. The height when you have to play a food critic!
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“I will be on a diet until the end of my days” confided the actor in 1976 to Michel Drucker in the program “Les rendez-vous du dimanche”. And to explain how he had respected this diet on the set: “In the scenes of the film, these are real dishes prepared at the caterer. Succulent dishes! (…) I tasted, I dipped a small piece of bread in the sauce, but barely soaked.” An iron discipline that Louis de Funès had ended up adopting without complaining: “They are enemies. Wine is an enemy, coffee too. Necker hospital, I had already gotten out of the habit of drinking coffee or wine. I held on, and now I’m fine. I eat a lot of things from my garden, biologically grown!” 7 years later, on January 27, 1983, Louis de Funès bowed out at the age of 68…
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