Atlanta Jewish Film Festival – The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob

In this madcap French comedy classic, a bigoted businessman finds himself forced to impersonate a rabbi after being taken hostage by an Arab revolutionist. Iconic performer Louis de Funès plays the blustering bourgeois factory owner who’s thrown in with terrorists on the way to his daughter’s wedding. Dodging assassins and authorities at the Paris airport, he disguises himself as a beloved Orthodox rabbi (Marcel Dalio) visiting from America. Other neurotic characters join the chase in a frenzy of frantic disguises and mistaken identities, culminating in a riotous climax. With an earnest message of tolerance amid the overflowing slapstick, writer-director Gérard Oury’s box office record breaker was a Golden Globe Best Foreign Film nominee.