‘Les Grandes Vacances’: The movie stunt that tragically killed two people
Dear reader, I am not the kind of dullard who wails about how “films are bad now”, but there is something about watching stunts in old movies that isn’t quite the same as seeing them today.
Watching a stunt nowadays, unless you’re watching Tom Cruise try to ritually sacrifice himself to the Gods of Hollywood in a Mission: Impossible flick by doing his own, death-defying stunts, is to watch something built from the ground up to take as few risks as humanly possible.
If it can be done with CGI, it will be. If it can’t, it (let’s be real here) probably won’t be done or done with CGI. Some great filmmakers can make this work; I’ve had my heart in my mouth through countless stunt scenes made possible with CGI, but it’s still not quite the same.
To be clear, this is a very, very good thing. Yes, sure, the corkscrew car jump in the 007 flick The Man With the Golden Gun is a jaw-dropping feat of stunt work (crying shame about the slide whistle they put in the mix). The cop car pile-up in The Blues Brothers is the kind of thing that makes you forget you’re watching a comedy movie when you see it. Basically, everything that Jackie Chan ever did on screen set a standard that basically no one has ever come close to topping since.
No one is denying that those scenes make for good cinema. The question is whether good cinema is worth the horrific risks that making those scenes took. Because, sure, it is incredible to watch those real people do those real things. However, no matter how much they planned, they were always putting the people involved in very real danger. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the story of Les Grandes Vacances.
A French comedy released in 1967 that claimed two lives it did not have to risk.
The stunt that killed two people
Nothing about Les Grandes Vacances (released internationally as The Exchange Student) seems to demand a death-defying stunt scene.
It’s a knockabout comedy directed by Jean Giraut, and one about a strict head teacher (played by Louis de Funès) who finds out that his son has failed his exams. In his rage, he decides to straighten the boy out by sending him on a foreign exchange trip to England. I’m sure I won’t blow your mind when I say that wackiness ensues from there.
Wackiness that absolutely did not need to include stunts that even today would be laughed out of the writers’ room of most Hollywood productions for being too ambitious. The plan was to add a chaotic set piece where a light plane lands on top of a speeding car. For some reason, they went ahead with this scene, and everything went horribly wrong. The plane spun out of control when it came into land and crashed into the road.
The movie’s aerial unit director and stunt pilot, Jean Falloux, was killed along with a passenger. The scene was, of course, cut from the picture, but production continued on it, eventually being released in 1964.
The movie was dedicated to Falloux, and one must ask oneself, was it really worth it? A stunt so unimportant to the movie that they could cut it, taking the lives of two people? I love stunt work as much as the next guy, but still, the risks speak for themselves.
If these stunts can be done safely, they absolutely should.