The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe

The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe is a 1972 French spy comedy film directed by Yves Robert and written by Robert and Francis Veber, starring Pierre Richard, Bernard Blier, Jean Rochefort and Mireille Darc. Richard reprised his role as François Perrin in the sequel, The Return of the Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe (1974), as well as playing a character with the same name in La Chèvre (1981). The film was remade in English as The Man with One Red Shoe (1985), starring Tom Hanks and Dabney Coleman. Plot Bernard Milan, the second-in-command of France's Counter-Espionage department, is out to discredit his chief Louis Toulouse so that he can supplant him. When a French heroin smuggler who has been arrested in New York claims that the drug smuggling was a secret mission on the orders of French Counter-Espionage (actually on Milan's orders), the resulting negative press reflects on Toulouse, who cannot prove that Milan was responsible. In retaliation, Toulouse hatches a plot to deal with his ambitious subordinate: in a room which he knows is filled with hidden microphones, he sends his assistant Perrache to Orly Airport at 9:30AM the next morning, making Milan (who has been listening) believe that Perrache has gone to meet a master spy who will expose Milan's treachery. However, Toulouse secretly instructs Perrache to choose someone at random from the crowd of travelers arriving at that time. After considering several possibilities from the flight arriving at the specified time, Perrache selects François Perrin, an unsuspecting violinist, who is noticeable because, as the result of a practical joke played on him by his fellow orchestra members, he has arrived wearing a black shoe on one foot and a reddish-brown one on the other. Milan takes the bait and immediately begins a series of attempts to discover what Perrin knows—never realizing the fact that Perrin knows nothing at all about espionage (although he is an expert on music). Milan's machinations place Perrin in a series of increasingly peculiar adventures which he either avoids or escapes from by pure luck (which only confirm Milan's increasingly paranoid suspicions), and although Perrin is largely oblivious to the mayhem occurring around him, he cannot help noticing Milan's top agent, the beautiful femme fatale Christine.