It’s official, “Rabbi Jacqueline” won’t be dancing. The sequel to “Rabbi Jacob” will not take place, it was announced on Sunday screenwriter Daniele Thompson, who had begun work on a second installment. In an interview on France 2, she denounced “a kind of censorship that exists today”. “There is no longer that freedom, and it’s a shame because humor must explode all the time and everywhere,” she regretted. “You have to be very careful not to offend sensibilities,” she also lamented.
Already screenwriter of the “Adventures of Rabbi Jacob”, released in 1973 and directed by his father, Gerard OuryDanièle Thompson confirmed that she had “begun work on a possible sequel”. Already announced in 2016, this second part was to focus on “the generation of children” of Rabbi Jacob, with a woman as the main character. It was to be co-written by Danièle Thompson and the comic artist Jul (Silex and the City, Lucky Luke).
“Shake things up”
A great success of popular cinema, with 7.3 million admissions at the time of its release, just fifty years ago, “The Adventures of Rabbi Jacob” told the tribulations of a racist industrialist, Victor Pivert (Louis de Funès), confronted in spite of himself with a settling of scores between terrorists in an Arab country, and forced to disguise himself as a rabbi in order to shake off his pursuers. The cast included many talented supporting roles: Henry GuybetClaude Piéplu, Jacques François, Popeck, etc.
Released a year after the hostage-taking of the Munich Olympics in 1972, and a few weeks after the Yom Kippur War, the film had already been at the heart of a controversy. In New York, filming was disrupted by Orthodox Jews opposed to the project, recalls Le Figaro. Worse: to protest against the release of the film, Danielle Cravenne – the wife of the producer responsible for promoting the feature film – had hijacked a Paris-Nice flight on October 18, 1973. Armed with a rifle and a a fake pistol, she had been killed during the intervention of the GIPN.
“We were very nervous when the film was released,” said Danièle Thompson on Sunday. We were aware of shaking things up, and we were walking on eggshells”. “There are a lot of lines that we cut because it was not possible”, confided the screenwriter, also author of several successes, including “La Grande vadrouille”, or “La Boum”, adding that many of these dialogues “would no longer be broadcast today”.