Danièle Thompson was aware that the project was arduous; She now realizes that it is impossible. The director wanted to give a sequel to the huge success that was The Adventures of Rabbi Jacob. Co-written with cartoonist Jul, Rabbi Jacqueline was to stage the adventures of the children and grandchildren of Rabbi Jacob's characters.
"We started working on a possible sequel that would take up the following generations," explained Danièle Thompson on France 2 Sunday. But forty years later, the task proved thorny. Even more, according to him, than at the time of Gérard Oury, his father. "We would have more this freedom, lamented the director. It's a shame because humor has to explode all the time and everywhere. We must be careful and not offend sensitivities as, it is a kind of censorship that exists today. "
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«We walked on eggshells»
It should be remembered that in 1973, when Rabbi Jacob was released, the film had already caused controversy. Despite the success of Le Corniaud, La Grande Vadrouille and La Folie des grandeurs, Gérard Oury was dropped by Gaumont. He struggled to find producers for this screenplay celebrating the friendship between Jews and Arabs under the patronage of a xenophobic Frenchman. In New York, filming was disrupted by Orthodox Jews who vilified the project. On screen a Louis de Funès in the role of Victor Pivert, an openly anti-Semitic French industrialist, disguises himself as a rabbi to save Slimane, a revolutionary from an Arab country. "We were aware throughout the writing of the film that we were shaking things up and walking on eggshells," recalls the co-writer of the film. Aftershocks had to be cut "because they would not have been possible". Replicas that would still not be broadcastable today. "Especially today," insists Danièle Thompson.
The release of the film on October 18, 1973 turned into drama. It intervenes in the middle of the Yom Kippur War. To protest against this film, which she considered propaganda, Danielle Cravenne, the wife of Georges Cravenne who was in charge of promoting the film, hijacked a plane armed with a rifle. She was mortally wounded during the intervention of the GIGN which stormed the Boeing at Marignane airport.
However, the public acclaimed the film: 7.3 million spectators flocked to the dark rooms to discover this latest collaboration between Gérard Oudry and Louis de Funès. And the production remains one of the most rebroadcast on French television, until today.
After considering a musical adaptation in the early 2000s, the idea of a film sequel emerged. In 2016, the project is confirmed for a release scheduled for Christmas 2018. At the time, in the show La cour des Grands on Europe 1, the director explains her project. Rabbi Jacqueline would have been "a sequel without being one, because it's a huge jump in time," she says. "These are delicate and formidable subjects and always on a razor blade," recalled Danièle Thompson. A continuation well inscribed in his family history since Jacqueline is the first name of his mother, the actress Jacqueline Roman.