Sightlines · reception

How Don't Look Now... We're Being Shot At! was received

1966 · Gérard Oury · Don't Look Now... We're Being Shot At! on Sightlines

The arc

Critics sniffed at Gérard Oury's crowd-pleasing farce in 1966 while audiences made it the biggest hit in French box-office history — a record it held for over four decades. Today even the critical establishment treats it as national heritage, a rite-of-passage comedy every French household knows by heart.

What’s debated

The perennial debate: is it a comic masterpiece or a cozy myth-making machine that let postwar France imagine everyone — painters, puppeteers, opera conductors — was secretly resisting the Occupation?

Its footprint

Endlessly rebroadcast on French TV, it's woven into the culture — the whistled 'Tea for Two' rendezvous in the Turkish baths is one of French cinema's most quoted scenes, and the Bourvil–de Funès bickering has been imitated ever since.

Where it stands

An absolute monument in France — the 'everyone has seen it' comedy — while abroad it's more of a beloved discovery for cinephiles exploring Bourvil and de Funès.

Did you know? With over 17 million tickets sold, it remained the most-attended French film ever in France for more than 40 years, until Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis finally overtook it in 2008.