The Tattoo

Released in 1968, the French-Italian comedy Le Tatoué (The Tattoo) was directed by Denys de La Patellière and built around a scheme by art dealer Félicien Mezeray to acquire a tattoo, supposedly the work of Modigliani, carried on the back of a former legionnaire named Legrain. To get his hands on it, Mezeray offers to restore Legrain's country home, unaware that the property is actually a ruined twelfth-century château and that Legrain is in fact a penniless count. The picture was conceived by its producer as a commercial pairing of two enormously popular stars, and its screenplay, credited to Alphonse Boudard, was largely written day by day during the shoot, with scenes filmed in roughly the same order the story unfolds. Despite lukewarm reviews, the film drew more than three million admissions that autumn and ranked among the year's biggest box-office successes in France.