Meet the French James Bond

Before Bond, before Bourne, there was Bonisseur de la Bath explains the Wall Street Journal. Created in 1949 by French thriller writer Jean Bruce (four years before Ian Fleming published his first Bond adventure, "Casino Royale"), Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, otherwise known as OSS 117, was the original prototype for the globe-trotting, devil-may-care secret agent.

Bruce's creation -- a smooth-talking, Americanized Frenchman employed by the Office of Strategic Services (forerunner to the CIA) -- brought him fame and wealth in over 80 novels and half-a-dozen films before the author's untimely death in a car accident in 1963. Since then, Bruce's widow and children have churned out further OSS 117 adventures without ever hitting the heights of the originals.

But two new French films have successfully resurrected OSS 117 and introduced him to a new generation of fans. The first film, "OSS 117: Cairo, nest of spies," was released in France in 2006; it sold over two million tickets and was subsequently distributed throughout the world. A sequel, "OSS 117: Lost in Rio," came out in France last week and immediately shot to the top of the box-office charts.

Whereas the original books and films (most of which were made during the 1960s starring a variety of B-list actors like Frederick Stafford, John Gavin and Errol Flynn's son Sean Flynn as OSS) were fairly serious, though slightly tongue-in-cheek adventures, the new films are deliberately played for laughs. "We appropriated Bruce's character by taking all his faults and magnifying them," says Michel Hazanavicius, who directed both films. "We also decided to make the character purely French as opposed to an Americanized Frenchman."

Both films star 36-year-old French actor Jean Dujardin, whose good looks and comic timing have drawn widespread acclaim. "He has this handsome premier side but also an elastic face a bit like Jim Carrey, which makes him ideal for comedy," says Jean-François Halin, who wrote the first film and co-wrote the second with Mr. Hazanavicius. "I was watching the second film the other day where Jean has this scene with an American CIA agent and if you look closely you'll see him pull about 15 different facial expressions in 15 seconds."

Mr. Dujardin's portrayal of OSS 117 has also drawn numerous comparisons with a young Sean Connery.

"It's true that for Jean Dujardin's look in the first film we were inspired by Sean Connery in early Bond films like 'Dr. No,'" says Mr. Hazanavicius. "But in the second I wanted Jean to strike a more urbane pose so I got him to look at films like 'Harper' starring Paul Newman. There are two suits he wears in the new film, a dark blue and a brown, which are replicas of the ones Newman wore."

Twelve years separate the two films: the first is set in Cairo in 1955 with France still a colonial power to be reckoned with, while the second takes place in Rio in 1967 with the world on the brink of massive social upheaval. "We wanted to take OSS out of his comfort zone in the second film," explains Mr. Hazanavicius. "In the first film his brand of misogyny and racism is rarely called into question, but in the second he can no longer get away with such outrageous behavior."

The second film also provided the filmmakers with an opportunity to deliver a withering critique on Gaullist-era France. Near the end of the film OSS finds his boss on a list of higher-ups who have had their collaborationist past wiped from the record. His first reaction is to protest but he is quickly silenced when his boss tells him he is in line for the Légion d'honneur.

"We wanted to show how many French people deliberately turned a blind eye to what was going on during the Second World War in France and for years after," says Mr. Halin. "We wanted to puncture the myth propagated by de Gaulle that France was a country entirely made up of resistors of the German occupation. It was interesting to talk about this climate that still reigned in France at the end of the 1960s 40 years later."

Both Mr. Hazanavicius and Mr. Halin cut their comedy teeth working for Canal Plus, the French pay-per-view channel, through the 1990s on a series of satirical shows. The channel has become renowned for its irreverent tone and anti-establishment voice. It also helped to revolutionize comedy sketch shows in France by applying high production values and paying its writers competitive salaries.

"One of the things I learned working for Canal Plus was to make the kinds of things I would like to see and not to differentiate between my own tastes and those of the public," says Mr. Hazanavicius. "It may sound egotistical but everything I've ever done professionally has been done to amuse myself."

The only difference now is that Messrs. Hazanavicius and Halin are working on a grander scale. Both OSS films were bankrolled by French studio giant Gaumont, which, far from rushing "Lost in Rio" into production after the success of the first film, gave their screenwriters ample time to develop a second film that is not a carbon copy of the first and works well on its own terms.

With the success of the second film now seemingly assured, Mr. Halin is keen for there to be one last installment in the adventures of OSS. "I think we're two-thirds way through this character's psychological arc and now we need to finish it," says Mr. Halin. "Cairo was the period of innocence, Rio that of doubt, it might be interesting in the third film to see an aging Hubert trading on former glories."

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