Few remember it, but the release of the film “The Adventures of Rabbi Jacob”, in 1973, was stormy. A tragic news story involving the hijacking of a plane marred its first releases in theaters.
The Adventures of Rabbi Jacob has established itself as a cult comedy since its cinema release on October 18, 1973. So much so that the feature film benefits from very regular rebroadcasts, the next of which takes place on France 2 on Sunday October 22, at 9:10 p.m.
However, the release of the film in cinemas did not go smoothly in the 1970s and it even gave rise to a tragic news item, which has since been forgotten. The day of the first broadcast of Adventures of Rabbi Jacob in dark rooms, a Boeing 727-228 carrying around a hundred passengers is hijacked by a lone woman, Danielle Cravenne, armed with a rifle and an imitation revolver.
Danielle Cravenne is not entirely unknown. She is the wife of advertising executive Georges Cravenne, then in charge of promoting the feature film directed by Louis de Funès. The Adventures of Rabbi Jacob, which criticizes anti-Semitism through humor and evokes relations between Arabs and Jews, was not to the taste of this rebellious wife, converted to Judaism during their marriage five years earlier. As comical as it is, Gérard Oury’s film is considered indecent by the 35-year-old woman, given the atrocities of the war taking place at the same time, west of Sinai.
A tense geopolitical context
Because the exit of Adventures of Rabbi Jacob takes place in a tense context: 12 days earlier, on October 6, 1973, there was an attack by the Egyptians and Syrians against Israel, which triggered the Yom Kippur War. Upset by the conflict and its victims on both sides, Danielle Cravenne wants to raise awareness and thus diverts the Air France flight between Paris and Nice on October 18.
She calls in particular for the cancellation of the release of Adventures of Rabbi Jacob, but also lists other demands in a three-page letter, relating to the fighting taking place at the same time thousands of kilometers away. Comments deemed “inconsistent” by the authorities.
The day the plane was hijacked, Danielle Cravenne denounced “selfishness, money, politics, indifference” in the face of the release of a film on relations between Arabs and Jews: “She tried to “I saw the different producers of this film and she hit a wall.”
A plane hijacked and one dead
While she asked that the plane land in Cairo, Danielle Cravenne finally agreed that the Boeing 727-228 would make a stopover at Marseille-Marignane airport to refuel with kerosene. The passengers were evacuated and the members of the GIPN, disguised as stewards, opened fire in the plane after three hours of negotiation. Danielle Cravenne dies from her injuries in the ambulance that was supposed to take her to a clinic.
Her husband sued the State, believing that the death of his wife, who was tired and disoriented at the time of the shooting and no longer presented a risk according to him, could have been avoided. The police claim to have acted in self-defense. The known psychological fragilities of Danielle Cravenne, who had been treated for “nervous breakdown”, will not allow her husband to obtain the legal compensation he wanted. Sylvie Matton, a friend of the “pacifist pirate”, again asked to reopen the file in the Obs in 2022.