OSS 117: Mission for a Killer

Everyone files these under Bond knockoff, but OSS 117 got there first: Jean Bruce began publishing the novels in 1949, four years before Ian Fleming picked up a pen. Agent Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, played here by the granite-jawed Frederick Stafford, is packed off to Brazil to break up an assassination ring, which mostly involves looking immaculate in Rio and Bahia while things explode around him. André Hunebelle directs the best-regarded entry in the series, all travelogue colour, poolside gadgets and lounge-jazz menace.

Decades later Jean Dujardin played the same agent for laughs, which sent everyone back to the straight-faced originals.