Trivia / Lévy and Goliath

• Acting for Two:
  • Louba Guertchikoff played the mother of the Lévy brothers and an old lady at the synagogue in Paris.
  • Muriel Combeau played Moses' wife Sarah and a young woman at the same synagogue.
• Associated Composer: Vladimir Cosma composed for a Gérard Oury-directed film once again.
• Cast the Expert: The hazzan/cantor who sings a prayer in Hebrew (specifically, "El Malei Rachamim", a funeral prayer for the soul of a deceased person) at the Parisian synagogue Moses goes to was a real one, Émile Kaçmann, an Auschwitz survivor and one of the most remarkable French cantors of his time.
• Completely Different Title: In Germany, the film is titled Wer hat dem Rabbi den Koks geklaut? ("Who Snatched the Rabbi's Coke?").
• Creator-Driven Successor: Another Gérard Oury film about Jewish people/culture and a protagonist who finds himself chased by antagonists following a random encounter that happened to him, after The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob and Ace of Aces. In fact, it's a reverse of Rabbi Jacob, in that a religious Jewish man has to disguise as a gentile/non-religious person to escape the villains instead of the other way. And Vladimir Cosma composed the soundtrack once again.
• Fake Nationality:
  • Moses is Belgian, Richard Anconina is French.
  • Moses' whole community in fact (since they are all French actors playing Antwerp-established Jews). The only exception is the Belgian André Valardy.
  • Malika is French of Algerian descent, while the actress, Souad Amidou, is French of Moroccan descent.
• Production Posse: Gérard Oury directed the film and co-wrote with his daughter Danièle Thompson as they did on a number of films before, with Vladimir Cosma at the soundtrack. And consultant and rabbi Josy Eisenberg helped Oury get the religious stuff right like he did on The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob.

---