Le Viager on AllMovie

This French comedy is the first feature film directed by the well-known television-director Pierre Tcherina. In the film, the most elaborate designs of a greedy family are unwittingly undone by an ailing old man. The family has made a complicated financial arrangement which will result in their owning the lovely resort villa the old man is living in, but until he dies they are obligated to let him continue living there. Actually, the old man wouldn't be there in the first place, but the family arranged for him to live there as they expected him to die at any moment. Instead, he lives through the Second World War and the years following, completely oblivious to their plots to do away with him; he is extremely grateful for their attentiveness and generosity, and is saddened as, one after another, they drop by the wayside.