Philippe de Broca, 71; Filmmaker Was Best Known for His Eccentric Comedies

French film director Philippe de Broca, best known for his eccentric comedies and swashbuckling adventure movies, died of cancer Friday in a hospital outside Paris. He was 71.

His death was announced Saturday by Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, the French minister of culture. French President Jacques Chirac issued a statement describing De Broca -- who was an assistant to French directors Francois Truffaut and Claude Chabrol before he made about 30 films of his own -- as an “imaginative” director who created some of French cinema’s “most enduring comedies.”

A writer and occasional actor as well as a director, De Broca had multiple credits on many of his early films, including his most popular works, “L’Homme de Rio” (“That Man From Rio”) in 1964 and “Le Roi de Coeur” (“The King of Hearts”) in 1966.

From his earliest years as a director, De Broca had an eye for gifted actors. In “The King of Hearts,” he cast a young Alan Bates as a soldier sent to disconnect a German bomb in rural France during World War I. When the soldier finds the village abandoned except for the mental asylum, he frees the inmates, who then crown him king. The film also starred a young Genevieve Bujold.

De Broca considered the film an antiwar statement that gently suggested that the world is crazier than the insane asylum. When it first opened in Paris, “it was a flop,” De Broca told The Times in 1974. “I sold my car and my wife’s furs -- she agreed, of course -- to buy a full page in the papers and invite people to come see it for free.”

Hardly anyone accepted his offer, he said, but the film became a cult classic in the United States and ran for more than six years at a movie theater in Cambridge, Mass.

For “That Man From Rio,” De Broca cast Jean-Paul Belmondo as an adventure-loving young man in hot pursuit of his fiancee, Francoise Dorleac, after she is kidnapped by thieves and taken to Brazil.

Some of his most successful films were period pieces, starting with 1962’s “Cartouche,” which starred Belmondo as a notorious thief in 18th century France.

Born in Paris, De Broca did not go to college but attended film school at the Ecole Technique de Photographie et du Cinema in Paris.

He completed his military service in Algiers during the French-Algerian conflict of the mid-1950s. He worked as a cameraman on government documentary films.

After his military service, he entered the world of French New Wave cinema, a movement dedicated to telling stories that examine human relationships at close range. Truffaut and Chabrol were early leaders.

As an assistant director to Chabrol, De Broca worked on “Le Beau Serge” (“Handsome Serge”) in 1958 and “Les Cousins” (“The Cousins”) in 1959. He was Truffaut’s assistant on “Les Quatre Cent Coups” (“The Four Hundred Blows”) in 1959.

The following year, he released his own first film, “Les Jeux de L’Amour” (“The Games of Love”), with Chabrol as his producer.

After early successes with “art house” films, De Broca blossomed into a crowd-pleasing director in Europe and the United States. He also made a number of films for television.

His more recent feature films include “Les Mille et Une Nuits” (“1001 Nights”), which marked the film debut of actress Catherine Zeta-Jones in 1990. His last work, “Vipere au Poing” (“Viper in the Fist”), opened in France in October.

De Broca is survived by his wife, Valerie Rojan, and two children.