Jean Yanne Movies

Life Upside Down was a French production (originally titled La Vie a l'Envers) which sneaked quietly into American art-movie houses and was greeted effusively by the critics. Charles Denner stars as a misfit who finds his dream world more preferable than the real world. As the film progresses, Denner retreats farther and farther into himself, until those around him, including his fiancee, are completely shut out. He locks himself in his barren apartment, sitting silently on the floor for hours. The final image is of an institutionalized Denner chuckling to himself that he's "won". While Life Upside Down became a critics' darling, it tended to bemuse general audiences who weren't certain if they were supposed to be laughing or weeping. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this Italian exploitation drama, a heart-broken young woman, recently jilted by her lover, becomes a hooker involved with a cruel pimp. After beating her, she heads for a new brothel. There she meets a dashing public- relations man who has come to her room to look into the killing of his aged boss. He helps her escape her murderous pimp and his brother, a professional killer. Unfortunately, the crooks manage to catch her. Fortunately, she is rescued by the PR man after one hood kills the other. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The people of a small town in France react differently to the Nazi occupation in this World War II action drama directed by Claude Chabrol. Mary (Jean Seberg) is willing to risk her life to help the resistance movement in spite of her husband's acceptance of the situation. The movement is slowed by an informer and another man who pretends to help the resistance fighters but leads them to the Nazis and steals their possessions. This is one of the few French films that accurately illustrates that the heroic resistance movement was a small minority and most people were content with the Nazi occupation as long as they had bread and wine. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

This uneven comedy finds two inept gunmen always being beaten out of their next caper by a conniving rival crook. They wait to turn the tables on the crook by posing as a Colonel and his faithful assistant, finding the rival crook's home and attempting to turn the tables on him by stealing the pilfered loot for themselves. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Claude Chabrol directs the tense psychological thriller Que la Bête Meure (This Man Must Die). When his young son is the victim of a hit-and-run car accident, writer Charles Thenier (Michel Duchaussoy) is determined to find the killer. Obsessed with avenging his son's death, he carefully records his thoughts in a diary. He travels to Paris and meets actress Helene Lanson (Caroline Cellier), who is a prime witness to the accident. After they start up a love affair, he discovers that the driver of the car was her brother-in-law, Paul Decourt (Jean Yanne). Paul also owns the auto repair shop that fixed up the car after the accident. Believing Paul is the killer, Charles befriends his son Phillipe Decourt (Marc Di Napoli). As it happens, Phillipe also wants Paul dead for his own reasons. Charles manages to get invited to the family's seaside home in Brittany in order to finally get his revenge, but things don't work out according to plan. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

Blanchard (Jean Yanne) is the colorless civil servant working for the French Culture Ministry. He works to support his nagging wife (Francoise Fabian) and their two children. He is called in on the carpet by his superior when a statistical report reflects his personal objection to growing censorship in France. He leaves home after his wife discovers his boss' secretary makes a play for her husband. When his children run away, Blanchard and his wife reunite to find the missing moppets and bring them home. For now, his plans to leave his wife and mistress for the secretary are temporarily put on hold. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

In this French crime thriller, you can leave the mob, but the mob won't leave you. Louis (Jean Yanne) has retired to a Thailand plantation with an Asian wife and child. Back in Marseilles, however, because a no-holds-barred gang war has broken out, Louis' large collateral family is wiped out, and he is family are slated for destruction. Hit-men are sent, and they kill his wife, but fail to get Louis. Now incensed, he returns to Marseilles to set these people straight. They confuse him with a policeman (Sterling Hayden) who is escorting Louis' daughter to Paris, and though they kill his daughter, Louis is able to get through the airport and into town. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This powerful romantic drama examines the final period of a long and ultimately unhappy affair. Jean (Jean Yanne) is an unpleasant, domineering man. Though he still lives with his wife, their marriage has been over for a long time. For six years, Jean has had an affair with the much-younger Catherine (Marlene Jobert). The dynamic of their relationship is moving it toward disintegration also, but Catherine resists it. Scenes of alternating recriminations and reconciliations unveil the anatomy of their breakup. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this French comedy/satire, director Jean Yanne plays Benoit, an economist who sets out to prove that, with money, one can get away with doing almost anything. Fired from the company he works for, he persuades a relative who is an important union organizer to invest union funds in helping him take over a bicycle factory. When he makes a big success of that, he begins taking over other failing businesses and making successes of them. Then he starts to play with the power of money. One of his stunts is to set up a church with very unusual doctrines in order to please a friend. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

The second of two horror films shot in a single production term and bearing the name of pop-art icon Andy Warhol (whose participation pretty much ended with the use of his name), this film is slightly superior to its higher-profile predecessor, Andy Warhol's Frankenstein. Direction is credited to Warhol factory filmmaker Paul Morrissey, though there still exists a very vocal camp who insist that the real credit should go to Italian director Antonio Margheriti. Euro-horror leading man Udo Kier assays the title role, playing the count as a pale, anemic-looking blood junkie with an overwrought accent. Finding the supply of "weer-gin" blood diminishing rapidly in Romania, Dracula is forced to seek a fix in a predominantly Catholic Italian province, where he is certain a few virgins still exist. He travels with his assistant (Arno Juerging) and his coffin-sealed sister to the decrepit, crumbling mansion of the financially-strapped Marquis DiFore (a tour-de-force performance from Bicycle Thief director Vittorio de Sica) who welcomes the affluent Count with open arms, hoping to marry off any one of his four daughters. Dracula clearly has other intentions for the girls... but his plans are rudely thwarted by beefy, socialist handyman Mario (Joe Dallesandro), who has been dutifully divesting the young maidens of their -- ahem -- virtue, thus tainting their blood and making it unsafe for vampiric consumption. Very unsafe, it turns out -- as we are treated to protracted scenes of the death-pale Count vomiting up gallons of blood. Rated "X" at the time of its release (and subsequently re-rated "R" ten years later), this outrageous catalogue of depravity features wildly campy performances, inane dialogue and an outrageous climax. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

Marcello Mastroianni stars in this French farce, an absurd "western" set in Paris, with Mastroianni as the incurably vain General George Armstrong Custer. Richard Nixon is the American president, but everyone is costumed appropriately for the previous century. Buffalo Bill (Michel Piccoli), the famous scout, is here portrayed as a limp-wristed bungler. Ugo Tognazzi plays one of Custer's Native American opponents; he runs a curio shop selling Native artifacts made in sweatshops by white women. The climactic battle is held in a large construction excavation where Les Halles market used to be. The language the two sides use to justify their conflict is lifted from that used in the then-current Vietnam War. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this satire, Jean Yanne punctures the pretensions of French show business, from music halls, to classical concert halls and even pornography. In the movie, he plays an indefatigable producer whose efforts sufficiently offend the big money people and the police so that his life is in danger. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide