Claude Zidi

Biography: life and films

Although Claude Zidi (born in Paris on 25th July 1934) is best known as a film director - one of the most commercially successful France has ever produced - he started out as a camera operator. In the 1960s, he worked on around twenty films in this capacity, including Jacques Demy's La Baie des anges (1963) and Claude Chabrol's Le Boucher (1970). His directing career got off to a flying start with Les Bidasses en folie (1971), his first collaboration with the popular comedy troupe Les Charlots which attracted an audience of 7.5 million. Zidi subsequently worked with Les Charlots on three other films - Les Fous du stade (1972), Le Grand Bazar (1973) and Les Bidasses s'en vont en guerre (1974).

Having made his name with these early successes, Zidi then went on to work with some of France's leading comic performers. He teamed up Pierre Richard and Jane Birkin in La Moutarde me monte au nez (1974) and La Course à l'échalote (1975), and the success of these two films led the director to fashion some other memorable 'double acts' in his subsequent comedies. Louis de Funès was partnered with rising star Colouche in L'Aile ou la Cuisse (1976), and then with Annie Giradot in La Zizanie (1978). Raquel Welch was paired up with Jean-Paul Belmondo in L'Animal (1977), and then we had the even less likely pairing of Coluche with Gérard Depardieu in Inspecteur la Bavure (1980). Zidi also worked with Coluche on Banzaï (1983) and Les Rois du gag (1985).

The most successful screen partnership which Claude Zidi manufactured was the one involving Philippe Noiret and Thierry Lhermitte, playing a pair of crooked cops in Les Ripoux (1984). Not only was this film (the director's best) a major critical and commercial success (it attracted an audience of 5.9 million in France), it also won the Best Director and Best Film Césars in 1985. The film's popularity resulted in not one but two sequels - Ripoux contre ripoux (1989) and Ripoux 3 (2003), as well as a spin-off television series Les Ripoux anonymes (2011), directed by Zidi's son Julien. Lhermitte starred in another of Zidi's comedies, La Totale! (1991), which was remade by James Cameron in America as True Lies (1994), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Although Claude Zidi was naturally a comedy director, he occasionally ventured into more serious territory - Deux (1989), a romantic drama with Depardieu, and Profil bas (1993), a traditional policier with Patrick Bruel. But it was with comedy that Zidi had most success, and with Astérix et Obélix contre César (1999) he grabbed his largest audience (almost nine million in France). After the spectacular failure of his next film, La Boîte (2001), and lukewarm reaction to Ripoux 3 (2003) Zidi bowed out of cinema and has since devoted his time to French television, scripting a TV movie Capitaine Casta: Amélie a disparu (2006) and co-directing the TV series Les Ripoux anonymes (2011).

Filmography