Jean Yanne

Biography: life and films

One of France's larger than life celebrities in the latter decades of the 20th century, Jean Yanne was a highly regarded humorist and actor who, in a career spanning half a century, notched up over a hundred film and television appearances. He was born in Paris on 18th July 1933, into a working class family of Breton origin. His father was a lithographer and his mother a dressmaker. His real name was Jean Roger Gouyé. Abandoning his studies for a career in journalism, he began writing cabaret sketches. After completing his military service, he started out on the cabaret circuit in 1957. In the early 1960s, he became a radio and television presenter. He also employed himself as a singer and song-writer and released records (including J'aime pas le rock) under the name Johnny 'Rock' Feller.

Ever eager to find new outlets for his creativity, Jean Yanne was drawn to cinema and made his film debut in Alain Jessua's La Vie à l'envers (1964). He then appeared in about a dozen non-descript films, cultivating his familiar screen persona as a likeable rogue with a lugubrious temper, before he was finally noticed, in Jean-Luc Godard's Week-End (1967). It wasn't until Claude Chabrol cast him in Que la bête meure (1969) as a tyrannical family man that Yanne's talent as an actor became apparent. Chabrol then gave Yanne his most important screen role in his brooding thriller Le Boucher (1970), which led Maurice Pialat to give him the lead role in Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble (1972). For his blisteringly authentic portrayal of Pialat's violent alter ego, Yanne was rewarded with the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1972.

In 1972, having grown tired of acting, Yanne decided to turn his hand to directing. His first film, Tout le monde il est beau, tout le monde il est gentil (1972), was set in the world he knew well, that of radio broadcasting, and works as a scathing satire of both commercial radio and advertising in general. Yanne's political concerns came to the fore in his next feature, the enjoyably daft Moi y'en a vouloir des sous (1973), which is not only a virulent assault against capitalism, but also an admission of failure of left-wing politics to come up with a viable alternative. He continued in a similarly subversive vein with his subsequent films, the most successful of which was Deux heures moins le quart avant Jésus-Christ (1982), a deliciously evil parody of the sword and sandals blockbuster featuring another legendary comic, Coluche.

In 1979, Yanne took up residence in Los Angeles for financial reasons, but made frequent returns to France to continue his busy career on radio, television and film. He was a regular contributor to Philippe Bouvard's RTL radio show Grosses Têtes. Yanne continued clocking up his film appearances throughout the 80s and 90s, alternating comic and dramatic roles in a dazzling variety of films. Claude Chabrol gave him a part in Madame Bovary (1991), and the following year he earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his work on Régis Wargnier's Indochine (1992).

In the 1990s, debutant filmmaker Jacques Audiard gave Yanne one of his more memorable dramatic roles in Regarde les hommes tomber (1994). In Rémi Waterhouse's Je règle mon pas sur le pas de mon père (1999), he made a likeable companion to Guillaume Canet, and appears even more sympathetic in Christophe Gans' Le Pacte des loups (2001). Yanne's final screen appearance was in the French television series, Les Thibault, which aired a few months after his death. Jean Yanne died from a heart attack on 23rd May 2003, at his home in Morsains, France.

Filmography

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