Jean Yanne : accidental director.

In the 1970’s and 1980’s, Jean Yanne was ubiquitous : he moved behind the camera, but stayed in front of it ; he directed himself in seven movies.

His direction is exactly what his films required : it was custom made for their brand of humour, that is ill-fitting, as it showed absolute disdain for technical elegance and aesthetics.

Jean Yanne’s movies prove that anybody can direct a film : it is not a matter of skills but power. In their unique way, they confirm « la théorie des auteurs » : a filmmaker is not a technician.

Jean Yanne created his films to his own image, without giving a damn to what they looked like.

Crude humour, bad taste, heavy satire and himself : Jean Yanne imported to the screen what made him successful on stage, TV and as a radio host.

His first film, « Tout le monde il est beau, tout le monde il est gentil » (1972) explores familiar turf : French radio.

The second, « Moi y en a vouloir des sous » (1973), tackles the industrial relations between equally greedy workers and bosses.

In « Les Chinois à Paris » (1974), the Chinese red army is indeed in Paris : possibly a late answer to Godard’s « Weekend » ; the People’s Republic did not think the film funny.

« Chobizenesse » (1975) is a distant cousin to Mel Brooks’s « The producers », « Deux heures moins le quart avant Jésus-Christ » (1982) a delirious mix of TV satire and peplum pastiche, which predated by twenty years Alain Chabat’s « Astérix et Obélix : mission Cléopâtre ».

The title of his final film rings like a famous last word for his filmmaking career : « Liberté, égalité, choucroute » (1985), « Liberty, equality, sauerkraut ».

Needless to say, Jean Yanne’s films are never, even inadvertently, politically correct.

With him, cinema becomes an annex of live entertainment and scandal paper sheets : his films look like overextended or loosely assembled acts of stand up comedy or « bête et méchant » -silly and nasty- reporting in the style of cult magazine « Hara Kiri ».

An outstanding improviser, Jean Yanne shoots from the hip, on screen and behind the camera, and probably only once : his films do not look like he is a fifty-take Kubrick type.

If he has afterthoughts, he stifles them quickly.

This is high risk cinema, prone, like certain police operations, to « bavures » : slip-ups, when bad taste forgets to be funny and game of social and political « shoot them up » is hit by its own erratic fire.

Simultaneously, their « take no prisoners » attitude fuels the films with tremendous energy and a sense of urgency which erects a barrier against the trappings of self-censorship and conniving filmmaking masquerading as social criticism, Bertrand Tavernier-style.

Jean Yanne’s films seem permeated by the naive belief that their rough edges and lack of polish guarantee their ingenuity and that, conversely, style and technical skills are nothing but tools of deception : Yanne’s cinema and « Le souper » are both French and at the antipodes of each other.

Does this reflect the director’s sincere conviction or is it rather a camouflaged artifice aimed at deceiving the audience ? Jean Yanne probably just chose what was to him the easier path to follow : by his account, he never gained heightened motivation by facing increased difficulties.

His filmmaking career came to a final halt after « Liberté, égalité, choucroute », because the going got financially rougher and Jean Yanne returned to the comfort of his radio and TV roots and shorter formats possibly better adapted to his talents.

To his last days, the slow grumbling of his voice provided a pleasant respite from the high-speed, enthusiastic delivery of his younger colleagues.

The public entertainer must be thanked for never taking himself too seriously. Even as a joke, he never contemplated running for the French presidency : a sad waste of energy from his perspective.

The staple of French talk shows includes a dialectical debate about the seemingly twin concepts of « grossièreté » and « vulgarité », « coarseness » and « rudeness » in English or vice versa, or plain « vulgarity » for both.

Some deep TV thinkers argue that, far from being one and the same, the two words define near opposites : « grossièreté » would be a fully honourable weapon when used to denounce social evils and hypocrisy, and ultimately the sign of a pure heart, while « vulgarité » would be just... well, « vulgarité ».

The debate always raged when Jean Yanne was an invited guest. Was he, were his films « grossiers » or « vulgaires » ? Usually both.