Tout le monde il est beau, tout le monde il est gentil (1972) - film review

Christian Gerber is a reporter for Radio-Plus, France’s most popular radio station.  Whilst he attempts to accurately report the peaceful revolution taking place in a Latin American country, his colleagues fabricate their reports in an attempt to draw a larger audience.  On his return to the offices of Radio-Plus in Paris, Gerber tries to expose this deception but the company’s president, Louis-Marcel Thulle, is incensed and demands that he be dismissed.   Plantier, the head of the station, is about to fire Gerber when his wife turns up unexpectedly, in a homicidal frame of mind.  After Gerber has diffused the situation, Plantier shows his gratitude by appointing him  the station’s artistic supervisor.   This turns out not be a good idea since the station’s entire output has a nauseating evangelical slant, and that includes the advertisements.  Once again, Gerbier’s honesty earns him the sack.   Out of work, Gerbier is soon occupied helping to produce a stage show with his friend Marcel Jolin.   When the show, an evangelical musical, proves to be a huge success, President Thulle decides to hire Gerbier as Plantier’s replacement in an attempt to revive the fortunes of the ailing radio station.   Gerbier’s brainwave is to create a new kind of radio experience, where the listeners are told the truth and nothing but the truth.  As Gerbier discovers, the truth can be more dangerous than any number of lies...

Jean Yanne’s directorial debut feels like something of a personal crusade, a full-blooded behind-the-scenes exposé of the radio business and an all-out assault on the murky world of advertising.  As he had already spent ten years working in radio, it is a milieu with which Yanne was well acquainted and, at the time the film was made, it was a far from healthy milieu.  Because French radio stations were dependent on advertising for their income, they were at the beck and call of their sponsors, with the result that they were little more than a mouthpiece for commerce and industry.  The same is true today with many commercially funded media outlets, particularly the newspapers and certain satellite channels, making this a film which continues to be highly relevant.    

Tout le monde il est beau, tout le monde il est gentil was a box office hit when it was first released, encouraging Yanne to make further films in a similar anarcho-satirical vein.  However, it also provoked great controversy and was judged by many to be blasphemous.  (Any film in which the director shares a credit with God and portrays the almighty endorsing a wide range of consumer products is unlikely to go down well with the Gospel reading fraternity.)   As well as satirising the shadier side of broadcasting and advertising, the film also lampoons organised religion, specifically the way in which unscrupulous individuals exploit the gullibility of the pious faithful for their own ends.   

Jean Yanne not only scripted and directed the film (embossing both which his own personality, that of a rabid sabre-toothed satirist), he also takes the lead role, playing along such giants as Michel Serrault and Bernard Blier (both giving great value), with a talented supporting cast that includes a young (and hilarious) Daniel Prévost.    With its unflagging humour and outrageous musical numbers (which evoke perfectly the early years of the 1970s in all their cool psychedelic glory), Tout le monde il est beau, tout le monde has just about everything it takes to make a cult classic.

© James Travers 2009

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