La Zizanie (1978)
Directed by Claude Zidi

Film Review

La Zizanie, one of the funniest of the later Louis de Funès film comedies, sees the unlikely pairing of the great comic actor with Annie Girardot, then at the height of her popularity.  Despite her association with more serious fare, such as André Cayatte's Mourir d'aimer (1971), Giradot was also a more than capable comic performer, and her sparky confrontation with de Funès in this raucous comedy is among the comedy highlights of her career.  By this stage, both actors had developed a forceful screen persona - de Funès was the mean-spirited and horribly intolerant bourgeois fiend, Giradot a thick-skinned feminist who always knew how to put men in their place.  Putting these two actors together in the same film is like keeping dynamite and nitro-glycerine together in your sock drawer - you can expect plenty of fireworks.  True to type, Girardot plays a strong-willed feminist-cum-ecologist who is improbably married to de Funès, an unscrupulous factory manager.

By accident or by design, the incessant husband-and-wife tussle that is amusingly enacted by the film's two stars makes an excellent parody of the real-life conflict between environmentalists and industrialists which began in the mid 1970s and which has become ever more vociferous since.  In the mid-to-late 1970s, environmentalism had become a burning issue, fuelled by man-made ecological disasters such as the Seveso dioxin catastrophe.  Other topical themes the film touches on are unemployment and the role of women in society.  The film's topicality no doubt contributed to its popularity - it attracted an audience of 2.8 million in France.  Before the film was released, the director Jean-Pierre Mocky successfully won a plagiarism lawsuit against its producers, claiming that it stole ideas from a scenario he had previously offered Louis de Funès.

The film benefits from another successful alliance - that of de Funès with director Claude Zidi.  Both have a natural flair for comedy which La Zizanie, their second film together - after L'Aile ou la cuisse - bears out very well.  Amongst the comic situations you are unlikely to forget are: Louis de Funès unwittingly destroying a billiard table whilst playing a game of billiards, de Funès and Girardot going to bed in a bedroom which has been transformed into a factory workshop (complete with lathes, conveyor belts and arc-welding equipment), and Girardot discovering that her treasured pet flesh-eating fish has been frozen to death (and then boiled).  A wonderfully funny Julien Guiomar is on hand to lend the film some additional comedy muscle, not that it needs it.  Like several de Funès comedies, La Zizanie has no qualms about going way over the top, but this is what audiences came to expect from France's top comedy performer - non-stop hilarity, with Louis de Funès doing for film comedy what Michelangelo did to the Sistine Chapel, but in a more ecologically sustainable way.

Film Synopsis

Guillaume Daubray-Lacaze is an ambitious man.  The mayor of a small town in France, he has high hopes for his anti-pollution inventions.  His latest pride and joy is the CX22, a machine that swallows smoke more effectively than a vacuum cleaner gobbles up dust.  Guillaume is understandably over the moon when he receives a massive bulk order for this miracle of modern technology from a Japanese client, but then he quickly realises that he needs a bigger factory to fulfil the order.  When his bid to extend his existing factory is turned down, the enterprising industrialist has only one option left open to him - he must convert his own private residence into a factory.

Naturally, this plan does not go down well with Guillaume's headstrong wife, Bernadette, who is appalled to see her lovely house turned into a gigantic noisy workshop.  The last straw comes when Bernadette's beloved kitchen garden ends up being sacrificed as a storage area for the infernal CX22s.  In a huff, the dissatisfied wife storms out and heads for the nearest hotel, where a masked ball is in progress.  So infuriated is Madame Daubray with her present domestic arrangements that she even allows her amorous admirer Dr Landry to think that his boat is about to come in.

With the mayoral elections just around the corner, Bernadette sees an opportunity to get even with her husband, by presenting herself as a candidate.  Thinking he has the election in the bag, Guillaume can hardly believe his wife capable of such a gross act of betrayal but he soon finds that he is up against a formidable opponent.  Basing her candidature on her ecological concerns, Bernadette soon manages to attract the attention of the media.  Her private war with her husband is about to become very public...