Animal (1977 film)

Last updated

L'Animal
L'Animal (1977 film poster).jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Claude Zidi
Written by Michel Audiard
Dominique Fabre
Claude Zidi
Produced by Bernard Artigues
Christian Fechner
René Malor
Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo
Raquel Welch
Cinematography Claude Renoir
Edited by Monique Isnardon
Robert Isnardon
Music by Vladimir Cosma
Distributed by Cerito Films
Analysis Film Releasing Corporation
Release date
  • 5 October 1977 (1977-10-05)
Running time
100 minutes
CountryFrance
LanguageFrench
Budget25 million francs [1]
Box office$7.1 million [2]

L'Animal is a 1977 French action comedy film directed by Claude Zidi and starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Raquel Welch. It was distributed in the United States by Analysis Film Releasing Corp under the title Stuntwoman.

Contents

The film initially focuses on two professional stunt performers, who are engaged to each other. They get injured in a car stunt on their wedding day, and then break-up their relationship and their professional partnership. After a period of unemployment, the man of the couple is offered a high-salary job. He soon wants to convince his former fiancée to rejoin their partnership. He finds out that she is currently engaged to a nobleman, and desperately tries to regain her affection before her impending wedding day.

Plot

Mike Gauché (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is a professional film stuntman who works with his fiancée Jane Gardner (Raquel Welch). However minutes before their long planned marriage they are called to perform a car stunt for a movie but it goes wrong, as a brake problem causes their car to fall and they end up in a hospital with bruises and broken legs. Exasperated by the behavior of her fiancé, Jane decides to leave. After his recovery Mike is no longer able to find work in the movie business and is forced to simulate mental retardation and to invent a family to receive Social Security benefits. One day his stuntman friend Santos asks him to replace him from time to time at his job which involves dressing up as a gorilla for advertising pasta at a supermarket.

Mike's luck begins to improve as he gets offered a high salary to do the stunts of an effeminate movie star Bruno Ferrari (Jean-Paul Belmondo) whom he proves to be a dead ringer to. Ferrari, while filming an action movie, suffers from vertigo and finds himself unable to perform dangerous sequences. Mike does not hesitate to get rid of his new stunt partner in order to replace her with Jane, who is enamored with the Count of Saint-Prix (Raymond Gérôme). Having heard the news Mike goes to the Count while impersonating a server in order to propose the offer to Jane. When he hears that the Count has asked to marry Jane he manically sabotages the dinner and makes Jane promise to do the film.

Desperate to regain Jane, Mike impersonates Ferrari who turns out to be gay, to seduce her. However the young woman is not fooled. Mike must perform a dangerous stunt on the wing of an airplane to an audience of journalists who think they are seeing Ferrari, where his life is saved from the accident by Jane, who is to marry the Count very soon. Meanwhile, the press discovers that Ferrari is not doing his own stunts.

While the wedding ceremony takes place at the castle of the Count, Mike arrives disguised as a gorilla, scaring guests with animals from the property, and takes Jane, who refuses to marry Count of Saint-Prix, preferring to live her life with Mike.

Cast

Production

Most of the stunts in the film were done by Belmondo himself. This caused him multiple injuries; a dislocated ankle after the scene on the steps of Sacré-Cœur, dislocation and a penetrating wound after the scene in which he is tumbling down the stairs, a chewed up ear after the fight scene with a tiger. Because the insurance companies refused to insure aerial stunts they had to be filmed last. Everything went off without incident, and the actor was able to realize his childhood dream of personally standing on the wing of a flying airplane, a Fieseler Fi 156.[ citation needed ]

Box office

The film sold over 3 million tickets in France. [3] [1] It grossed a total of $7,196,268 million at the worldwide box office. [2]

Related Research Articles

An animal is a multicellular, eukaryotic organism of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean-Paul Belmondo</span> French actor (1933–2021)

Jean-Paul Charles Belmondo was a French actor. Initially associated with the New Wave of the 1960s, he was a major French film star for several decades from the 1960s onward, frequently portraying police officers and criminals in action thriller films. His best known credits include Breathless (1960), That Man from Rio (1964), Pierrot le Fou (1965), Borsalino (1970), and The Professional (1981). An undisputed box-office champion like Louis de Funès and Alain Delon of the same period, Belmondo attracted nearly 160 million spectators in his 50-year career. Between 1969 and 1982 he played four times in the most popular films of the year in France: The Brain (1969), Fear Over the City (1975), Animal (1977), Ace of Aces (1982), being surpassed on this point only by Louis de Funès.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raquel Welch</span> American actress and model (1940–2023)

Jo Raquel Welch was an American actress.

<i>Breathless</i> (1960 film) 1960 French film by Jean-Luc Godard

Breathless is a 1960 French New Wave crime drama film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard. It stars Jean-Paul Belmondo as a wandering criminal named Michel, and Jean Seberg as his American girlfriend Patricia. The film was Godard's first feature-length work and represented Belmondo's breakthrough as an actor.

<i>Les Misérables</i> (1995 film) Film by Claude Lelouch

Les Misérables is a 1995 French war film written, produced and directed by Claude Lelouch. Set in France during the first half of the 20th century, the film concerns a poor and illiterate man named Henri Fortin who is introduced to Victor Hugo's classic 1862 novel Les Misérables and begins to see parallels to his own life. The film won the 1995 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

<i>Le Magnifique</i> 1973 French film

Le Magnifique is a 1973 spy comedy, a French/Italian international co-production, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jacqueline Bisset and Vittorio Caprioli that was directed by Philippe de Broca. Le Magnifique is a slapstick spoof of B-series spy films and novels and the men who write them.

<i>Cartouche</i> (film) 1962 film

Cartouche is a 1962 French adventurer film directed by Philippe de Broca and starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Claudia Cardinale.

<i>Crime on a Summer Morning</i> 1965 film

Crime on a Summer Morning is a 1965 French crime film directed by Jacques Deray and starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. The film is based on the 1963 novel One Bright Summer Morning written by James Hadley Chase.

<i>Borsalino</i> (film) 1970 film

Borsalino is a 1970 French gangster film directed by Jacques Deray and starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, Alain Delon and Catherine Rouvel. It was entered into the 20th Berlin International Film Festival. In 2009, Empire named it No. 19 in a poll of "The 20 Greatest Gangster Movies You've Never Seen… Probably". A sequel, Borsalino & Co., was released in 1974 with Alain Delon in the leading role. The film is based on real-life gangsters Paul Carbone and François Spirito, who collaborated with Nazi Germany during the occupation of France in World War II.

<i>Hold-Up</i> (1985 film) 1985 Canadian film

Hold-Up is a Franco-Canadian crime comedy from 1985, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and directed by Alexandre Arcady. The screenplay by Arcady, Daniel Saint-Hamont and Francis Veber is based on the novel Quick Change by Jay Cronley. The novel was filmed again, as Quick Change (1990), with Bill Murray starring and co-directing.

<i>La Scoumoune</i> 1972 French film

La Scoumoune is a 1972 French film directed by José Giovanni, starring Jean Paul Belmondo, Claudia Cardinale and Michel Constantin. It is an adaptation of Giovanni's novel L'Excommunié.

A Man and His Dog is a 2008 French film directed by French filmmaker Francis Huster, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, based on the 1952 film Umberto D. directed by Vittorio De Sica, and written by Cesare Zavattini.

<i>Le Solitaire</i> 1987 French film

The Loner is a 1987 French crime film directed and co-written by Jacques Deray, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean-Pierre Malo, Michel Beaune and Pierre Vernier. It was the last in a series of commercial action films made by Belmondo, which started with 1975's The Night Caller and made him a powerhouse at the continental European box office.

<i>Fear Over the City</i> 1975 French film

Fear Over the City is a 1975 French crime film directed by Henri Verneuil and starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. It was the first time Belmondo played a police officer.

Jean-Louis Scherrer was a Parisian fashion designer and couturier. Although he had name recognition and was known for his work, he is mainly noted for being the first couture designer to be sacked from their own-name label in 1992.

Raymond Gérôme was a Belgian-born, French stage and screen actor.

<i>Young Sinners</i> (1958 film) 1958 film

Young Sinners is a 1958 French-Italian film directed by Marcel Carné.

<i>Love and the Frenchwoman</i> 1960 film

Love and the Frenchwoman is the US title of a 1960 French anthology film originally entitled La française et l'amour. It starred Jean-Paul Belmondo and Dany Robin.

<i>Male Hunt</i> 1964 film by Édouard Molinaro

Male Hunt is a 1964 comedy film directed by Édouard Molinaro and starring Jean-Claude Brialy, Catherine Deneuve, Marie Laforêt, Claude Rich, Françoise Dorléac and Jean-Paul Belmondo.

The Prix du Brigadier, established in 1960 by the Association de la Régie théâtrale (ART), is an award given to a personality from the world of theater.

References

  1. 1 2 "L'Animal - Jean Paul Belmondo Box Office 1977". Box Office Story (in French). Retrieved 26 December 2022.
  2. 1 2 "Animal (1977)". Box Office Mojo . Retrieved 26 December 2022.
  3. ↑ "L'animal (1977)". JP Box Office (in French).
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.