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La Zizanie

La Zizanie is a 1978 French comedy directed by Claude Zidi, starring Louis de Funès as an industrialist whose anti-pollution business invades his own home, and Annie Girardot as his wife, who retaliates by running against him in a municipal election. It was the second film Zidi made with de Funès after L'Aile ou la cuisse (1976), and the only time de Funès played opposite Girardot.1 • 2

Key factDetail
Director and writersDirected by Claude Zidi; screenplay by Zidi with Pascal Jardin and Michel Fabre; dialogues by Pascal Jardin3
StarsLouis de Funès as Guillaume Daubray-Lacaze; Annie Girardot as Bernadette Daubray-Lacaze4
ReleaseFrench theatrical release 22 March 1978; CNC visa no. 48231 dated 17 March 1978, classified "Tous publics"1
ProductionLes Films Christian Fechner and Simar Films; budget 21 million francs4 • 5
Key crewMusic Vladimir Cosma; cinematography Claude Renoir3
Box officeAbout 2.8 million admissions in France, against nearly 6 million for L'Aile ou la cuisse2
Runtime98 minutes per the CNC visa record; other sources give 93 to 97 minutes1 • 5

Spoilers

Plot

Guillaume Daubray-Lacaze is a provincial mayor, inventor, and manufacturer of anti-pollution equipment. During a visit from Japanese buyers, he sells them 3,000 units of his smoke-extracting machine, the CX 22.6 The order can save his struggling factory, but no land is available to expand, so he installs new workshops inside the house he shares with his wife Bernadette and turns her garden into a warehouse.6

Bernadette, a devoted horticulturist, leaves him and enters the municipal election against him to publicly disavow his expansionist politics.6 • 7 The film's comedy comes from the resulting quarrels between the couple, between management and workers, and between the two rival election campaigns. IMDb's synopsis instead gives the order as 5,000 pieces; French-language sources consistently give 3,000.4 • 6

Production

After the success of L'Aile ou la cuisse, a second film with the producer Christian Fechner and Claude Zidi was planned.8 Zidi cast Annie Girardot, then at the height of her fame, as the female lead, a role usually played by Claude Gensac in de Funès's films.2

Shooting under medical supervision. De Funès had suffered a double heart attack in March 1975, and insurers were reluctant to cover him afterward. Fechner agreed to a strict on-set medical setup, including a cardiologist and a resuscitation team, and the factory and house sets were built almost entirely in studios to satisfy the insurance conditions. The production spent, by one account, the equivalent of 3 million euros on these sets, from a budget of 21 million francs.2 • 5 Shooting ran from 14 November 1977 to 20 January 1978.5

Plagiarism suit. The production was complicated by a legal action: the director Jean-Pierre Mocky claimed the screenplay plagiarized his own project and took the case to court.8 One film reference site also lists Mocky among the credited writers, though the main French credits name Zidi, Jardin, and Fabre.9 • 3

Reception

The film was expected to be the comedy event of 1978 but drew about 2.8 million admissions, close to de Funès's 1971 film Jo (2.5 million) and well below L'Aile ou la cuisse (nearly 6 million).2 The same year's French comedies La cage aux folles (5.4 million) and La carapate (2.9 million) both outdrew it, and American releases such as Grease and Midnight Express dominated the market.2 Critics were harsh, and word of mouth was poor; one retrospective commentary attributes the result partly to the film's ecology and politics themes, which made it less family-oriented than de Funès's earlier comedies.2

Audience ratings have since been moderate: IMDb lists 6.4/10 from about 4,700 votes, and AlloCiné an average of 3.1/5 from about 2,600 ratings.4 • 10 Reviewers frequently single out the payroll gag, in which workers receive paychecks sized in proportion to their girth, and Vladimir Cosma's disco-pop theme.10

Themes

The film sets industrial expansion against environmental protection within a single marriage: the husband manufactures pollution-control machines while the wife cultivates a garden that the factory destroys.7 A television-programming notice describes its themes as the tension between industrial development and environmental preservation, and the balance between professional and personal life.11 A retrospective review compares Zidi's mocking treatment of industrial "progress" and the factory's machines to Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times.12

References

  1. La Zizanie, visa d'exploitation no. 48231, CNC
  2. La zizanie (C8) : Pourquoi Louis de Funès a été forcé de tourner en studios avec Annie Girardot, Toutelatele
  3. La Zizanie, Cinéma-francais.fr
  4. La zizanie (1978), IMDb
  5. La Zizanie, Louis de Funès box office 1978, Box Office Story
  6. La Zizanie (1978), Cinéma-francais.fr
  7. La zizanie, Apple TV
  8. Saga Louis de Funès: Le retour au sommet (1975/1982)
  9. La Zizanie (1978), Films en France
  10. La Zizanie, critiques spectateurs, AlloCiné
  11. La zizanie, Programme TV
  12. La Zizanie, Loucinefil

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of the 1970s › Released 1977 to 1979

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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La Zizanie

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