Il montone infuriato

A middle-age man (Jean-Louis Tritignant) picks up a pretty young woman (Jane Birkin). When he finds out she's a prostitute, he slaps her into submissiveness and then "rapes" her. She ends up adoring him for it, and he discovers his strange powers over beautiful women.Encouraged by his scheming friend (Jean-Pierre Cassel), a crippled, unsuccessful writer, he uses his seductive powers to seduce the wife of a business associate (Romy Schneider), and embarks on a campaign of shady land deals and political intrigue.

This movie works best if you take it as a satire or absurdist comedy. The character's strange power over incredibly beautiful woman is especially ludicrous. Most men would volunteer their left testicle to sleep with Jane Birkin and their right one to sleep with Romy Schneider; they would then be left castratti if they went on to seduce the likes of Florinda Bolkan (as a bisexual political power broker)and Estelle Blain (as a vapid movie star) as Tritigant's character does here. In one of the funniest scenes, the hero has to, in order to close a deal, either sleep with a wealthy woman who is "older than God" or marry an 18-year-old heiress. Hilariously, the young girl is eager to jump into bed with him, but refuses to consider marriage, so he has to make the ultimate sacrifice.

This is definitely a very black comedy which takes a lot of tragic and violent turns at the end, but in typical French (i.e. decidedly non-Hollywood)fashion it refuses to provide a tidy moral at the end or make its hero too sympathetic. As for the literal translation of the French title, "The Angry Sheep", I'm still trying to figure that one out.

Michel Deville was of the same generation as Truffaut, Chabrol and Godard, but resembles them not at all. He seems to belong to an older generation, like Carne and Renoir, but much more eroticized. The story is that of mentor and student (sort of Svengali and Trilby, but with two men). The homosexual undercurrent of the story should not be too hard to see for most viewers. Trintignant is the shy 'sheep' of the title, his overbearing mentor, who has emotional problems owing to his club foot, is Cassel, one of his most impressive performances.

I don't know who is really the female lead--is it Birkin or Schneider? They both have very important roles. Florinda Bolkan, so great in Investigation of a Citizen..., has another memorable role here. Mary Marquet, almost 80 at the time, has a superb cameo as the very rich woman Trintignant has to romance.

As the title of Michel Deville's film translates as the singularly uninviting 'The Rabid Sheep', there have naturally been a few alternatives, the most inappropriate of which must surely be 'Love at the Top'. Whoever thought that one up might perhaps have had in mind the earlier 'Room at the Top' and its sequel but Laurence Harvey's social climber Joe Lampton is a positive milquetoast compared to the Nicholas Mallet of Jean-Louis Trintignant. Monsieur Trintignant utilises his innate shyness and natural charm to great effect here so as to make his character less loathsome.

This film is the first of Deville's loosely connected trilogy that was to continue with the dark and disturbing 'Eaux Profondes' and culminate in his most accomplished, critically acclaimed and commercially successful 'Péril en la Demeure'. Of the three it is the most scathing and cynical and for this viewer at any rate, the weakest.

Trintignant's character is a latter day Bel Ami and the women he beds show precious little resistance, notably the enchanting nymphet of Jane Birkin who becomes remarkably docile after being clipped round the chops by our hero, gorgeous Romy Schneider's bored wife who pays the ultimate price for her infidelity, cougar Florinda Bolkan who paddles with both feet and septuagenerian Mary Marquet!

By far the most fascinating character and one that supplies the film's darkest element is the crippled writer Claude of Jean-Pierre Cassel, a near devilish personality who guides Nicholas on his way to sexual and financial success as well as living a life by proxy as he obviously covets his protegé's conquests. An astute critic has observed that Cassel and Trintignant could so easily have swapped roles.

Deville's preferred editor Raymonde Guyot guarantees a brisk pace whilst the excellent use of the music of Saint-Saens, notably his Third Symphony, reminds us that he is credited with writing the first film score for 'L'Assassinat du Duke de Guise' in 1908.

Is there a moral to the tale? 'Be careful what you wish for....' would seem the most apt.

It is just a beautiful film. Not exactly in ordinary manner who you expect - sure the cast is more than impressive, the dialogues are just fair, the satire works more than seductive, the dream , animating many from us , reminding a sort of Vicomte de Valmont and pure intelectual voyerism are admirable good points- but for situations, cliches reinvented in wise manner, for the magnificent end and for references to so many familiar situations from literature and cinema.

An ordinary man, working in a bank, after two meetings with a young girl becomes the subject of a sort of social experiment of his friend.

This is all, in fact, and you become part of each step of the way , with dramatic to terrible consequences of a functionary beginning a different life in profound sense.

In short, just a gem.

A so French satirical drama, or comedy drama, and played by the perfect cast of actors. Jean-Louis Trintignant and Romy Schneider are here not as good as in LE TRAIN, made the very same year, but this movie is a perfect testimony of this seventies period. Jean-Louis Trintignant is delightful of cynicism, selfishness, as a cool ruthless man. This film, I repeat, is a satyre of social rise during this period. Keep in mind that the seventies was a period that we never knew after. Greed was smooth, ambition was fun, and we could speak about that, show this without any restriction, with a bit of humor. Foreign audiences will probably understand nothing to it.