''Love at the Top'' (french: Le Mouton enragé, lit=The Rabid Sheep) is a 1974
satirical
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or e ...
comedy-drama
Comedy drama, also known by the portmanteau ''dramedy'', is a genre of dramatic works that combines elements of comedy and drama. The modern, scripted-television examples tend to have more humorous bits than simple comic relief seen in a typical ...
film directed by
Michel Deville
Michel Deville (born 13 April 1931) is a French film director and screenwriter.
Deville started his filmmaking career in the late 1950s, paralleling the emergence of the French New Wave directors. He never achieved the level of critical and in ...
from a screenplay by
Christopher Frank
Christopher Frank (5 December 1942, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, UK – 19 November 1993, Paris, France) was a British-born French writer, screenwriter, and film director. He won the 1972 Prix Renaudot for his novel ''La Nuit américaine'' t ...
,
based on the 1956 novel ''Le Mouton enragé'' by
Roger Blondel.
Plot
Nicolas Mallet is a modest bank employee resigned to social mediocrity for the security that his job gives him. Introverted and dull, with the assistance and under the guidance of a former high school friend, novelist Claude Fabre, he will become a confident seducer, an opportunist upstart with no defined ambition. In the aftermath of the oil crisis, the Bel Ami of the 1970s experienced a remarkable social rise, relying exclusively on women whom he seduced almost unwittingly, while being remotely guided by Fabre. Going to seek power from those who rule him, knowing how to make himself indispensable, he will succeed in his ascent and favor that of his first conquest. It is only at the end of the film that we discover the real reasons behind Fabre's manipulative attitude.
Cast
References
External links
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''Love at the Top''at
Variety Distribution
Variety Distribution is an Italian-based film distribution company.
It distributes Italian films worldwide, produced from the 1930s onward.
History
Variety Distribution (formerly Variety Film and Variety Communications) has been in the film ...
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1974 films
1974 comedy-drama films
1970s French-language films
1970s satirical films
Films based on French novels
Films directed by Michel Deville
Films set in Paris
Films shot in Paris
French comedy-drama films
French satirical films
Italian comedy-drama films
Italian satirical films
1970s French films
1970s Italian films
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