Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#111409
of 909177 performers
Top 25%
Guy Decomble works on quiet performance rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Guy Decomble appears in 5 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Guy. The 400 Blows is the clearest case: a film rated 7.8 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, screen presence, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for drama, mystery, crime. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with François Truffaut, Jean Delannoy, Jean-Pierre Melville and others, Guy Decomble helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
The 400 Blows (1959) as Professeur de français · Bob le Flambeur (1956) as Police Commissary Ledru · Jour de Fête (1949) as Roger
Career snapshot
Ranked #111409 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
5
1936–1959
Career length
23 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.8
The 400 Blows
Average Nutevio score
7.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
The 400 Blows
Most frequent director
François Truffaut
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With François Truffaut
Most common genre
Drama
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 37m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.0
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.7
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
1950s
7.1 average MV
The 1950s are where the work and the material meet. The 400 Blows, Maigret Sets a Trap, Bob le Flambeur — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1950s
7.1
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1950s
7.4
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1930s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Crime of Monsieur Lange.
Most productive era
1950s
3 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 1930s | 1940s | 1950s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.71 film | — | 7.13 films |
| Action | — | — | 6.91 film |
| Comedy | 6.71 film | 6.81 film | — |
| Crime | 6.71 film | — | 6.82 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1936The Crime of Monsieur Lange
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Typesetter (uncredited).
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
1959The 400 Blows
7.8 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once. The current state of the argument, as Professeur de français.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
5 of 5 films
as Professeur de français
Directed by François Truffaut
as Police Commissary Ledru
Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville
as Typesetter (uncredited)
Directed by Jean Renoir
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Professeur de français
The 400 Blows (1959)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Professeur de français gives Guy Decomble a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Roger
Jour de Fête (1949)
Performance score7.2
Jour de Fête asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Roger is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Police Commissary Ledru
Bob le Flambeur (1956)
Performance score7.1
Bob le Flambeur asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Police Commissary Ledru is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Mazet
Maigret Sets a Trap (1958)
Performance score6.6
Maigret Sets a Trap asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mazet is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Professeur de français
Start here. The 400 Blows is the clearest statement of what Guy Decomble does — accessible, 99 minutes, and rated 7.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Guy at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936)
Keeps the drama register of The 400 Blows but asks for a colder reading of it.
Jour de Fête (1949)
Keeps the comedy register of The Crime of Monsieur Lange but asks for a colder reading of it.
Bob le Flambeur (1956)
A deliberate change of key after Jour de Fête — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Maigret Sets a Trap (1958)
Keeps the crime register of Bob le Flambeur but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Jean Renoir
Director
1 film together
Notably The Crime of Monsieur Lange
Jacques Tati
Director
1 film together
Notably Jour de Fête
Jean-Pierre Melville
Director
1 film together
Notably Bob le Flambeur
Jean Delannoy
Director
1 film together
Notably Maigret Sets a Trap
François Truffaut
Director
1 film together
Notably The 400 Blows
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
François Truffaut
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The 400 BlowsJean-Pierre Melville
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Bob le FlambeurJacques Tati
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Jour de FêteJean Delannoy
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Maigret Sets a TrapJean Renoir
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Crime of Monsieur LangeSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
The 400 Blows
as Professeur de français
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The 400 Blows
as Professeur de français
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
The 400 Blows
as Professeur de français
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Crime of Monsieur Lange
as Typesetter (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The 400 Blows
as Professeur de français
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Guy Decomble has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Career Achievement
Awarded
23 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Drama Legend
Awarded
4 catalogue titles in drama, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
The 400 Blows
as Professeur de français
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Bob le Flambeur
as Police Commissary Ledru
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The 400 Blows
as Professeur de français
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Maigret Sets a Trap
as Mazet
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Bob le Flambeur
as Police Commissary Ledru
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Bob le Flambeur
as Police Commissary Ledru
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Crime of Monsieur Lange
as Typesetter (uncredited)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The 400 Blows
as Professeur de français
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and drama
Bonnie Hunt
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Cillian Murphy
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