Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#71505
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Yves Montand represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 73 years in, and Yves is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Yves Montand appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Yves. The Wages of Fear is the clearest case: a film rated 7.6 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for documentary, tv movie, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Gérard Oury, Jean-Pierre Melville, Costa-Gavras and others, Yves Montand 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 Wages of Fear (1953) as Mario Livi · Le Cercle Rouge (1970) as Jansen · Z (1969) as Z
Career snapshot
Ranked #71505 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
1953–2026
Career length
73 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
The Wages of Fear
Average Nutevio score
5.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
The Lovely Month of May
Most frequent director
Gérard Oury
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Gérard Oury
Most common genre
Documentary
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 59m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
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
6.8
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
7.6 average MV
The 1950s are where the work and the material meet. The Wages of Fear — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1950s
7.6
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1950s
8.0
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1950s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Wages of Fear.
Most productive era
1960s
4 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 | 1950s | 1960s | 1970s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.61 film | 7.03 films | — | — |
| Action | — | 6.91 film | — | — |
| Thriller | 7.61 film | 7.31 film | 7.31 film | — |
| Comedy | — | — | 7.11 film | — |
| Crime | — | 7.31 film | 7.31 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Mario Livi. 7.6 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.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument, as Self (Archive footage).
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.
11 of 11 films
as Mario Livi
Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot
as Blaze, Don Sallust's valet
Directed by Gérard Oury
as Narrator (French version) (voice)
Directed by Pierre Lhomme
as Jansen
Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville
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
Mario Livi
The Wages of Fear (1953)
Performance score8.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Mario Livi gives Yves Montand a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Z
Z (1969)
Performance score7.9
Z asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Z is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Blaze, Don Sallust's valet
Delusions of Grandeur (1971)
Performance score7.5
Delusions of Grandeur asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Blaze, Don Sallust's valet is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Narrator (French version) (voice)
The Lovely Month of May (1963)
Performance score7.5
The Lovely Month of May asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Narrator (French version) (voice) 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 Mario Livi
Start here. The Wages of Fear is the clearest statement of what Yves Montand does — accessible, 154 minutes, and rated 7.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Yves 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 Lovely Month of May (1963)
A deliberate change of key after The Wages of Fear — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Z (1969)
A deliberate change of key after The Lovely Month of May — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Le Cercle Rouge (1970)
Keeps the crime register of Z but asks for a colder reading of it.
Delusions of Grandeur (1971)
A deliberate change of key after Le Cercle Rouge — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Henri-Georges Clouzot
Director
1 film together
Notably The Wages of Fear
Pierre Lhomme
Director
1 film together
Notably The Lovely Month of May
John Frankenheimer
Director
1 film together
Notably Grand Prix
René Clément
Director
1 film together
Notably Is Paris Burning?
Costa-Gavras
Director
1 film together
Notably Z
Jean-Pierre Melville
Director
1 film together
Notably Le Cercle Rouge
Gérard Oury
Director
1 film together
Notably Delusions of Grandeur
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Henri-Georges Clouzot
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Wages of FearJean-Pierre Melville
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Le Cercle RougeCosta-Gavras
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ZGérard Oury
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Delusions of GrandeurRené Clément
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Is Paris Burning?John Frankenheimer
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Grand PrixPierre Lhomme
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Lovely Month of MaySix 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 Wages of Fear
as Mario Livi
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 Wages of Fear
as Mario Livi
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 Wages of Fear
as Mario Livi
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Morceaux de Cannes
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Wages of Fear
as Mario Livi
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. Yves Montand 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
73 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Documentary Legend
Awarded
5 catalogue titles in documentary, 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 Wages of Fear
as Mario Livi
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Le Cercle Rouge
as Jansen
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Wages of Fear
as Mario Livi
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Le Cercle Rouge
as Jansen
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Wages of Fear
as Mario Livi
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Grand Prix
as Jean-Pierre Sarti
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Z
as Z
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Nostalgia for the Future
as Self (Archive footage)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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