French Film Noir Actors
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Jean-Alexis Moncorgé started his career with 15 years at the theatre and debuted at the "Moulin Rouge" in Paris in 1929. Despite of his rude aspect he knew to be the gentleman of the French cinema in the time between the two World Wars. One of his most popular personalities was inspector Maigret. But he was also able to play all other kind of people: aristocrats, farmers, thieves and managers. He never stopped working and when death surprised him in 1976 he was still an institution for the French audience.- Actor
- Writer
- Director
The son of a sausage-maker, Michel Simon was conscripted into the Swiss Army at the start of World War I, but was thrown out through a combination of tuberculosis and general insubordination. He was variously a boxer, photographer, general handyman and right-wing anarchist, finally becoming a stage actor in Geneva in 1920. His reputation soon grew, and he moved to Paris in 1923, appearing in his first film in 1925 (the same year he played Boudu for the first time on stage). With the coming of sound, Simon became firmly established as one of France's outstanding character actors, doing unforgettable work for Jean Renoir (La Chienne (1931), Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932)), Jean Vigo (L'Atalante (1934)) and Marcel Carné (Port of Shadows (1938), Bizarre, Bizarre (1937)). In the 1950s he worked less frequently, partly thanks to an accident involving makeup dye that paralyzed part of his body and face. Despite this, he still managed to appear in films right up to his death in 1975.- Actor
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Louis Jouvet was a living glory of the French theatre where he debuted in 1910. In his life he has worked as pharmacist, manager of a theatre, actor and theatre teacher. He debuted at the movies in 1932 and his best films were of the Golden Age of French cinema called the "poetical realism", e.g. "Hotel du Nord (1938)" or "La fin du jour (1939)". His character, his eagle-like profile and his unique way of speaking made him unforgettable.- Writer
- Director
- Actor
Bertrand Blier was born on 14 March 1939 in Boulogne-Billancourt, Seine [now Hauts-de-Seine], France. He is a writer and director, known for The Clink of Ice (2010), Too Beautiful for You (1989) and 1, 2, 3, Freeze (1993).- Actor
- Director
- Writer
In 1940 Gerard left school and his parents wanted him be a lawyer. But soon his mother noticed that he was only interested in acting, although his father was against the idea. After timely intervention from Marc Allégret, who decided he showed some promise, Gerard's debut was in Claude Dauphin's play "One plain girl". After this, Gerard decided to get into the conservatory. He was wonder even in music. He himself used to find necessary sounds - exact, unexpected, and unforeseen. All this helped him to portray amazing characters. Millions of people were inspired by him.
One day Georges Lacombe offered Philipe a part in his movie Le pays sans étoiles (1946). Critical reaction was very favourable and he became a star, taking on prominent roles in films such as L'idiot (1946), Devil in the Flesh (1947), The Charterhouse of Parma (1948), Such a Pretty Little Beach (1949), Juliette ou La clef des songes (1951), Fanfan la Tulipe (1952), Beauties of the Night (1952), The Red and the Black (1954), La meilleure part (1955) and Le joueur (1958).
In 1951 Gerard Philipe married Annie. He dreamed of his own home and family, children. Their first child, Ann-Marie, was born in 1954, and in 1956 came Olivie. In 1959 Gerard returned to France. He seemed to be very tired. Doctors then gave him the bad news that he had a liver cancer. "He'll live 15 days or 6 months", - they decided. After that Gerard waited for death very calmly. On November 25, 1959 he died.- A classic beauty, blonde French actress Michèle Morgan was one of her country's most popular leading ladies for over five decades. Born Simone Renee Roussel on Leap Year Day (February 29) in 1920, she ran away from home as a teenager and studied acting under René Simon, beginning her film career at 16 working as a film extra to pay for drama classes.
The young actress soon caught the eye of director Marc Allégret, who cast her in Heart of Paris (1937), which clinched her stardom. Her remote, enigmatic features and gloomy allure had audiences comparing her to a young Greta Garbo. She went on to appear elegantly opposite Charles Boyer in the drama Orage (1938) directed by Allegret; opposite Jean Gabin in Moth and the Flame (1938) directed by Marcel Carné, as well as both Coral Reefs (1939) and Remorques (1941). She had her first top-billed roles in L'entraîneuse (1939) and La loi du nord (1939).
Michèle's eventual fled war-torn France for Hollywood and earned roles based purely on her European prestige. She did not stand out among the other female foreign imports of that time, however, such as Ingrid Bergman. Cast in rather routine sultry roles amid WWII surroundings, she received only a modest reception for such US-based films as Joan of Paris (1942) with Paul Henreid; Two Tickets to London (1943) with Alan Curtis; Passage to Marseille (1944) opposite Humphrey Bogart; and the noirish The Chase (1946) starring Robert Cummings.
Michèle succeeded much better at home continuing prolifically in such films as The Proud and the Beautiful (1953), The Moment of Truth (1952), Oasis (1955), The Grand Maneuver (1955), Shadow of the Guillotine (1956) (as Marie Antoinette), Grand Hotel (1959), Bluebeard (1963), Web of Fear (1964), The Diary of an Innocent Boy (1968) and Cat and Mouse (1975). Back in the late 1940's, she received the very first Cannes Film Festival award for "best actress" for her touching performance as the blind heroine in Pastoral Symphony (1946). She also received an honorary Cesar Award in 1992.
Married during the war and early post-war years (1942-1949) to American actor/singer William Marshall, Michèle's second husband was handsome Gallic star Henri Vidal and they appeared together in a couple of films, including both the historical drama Fabiola (1949) and romantic drama La belle que voilà (1950), plus The Seven Deadly Sins (1952) (albeit different "sin" segments) and Napoleon (1955). Following Vidal's sudden death of a heart at age 40 in 1959, the actress married a third time one year later to well-known French actor/writer/director Gérard Oury. They had unbilled cameos in A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later (1986). She was left a widow in 2006.
Semi-retired by the 1970's, Michèle's last feature film was a small bit in the Marcello Mastroianni film Everybody's Fine (1990). She retired in 1999 after a few sporadic 90's TV parts. She died in her home town of Hauts-de-Seine, France on December 20, 2016, at age 96. - Actress
- Writer
Véra Gibson-Amado, known professionally as Véra Clouzot, was a Brazilian-French actress.
In 1941, Véra met French actor Léo Lapara, a member of the theater company of Louis Jouvet, who toured in Brazil during World War II. Vera married the actor, taking part in the company's South American tour that lasted almost four years. After World War II, Vera settled in Paris.
In 1947, Lapara had a role in Jenny Lamour (1947) by Henri-Georges Clouzot. Vera met Henri on the set with her then-husband and it was described as "coup de foudre", love at first sight. Clouzot hired Vera as the script girl of his next film, Miquette (1950). Vera divorced Lapara and married Henri-Georges Clouzot in 1950. She was directed by her husband in her first film, the 1953 thriller The Wages of Fear (1953), in which she appeared alongside Charles Vanel and Yves Montand. In a short film career Clouzot only performed in films directed by Henri-Georges, the most famous of which was undoubtedly the 1955 thriller Diabolique (1955).
Vera died suddenly of a heart attack in 1960 just 15 days short of her 47th birthday.- Actor
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- Additional Crew
Jean Servais was born on 24 September 1910 in Antwerp, Belgium. He was an actor and writer, known for Rififi (1955), The Longest Day (1962) and Le Plaisir (1952). He was married to Dominique Blanchar and Gilberte Graillot. He died on 17 February 1976 in Paris, France.- The face of Simone Signoret on the Paris Metro movie posters in March 1982 looked even older than her 61 years. She was still a box-office draw, but the film L'étoile du Nord (1982) would be her last theatrical release; she played the landlady. Signoret had a long film apprenticeship during World War II, mostly as an extra and occasionally getting to speak a single line. She worked without an official permit during the Nazi occupation of France because her father, who had fled to England, was Jewish. Working almost all the time, she made enough as an extra to support her mother and three younger brothers. Her breakthrough to international stardom came when she was 38 with the British film Room at the Top (1958). Her Alice Aisgill, an unhappily-married woman who hopes she has found true love, radiated real warmth in all of her scenes--not just the bedroom scenes. She was the same woman as Dedee, a prostitute who finds true love in Dédée d'Anvers (1948), a film directed by Signoret's first husband, Yves Allégret, a decade earlier. Hollywood beckoned throughout the 1950s, but both Signoret and her second husband, Yves Montand, were refused visas to enter the United States; their progressive political activities did not sit well with the ultra-conservative McCarthy-era mentality that gripped the US at the time. They got visas in 1960 so Montand, a singer, could perform in New York and San Francisco. They were in Los Angeles in March 1960 when Signoret received the Oscar for best actress and stayed on so Montand could play opposite Marilyn Monroe in Let's Make Love (1960). The Signoret film that is shown most often on TV and got a theatrical re-release in 1995, four decades after it was made is the French thriller Diabolique (1955). The chilly character Signoret plays is proof of her acting ability. More typical of her person is the countess in Ship of Fools (1965), a film that also starred Vivien Leigh ,which more than doubled its chances of being in a video-store or library film collection.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
One of France's most beloved character stars from the 1950s through and including the 1980s was the Italian-born Lino Ventura. Born Angiolino Joseph Pascal Ventura to Giovanni Ventura and Luisa Borrini, on July 14, 1919, in Parma (northern) Italy, young Lino moved with his family at a young age to Paris, where he grew up. A school dropout at age eight, Lino drifted from job to job (mechanic's apprentice, etc.), unable to decide on what to do for a living. Marrying in 1942 at age 23, he and wife Odette Ventura had four children.
Lino finally found a career calling as a Greek/Roman-styled wrestler and went on to become a professional European champion in 1950. He was forced to abandon this sporting life, however, after incurring a serious injury in the ring. Looking for gangster types for his next film, director Jacques Becker gave the inexperienced 34-year-old his first acting job as bad guy support to star Jean Gabin in the crime thriller Touchez pas au grisbi (1954) [Grisbi]. Gabin was impressed and did more than just encourage Lino to pursue acting as a living. Lino went on to appear with Gabin in several of the star's subsequent movies, often playing a gangster, including Razzia (1955) [Razzia], Crime and Punishment (1956), Speaking of Murder (1957) [Crime and Punishment] and Inspector Maigret (1958) [Inspector Maigret].
A tough, brutish, burly-framed presence, Lino came into his own as a tough-nut character star in the 1960s playing both sides of the moral fence. Adept in both light comedy and dark-edged drama, he appeared in scores of films now considered classic French cinema. His homely, craggy-looking mug took the form of various criminals types as in Second Wind (1966) [Second Breath] and Happy New Year (1973) [Happy New Year], as well as dogged, good-guy inspectors in The French Detective (1975) [The French Detective], Illustrious Corpses (1976) [Illustrious Corpses'], and The Grilling (1981). Lino bore a patented weight-of-the-world-on-his-shoulders countenance that audiences sympathized with, even when playing the arch-villain. Over the course of three decades he built up an impressive gallery of blue-collar protagonists. Not to be missed are his embittered, vengeful husband in Witness in the City (1959) [Witness in the City]; corrupt police chief Tiger Brown in Three Penny Opera (1963) [The Threepenny Opera]; a WWII French Resistance fighter in Army of Shadows (1969) [Army in the Shadows]; and Mafia boss Vito Genovese in Charles Bronson's The Valachi Papers (1972), among many, many others. Toward the end of his career he played Jean Valjean in a French production of Les Misérables (1982) for which he received a Cesar award nomination (i.e, the French "Oscar"). He performed practically until the time of his fatal heart attack in 1987 at age 68 in his beloved France. Survivors included his wife of 45 years and children. Daughter Mylene died in a plane crash in 1998 and wife Odette died in 2013.- Actor
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The son of the renowned French sculptor Paul Belmondo, he studied at Conservatoire National Superieur d'Art Dramatique (CNSAD); after the minor stage performances he made his screen debut in À pied, à cheval et en voiture (1957) but the episodes with his participation were cut before release. However, the breakthrough role in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (1960) made him one of the key figures in the French New Wave. Since mid-60s he completely switched to commercial mainstream pictures and became a big comedy and action star in France. Following the example of Alain Delon he founded his own production company Cerito named after his grandmother's maiden name. In 1989 he was awarded Cesar for his performance in Itinerary of a Spoiled Child (1988) . Recently he returned to stage performing in the Théâtre Marigny, Paris, notably as Edmund Kean or Cyrano de Bergerac. He still appears in the movies but not so often as before preferring mostly dramatic roles. The president of France distinguished him with order of Legion of Honour. Belmondo had three children with his first spouse Elodie Constant: Patricia Belmondo ( who died in a fire in 1993), Florence Belmondo and Paul Belmondo. In 2003, he had another daughter, Stella Belmondo, with his second spouse Natty Belmondo. None of his children became actors though you could have seen his son Paul in an episodic role (the same as his father, at an earlier age) in Itinerary of a Spoiled Child (1988).- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon was born in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, France, to Édith (Arnold) and Fabien Delon. His father was of French and Corsican Italian descent, and his mother was of French and German ancestry. His parents divorced early on, and Delon had a stormy childhood, being frequently expelled from school.
In 1953/1954 he served with the French Marines in Indochina. In the mid-'50s he worked at various odd jobs including waiter, salesman and porter in Les Halles market. He decided to try an acting career and in 1957 made his film debut in Yves Allégret's Quand la femme s'en mêle (1957). He declined an offer of a contract from producer David O. Selznick, and in 1960 he received international recognition for his role in Luchino Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers (1960). In 1961 he appeared on the stage in "'Tis a Pity She's a Whore", directed by Visconti, in Paris. In 1964 he formed his own production company, Delbeau Productions, and he produced a short film directed by Guy Gilles. In 1968 he found himself involved in murder, drug and sex scandal that indirectly implicated major politicians and show-business personalities, but he was eventually cleared of all charges. In the late 1960s he formed another company. Adel Film, and the next year he began producing features. In 1981 he directed his first film, To Kill a Cop (1981).
Delon was a sensation early in his career; he came to embody the young, energetic, often morally corrupted man. With his breathtaking good looks he was also destined to play tender lovers and romantic heroes, and he was a French embodiment of the type created in America by James Dean. His first outstanding success came with the role of the parasite Tom Ripley in 'Rene Clement''s sun-drenched thriller Purple Noon (1960). Delon presented a psychological portrait of a murderous young cynic who attempts to take on the identity of his victim. A totally different role was offered to him by Visconti in Rocco and His Brothers (1960). In this film Delon plays the devoted Rocco, who accepts the greatest sacrifices to save his shiftless brother Simon.
After several other films in Italy, Delon returned to the criminal genre with Jean Gabin in Any Number Can Win (1963). This work, a classic example of the genre, was distinguished not only by a soundly worked-out screenplay, but also by the careful production and the excellent performances of both Delon and Gabin. It was only in the late 1960s that the sleek and lethal Delon came to epitomize the calm, psychopathic hoodlum, staring into the camera like a cat assessing a mouse. His tough, ruthless side was first used to real effect by Jean-Pierre Melville in The Samurai (1967). In 1970 he had a huge success in the bloodstained Borsalino (1970)--which he also produced--playing a small-time gangster in the 1930s who, with Jean-Paul Belmondo, becomes king of the Marseilles underworld. Delon later won critical acclaim for his roles, against type, in Joseph Losey's Mr. Klein (1976) in which he played (brilliantly) the icily sinister title role, and the art-movie Swann in Love (1984). He has an older son Anthony Delon (who has also acted in a number of movies) from his first marriage to Nathalie Delon, and has a young son and daughter, Alain-Fabien and Anouchka with Rosalie.- Actor
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Iconic American-born singer and actor in international films since the 1950s. Born in L.A. to Russian immigrant parents, Constantine studied voice in Vienna. He returned to the US, where his singing career wavered and he found work as a film extra. Constantine first achieved fame in Paris, where he launched a successful career as a popular singer under the tutelage of Édith Piaf. On screen from 1953, his tough guy manner was put to good use in French imitations of Humphrey Bogart films, several of which featured Peter Cheyney's no-nonsense, hard-hitting private detective, Lemmy Caution. In 1965 Jean-Luc Godard appropriated both Constantine and the Caution character for Alphaville (1965), a futuristic, parodic homage to the detective genre. The tough guys that craggy-faced Constantine played were ideals derived from the already stylized and ritualized world of G-men and private eyes found in American movies. Filmmakers of the New German Cinema resurrected Constantine and his persona; notably, Rainer Werner Fassbinder cast him as the laconic star of the film-within-the-film in Beware of a Holy Whore (1971). Constantine also appeared in a number of German TV dramas in the 70s and 80s and, late in life, reprised his most famous role in Godard's Germany Year 90 Nine Zero (1991).- Actor
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Philippe Noiret was one of French cinema's most familiar faces who appeared in more than 140 films in a career that spanned more than half a century.
He was born on October 1, 1930, in Lille, Nord, France, into a middle class family of shopkeepers. His father was fond of literature. Young Noiret attended the College Janson-of-Sally in the 16th arrondissement in Paris. At school, he was more interested in acting than in academics; he failed to pass his baccalaureate exams three times and left school without graduation. He studied acting at the Centre Dramatique de l'Ouest (Western Drama Theatre). There, in 1950, Noiret made his debut sharing the stage with Gérard Philipe under directorship of Roger Blin . From 1953-1960 Noiret was a permanent member of the troupe with the Théâtre National Populaire (TNP) in Paris. There he played over 40 roles in seven years under directorship of Jean Vilar. While there he met actress Monique Chaumette, whom he married in 1962, and they had one daughter, Frederique. At that time Noiret continued his acting career as a stand-up comedian and a night club entertainer.
Noiret made his big screen debut playing bit part in Gigi (1949), then earned his first on-screen credit in Agence matrimoniale (1952). He landed his first leading role as Lui, a government inspector, in the French New Wave film La Pointe Courte (1955) by notable female director Agnès Varda. His first big success came in 1960 with Louis Malle 's film Zazie in the Metro (1960) (aka.. Zazie in the Metro). In 1968 he became a star in France with the title role in Very Happy Alexander (1968). After that success, Noiret moved on with his acting career and devoted himself almost entirely to the big screen. Noiret's trademark hangdog face and his range allowed him to portray a middle-class man or an aristocrat, but not a handsome romantic hero, so he was cast primarily as the Everyman character. In The Big Feast (1973), an allegoric film about sex orgy and suicide by overeating, which caused a scandal at Cannes in 1973, Noiret co-starred in a controversial role as suicidal judge Philippe, alongside Marcello Mastroianni.
Philippe Noiret shot to international fame with the supporting role as Alfredo, an old man who is a small town projectionist who befriends and inspires a young boy, in Cinema Paradiso (1988). He received international acclaim for his portrayal of the exiled Chilean poet Pablo Neruda in The Postman (1994) by director Michael Radford. Noiret won two Cesar Awards (the French equivalent of the Oscars) and earned three more Cesar nominations. In 1976 he won his first Cesar for his exceptional performance as Julien Dandieu, a surgeon who kills the Nazis in revenge for the death of his wife and daughter, in The Old Gun (1975) (aka.. The Old Gun). Noiret won his second Cesar for the leading role as Major Delaplane in Life and Nothing But (1989) (aka.. Life and Nothing But) in 1990. Over the years, Noiret worked with all of the France's top directors. He also made excellent radio performances and popular books readings, which he narrated with his serious voice and impeccable diction. He was decorated with the Knight of the Legion of Honor.
Philippe Noiret was also known as an elegant hedonist and an avid dog lover. His other interests outside of the acting profession included art, horses, gourmet cuisine and cigars. For about 30 years he resided in his country house in the wine country near Carcassonne, in the South of France, where he generously supported the local causes. Noiret died of generalized complications of cancer on November 23, 2006, in a hospital, in Paris, and was laid to rest in Cimetière du Monparnasse in Paris, France.- Actress
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When people gave Louis Malle credit for making a star of Jeanne Moreau in Elevator to the Gallows (1958) immediately followed by The Lovers (1958), he would point out that Moreau by that time had already been "recognized as the prime stage actress of her generation." She had made it to the Comédie Française in her 20s. She had appeared in B-movie thrillers with Jean Gabin and Ascenseur was in that genre. The technicians at the film lab went to the producer after seeing the first week of dailies for Ascenseur and said: "You must not let Malle destroy Jeanne Moreau". Malle explained: "She was lit only by the windows of the Champs Elysées. That had never been done. Cameramen would have forced her to wear a lot of make-up and they would put a lot of light on her, because, supposedly, her face was not photogenic". This lack of artifice revealed Moreau's "essential qualities: she could be almost ugly and then ten seconds later she would turn her face and would be incredibly attractive. But she would be herself".
Moreau has told interviewers that the characters she played were not her. But even the most famous film critic of his generation, Roger Ebert, thinks that she is a lot like her most enduring role, Catherine in François Truffaut's Jules and Jim (1962). Behind those eyes and that enigmatic smile is a woman with a mind. In a review of The Clothes in the Wardrobe (1993) Ebert wrote: "Jeanne Moreau has been a treasure of the movies for 35 years... Here, playing a flamboyant woman who nevertheless keeps her real thoughts closely guarded, she brings about a final scene of poetic justice as perfect as it is unexpected".
Moreau made her debut as a director in Lumiere (1976) -- also writing the script and playing Sarah, an actress the same age as Moreau whose romances are often with directors for the duration of making a film. She made several films with Malle.
Still active in international cinema, Moreau presided over the jury of the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.- Actor
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Born 1930 in Piolenc in south France as son of a wealthy industrialist. Studied law in Aix-en-Provence. Started theatrical acting in 1950, but was regarded untalented at first, until Roger Vadim discovered him for the movies. When the press stalked him 1956 because of rumors of an affair with Brigitte Bardot his partner in ...And God Created Woman (1956), he fled into the army. Ten years later he had his first big success with A Man and a Woman (1966). Since then he has starred in more than 100 movies, with a special talent for the dark characters like murderers or jealous husbands. In his late career he preferred theater to movies.- Actor
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The son of orchestra conductor André Hossein, Paris-born Robert Hossein was trained at René Simon's acting school. Hossein labored away as actor/director with the legendary Theatre Grand Guignol in Montmartre, then spent several years on the "legitimate" stage. In films from 1955's Rififi (Rififi (1955)), he has been generally cast as jaded villains. Making his movie directorial debut with The Wicked Go to Hell (1955) The Wicked Go to Hell (1955)), Hossein went on to call the shots on such Film Noir fare as Toi... le venin (1958) and J'ai tué Raspoutine (1967). In the 1960s, Robert Hossein appeared regularly as Jeoffrey de Peyrac in the soft-core Angélique films. He also worked as director.
As he was one of the most prominent leading men in French cinema, he was the screen partner of leading ladies like Brigitte Bardot, Michèle Mercier, Marina Vlady, Stéphane Audran, Claude Jade or the Italian beauty Sophia Loren, and more recently with Audrey Tautou in Venus Beauty Institute (1999).- Michel Constantin was born on 13 July 1924 in Paris, France. He was an actor, known for The Hole (1960), Second Wind (1966) and Cops Is Cops (1972). He was married to Maud Serres. He died on 29 August 2003 in Draguignan, Var, France.
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Catherine Fabienne Deneuve was born October 22, 1943 in Paris, France, to actor parents Renée Simonot and Maurice Dorléac. She made her movie debut in 1957, when she was barely a teenager and continued with small parts in minor films, until Roger Vadim gave her a meatier role in Vice and Virtue (1963). Her breakthrough came with the excellent musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), in which she gave an unforgettable performance as a romantic middle-class girl who falls in love with a young soldier but gets imprisoned in a loveless marriage with another man; the director was the gifted Jacques Demy, who also cast Deneuve in the less successful The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967). She then played a schizophrenic killer in Roman Polanski's Repulsion (1965) and a married woman who works as a part-time prostitute every afternoon in Luis Buñuel's masterpiece Belle de Jour (1967). She also worked with Buñuel in Tristana (1970) and gave a great performance for François Truffaut in Mississippi Mermaid (1969), a kind of apotheosis of her "frigid femme fatale" persona. In the seventies she didn't find parts of that caliber, but her magnificent work in Truffaut's The Last Metro (1980) as a stage actress in Nazi-occupied Paris revived her career. She was also very good in the epic drama Indochine (1992), for which she earned her first Academy Award nomination (Best Actress). Although the elegant and always radiant Deneuve has never appeared on stage, she is universally hailed as one of the "grandes dames" of French cinema, joining a list that includes such illustrious talents as Simone Signoret, Jeanne Moreau, Isabelle Huppert, Isabelle Adjani and the younger Juliette Binoche.- Actor
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Robert Manuel was a long-time member of The Comédie-Française. He got his first part on stage in 1933 in Gabriel Pierné's "Fragonard" at the early age of eighteen, which allowed him to celebrate - as of October 1983 - the fiftieth anniversary of his debut. At the time he was playing Liberio Bocca,a fanciful old man, in Aldo Nicolai's "Le Soleil n'est plus aussi chaud qu'avant", later filmed for television. Among his numerous other plays are: "Hello Dolly", "Barnum", "Ceux qui font les Clowns"... Robert Manuel was also the owner of a restaurant on Quai Kennedy named "Wall Street".- Actress
- Soundtrack
Stéphane Audran was born on November 8, 1932 in Versailles, Seine-et-Oise [now Yvelines], France as Colette Suzanne Jeannine Dacheville. She was an actress, known for Der diskrete Charme der Bourgeoisie (1972), Babettes Fest (1987) and Der Schlachter (1970). She was married to Claude Chabrol and Jean-Louis Trintignant. She died at the age of 85 on March 27, 2018 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France after an illness.- Actor
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This suave, elegant character star was a ubiquitous presence in French cinema for nearly seven decades. His distinguished career extended to both stage and screen and his versatility was such that he could take on just about any persona (in his own words: "I do not put on an act... I slip away behind my characters"), from police inspectors to gangsters, from priests and academics to King Louis XVI and the Marquis de Sade. More than a few of his portrayals were of ordinary bourgeois caught up in difficult circumstances or undergoing mid-life crisis. However, Piccoli truly excelled in sardonic, cynical or morally ambiguous roles - playing smooth, quietly-spoken types harbouring dark passions or sinister secrets. His directors have included a veritable who's who of European film makers: Luis Buñuel (six times), Claude Sautet (five times), Alfred Hitchcock (who cast him as Jacques Granville, the principal antagonist in Topaz (1969)), Jean-Pierre Melville, Louis Malle, Alain Resnais, and Jean-Luc Godard.
Piccoli was born in Paris on December 27 1925. His parents were both musicians: his father a Swiss-born violinist, his mother a French pianist. He made his screen debut at 19, for a number of years confined to small supporting roles. Becoming actively involved in left-wing politics, Piccoli joined the Saint-Germain-des-Prés social set, headquartered at the Tabou club and comprising intellectuals and artists whose adherents included the philosophers Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, as well as the chanson and cabaret singer Juliette Gréco (to whom Piccoli was married from 1966 to 1976). His career took off in the early 60s and he enjoyed his first major success as Brigitte Bardot's husband in Godard's Contempt (1963). Luis Bunuel also recognized Piccoli's potential and employed his trademark cerebral eloquence on pivotal parts in important films like Diary of a Chambermaid (1964), Belle de Jour (1967) and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972). In 1973, Piccoli formed his own production company, Films 66, which allowed him even greater freedom in selecting his roles. He continued to work steadily, retaining his huge popularity with French audiences throughout the 80s and 90s. Though nominated four times, he never won the coveted Cesar Award. However, his many other accolades included a win as best actor at Cannes in 1980 and two German Film Awards (in 1988 and 1992). He also directed three feature films, one of which, Alors voilà, (1997), won the Bastone Bianco critical award at the Venice Film Festival.- Actor
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Popular but troubled renegade French actor Patrick Dewaere was christened Jean-Marie Patrick Bourdeaux on January 26, 1947, at Saint-Brieuc in Britanny in the north-west region of France. The third of six children born to actress Mado Maurin (1915-2011), his mother made acting a family affair. All of his siblings -- Jean-Pierre Maurin (1941-1996), Yves-Marie Maurin (1944-2009), Dominique Maurin (1949- ), Jean-François Vlerick (also known as Jean-Francois Maurin) (1957- ) and Marie-Véronique Maurin (1960- ) -- all became thespians. Patrick made his film debut at the age of four under the name Patrick Maurin in Amazing Monsieur Fabre (1951).
While growing up, he was taunted by his schoolyard friends for his young film endeavors, he learned sensitivity and isolation at an early age. Other films during this adolescent period of time included his playing an unbilled child role in Gene Kelly's The Happy Road (1957).
As a young adult in the early 1960s Patrick appeared on French television, then joined the "Café de Gare" theatrical troupe in 1968 where he remained for nearly a decade. It was during these stage years that he changed his stage name to Dewaere, the maiden name of his great grandmother. He also met and became romantically involvement with fellow troupe member Miou-Miou. A child, Angele, was born to this liaison in 1974, but the couple broke up after only two years. Another daughter, Lola, was born in the early 1980s from a later marriage.
After numerous film bits, stardom was finally his with the leading rebel-like role of Pierrot in Bertrand Blier's anarchic comedy Going Places (1974) [Going Places], which also starred up-and-coming actor Gérard Depardieu and lady love Miou-Miou. He and Depardieu earned instant "anti-hero" stardom in this tale of two wanderlust petty thugs. Patrick's genius for dark, offbeat comedy was apparent in the number of black comedies that came his way. Catherine & Co. (1975) [Catherine & Co.] co-starred Patrick with Jane Birkin, a social commentary on the prostitution business. He followed this with the crime drama The French Detective (1975) [The French Detective] as Lino Ventura's inspector sidekick. Dewaere earned high marks for his off-balanced role in La meilleure façon de marcher (1976) [The Best Way], then paired up again with Depardieu in the Oscar-winning cross-over comedy Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (1978) [Get Out Your Handkerchiefs].
Infinitely more interested in searching out complex roles than fame, his work in films were more often than not experimental, low budget and quirky in style. He appeared innately drawn to playing sensitive, scruffy, miserable neurotics, misfits and losers, as exemplified by his characters in Hothead (1979) [Hothead], Serie Noire (1979), Heat of Desire (1981) [Heat of Desire], Hotel America (1981) [Hotel America] which co-starred Catherine Deneuve, and the critically-acclaimed Beau-père (1981).
This obsession may have triggered a deep and profound suffering in his own off-screen personal life. Unlike his counterpart Depardieu, Patrick's fame never branched out internationally, but he was recognized consistently throughout Europe for his superlative portrayals. Amazingly, he was nominated for seven César awards (the French equivalent of the "Oscar") but never won.
Patrick's career ended in tragic and still mysterious circumstances. Shortly after the release of the film Paradis pour tous (1982) [Paradise for All], a dark comedy in which his character commits suicide, the 35-year-old actor decided to end his own life by shooting himself with a rifle in his Paris home on July 16, 1982. At the time he was working on the Claude Lelouch's film Edith and Marcel (1983). A shocking, inexplicable end to friends, fans and family alike, Dewaere later became the subject of a full-length French documentary Patrick Dewaere (1992), which was shown at the Cannes Film Festival. The Patrick Dewaere Award was established in France in 1983.- Actor
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Marcel Bozzuffi was born on 28 October 1929 in Rennes, Ille-et-Vilaine, France. He was an actor and director, known for The French Connection (1971), Z (1969) and Maigret voit rouge (1963). He was married to Françoise Fabian. He died on 1 February 1988 in Paris, France.- Actor
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Another in the long line of dramatically handsome foreign imports who made an immediate impact on WWII Hollywood was debonair French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont. The epitome of grace and sophistication, the stylish leading man went on to have a long and respected career on stage, film and TV, both here and abroad.
Aumont was born Jean-Pierre Philippe Salomons on January 5, 1911 (some sources list 1909) in Paris, France, to Suzanne (Cahen), an actress, and Alexandre Abraham Salomons, a well-to-do department store executive. His brother, François Villiers (né Francois Salomons), went on to become a film writer/director. His father was a Dutch Jew and his mother was from a French Jewish family; he was of both Ashkenazi and Sephardi ancestry. Jean-Pierre was transferred from various prep schools before enrolling at the Paris Conservatory of Dramatic Art at the age of 16. Run by the renowned Louis Jouvet, young Aumont's first two film roles were prime roles in Jean de la Lune (1931) and Échec et mat (1931). He then went on to appear strongly in a number of Gallic films. He also made an impressive theater debut playing the role of Oedipus in Jean Cocteau's "La Machine Infernale" at the Comedie Champs-Elysees in 1934, which set up a long and lucrative tenure on the stage. Splitting his time between live performances and film-making opposite such lovelies as Simone Simon, Danielle Darrieux and Annabella), Aumont served with the French Third Mechanized Division for nearly a year (1939-1940) and earned a medal of distinction for his valour (Croix de Guerre). Two of his finest screen roles came just prior to this: 'Marcel Carne''s farcical comedy Bizarre, Bizarre (1937) starring mentor Louis Jouvet, and the romantic drama Hotel du Nord (1938) opposite the lovely Annabella and co-starring Jouvet again.
Aumont arrived in America barely speaking English in 1942 and only a few days later was "discovered" by stage legend Katharine Cornell, making his American debut in her production of "Rose Burke". During the play's Los Angeles engagement, he was signed by MGM for films and made a noticeable debut as Captain Pierre Matard in the espionage war picture Assignment in Brittany (1943) co-starring the tragic Susan Peters. Classily promoted as an up-and-coming Jean Gabin, the lithe, handsome, blue-eyed blond captured the admiration of the American public with his Charles Boyer-like charm and charisma. His second American film was the equally successful The Cross of Lorraine (1943), a dramatic Stalag 17-like story of French POW's held in a German war camp.
The lovely Technicolor siren Maria Montez, known for her popular (and campy) WWII escapism films at Universal, quickly caught his eye and the couple married in 1943 after only a three-month courtship. An earlier marriage to French's Blanche Montel had ended in divorce in 1940, well before his arrival in America. Aumont again interrupted his burgeoning acting career by serving with the Free French forces in North Africa and was again awarded a medal (Legion of Honor) for his bravery. He was twice wounded during his active years of service.
The French actor returned to Hollywood films after the war co-starring with Ginger Rogers in the comedy Heartbeat (1946) and appearing as composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in Universal's Song of Scheherazade (1947). The reception to both were lukewarm and Aumont decided to return to France with his wife (whose career was now in decline), and his daughter (who was born in 1946 and grew up to become the actress Tina Aumont). Seeking to rediscover his earlier glory in European films and the theatre, he also began writing plays. Now and then he would return to the American soil and appeared on Broadway in 1949 with his work "Figure of a Girl," which was retitled "My Name Is Aquilon" by the time it arrived on the Great White Way. While it co-starred the embraceable Lilli Palmer, who was also making her Broadway debut, the play itself was not as embraced.
On the international film scene, Aumont appeared with wife Maria in such uninspired offerings as the United Artist escapist fare Siren of Atlantis (1949), the French crime drama Wicked City (1949) [Wicked City] and the Italian adventure La vendetta del corsaro (1951)_ [The Revenge of the Pirates], the last-mentioned proving to be the last for the fetching Ms. Montez. The 39-year-old star tragically drowned in September of 1951 after her hot mineral salt bath triggered a heart seizure.
After a period of grieving, Aumont continued transcontinentally, but rather unspectacularly, with acting parts that seemed hardly challenging. He cavorted with Paulette Goddard in the mediocre action adventure Charge of the Lancers (1954); appeared among an international cast in the spectacle Napoleon (1955); co-starred rather stiffly opposite Jean Simmons in the glossy "sudspenser" Hilda Crane (1956); was overshadowed by Eleanor Parker, who paled next to Garbo in the remake of Garbo's "The Painted Veil" entitled The Seventh Sin (1957); and, played a cameo as the doomed Louis XVI in the US-based John Paul Jones (1959) co-starring wife Marisa. On a more positive note, he, Mel Ferrer and the ever-enchanting Leslie Caron were wonderful in MGM's touching musical Lili (1953). Aumont also fared much better in his 1950s televised appearances of classic works, notably "Arms and the Man" and "Crime and Punishment".
Following a torrid 1955 romance with Grace Kelly (whom, as we all know, went on to marry her Prince), the actor met and married lovely Italian actress Marisa Pavan, the sister of the late Pier Angeli, in 1956, and had two sons, Jean-Claude and Patrick, by her. Troubled by his erratic output and the uneventful film roles offered, which included those in The Enemy General (1960), The Devil at 4 O'Clock (1961) and Five Miles to Midnight (1962) [Five Miles to Midnight], Aumont wisely refocused on the theatre and his playwriting skills. Stage performances included "The Heavenly Twins" and "A Second String" (both on Broadway), the title role in "The Affairs of Anatol", "Murderous Angels" and appearances in the musicals "Tovarich" with Vivien Leigh (on Broadway), "Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris," "South Pacific" (as the debonair Emile DeBecque), and "Gigi" with wife Marisa. The couple also went on to form a warmly-received nightclub act in New York.
For the remainder of his career, Aumont remained the ever-charming and worldly continental, vacillating between the stage ("Camino Real," "Private Lives," "The Sound of Music" and "Tiger at the Gates"); international films (Castle Keep (1969), Catherine & Co. (1975), Mahogany (1975), Nana (1983), Sweet Country (1987), Becoming Colette (1991) and a pair of Merchant/Ivory films Jefferson in Paris (1995) and The Proprietor (1996)): and classy TV fare (The Memory of Eva Ryker (1980), Melba (1988), A Tale of Two Cities (1989)). Some of the actor's finest movie roles in years occurred in the 1970s with the excellent Day for Night (1973) [Day for Night] and Cat and Mouse (1975) [Cat and Mouse].
The distinguished actor/playwright went awardless throughout his cinematic career but this glaring oversight was finally rectified in the form of the cross of Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres in 1991 and an honorary César Award in 1992. He died in his native country of a heart attack a few weeks after his 90th birthday in 2001.- Actress
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Brigitte Bardot was born on September 28, 1934 in Paris, France. Her father had an engineering degree and worked with his father in the family business. Brigitte's mother encouraged her daughter to take up music and dance, and she proved to be very adept at it. By the time she was 15, Brigitte was trying a modeling career, and found herself in the French magazine "Elle". Her incredible beauty readily apparent, Brigitte next tried films. In 1952, she appeared on screen for the first time as Javotte Lemoine in Crazy for Love (1952). Two more films followed and it was also the same year she married Roger Vadim (the union lasted 3½ years). Capitalizing on her success in French films, Brigitte made her first American production in Act of Love (1953) with Kirk Douglas, but she continued to make films in France. Brigitte's explosive sexuality took the United States by storm, and the effect she had on millions of American men who had not seen a woman like her in a long, long time--if ever--was electric. Rise to the phrase "sex kitten" and fascination of her in the United States consisted of magazines photographs and dubbed over French films--good, bad or indifferent, her films drew audiences--mainly men--into theaters like lemmings. In 1965, she appeared as herself in the American-made Dear Brigitte (1965) with James Stewart (she only appeared in one scene). Just before she turned 40, Brigitte retired from movies after filming The Edifying and Joyous Story of Colinot (1973). She prefers life outside of stardom. While it enabled her to become internationally famous, it also carried with it annoyances. It was not anything for her to have "fans" enter her house or wander around the grounds of her home in the hopes of getting a glimpse of her or to take something that belonged to her. Paparazzi constantly hounded her with their cameras. She has been so soft-hearted that some people even have taken advantage of her generosity. After her life in the spotlight, Brigitte went on to become a leading spokesperson for animal rights and started the "Foundation Brigitte Bardot" dedicated solely to that cause. Her work in that realm is, perhaps, far greater than any film she could have made. Brigitte has been married to Bernard d'Ormale since 1992 and they reside in St. Tropez with their nearly 50 pets.- Paul Frankeur was born on 29 June 1905 in Paris, France. He was an actor, known for The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), The Phantom of Liberty (1974) and Children of Paradise (1945). He died on 27 October 1974 in Nevers, Nièvre, France.
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Pierre Brasseur was born on 22 December 1905 in Paris, France. He was an actor and writer, known for Eyes Without a Face (1960), Children of Paradise (1945) and Gates of the Night (1946). He was married to Lina Magrini and Odette Joyeux. He died on 14 August 1972 in Bruneck, Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy.- Madeleine Robinson grew up in a struggling working class background but found her métier as an actress after attending the theater school run by Charles Dullin, six years that she considered the happiest of her life. The stage would stay her main love even though she would lend her striking presence to over 100 roles in film and on Tv over six decades.She was particularly acclaimed in the theater for her Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire (a role Arletty also played) and her ferocious Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Sensitive to what she saw as unfair treatment by the French press and media she left her native country after 50 years and retired to Switzerland. She was still able to catch touring productions of plays there, but this way, she said in an interview, she was able to see only the worthwhile ones and not the mediocre ones she might have gone to were she still in Paris. She wrote a memoir on her career, Belle Et Rebelle. She regretted never having become a "star" in the sense that she was the woman the main male character would embrace in the fadeout, but she was grateful for the fellow actors she got to know and for getting to work with major directors like Jean Gremillon.
- Roger Duchesne was born on 27 July 1906 in Luxeuil-les-Bains, Haute-Saône, France. He was an actor, known for Bob the Gambler (1956), Tarass Boulba (1936) and Tempête sur l'Asie (1938). He was married to Yvette Lebon. He died on 25 December 1996 in Les Mureaux, Yvelines, France.
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Michel Duchaussoy was born on 29 November 1938 in Valenciennes, Nord, France. He was an actor, known for Mesrine: Killer Instinct (2008), Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1 (2008) and Intimate Strangers (2004). He was married to Isabelle De Funès. He died on 13 March 2012 in Paris, France.- Actor
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Yves Montand was born on 13 October 1921 in Monsummano Terme, Tuscany, Italy. He was an actor, known for Jean de Florette (1986), Z (1969) and The Wages of Fear (1953). He was married to Simone Signoret. He died on 9 November 1991 in Senlis, Oise, France.- Actor
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Maurice Ronet was born on 13 April 1927 in Nice, Alpes-Maritimes, France. He was an actor and writer, known for Elevator to the Gallows (1958), The Fire Within (1963) and Purple Noon (1960). He was married to Maria Pacôme. He died on 14 March 1983 in Paris, France.- Actor
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Charles Vanel was a French actor. His film career lasted for 76 years, from 1912 to 1988. He appeared in over 200 films.
Vanel often worked under famous directors, such as Luis Buñuel, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Jacques Feyder, and Alfred Hitchcock. A career highlight was his role as truck driver Jo in the thriller film "The Wages of Fear" (1953). In France, it was the 4th highest earning film of the year. The film won both the Golden Bear and the Palme d'Or.
Vanel won the Best Actor award of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival , for his role as Wolf Andergast in the drama film "L'affaire Maurizius" (1954).
Vanel had a supporting role in the thriller film "To Catch a Thief" (1955) as restaurant owner Monsieur Bertani, who is a veteran of the French Resistance. In retrospect, the film was considered one of Hitchcock's strongest films.
Vanel won the Best Actor award of the San Sebastian International Film Festival, for his role as Albatrasse in the thriller film "Burning Fuse" (1957).
In 1979, Vanel received a Honorary César Award for his career. In 1981, he won the Best Supporting Actor award in the David Di Donatello Awards, for his role as pater familias Donato Giuranna in the drama film "Three Brothers".
Vanel's last film role was in the film "Les Saisons du plaisir" (1988). He died in April 1989, at the age of 96.- Actor
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With his whitish blond crew-cut, slow, menacing drawl and Germanic manner, Van Eyck was destined to be typecast as stereotypically scowling, arrogant Nazi officers. This was ironic, because he was an avowed anti-fascist who had left Germany in 1931 -- two years before Adolf Hitler came to power. The son of an aristocratic Prussian land owner, his father had intended him to embark on a military career. Instead, Peter spent his education in Berlin, where he trained as a musician.
In 1937, Van Eyck arrived in New York via Havana, Cuba, and became acquainted with the composer Aaron Copland. This led to a collaboration, as well as solo efforts, as composer and lyricist on a variety of songs for revue and cabaret. He also moonlighted as a pianist in bars and nightclubs. Around this time, he also began to work as a stage manager and arranger for Irving Berlin. Not afraid to try any job that came along, he tried his hand at driving a truck, and this, somehow, led him to Hollywood where he became a protege of the director Billy Wilder. Wilder prompted him to appear in front of the camera. In 1943, Peter commenced his career in films, by this time, as a naturalized American citizen. For the remainder of the decade, he had little to do but act an assembly line of parts as German officers and Gestapo henchmen in films like Five Graves to Cairo (1943) and Address Unknown (1944).
After the war, Van Eyck returned to Germany, where he was ironically cast as an American officer in Hallo, Fräulein! (1949). He also appeared in the comedy Royal Children (1950) ,with Jenny Jugo), as yet another American. He gave one of his very best performances in the role of Bimba in Henri-Georges Clouzot's high octane thriller The Wages of Fear (1953). In this famous French classic, he played one of a group of daredevil truck drivers traversing an impenetrable South American jungle with a deadly load of nitroglycerin.
Down the track, he found other good roles: as the womanising Frenchman Fribert in Rosemary (1958); as a police inspector investigating a famous murder in Dr. Crippen lebt (1958),aka ('Dr.Crippen lives'); a starring role as Paul Decker, who attempts the perfect murder of his wife in The Snorkel (1958); and one of two industrialist brothers in Helmut Käutner''s The Rest Is Silence (1959).
During the 60's, Van Eyck appeared increasingly in international co-productions of variable quality. Having settled in Switzerland and maintaining a residence in Paris, he was ideally placed to alternate between French, English and German film roles. He made three potboilers about the master criminal Dr. Mabuse which were extremely popular in Germany. His best performances during this period were as the East German intelligence officer Mundt, who is the target of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) and as Colonel General von Brock in the absorbing war drama The Bridge at Remagen (1969), which was also his last film.
Van Eyck died near Zurich in July,1969, of septicemia, just short of his 58th birthday.- Actress
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Her father was a police lieutenant and imbued in her a military attitude to life. Marlene was known in school for her "bedroom eyes" and her first affairs were at this stage in her life - a professor at the school was terminated. She entered the cabaret scene in 1920s Germany, first as a spectator then as a cabaret singer. In 1923, she married and, although she and Rudolf Sieber lived together only 5 years, they remained married until his death. She was in over a dozen silent films in increasingly important roles. In 1929, she was seen in a Berlin cabaret by Josef von Sternberg and, after a screen test, captured the role of the cabaret singer in The Blue Angel (1930) (and became von Sternberg's lover). With the success of this film, von Sternberg immediately took her to Hollywood, introducing her to the world in Morocco (1930), and signing an agreement to produce all her films. A series of successes followed, and Marlene became the highest paid actress of her time, but her later films in the mid-part of the decade were critical and popular failures. She returned to Europe at the end of the decade, with a series of affairs with former leading men (she had a reputation of romancing her co-stars), as well as other prominent artistic figures. In 1939, an offer came to star with James Stewart in a western and, after initial hesitation, she accepted. The film was Destry Rides Again (1939) - the siren of film could also be a comedienne and a remarkable comeback was reality. She toured extensively for the allied effort in WW II (she had become a United States citizen) and, after the war, limited her cinematic life. But a new career as a singer and performer appeared, with reviews and shows in Las Vegas, touring theatricals, and even Broadway. New success was accompanied by a too close acquaintance with alcohol, until falls in her performance eventually resulted in a compound fracture of the leg. Although the last 13 years of her life were spent in seclusion in her apartment in Paris, with the last 12 years in bed, she had withdrawn only from public life and maintained active telephone and correspondence contact with friends and associates.- Actor
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Born in Milan in 1933, Gian Maria Volontè studied in Rome at the National Dramatic Arts Academy, where he obtained his degree in 1957. He began working in theatre and television, where he was soon noticed as one of the most promising actors of his generation. After several supporting appearances in film, he reached notoriety with the character of Ramón Rojo in Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (1964). This success was doubled in Leone's next film, For a Few Dollars More (1965). The following ten years would be the most intense of Volontè career. L'armata Brancaleone (1966) (directed by Mario Monicelli) was the most successful Italian movie of the year, We Still Kill the Old Way (1967) (directed by Elio Petri) won the Grand Prix du Scenario at the Cannes Film Festival, and Volontè won his first Nastro d'Argento (Silver Ribbon - the most prestigious acting award in Italy) in 1970 for Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) (also directed by Petri), making him an international star. The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film, the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival and two Italian Golden Globes, including one for his performance. In 1972, he starred in two Italian movies as the protagonist: Petri's The Working Class Goes to Heaven (1971) and Francesco Rosi's The Mattei Affair (1972), both of which won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, where he also won a Special Mention. In his life, Volontè won a huge number of other prizes and honours, becoming one of the most celebrated Italian actors of the seventies, and challenging Vittorio Gassman and Marcello Mastroianni as the most popular Italian actor. He died in Greece in 1994.- Actor
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"Straight Shooting" -- whether skeet shooting, or portraying Eliot Ness -- Robert Stack always told it like it was, and shot straight. Born in Los Angeles, California, the younger son of James Langford Stack (1860-1928), the owner of an advertising agency, and Mary Elizabeth Modini Wood (1891-1975), he was originally named Charles Langford Modini Stack at birth by his mother but his father soon changed the name to Robert Langford Stack. (The name Robert reportedly referred to no one in particular.) His elder brother and only sibling was James Langford Stack (1916-2006).
His parents had divorced when he was one-year-old, and his mother took him to Europe when he was three. He did not learn to speak English until he was six years old. His brother, James Langford Stack Jr., stayed in the United States with their father. Young Robert spoke fluent Italian and French, but had to learn English when they returned to Los Angeles. His mother and father remarried in 1928. Robert took drama courses at USC. He was not interested in team sports, so he took up skeet shooting. In 1935, he came in second in the National Skeet Shooting Championship (held in Cleveland) and, in 1936, his 5-man team broke the standing record at the National Skeet Championships (held in St. Louis).
Stack arrived at Universal City Studios in 1939, when the movie studio (once riding high on the successes of movies such as Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931)) was in financial trouble, and looking for a superstar. That superstar was Deanna Durbin (acquired from MGM), and Stack made his screen debut as her lover in First Love (1939). At first, he did not want to listen to the makeup man who had told him, "no blond has ever made it as a leading man", and insisted on dyeing his hair black and uncurling it. That makeup man was genius and Oscar winner, Jack P. Pierce (who had done all the monsters for Universal), and Stack became a matinee idol, overnight. After two more movies, he was teamed with Durbin again, in Nice Girl? (1941). he was now a bona-fide star, but Universal was still only paying him $150 a week. For the next 10 years, Stack did Westerns, war movies and romantic comedies.
Stack had fond memories for Bullfighter and the Lady (1951), a movie produced by his friend, John Wayne, which meant 12 weeks filming in sunny Mexico. The movie had a great script; unfortunately, two bullfighters were gored while filming. There were several weeks of delays, they could not get a crew or a sound stage, until they realized that, in Mexico, it is necessary to bribe the local union; some money was passed and filming started, immediately. There were wild times, and lots of tequila. Robert became a local legend; when some Mexicans asked him what he did in the War, Robert said: "I taught machine gun." The rumor spread: "Roberto teaches chingas!" (that's Spanish for "hookers"). In 1952, he made movie history (much like Al Jolson had done in 1927, being in the first "talkie") -- he starred in Bwana Devil (1952), the first 3-D movie. This gave startling effects to the story, which was based on real-life lion attacks in Africa.
Stack attended the premiere, and recalled people's reactions to the 3-D lion scenes: "People in the audience jumped out of their seats, some even fainted." The movie broke box office records, and immediately started the demand to film more movies in 3-D (such as House of Wax (1953)). Around 1955, Robert (Hollywood's most eligible bachelor) was introduced to Rosemarie Bowe, by mutual agent Bill Shiffrin. Rosemarie had been under contract to MGM and Columbia, making such movies as Million Dollar Mermaid (1952) and The Golden Mistress (1954). The couple wed two years later and had two children: Elizabeth Stack and Charles Stack. The former perennial bachelor found out he liked being married and being a father. His onscreen fame had grown and, for Written on the Wind (1956), he received an Academy Award nomination. Unfortunately, this did not sit well with 20th-Century Fox, which had him under contract, and had lent him to Universal for this picture. His contract with Fox came to an end. Stack made the transition to the new medium that was sweeping the country: television. He delivered breakout performances in his signature role as T-man (Treasury agent) Eliot Ness on The Untouchables (1959) which, after the pilot, ran for four seasons (118 episodes). And there was also the television movie, The Scarface Mob (1959).
There were some funny behind-the-scenes anecdotes, such as this one: there is no scene which stood out more as the most potentially evil, and risky in terms of audience acceptance, as the "bacio di morte" ("kiss of death"), the Sicilian gesture whenever a Capo (Neville Brand) kissed a Mafia soldier (Frank DeKova) to send him out as an executioner. The two actors were nervous enough about this scene (two guys had never kissed on television before), but then some crewman decided to be a prankster and told each star, in private, just before filming, "look out -- your co-star likes kissing guys" (a complete deception, of course). There were some unfortunate anecdotes: Joseph Wiseman was a fine actor, but trained to work on the New York stage with props; he was not accustomed to real Hollywood sets. In a 1960 episode of "The Untouchables", Stack was supposed to take an axe and smash up a brewery. He hit a real pipe, the axe ricocheted off the metal, and cut through his Achilles tendon. "I never felt so sorry for anyone in my life", Stack commented. They wrote a role for Wiseman as a crippled, renegade chemist a few weeks later in "The Antidote", which Stack noted, "was one of our half-dozen top shows". Stack went on to do television series, such as The Name of the Game (1968) alternating lead with Gene Barry and Anthony Franciosa, then later Most Wanted (1976), and he pleasantly surprised everyone with his flair for comedies in movies like 1941 (1979) and Airplane! (1980).
Stack hosted Unsolved Mysteries (1987) and did more zany humor in Caddyshack II (1988), Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996) and BASEketball (1998). He also provided the voice of the character Ultra Magnus in The Transformers: The Movie (1986). He portrayed the no-nonsense G-man Ness again in The Return of Eliot Ness (1991). Stack was being treated for prostate cancer when he died at age 84 on May 14, 2003 at his home in Bel Air, Los Angeles, after suffering a heart attack.- Actor
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Richard Donald Crenna was born in Los Angeles, California, into a modest-income family, the only child of Edith J. (Pollette) and Domenick Anthony Crenna, a pharmacist. His parents were both of Italian descent. His mother managed a small hotel in downtown Los Angeles, where Richard and his family resided.
He began his career when he was eleven years old, playing the dimmer half of two youngsters called Herman and Sam in the Los Angeles radio show "Boy Scout Jamboree". He stayed with the series on and off for seventeen years, doing hundreds of other radio shows in between, including voicing Ougy Pringle in "A Date with Judy" (1946). During this time, he graduated from high school with letters in track and basketball, and later enrolled at the University of Southern California, where he majored in Theater Arts.
He was cast as Walter Denton in the radio show "Our Miss Brooks" and stayed in the part when the show moved from radio to television (Our Miss Brooks (1952)). The role called for a gangly, awkward, cracked-voice adolescent. Crenna was a tall, graceful man with a rich voice, yet his acting skills were such that he was easily able to fulfill the character's requirements, leading many viewers to believe that he actually was of high school age, when in fact he was 26 years old at the time. Crenna went on to star in another early television series, The Real McCoys (1957), but it was his role as the dedicated state legislator in the short-lived Slattery's People (1964) that finally established him both as a dramatic actor and a leading man. From that moment on, he was rarely absent from either television or motion pictures. In 1985, Crenna was awarded an Emmy for Best Performance by an Actor for The Rape of Richard Beck (1985). During the 1980s, he also became known for playing Colonel Trautman in the Rambo films (First Blood (1982), Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), and Rambo III (1988)). His star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is in a prime position, opposite Mann's Chinese Theatre, two stars down from his Rambo co-star Sylvester Stallone.
Crenna married shortly after his graduation from USC, but the marriage was short-lived. He met and married his last wife in the late 1950s. Richard Crenna died at age 76 of heart failure on January 17, 2003 in Los Angeles, with more than 70 major motion pictures to his credit.- Actor
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- Additional Crew
Sunday, November the 20th is the anniversary of Marcel Dalio's death in 1983. It was the end of a serendipitous life. You know him. He was a citizen of the world. Born Israel Moshe Blauschild, in Paris, in 1900, he became a much sought-after character actor. His lovely animated face with its great expressive eyes became familiar across Europe. He appeared in Jean Renoir's idiosyncratic "Rules of the Game" (The Rules of the Game (1939)) and "Grand Illusion" (The Grand Illusion (1937)), arguably the greatest of all films. True to his Frenchman's heart, he married the very young, breathtaking beauty Madeleine Lebeau. He worked with von Stroheim and Pierre Chenal. He had it all.
But then the Germans crushed Poland, swept across Belgium and pressed on toward Paris. He waited until the last possible moment and finally, with the sound of artillery clearly audible, with Madeleine, fled in a borrowed car to Orleans and then, in a freight train, to Bordeaux and finally to Portugal. In Lisbon, they bribed a crooked immigration official and were surreptitiously given two visas for Chile. But on arriving in Mexico City, it was discovered the visas were rank forgeries. Facing deportation, Marcel and Madeleine found themselves making application for political asylum with virtually every country in the western hemisphere. Weeks passed until Canada finally issued them temporary visas, and they left for Montreal.
Meanwhile, France had fallen and, in the process of subjugating the country, the Germans had found some publicity stills of Dalio. A series of posters were produced and were then displayed throughout the city with the caption 'a typical Jew' so that citizens could more easily report anyone suspected of unrepentant Jewishness. The madness continued. The Curtain Rises (1938), a popular film, was ordered re-edited so that Dalio's scenes could be deleted and re-shot with another, non-Jewish, actor.
After a short time, friends in the film industry arranged for them to arrive in Hollywood. Nearly broke, Marcel was immediately put to work in a string of largely forgettable films. Madeleine, a budding actress in her own right, was ironically cast in Hold Back the Dawn (1941), a vehicle for Charles Boyer with a plot driven by the efforts of an émigré (Boyer) trying desperately to cross into the United States from Mexico. But the real irony was waiting at Warner Brothers.
In early 1942, Jack L. Warner was driving production of a film based on a one act play, 'Everybody Comes to Rick's' but had no screenplay. What he had was a mishmash of treatments loosely based on the play and two previous movies. But he had a projected release date and a commitment to his distributors to have a movie for that time slot and little else. Warner Brothers started to wing it.
Shooting started without a screenplay and little plot. Principal players were cast and a director hired but casting calls for supporting roles and bit players continued, and sometime in the early spring Marcel Dalio and Madeleine Lebeau were cast as, respectively, a croupier and a romantic entanglement for the male lead. Veteran screen-writers were hired to produce a running screenplay, sometimes delivering pages of dialogue one day, for scenes to be shot the following day. No one knew exactly where the plot would go or how the story would turn out. No one was sure of the ending. And, of course, they produced a classic, perhaps the finest, American movie.
They produced a screenplay of multiple genres, rich with characterizations, perfectly in tune with the unfolding events in Europe and loaded with talent from top to bottom. Oh, and they changed the title to Casablanca (1942).
It is so well known, that many lines of long-memorized dialogue have passed into the slang idiom. 'We'll always have Paris', 'I was misinformed', 'Here's looking at you, kid', ' I am shocked! Shocked! To find that there's gambling going on in here!', 'Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship', 'Oh he's just like any other man, only more so', 'I don't mind a parasite. I object to a cut-rate one', 'Round up the usual suspects', and, of course, the iconic 'Play it, Sam,' often misquoted as 'Play it again, Sam,' the title of the Woody Allen movie.
Madeleine Lebeau plays Yvonne, the jilted lover of Humphrey Bogart, who is seen drowning her sorrows at the bar early in the film and who later, to get back at Rick and looking for solace takes up with a German officer finding only self-hatred. She is luminous.
And when Claude Rains delivers the signature line, 'I'm shocked! Shocked! To find that there's gambling going on in here!' the croupier, Emil, played by Marcel Dalio, approaches from the roulette table and says simply, 'Your winnings, sir.' It is a delicious moment ripe with scripted irony, one among many in this film, but one made all the more so, knowing where Dalio came from and what he and his wife had endured to arrive at that line.
Alas, they separated and divorced the next year, both going on to long successful careers. Dalio never remarried.
Late in his career, when Mike Nichols was looking for a vaguely familiar face to deliver a long and worldly, near-monologue in Catch-22 (1970), he turned to Dalio. Faced with a hopelessly idealistic young American pilot, Dalio in tight close-up, delivers a discourse on practical people faced with impractical circumstances, of the virtues of expedience in the face of amorality. Using his wonderful plastic features, now beginning to sag, in a voice full of melancholy, the old man reassures the young man that regardless of what 'grand themes' may be afoot in the world, in the end, little matters but survival.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Mireille Balin was one the most glamorous and best loved actresses of pre-war French cinema. She appeared in two of the best remembered French films of the 1930s: Pépé le Moko (1937) and Lady Killer (1937), both opposite Jean Gabin. After the German occupation of France and her separation from her long-time fiancé, the singer/actor Tino Rossi in 1942, she starred in several films and became the idol of the Paris High Society where she met the love of her life, Birl Desbok, an officer in the Wehrmacht. In the summer of 1944, as Paris was about to be liberated, she and Desbok fled Paris and tried to reach the Italian border but on September 28th, 1944 they were arrested by the FFI in Beausoleil (near Nice). Separated from Desbok, who was probably executed (she never knew what really happened to him), she was beaten and raped before being taken to Nice prison. She was soon transferred to Fresnes prison (near Paris) where she stayed until her release on bail on 3rd January 1945. She was forbidden to work for a year but once this restriction lifted, she went back to the studios to appear in what proved to be her last film La dernière chevauchée (1947), her frail constitution prevented her from appearing in any other films. She died in 1968, forgotten and broke.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Jules Berry was born on 9 February 1883 in Poitiers, Vienne, France. He was an actor, known for Les Visiteurs du Soir (1942), Aventure à Paris (1936) and Le Jour Se Leve (1939). He was married to Josseline Gaël. He died on 23 April 1951 in Paris, France.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Before Arlette-Leonie Bathiat went to the movies she was a secretary and had posed several times as a model for different painters and photographers. In 1920 she debuted on stage at a theatre. She only began to work in movies after 1930. After World War II she was condemned to prison for having been the lover of a German official during the ocupation of France. In 1963 she had an accident which left her almost blind. Her most important movies were filmed and directed by Marcel Carné ("Hotel du Nord (1938)" or "Enfants du Paradis, Les (1945)").- Actress
- Soundtrack
Diminutive, fiery-tempered Simone Simon was born in France, but spent much of her early childhood in Madagascar, where her father managed a graphite mine. Her schooling was somewhat unsettled, her family moving from city to city (Berlin, Budapest, Turin) before finally establishing themselves in Paris in 1930. Simone started as a dress designer, fashion model and occasional performer in stage musicals. She eventually met the director Marc Allégret, who took her under his wing. Her film debut was in 1931 and she had her first major hit as Jean Gabin's co-star in La Bête Humaine (1938), directed by Jean Renoir.
There were two halves to Simone's history in Hollywood. In 1936, Darryl F. Zanuck signed her to a contract at 20th Century Fox on the strength of a picture she had made two years earlier, Allegret's Ladies Lake (1934). She was launched with an expensive publicity campaign which accentuated her continental allure, particularly, her 'sexy pout'. During her tenure, problems surfaced regarding her command of English and also her limited singing skills. Dissatisfied with the roles she was given, Simone returned to France and 'La Bete Humaine'. She made a second attempt at Hollywood, acting in William Dieterle's The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941) as Belle, the devil's handmaiden. The New York Times review of October 17 considered her 'completely out of key'. Simone's best work, however, was to come in the shape of the cult horror classic Cat People (1942). Producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur used her triangular-faced feline qualities to best effect in the story of a girl who obsesses about an ancient Balkan curse turning her into a panther. The film was stylish and subtle, creating imagined rather than actual menace. Simone's performance was commensurate with perfectly studied cat-like mannerisms. During the production of 'Cat People', Simone was under FBI surveillance because of her relationship with MI5 spy Dusko Popov. She made two further, less successful, films at RKO, then returned to France for good. Simone made several films there and worked on the stage. In spite of many affairs and relationships, she never married.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Isa Miranda was one of the most significant actresses in Europe from the 1930s-'50s. Her remarkable talent expressed itself both in cinema and theater. She reached international popularity in the 1930s, especially in France, Germany and Austria, and became the only international movie star produced by the fascist cinema. In the 1950s, when her film career began declining, she played on stage in Italy, the US ("Mike McCauley", 1951), France ("Le serpent à sonettes", 1953) and England ("Orpheus Descending" by Tennessee Williams, 1959), receiving positive reviews everywhere. In the 1960s she started a TV career in England, appearing in many made-for-TV movies. She was a versatile actress, exceedingly sensible, a charming woman, and unjustly forgotten at the end of her life even by those who should have remembered her.- Actor
- Soundtrack
The notably gifted, multi-talented actor, chanteur, poet and painter Serge Reggiani was born in Reggio Emilia, a town in northern Italy, in 1922. His father, a highly visible anti-fascist, fled his Mussolini-dictated homeland due to his fervent political activities and emigrated to France in order to protect his family. Serge learned to speak fluent French and developed an interest in athletics, particularly boxing, but went an entirely different route altogether by following in his father's footsteps as a hair stylist.
In 1937, his career path changed yet again when he was accepted into the Conservatoire des Arts Cinematographiques. After graduation, he landed a few minor roles in both films and theatre and enrolled at the prestigious Conservatoire National d'Art Dramatique in 1939 wherein he won numerous acting awards. Though he earned a reputation for himself in the Paris theatre world, Reggiani was more interested in movie-making and would thereafter focus his attention toward the big screen.
During the filming of Le carrefour des enfants perdus (1944) [Children of Chaos], he met and subsequently married actress Janine Darcey, which produced two children: Stephan (1946) and Carine (1951). After obtaining French citizenship in 1948, he went on to secure a name for himself in Gallic cinema with roles in Gates of the Night (1946) [Gates of the Night], Manon (1949), The Lovers of Verona (1949) [The Lovers of Verona], La Ronde (1950) and Casque d'Or (1952). Following his divorce, he married actress Annie Noël and fathered three children: Celia (1958), Simon (1961) and Maria (1963). In 1959 Reggiani introduced a distinctive singing talent on radio and, following film roles in The Informer (1962) and The Leopard (1963) [The Leopard], launched his musical career at age 43.
Reggiani released his award-winning debut album in 1965 and it proved to be such a major hit with both the French public and the critics that singing became a prime career. Surprisingly, the middle-aged, deep-voiced balladeer would strike a chord with the younger politically left generation of the late 60s. A second album produced in 1967, plus a left-wing concert with the legendary Jacques Brel, clenched his popularity with teenagers. He began to extend himself internationally while continuing a healthy album output.
Children Stephan and Carine actively developed their own singing careers and Reggiani performed on the concert stage with them in encouragement but with lackluster results. Son Stephan, completely overshadowed by his father, took this extremely hard and in 1980 (July, 29) committed suicide at the family home in Mougins. He was only 33. Devastated, Reggiani withdrew from the music scene for a while to recover from his grief and would battle bouts of depression and alcoholism for much of his remaining life. Divorced from his second wife in 1973, he met actress Noëlle Adam in the 1980s and they lived in partnership for over 20 years, she becoming a lasting source of strength for him in dealing with his personal tragedies.
Reggiani's later years would be more or less spent in seclusion, finding one last passion in painting. He displayed his works at his first exhibition in 1989. After performing in concert to mark the 25th anniversary of his singing career, Reggiani found the strength to return to the French music scene with a brand new album. At age 70+, he successfully recorded and was welcomed back to the concert stage with great applause. Though his acting career had calmed down a great deal since his singing heyday erupted, he did star in De force avec d'autres (1992) [For the Love of Others], a film written and directed by son Simon Reggiani that also featured Ms. Adam.
Serge married his longtime partner, Noëlle Adam, in March of 2003; he died of a heart attack at his Paris home a little over a year later at age 82. Although little known here in the U.S., unlike chanson stylists Yves Montand and Jacques Brel, the acclaimed Reggiani has nevertheless reached legendary proportions in France and Europe.- Actor
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Pierre Fresnay was born on 4 April 1897 in Paris, France. He was an actor and writer, known for The Grand Illusion (1937), The Murderer Lives at Number 21 (1942) and Monsieur Vincent (1947). He was married to Berthe Bovy and Rachel Bérendt. He died on 9 January 1975 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France, France.- Actor
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Sensitive, boyishly handsome, dark-haired Gallic lead and character actor Daniel Gelin did not have an easy personal life but was warmly embraced as a talented star who appeared to fine advantage for such legendary directors as Max Ophüls, Louis Malle, Jean Cocteau, Alfred Hitchcock, and Claude Lelouch.
Born Daniel Yves Alfred Gelin in Angers, France, on May 19, 1921, he left home at age 16 to take dramatic arts classes and trained at the Cours Simon in Paris, later studying at the Paris Conservatoire with Louis Jouvet his mentor. He made his first film appearance in Miquette (1940) and for several years played extra or bit parts in French films.
His rebellious bohemian nature served him well in films, if not his private life. Adept at both light comedy and heavy drama, Gelin moved into leading roles in 1949 and went on to mesmerize audiences in such films as Rendezvous in July (1949), Edward and Caroline (1951), Dirty Hands (1951), Le Plaisir (1952), Rue de l'Estrapade (1953), Young Love (1951), Napoleon (1955) (title role), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Testament of Orpheus (1960) and many more.
Numerous starring/co-starring roles in primarily French films followed, a healthy mixture of farce and drama. These included Shadows of Adultery (1961), El niño y el muro (1965), Line of Demarcation (1966), À belles dents (1966), Witness Out of Hell (1966), La trêve (1968), Hallucinations sadiques (1969), La servante (1970), Far from Dallas (1972), Diálogos de exiliados (1975), L'honorable société (1978) and The Children (1985). His final films would be in Les ténors (1994), Des feux mal éteints (1994), Fugueuses (1995) and Les Bidochon (1996). Gelin's last few years were spent on TV with projects including roles on Chercheurs d'or (1996), Les marmottes (1998) and Madame le proviseur (1994).
Despite his enviable resume (150 films), It's generally considered that Gelin professional career was compromised by a turbulent, unhappy life off screen. Gelin lived an emotionally up-and-down rollercoaster life pocked with stormy relationships, severe depression and suicide attempts. A lengthy battle with alcohol and drugs quickly hardened his initially boyish features. One child son, Pascal, died tragically in 1957 at the age of 14 months when he accidentally swallowed pills. Another son, actor/producer Xavier Gélin, lost his battle with cancer in 1999.
Gelin was married three times, including his first to actress Danièle Delorme. He had six children in all. One daughter, actress Maria Schneider was the product of his liaison with French model Christine Marie Schneider, whom he never married. Another daughter was actress Fiona Gélin. Gélin was a writer as well, and penned a number of poetry poems, memoirs and even a manual on gardening. He died in Paris on November 29, 2002, at the age 81 of kidney failure.- Actress
- Music Department
- Producer
Isabelle Huppert was born March 16, 1953, in Paris, France, but spent her childhood in Ville d'Avray. Encouraged by her mother Annick Huppert (who was a teacher of English), she followed the Conservatory of Versailles and won an acting prize for her work in Alfred de Musset's "Un caprice". She then studied at the Conservatoire d'Art Dramatique and followed an illustrious theatrical career, which includes Ivan Turgenev's "A Month in the Country", Euripides' "Medea" (title role) etc. She made her movie debut in Le Prussien (1971) and soon became one of the top actresses of her generation, giving fine performances in important films, like Claude Goretta's The Lacemaker (1977), as a simple-minded girl who falls in love with - and is betrayed by - a student, Jean-Luc Godard's Every Man for Himself (1980), as a prostitute, and Maurice Pialat's Loulou (1980), as an upper-class woman who is physically attracted by a young vagabond. She made an inconsequential US debut in Otto Preminger's Rosebud (1975) before playing a brothel madam in Michael Cimino's disastrous Heaven's Gate (1980), but she fared better in Curtis Hanson's The Bedroom Window (1987) (as an adulteress who witnesses an attack). Huppert has an extremely productive collaboration with Claude Chabrol, who cast her in several movies, including Violette (1978), in which she played a woman who murders her parents, and Story of Women (1988), in which she gave an excellent performance as a shameless abortionist, the last woman to be executed in France. More recent good films include Patricia Mazuy's Saint-Cyr (2000) and Michael Haneke's controversial The Piano Teacher (2001), as a sexually repressed piano teacher.- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Isabelle Yasmine Adjani was born in Gennevilliers, Hauts-de-Seine, a suburb of Paris, to Emma Augusta "Gusti" (Schweinberger) and Mohammed Adjani. Her father was a Kabyle Algerian, from Iferhounène, and her mother was a Bavarian German. She grew up speaking German fluently. After winning a school recitation contest, she began acting in amateur theater by the age of twelve. At the age of 14, she starred in her first motion picture, Le Petit Bougnat (1970). Adjani has appeared in 30 films since 1970. She holds the record for most César Award for Best Actress (5), which she won for Possession (1981), One Deadly Summer (1983) (aka "One Deadly Summer"), Camille Claudel (1988), Queen Margot (1994) (aka "Queen Margot") and Skirt Day (2008) (aka "Skirt Day"). She was also given a double Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Award in 1981. She also received two Academy Award nominations for Best Actress. She performs in French, English, Italian and German. Adjani was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur in 2010.- Actor
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Daniel Auteuil was born on 24 January 1950 in Algiers, Alger, France [now Algeria]. He is an actor and director, known for Caché (2005), Jean de Florette (1986) and The Well-Digger's Daughter (2011). He has been married to Aude Ambroggi since 22 July 2006. They have one child. He was previously married to Emmanuelle Béart and Anne Jousset.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Gérard Depardieu was born in Châteauroux, Indre, France, to Anne Jeanne Josèphe (Marillier) and René Maxime Lionel Depardieu, who was a metal worker and fireman. Young delinquent and wanderer in the past, Depardieu started his acting career at the small traveling theatre "Café de la Gare", along with Patrick Dewaere and Miou-Miou. After minor roles in cinema, at last, he got his chance in Bertrand Blier's Going Places (1974). That film established a new type of hero in the French cinema and the actor's popularity grew enormously. Later, he diversified his screen image and became the leading French actor of the 80s and 90s. He was twice awarded a César as Best Actor for The Last Metro (1980) and Cyrano de Bergerac (1990), also received an Oscar nomination for "Cyrano" and a number of awards at international film festivals. In 1996, he was distinguished by the highest French title of "Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur". He married Elisabeth Depardieu in 1971, and they divorced in 1996; she appeared with him in Jean de Florette (1986) and Manon of the Spring (1986); their children Guillaume Depardieu and Julie Depardieu are both actors.- Actor
- Music Department
- Composer
Beloved French chanson entertainer Charles Aznavour, who wrote more than 800 songs, recorded more than 1,000 of them in French, English, Italian, German and Spanish and sold over 100 million records in all, was born Shahnour Vaghinag Aznavourian on May 22, 1924, in Paris, the younger of two children born to Armenian immigrants who fled to France. His mother was a seamstress as well as an actress and his father was a baritone who sang in restaurants. Both Charles and his elder sister waited on tables and he performed, as well. He delivered his first poetic recital while just a toddler. Within a few years later he had developed such a passion for singing/dancing, that he sold newspapers to earn money for lessons.
He took his first theatrical bow in the play "Emil and the Detectives" at age 9 and within a few years was working as a movie extra. He eventually quit school and toured France and Belgium as a boy singer/dancer with a traveling theatrical troupe while living the bohemian lifestyle. A popular performer at the Paris' Club de la Chanson, it was there that he was introduced in 1941 to the songwriter Pierre Roche. Together they developed names for themselves as a singing/writing cabaret and concert duo ("Roche and Aznamour"). A Parisian favorite, they became developed successful tours outside of France, including Canada. In the post WWII years Charles began appearing in films again, one of them as a singing croupier in Adieu... Chérie (1946).
Eventually Aznavour earned a sturdy reputation composing street-styled songs for other established musicians and singers, notably Édith Piaf, for whom he wrote the French version of the American hit "Jezebel". Heavily encouraged by her, he toured with her as both an opening act and lighting man. He lived with Piaf out of need for a time not as one of her many paramours. His mentor eventually persuaded him to perform solo (without Roche) and he made several successful tours while scoring breakaway hits with the somber chanson songs "Sur ma vie" and "Parce que" and the notable and controversial "Après l'amour." In 1950, he gave the bittersweet song "Je Hais Les Dimanches" ["I Hate Sundays"] to chanteuse Juliette Gréco, which became a huge hit for her.
In the late 50s, Aznavour began to infiltrate films with more relish. Short and stubby in stature and excessively brash and brooding in nature, he was hardly leading man material but embraced his shortcomings nevertheless. Unwilling to let these faults deter him, he made a strong impressions with the comedy Une gosse 'sensass' (1957) and with Paris Music Hall (1957). He was also deeply affecting as the benevolent but despondent and ill-fated mental patient Heurtevent in Head Against the Wall (1959). A year later, Aznavour starred as piano player Charlie Kohler/Edouard Saroyan in Francois Truffaut's adaptation of the David Goodis' novel Shoot the Piano Player (1960) [Shoot the Piano Player], which earned box-office kudos both in France and the United States. This sudden notoriety sparked an extensive tour abroad in the 1960s. Dubbed the "Frank Sinatra of France" and singing in many languages (French, English, Italian, Spanish, German, Russian, Armenian, Portuguese), his touring would include sold-out performances at Carnegie Hall (1964) and London's Albert Hall (1967).
Aznavour served as actor and composer/music arranger for many films, including Gosse de Paris (1961), which he also co-wrote with director Marcel Martin, and the dramas Three Fables of Love (1962) [Three Fables of Love") and Caroline chérie (1968) [Dear Caroline]. The actor also embraced the title role in the TV series "Les Fables de la Fontaine" (1964), then starred in the popular musical "Monsieur Carnaval" (1965), in which he performed his hit song "La bohême".
His continental star continued to shine and Aznavour acted in films outside of France with more dubious results. While the satirical Candy (1968), with an international cast that included Marlon Brando, Richard Burton and Ringo Starr, and epic adventure The Adventurers (1970) were considered huge misfires upon release, it still showed Aznavour off as a world-wide attraction. While he was also seen in The Games (1970) (1970), The Blockhouse (1973) (1973) and an umpteenth film version of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians (1974), it was his music that kept him in the international limelight. Later films included Yiddish Connection (1986), which he co-wrote and provided music; Il maestro (1990) with Malcolm McDowell; the Canadian-French production Ararat (2002) for which he received special kudos; cameos as himself in The Truth About Charlie (2002) and Emmenez-moi (2005); and his final feature film, Mon colonel (2006)
Films aside, his chart-busting single "She" (1972-1974) went platinum in Great Britain. He also received thirty-seven gold albums in all. His most popular song in America, "Yesterday When I Was Young" has had renditions covered by everyone from Shirley Bassey to Julio Iglesias. In 1997, Aznavour received an honorary César Award. He has written three books, the memoirs "Aznavour By Aznavour" (1972), the song lyrics collection "Des mots à l'affiche" (1991) and a second memoir "Le temps des avants" (2003). A "Farewell Tour" was instigated in 2006 at age 82. He died
Married at least three times (some claim five) to Micheline Rugel, Evelyne Plessis and Ulla Thorsell, he fathered six children (daughters Katia, Patricia and Seda Aznavour, and sons Misha, Nicholas, and Patrick Aznavour). He died on October 1, 2018, in France.- Actor
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- Producer
As accomplished and versatile the well-loved French actor Michel Serrault proved to be over the course of five decades, American audiences still remember this actor for one role only - that of the neurotic, outrageously flamboyant drag performer Albin (aka Zaza) in the side-splitting French gay farce La Cage aux Folles (1978). Opposite Italian actor Ugo Tognazzi as his more subdued partner/manager Renato, the unambiguously gay duo easily became one of the most well-received matchups ever on celluloid both here and abroad. Forget Felix and Oscar or even the Scarlett and Rhett coupling, this pair managed to turn La Cage aux Folles (1978) not only into the cult film classic it is today, but made it one of America's largest cross-over European hits ever.
Born in Brunoy, France on January 24, 1928, Serrault initially had a calling to join the priesthood. After entering the seminary, he quickly realized there would be a conflict with the vow of celibacy and left. The love of performing must have also been a strong factor as he quickly changed the course of his destiny and taking up dramatic studies in Paris. His career began on the cabaret stage and as a singing apprentice and member of Robert Dhery's theater troupe before its focus shifted to filmmaking in the mid-50s. Making his film debut in 1954, one of his earliest films was in Henri-Georges Clouzot's masterpiece thriller Diabolique (1955) starring Simone Signoret in a featured part.
From there he developed into a supremely talented performer who went on to appear in hundreds of character film studies, With a chameleon-like approach to his work, he proved himself not only a gifted and witty farceur but a dark and compelling dramatic actor capable of going to extreme depths in order to play a character. A successful partnership on stage and in film with the late writer/actor Jean Poiret, which included his huge international hit La Cage aux Folles (1978) and its first sequel, enhanced the respect he earned over the years. Serrault seldom ventured outside the realm of Gallic filming, which explains why he has not been a strong foreign name in America.
He has been a recipient of many awards for his work. In France he has the distinction of being a three-time "Best Actor" César winner for La Cage aux Folles (1978), The Grilling (1981) and, more recently, his retired judge in Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud (1995). Like fine wine, Serrault continued to age well as an actor while continuing to stay on top of his craft with such marvelous performances as his grifter alongside Isabelle Huppert in Claude Chabrol's L'entourloupe (1980), the titular serial killer Dr. Petiot (1990), the white-haired old timer opposite film icon Jeanne Moreau in The Old Lady Who Walked in the Sea (1991) and his farmer in The Girl from Paris (2001). He died on July 29, 2007 of cancer and was survived by his wife Juanita and actress/daughter Nathalie Serrault- Michel Bouquet was born in the 14th arrondissement of Paris on the 6 November 1925. His father, Georges Bouquet, was a World War One veteran and a wine-maker. His mother Marie was a milliner. He had three older brothers: Georges, Bernard and Serge. Michel's father was always a shadowy figure in his life: having been deeply affected by the war, he used to talk very little and developed a very distant and estranged relationship with his sons. When he was 7 years old, Michel was sent to the "École Privée Catholique Fénelon", a Catholic boarding school located inside a 17th century hunting lodge in Vaujours. He would keep very unpleasant memories of this period his entire life, describing it as "seven years of darkness and loneliness". Being used to receive corporal punishment or other cruel and unusual forms of penalty for absurd reasons -like keeping his arms crossed in a supposedly insolent way- and to be bullied by older boys, Michel chose to withdraw into himself and dream of exciting, picaresque adventures far away from the school. This approach to life would help him developing his trademark internalized acting style. Repelled by studying, he actually used to enjoy being put in detention, so that he didn't have to mingle with the other boys: the adult Bouquet would later call his younger self "a sweet kid with an anarchic touch". In 1939, Michel came home for the summer with a mediocre school study certificate. He would however never return to the boarding school, since France and England declared war to Germany on the 3rd September. Georges Senior was immediately sent to the front and made a prisoner in Pomerania shortly after. Bernard went to war as well while Georges Jr. had already been sent to a religious school in Carthage. On the 14th June 1940 the German troops entered Paris and Marie soon decided to relocate to Lyon with her two remaining sons. They moved with Michel's paternal aunt, Marguerite. Marie didn't want to be a weight for her sister-in-law, so she spurred her sons to find some work to do. Michel became an errand boy in a bakery: having been toughened by his stay at the boarding school, he now felt ready to help his mother facing the adversities of life and raising the family. When the armistice between France and Germany was signed, Marie and her sons returned to Paris. Michel tried several new jobs in this period, including warehouseman, dental laboratory technician and delivery man in a bank. He was soon, however, to find his real vocation in life. Marie was a great theatre lover and had the habit to bring Michel to see operas, comic operas or great classic plays. He immediately realized that he wanted to be an actor when he saw the legendary Comédie-Française luminary Maurice Escande playing Louis XV in a stage production of "Madame Quinze". So, in May 1943, he decided to look Escande's address on the phone book and, on a Sunday morning, he went to visit him at his place while Marie was attending church. Young Bouquet introduced himself to the actor by telling him that he wanted to work on the stage. Escande asked him if he had memorized a piece to recite. Michel tried the nose monologue from "Cyrano", but the theatre veteran asked him if he hadn't learnt any other thing that suited his physical appearance better. So he started to recite a few verses from Alfred de Musset's "La Nuit de Décembre" instead. After hearing a couple lines only, Escande realized that the young man standing before him possessed enormous gifts and decided to immediately bring him to one of his classes at the Edouard-VII Theatre. There, Michel was allowed to finish the "Nuit de Décembre" monologue in a room full of people. Many students were ready to leave the class with a look of indifference, but Escande reproached them, telling them that they should have better listened to Michel and learnt a lesson from him. Although moved to tears, Michel managed to finish his piece. The great Maurice Escande had named him an actor. At the end of the lesson, Escande brought Michel home and convinced Marie that he had to pursue a stage career.
Bouquet began to learn scenes from many important plays in order to be admitted to the CNSAD (the Paris Conservatoire). When the day of the exam at the Théâtre de l'Odéon finally came, he already knew that only 7 students out of 300 would have been accepted. For his test, he had studied the monologue from Alfred de Vigny's "Chatterton" and one of Smerdiakov's dialogues from Jacques Copeau's "The Brothers Karamazov". The same day, someone else was going to audition in front of the same jury: it was an elegant young man wearing camel, who possessed, in Bouquet's eyes, a certain charm à la Gary Cooper. It was the soon to become legendary Gérard Philipe, who had already made a couple of appearances in acclaimed stage productions and completed his first screen role in Les petites du quai aux fleurs (1944). He was going to play a scene from De Musset's "Fantasio". Bouquet immediately noticed that Philipe projected a great sense of self-confidence, something he himself had always lacked, since he had many perplexities about his physical appearance (he was skeletal at the time) and modest cultural background. At the exam, Philipe and Bouquet managed to scrape through as sixth and seventh respectively. Michel can't even remember who were the five students that were admitted before them, since their careers never went anywhere. He became the pupil of the accomplished stage actress Béatrix Dussane, who had heard some great things about him from Escande and used all of her powers to have him getting admitted.
Bouquet's first stage roles were Damis in Molière's "Tartuffe" and Robespierre in Romain Rolland's "Danton". It was an interesting and indicative starting point to his career, considering that Molière is the author he will always be most associated with and that he would play "The Incorruptible" on several future occasions. After having played roles in "Première Étape" and "Le Voyage de Thésée", he made his first important professional encounter: writer and playwright Albert Camus had witnessed many of his auditions at the "Théâtre de l'Odéon" and he had been so impressed by his skills to offer him the role of Scipio in his upcoming production of "Caligula", which starred Philipe in the title role. Bouquet said that he could do 30 shows only, as he had already signed on to appear in a production of "La Celestine" under Jean Meyer's direction. Camus accepted his conditions since he wanted him to play the role so much. "Caligula" was the only Philipe-Bouquet collaboration, but Michel would go on to see Gérard on stage many times and always kept huge admiration for him along with very fond memories of their relationship. Bouquet's next stage credits were three Jean Anouilh plays directed by André Barsacq (who had personally recommended him to the author): the moderately successful, Shakespeare-inspired "Romeo and Jeannette", "Le Rendez-Vous de Senlis" and "L'Invitation au château". In the first one, Bouquet provided support to stage legends Jean Vilar and María Casares and the "Combat" critic wrote that he towered on the entire cast. Although he was initially irritated by a negative comment made by Michel about the pacing of the play, Anouilh went on to work with the actor on many other occasions. After having made his screen debut as an assassin in the obscure Criminal Brigade (1947), Bouquet was given the role of a tubercular patient in the acclaimed Monsieur Vincent (1947), which was scripted by the author. And a couple of years later, he found his first memorable screen role in another Anouilh-penned movie: Maurice, the twisted (but not evil at heart) brother of the title character in the suggestive and atmospheric White Paws (1949), another remarkable entry by the talented, but often neglected Jean Grémillon. As his character is first seen walking the docks at night, one can already feel a great leading man "allure" à la Jean-Louis Barrault around the emaciated young actor. Interviewed in 2013, Bouquet still remembers this role as one of his favorites. The same year he appeared in Henri-Georges Clouzot's Manon (1949), which was diminished by Cécile Aubry's performance as the title heroine.
For the rest of the 40's and entire 50's, Bouquet mainly kept collaborating on the stage with Anouilh, Camus and his former "Romeo and Jeannette" co-star Jean Vilar, who directed him in several productions, notably Shakespeare's "Henry IV" (as Prince Hal) and "Richard II" (as the Duke of Aumerie), Molière's "Dom Juan" (as Pierrot) and Georg Büchner's "Danton's Death" (as another prominent figure of the French Revolution, Saint-Just). Bouquet really liked Vilar for his talent to pick up his actors. He actually thought that an actor's director should be a person with a great eye for spotting talent and the skill to cast the right person in the right role, but that his input should end there. He didn't enjoy to have his directors telling him to play a part or trying to over-impose their view on the character upon his own. That never happened with Vilar. Anouilh wrote another great role for Bouquet in 1956: the title character in "Pauvre Bitos ou le Dîner de têtes". Bitos is a poor man's Robespierre, a little politician in Post-war France who wants to obtain power even if he doesn't possess the means to do it. The author had created the role specifically for the actor because he had expressed the interest to play "the Incorruptible" once more. In 1951, Bouquet was also seen as Dany Robin's opportunistic brother (again called Maurice) in Anouilh's second (and final) directed feature, Deux sous de violettes (1951), a (mostly) cynical, anti-bourgeois drama. His other film roles from this period include the dim-witted King Louis X in the Dumas adaptation La tour de Nesle (1955) and a Russian revolutionary in the Romy Schneider vehicle Adorable Sinner (1959). He also borrowed his incredible voice to Alain Resnais's hugely acclaimed Holocaust documentary Night and Fog (1956). On the Parisian stage, he tried his hand at directing: first it was a production of "Chatterton" (where he starred with his wife of the time, Ariane Borg), then a revival of George Bernard Shaw's "Heartbreak house" (where Borg was co-director). The shows weren't lauded and he never tried to follow this path again. In TV, he was finally allowed to play Robespierre again in an episode of Stellio Lorenzi's historical series, La caméra explore le temps (1957). The program was focused on the trial of Marie Antoinette and Bouquet's screen time was consequently limited, but there's still enough ground to make a case about the actor being the definitive incarnation of the complex French politician. Bouquet had always been fascinated with the character, imagining him as constantly living in a state of great anguish and anxiety since he probably thought not to possess the cunning of a Mirabeau or the orator skills of a Danton and knew that everyone in those times was expendable. Sympathizing with what "the Incorruptible" must have been feeling in his short, turbulent life, Bouquet created a well-rounded and appropriately indecipherable figure, finding the perfect balance between the cover of impassibility and the neurotic nature of the character. In addition to this, he played the ill-fated King Charles I and Napoleon's jailer, Sir Hudson Lowe, in his two other appearances in Lorenzi's program.
Bouquet's stage work kept offering him a lot of professional satisfactions in the 60's: he expanded his repertoire to 'Eugene Ionesco''s Theatre of the Absurd (his association with the author will also be career-defining) and to several other authors. He was now living an important phase in the history of French theatre, as it was during those years that the stars of the Parisian stage were beginning to discover the great English-language playwrights. In 1965, productions of Harold Pinter's "The Lover" and "The Collection" were staged simultaneously and featured the same, exceptional trio of stars, as Bouquet was teamed up with the brilliant Jean Rochefort and the sublime Delphine Seyrig. Still, it was rare for Michel to feel completely fulfilled, neither in his professional or personal life. His marriage with Ariane had been a mistake (as she had proved, according to his recollections, to be a gold-digging harpy) and he had never managed to re-establish any emotional connection with his father since he had returned from the front. A great perfectionist, he also used to have an high lot of quarrels with his own performances: he felt that his rather ordinary appearance and modest height didn't give him enough 'gravitas' to be a great dramatic actor, was equally skeptical about the quality of his comedic turns and believed that his talents were probably better suited to a genre in the middle, "the dramatic comedy". He often helped himself to get past these dark moments with big quantities of alcohol. One day, after a performance of "The Collection", a single meeting would make his existence change for the better: stage actress Juliette Carré approached him to pay a lot of sincere and heartfelt compliments to his acting in the play. Shortly after, Michel put an end to his marriage with Ariane and, even if it would take years to get an official divorce, he immediately started a family with Juliette and the two sons she had from a previous relationship, Frédéric and Sylvie. Juliette proved to be the perfect mate for Michel in life- as she could understand his introverted nature and accept that he was a solo player- and ideal sparring partner on the stage. He stated himself that he never felt so much at ease at playing opposite anyone as he did with her. In 1965, Bouquet played both on stage and TV a third important member of the French Revolution: Fouquier-Tinville in L'accusateur public (1965). But his golden period as a film actor was about to start. His juicy role as a perverse abbey in This Special Friendship (1964) had already raised his interest in cinema. Now, two of the most representative directors of the French New Wave were to cross their paths with his. His performance as the chief villain in Our Agent Tiger (1965) marked his first collaboration with Claude Chabrol. Unfortunately the film belongs to the long list of bad titles the director did for rather obscure reasons. Bouquet and Chabrol's next journey together was equally unexciting as the thespian's comedic skills were wasted in the supposedly ironic spy story The Road to Corinth (1967), a sub-par product not much dissimilar from the silliest episodes of The Avengers (1961) and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964). Luckily, the two men would soon team up again for a better cause. In the mean time, Bouquet kept himself busy by appearing in a couple movies made by the way more consistent François Truffaut. In 1968 he played the role of Coral in The Bride Wore Black (1968) opposite the great Jeanne Moreau in one of her signature roles. The unforgettable masterpiece that would inspire Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" movies sees Moreau's Julie Kohler eliminating with extreme prejudice all the men responsible for the death of her husband. As the second target, Bouquet is the male actor who shines the most. Truffaut enjoyed mocking the actor's melancholic/tormented characterization of Coral, thinking that he should have been more casual and less serious. So he decided to play a mean prank on him when he called him back one year later to support Jean-Paul Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve in the fine Mississippi Mermaid (1969). Bouquet has a couple of scenes in the film as the implacable sleuth Comolli. On the morning of the shooting, he found out that Truffaut had completely changed all his dialogue, something that took him completely off guard. This didn't prevent him from making the most of his little screen time anyway. The same year, he would also find one of his most iconic roles in one of Chabrol's best movies, The Unfaithful Wife (1969). It was the first time he was paired with the director's glacial wife and muse, Stéphane Audran. Like in the case of every other Chabrol-Bouquet-Audran collaboration, Michel provided the acting, while Stéphane just added her very beautiful (but equally motionless) face to the proceedings. Known for his explosive presence on the stage, Bouquet favored, as a film actor, a performing style all about subtleties and psychological introspection: he once said that "stage acting is like the work of an ascensionist; screen acting is like the work of a speleologist". Belonging to that rare breed of actors à la Jean-Louis Trintignant, able to express a world of emotions by simply raising an eyebrow, Bouquet gave a superlative performance as cuckolded husband Charles Desvallees in Chabrol's classic, making his transaction from boring bourgeois type to passionate murderer well-timed, impeccably constructed and absolutely believable and managing at the same time to inject enough humour into his characterization to make the role somehow sympathetic. Chabrol had written the role specifically for him and Bouquet got to admire his working method enormously, later calling him a great actor's director and crediting him for having offered him the possibility to give one of his best performances. Audran's ice maiden act proved somewhat functional to the nature of her character (the bored and adulterous Hélène) and she didn't ruin the movie this time around. The same can't unfortunately be said about the trio's next collaboration, the uneven The Breach (1970). As ex-dancer Hélène Régnier, Stéphane gave one of her very worst performances, walking through the movie without showing any trace of emotion not even when witnessing her little son being thrown around the room by her mentally deranged husband or waiting for the doctors to tell her about his condition. Michel (as Hélène's father-in law Ludovic, a despicable man ready to do everything to prevent her from getting custody of the child), Jean-Pierre Cassel (in the thankless, psychologically absurd role of private eye Paul Thomas) and frequent Chabrol collaborators and great actors Jean Carmet and Michel Duchaussoy formed the rescue team that should have made up for the huge void at the centre of the movie, but the flawed screenplay was conspiring against the success of 'La Rupture' as much as Audran's performance and the end result was rather disappointing.
Bouquet's film career had now taken full flight and, between 1970 and 71, he found several roles that truly showcased his talents. He played a ruthless inspector avenging the death of his partner in The Cop (1970) and a mobster lawyer in the Jean-Paul Belmondo-Alain Delon collaboration Borsalino (1970) (although his role was largely left in the editing room when the movie was originally released, something that made him very distrustful of commercial cinema). One year later, he played a slimy sycophant in Harry Kümel's authorial horror The Legend of Doom House (1971) and found an even better role in another remarkable revenge movie, Countdown to Vengeance (1971). The movie is centered around Serge Reggiani's character, a criminal who, after his release from prison, plans to get revenge on his former associates for having betrayed him. The spectacular supporting cast includes Bouquet, Jeanne Moreau, Simone Signoret and Charles Vanel. Michel got to play the lion's role as a one-eyed villain, constantly wearing black, involved in a mental game of chess with Reggiani for the entire movie. Similarities with 'La Mariée était en noir' are strong and made even more evident by the presence of Moreau and Bouquet. Michel rounded off the year by giving outstanding performances in two Molière plays for TV, Tartuffe (1971) (where he was perfectly matched scene by scene by Delphine Seyrig) and Le malade imaginaire (1971), and playing another of his best film roles, Charles Masson in the vintage Chabrol Just Before Nightfall (1971). The movie is arguably the director's deepest and most complex reflection about the twisted, dark urges hidden in the meanders of human psyche, as repressed bourgeois Charles kills his lover for apparently no reason. Bouquet was simply mesmerizing in the part and owned every celluloid frame of the movie, making the viewer feel the character's torment on every moment and perfectly follow his inner path (from his sense of guilt to his desire to be punished): all of this in the subtlest, least showy way as possible. As his wife Hélène, Audran did near to nothing in the film: in the scene where Bouquet confesses his crime to her, Chabrol just filmed her reaction from behind (therefore releasing her from any acting duty) and, when he has his thrilling final monologue about his wish to atone, she just listens to him, completely frozen, and restricts herself to put a hand on her mouth once he announces his intention to give himself up. "Juste avant la nuit" was released in the UK only in 1973 and BAFTA hit an all-time low by ignoring Bouquet's performance, but bestowing a Best Actress Award to Audran for her minimal work in the movie added to her supporting turn in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) (where she was easily the least talented main player).
Galvanized by the quality of his recent body of film work, Bouquet took a 5 years break from the stage (the longest he ever did) to do more movies. Unfortunately, most of the roles he found in this period proved totally unworthy of his skill: Bons baisers... à lundi (1974) (one of Michel Audiard's several dismal attempts at directing) was particularly unremarkable. Nadine Trintignant's Défense de savoir (1973) put together such wonderful performers as Bouquet, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Bernadette Lafont, Juliet Berto and Charles Denner and couldn't make an interesting use of any of them. It was clear to Michel that things couldn't go on like this and that's the reason he headed back to theatre so soon. His other film roles that stand out in the 70's are a detestable policeman in Two Men in Town (1973) with Delon and Jean Gabin, a ruthless newspaper director and unsentimental father in The Toy (1976), a sculptor pretending to go blind in Vincent mit l'âne dans un pré (et s'en vint dans l'autre) (1975) and particularly a drug lord in Alain Corneau's bizarre, but ultimately involving sci-fi feature, France société anonyme (1974). Despite having always publicized his lack of athletic skills, he gave a great lesson in physical acting in the latter. He also started to direct his talents towards the small screen and Gabriel Axel offered him the possibility of giving two particularly memorable performances. The first was as painter Rembrandt van Rijn in La ronde de nuit (1978). The second was in the Balzac adaptation Le curé de Tours (1980) as the backstabbing Abbey Troubet, a vile man who ruins the life of Jean Carmet's passive title character with the help of a deliciously serpentine Suzanne Flon. He also appeared in Les nuits révolutionnaires (1989) (a mini-series set during the French Revolution) and played Ebenezer Scrooge in a 1984 version of "A Christmas Carol", winning a 7 d'or (a French Emmy) for his performance. His stage work from the 80's include playing Harpagon in "the Miser"- which invited the comment 'Whoever hasn't seen Bouquet in The Miser hasn't seen The Miser'- and appearing in a Chabrol-directed production of Strindberg's "The Dance of Death", which was later filmed. A stage production of "Macbeth" opposite his wife was very unsuccessful and he bode farewell to Shakespeare for good. Bouquet's most important film achievement from this decade is undoubtedly playing the immortal role of Inspector Javert in Robert Hossein's Les Misérables (1982) (released both as a 4 part mini-series and feature film). Although this version (like nearly every other) couldn't completely do justice to the spirit of Hugo's novel, the portrayals of the main characters are arguably definitive, from Lino Ventura's interpretation of Jean Valjean to Jean Carmet's César-winning performance as Thénardier and of course Bouquet's ascension to King of Javerts. Michel possessed the "physique du rôle" that the larger than life Charles Laughton lacked in the 1935 film, was infinitely subtler than the likes of Hans Hinrich and Robert Newton were in their respective outings, had more scope to express himself than the well-cast Anthony Perkins and Geoffrey Rush had in their mediocre vehicles and any comparison between his work and Russell Crowe's acting/singing performance in the 2012 musical would almost be sadistic. Many people in France strictly associate Bouquet with this part. His second most notable film role from the 80's is a creepy notary in Chabrol's poorly paced and constructed Cop Au Vin (1985), which was Jean Poiret's first outing as Inspector Lavardin. Apart from acting, Bouquet was very busy teaching the craft at the CNSAD during those years. Despite his modest studies, he had gradually become an immensely cultured man within the decades, having traveled a lot and grown a great interest towards literature, music and the figurative arts. These interests were also the reason that lead him to play real-life artists on several occasions.
Bouquet was seldom seen on the silver screen in the 90's, but, when he was, he most certainly lingered in memory. In 1991 he appeared in the much lauded Toto the Hero (1991) as the oldest incarnation of the title character. The movie starts with little Thomas dealing with all the adversities of life by dreaming of an alter ego living all kinds of exciting adventures (something reminiscent of what Michel himself had gone through during his childhood) to eventually see him turning into an unhappy, disenchanted man ready to do the most extreme and unimaginable thing to get even with the rival of a lifetime. Bouquet also borrowed his voice to actor Jo De Backer, who played his younger adult self. His performance helped him cementing his status as a crucial figure of European cinema and won him the EFA (European Film Award) for Best Actor. The same year he also played painter Laubin Baugin in Corneau's best movie, Tous les matins du monde (1991), while in 1993 he narrated Chabrol's well-made documentary The Eye of Vichy (1993) (a compilation of official newsreels originally broad casted in Nazi-occupied France). Bouquet's theatre highlights from this period include playing for the first time King Bérenger I in Ionesco's "Exit the King" (his portrayal of the character remains one of his most celebrated triumphs) and appearing alongside the great Philippe Noiret in Bertrand Blier's "Les Côtelettes". His performance in this play won him his first Molière (France's prestigious stage award founded in 1987).
Even greater things were waiting for Bouquet in the 2000s: he accepted very few roles, but they were the best any actor could dream of. Having seen a performance of "Les Côtelettes" on the Parisian stage, Italian novelist and occasional director Roberto Andò chose him to play the role of writer Tomasi di Lampedusa in his very interesting feature Il manoscritto del principe (2000). Having now reached the apex of his acting technique and maturity, Bouquet gave the first of a series of absolutely essential performances. Although he somehow regretted that he couldn't cast an Italian actor in the role, Andò stated that he couldn't possibly imagine the Lampedusa role played by anyone else. In 2001, Bouquet was given the complex, multi-dimensional role of estranged father Maurice in Anne Fontaine's noteworthy How I Killed My Father (2001). Michel had a great understanding of the central relationship between his own character and Charles Berling's bitter son as it mirrored in some ways the one he had with his own father, to whom he had started to feel a bit closer long after his death. Inspired by Fontaine's direction (he credits her for having taught him a more relaxed approach to characters), the actor gave life to a rather sinister, but eventually very poignant figure. At age 76 he was nominated for his first César and won it. In 2003, Blier turned his stage success into a major feature with Les côtelettes (2003) and recast Noiret and Bouquet in their original roles, a man who has trouble defecating and a mysterious character who must help him doing it. Although the movie is pretentious and often off-colour, the central performances of the two acting giants are all to be savored. Michel's next film appearance was as the title role in L'après-midi de monsieur Andesmas (2004), an adaptation of the Marguerite Duras novel by the same name. He was already familiar with the text, but he had always found it to be a bit unclear, albeit impressive. He had, however, far less difficulties in penetrating the deeper meanings of the story once he read the script by the movie's director, Michelle Porte, who had started her career as a second assistant director to Duras herself in Baxter, Vera Baxter (1977). The film follows Monsieur Andesmas, who has just bought a house for his daughter, as he waits for the arrival of a mysterious businessman, Michel Arc, who never shows up. This shadowy character can be interpreted as a representation of many things: Bouquet saw him as an emissary of death as he imagined Monsieur Andesmas' afternoon to be his last one. The actor had all the vital characteristics of the quintessential Duras protagonist, being multi-layered, introvert and provided with the impeccable diction and thousand vocal inflections that are indispensable to give power to the great author's affecting, literary lines of dialogue. Aided by an excellent Miou-Miou as Michel Arc's wife, he gave one of his most touching performances and one that appears to follow a recent pattern: all his latest movies seem to deal with the theme of the end of life, either in an explicit or a veiled way. He carried on this tradition when he next appeared in The Last Mitterrand (2005), playing President Mitterrand when death's approaching him. An unusually good biopic, the film showed a more private dimension and different image of Mitterrand, so that Bouquet didn't really have to live up to people's common perception of the President: consequently, he managed to give a very complex and involving portrayal of a man opposed to the sheer exercise in mimicry and acting virtuosity that one usually expects from this kind of picture. Again he was heart-breaking, again he received a César nomination and again he won. After this new triumph, Bouquet grew more and more selective of film roles, basically declining every script that was sent to him. Like in the case of Mesdames Fontaine and Porte, it was again a duo of female directors, Swiss actresses Stéphanie Chuat and Véronique Reymond, to win his attention. Having eventually managed to find Bouquet's phone number (he doesn't have an agent), the two girls offered him the leading male role in their debut feature film, the little gem The Little Bedroom (2010). Bouquet adored the script and was pleasantly surprised that such young ladies could have written a story that was such a beautiful reflection on old age. He consequently played the role of Edmond, a sad, lonely man who gets treated with neglect by his son and progressively develops a warm relationship with his carer (Florence Loiret Caille). He again put body and soul in a project meant to give dignity to the last days on earth of a common man. During the course of the decade, Bouquet also kept to assiduously work on the stage, notably in revivals of "Exit the King", "The Imaginary Invalid" and the "Miser", all directed by Jacques Werler. He received splendid support by wife Juliette in the first two, which were filmed. His incredible performance as Bérenger in the Ionesco play will forever help people who never had the honor of seeing him on the stage to understand what kind of chameleon he was as a theatrical actor. He won his second Molière for his work in this production.
A late highlight in Bouquet's silver screen career was his performance as Pierre-Auguste Renoir in Renoir (2012), an account of the relationship between the great painter and his son Jean, the future genius of cinema. Michel thought that Gilles Bourdos's script possessed the necessary grace to speak about some rather obscure themes. He had always considered painting the most sublime of arts and, while studying the Renoir character, he found himself relating to his "nature-immersed" side above all. Although not as Bouquet-centered as one would have wished it to be, the film still offered the great thespian the possibility to shine and won him a third César nomination for Best Actor.
Bouquet's commitment to his stage activity was something that could hardly find a proper match among future generations of actors, approaching it like a sacred path as a missionary of sorts would do (his acting pupil Fabrice Luchini would indeed compare him to a monk). Having first announced his retirement from the theatre world in 2011, he couldn't couldn't keep his word, as his bond to the theatre in general and 'Exit the King' in particular proved to be just too strong: in 2013 he did a special performance of the play during the prestigious Ramatuelle festival and, in early 2014, brought the production back to the Parisian stage for a limited season. He later played conductor and composer Wilhelm Furtwängler in a production of Ronald Harwood, winning once again a lot of admiration alongside a final Molière nom, and said at one point he would never quit the boards. His final theatrical role was as Orgon in a new production of Tartuffe directed by his great admirer Michel Fau, who also played the title role that had once been a defining one for Bouquet: the marketing and promotion of the show was largely centered around the latter's legendary persona, and the Crystal Globes gave him yet another laurel as the best stage actor of 2017, as a further testament to his evergreen core essentiality to the Parisian stage's life. In late 2018, it was announced that Bouquet would play the role of Albert Einstein in the play "Le case Eduard Einstein", focused on the relationship between the great scientist and his schizophrenia-stricken son. He did, however, withdraw from the project shortly after, also announcing his retirement from the stage for good this time, stating he was feeling too tired and devoid of the needed energy to approach this new challenge, and later adding that he already felt as if he "had done everything he could".
Michel Bouquet peacefully passed away on the 13 April 2022: interestingly enough, it was the year that marked the fourth centenary of the birth of Molière. A veritable national treasure by then, he was proudly and fondly saluted by countless leading figures of France's artistic and politic world. Most people would say he had the right to consider himself satisfied with his career like very few can. Probably no other actor of his generation could find equally memorable film roles in the new millennium. Having appeared in at least one play a year in the 70 years period between 1944 and 2017 (with very few breaks in between), he had put together one of the most impressive stage resumes ever. And not many can say to be as respected as he was by the public, the critics and their peers. However, the master thespian himself was never one to take anything for granted: earlier in his life, he had mentioned how he envisioned his actor's journey as being, for the most part, a sort of training until a final act where he could play a few roles very well. Still, taking into account the way he'd been able, even in the end, to satisfyingly eviscerate multiple roles that marked some of his most celebrated triumphs-- such as the King Bérenger one which he played over 800 times-- one can imagine with justified optimism that, by that time, Michel Bouquet would no longer be extraneous with that total sense of commitment he'd been entitled to for a very long time: he finally accomplished everything a dedicated actor of his kind could, leaving a legacy that couldn't be truer to the principles and goals of one who did value and envision his profession in such a way.
The King may have exited our stage now, but he did so while wearing his well-earned crown. - Henri Attal was born on 13 May 1936 in Paris, France. He was an actor, known for Vivre sa vie (1962), Fantomas (1964) and OSS 117: Mission for a Killer (1965). He died on 24 July 2003 in Cucq, Pas-de-Calais, France.
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Dominique Zardi was born on 2 March 1930 in Paris, France. He was an actor, known for Jo (1971), Delicatessen (1991) and Nada (1974). He died on 14 December 2009 in Paris, France.- Tony Wright was born on 10 December 1925 in London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Beside Murder (1955), The Saint (1962) and Callaghan remet ça (1961). He was married to Shirley Clark and Janet Munro. He died on 7 June 1986 in London, England, UK.
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Robert Berri was born on 16 December 1912 in Paris, France. He was an actor and writer, known for Un sourire dans la tempête (1950), The Three Musketeers: Part I - The Queen's Diamonds (1961) and Ein Lächeln im Sturm (1951). He died on 22 November 1989 in Rueil-Malmaison, Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France, France.- Actor
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Erich von Stroheim was born Erich Oswald Stroheim in 1885, in Vienna, Austria, to Johanna (Bondy), from Prague, and Benno Stroheim, a hatter from Gleiwitz, Germany (now Gliwice, Poland). His family was Jewish.
After spending some time working in his father's hat factory, he emigrated to America around 1909. Working in various jobs he arrived in Hollywood in 1914 and got work in D.W. Griffiths' company as a bit player. America's entry into WW1 enabled him to play sadistic monocled German officers but these roles dried up when the war ended. He turned to writing and directing but his passion for unnecessary detail such as Austrian guards wearing correct and expensively acquired regulation underwear which was never seen in 'Foolish Wives' caused the budget to reach a reported $1 million. Although the film became a hit the final edit was given to others resulting in a third of his footage being cut. Irving Thalberg fired him from 'Merry Go Round' which was completed by Rupert Julien. He then started on 'Greed', which when completed was unreleasable being 42 reels with a running time of 7 hours. It was eventually cut down to 10 reels which still had a striking effect on audiences. 'The Wedding March' was so long that even in it's unfinished state it was released as two separate films in Europe. Gloria Swanson fired him from her production of 'Queen Kelly' when with no sign of the film nearing completion the costs had risen to twice the budget partly due to him re-shooting scenes that had already been passed by the Hays office. She then had to spend a further $200,000 putting the footage into releasable state. It was the end for him as a director, but he made a reasonable success as an actor in the talkies.- Actress
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In a world weary of war and dispirited by the ravages of the Great Depression, Hollywood at the turn of the 1940s concocted a wildly popular, effective lot of escapist fare (though often cheaply made) to regale the sick at heart worldwide. Universal Pictures, more often than not, led in producing such films. We know about the monster movies: wolf men, invisible men -- and invisible women too, for that matter. We know about Sherlock Holmes chasing not killer hounds in 1890 but chasing killer Nazis a half- century later. Such were among typical Universal "B" productions. Enter Maria de Santo Silas -- Maria Montez. This daughter of a Spanish diplomat traveled extensively after being educated in the Canary Islands and attempted, albeit unsuccessfully, to establish herself as a stage actress in Europe. In 1940 she found herself in New York City, a model. Her screen career began in 1941, with Universal casting her in bit parts. On account of her strikingly exotic looks and her exotic accent, the studio soon paired her with other "exotics" (Sabu and Turhan Bey), and usually with a more "home-style" hero (Jon Hall), in a series of low-budget adventures, filmed in Technicolor and situated in fantasy lands, with Montez herself often situated in revealing dress. With Montez threatened by all manner of nastiness -- from evil caliphs to man-eating sharks to her own cobra-worshipping twin sister (!) -- her pictures soon became immensely popular, even though she could not really act, could not dance and could not sing. Audiences flocked to see her films, just to witness the trials and endurance of an alluring beauty in distress (as well, perhaps, as to glimpse some scantily clad, beauteous flesh). The Depression having long since passed, the end of World War II meant also the end of flying carpets and sand dunes and deadly reptiles as potential subjects for attracting moviegoers. That bit of history, plus a bit of girth added to Montez's frame, led her and her husband, the actor Jean-Pierre Aumont, to abandon Hollywood for Europe, where she would appear in a handful of French and Italian adventure films. On 7 September 1951 Maria Montez was discovered drowned in her bath, possibly having first suffered a heart attack.- Raymond Pellegrin was born on 1 January 1925 in Nice, Alpes-Maritimes, France. He was an actor, known for Second Wind (1966), Maigret à Pigalle (1966) and Imperial Venus (1962). He was married to Gisèle Pascal and Dora Doll. He died on 14 October 2007 in Garons, Gard, France.
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Bernadette Lafont was born at the Protestant Health Home of Nîmes in Gard, the only child of a pharmacist and a housewife from the Cévennes. Her mother always wanted a boy to name Bernard and, once she gave birth to a girl, she enjoyed to hold this against all the catholics she knew as the proof that their God either was blind or didn't exist. Often dressed as a boy and nicknamed Bernard, Bernadette nevertheless had a great relationship with her parents. Having spent part of her childhood in Saint-Geniès-de-Malgoirès, she returned to Nîmes where she took ballet lessons at the local Opera House. She proved to be a gifted student and she did three little tours and about twenty galas there. An extroverted girl with a fervent imagination, she used to spend her holidays at the Cévennes family mansion playing dress-up with her friend Annie, along whom she used to pretend to be an actress from an imaginary West End Club, working in Italian cinema: doing this started to win her a lot of male attention. She also began to develop a passion for film from an early age, adopting Brigitte Bardot and Marina Vlady as role models.
On the summer of 1955, the "Arènes" of Nîmes hosted a Festival of Dramatic Arts for the second time: 40 actors came from Paris while 50 regional aspiring thespians and 30 dancing students were recruited on the place. The main attraction was a production of "La Tragédie des Albigeois", a new play which featured music by Georges Delerue and starred, in the leading roles, the acclaimed stage veteran Jean Deschamps and a talented young actor called Jean-Louis Trintignant, who would go a long way from there. The play also offered bit parts to future directing genius Maurice Pialat, Trintignant's then wife Colette Dacheville (the future Stéphane Audran), and the skilled Gérard Blain, who, by then, had already appeared in a handful of movies, although usually in uncredited roles. Having seen Gérard on his way to a rehearsal at the "Arènes", Bernadette was immediately won over by his "bad boy" charm and decided to walk around the place (which had ironically been the spot of her parents' first encounter) to catch his attention: she did. Already separated from wife Estella Blain, Gérard immediately developed a great interest in Bernadette, stating that he was willing to bring her to Paris to introduce her to certain people at the Opera House and stating how glad he was that she didn't have any interest in pursuing an acting career, something he regarded, in a woman's case, as a road to perdition. After she finished her studies, Bernadette's parents gave her permission to marry Gérard and she did so in 1957.
Blain found his first relevant film role in Julien Duvivier's brilliant thriller Deadlier Than the Male (1956) and Bernadette spent a lot of time with him on the movie's set, something that made her fascination with cinema grow even bigger. The film opened to positive reviews and was also lauded (quite an oddity for a Duvivier feature) by the ruthless "Cahiers du Cinéma" critics, including the young François Truffaut, who called Blain "the French James Dean". Gérard decided to give the critic a phone call to thank him for the kind words and, after the two had a couple lunches together, Truffaut ended up making him a work offer. It's always been very hard for film critics to point at a specific work as the undisputed start of the French New Wave: for many people it's Agnès Varda's La Pointe Courte (1955) , but the director herself never wanted to be bestowed this honor and prefers to be considered a godmother to the movement. Others think that the roots of this new school of cinema can be found in the early shorts of Jacques Rivette, Jean-Luc Godard and Truffaut. The latter's The Mischief Makers (1957) is certainly one of the most significant of these ground-breaking works and happens to be the project for which Blain was recruited. Truffaut wanted to shoot the short in Nîmes and, with the exception of Gérard, he hired only non-professional actors: this included several local children and, of course, Bernadette. The mini-feature is centered around two lovers, Gérard (Blain) and Bernadette Jouve (Lafont), who are spied on by a group of children and are separated forever once he leaves for a mountain excursion from which he will never return. The character of Bernadette, a head-turner who becomes a great object of attention wherever she goes, was very much based on the real-life Lafont, just like her relationship with her beau Gérard (who has to leave Nîmes for three months, promising to marry her at his return) was very much reminiscent of her engagement to Blain. The two actors stayed at the house of Bernadette's parents for the entire shooting of the short. She chose to act in bare feet the whole time to make a homage to Ava Gardner in The Barefoot Contessa (1954) and, at the same time, a favour to Blain, not exactly a man of exceptional height. When he had married Bernadette, Gérard had sworn to himself that his new wife would have never stolen the spotlight from him like Estella had previously done: unfortunately for his plans, he was soon going to be sorely disappointed. Truffaut managed to get the best out of the young actress through rather unorthodox methods at times (like threatening to slap her hadn't she cried convincingly), but they established a great chemistry in the end and he taught her not to look at someone like Bardot as a source of inspiration, since the big star didn't possess any gift Bernadette should have been jealous of. "Les Mistons" turned out to be a little gem which already contained all the best elements of the great director's cinema. During the shooting, Bernadette got to know many other key figures of the upcoming French New Wave, including Rivette, Paul Gégauff and Claude Chabrol. The latter had already asked her to appear in his debut feature film by the time Truffaut had proposed her to star in "Les Mistons": she had accepted both offers simultaneously and, once the shooting of the short movie was over, she immediately embarked on another adventure.
Chabrol's atmospheric Le Beau Serge (1958) is now officially considered the movie that kickstarted the French New Wave: it was shot in Sardent, where the director had spent many of his childhood years. The main cast was formed by Bernadette, Gérard and another young actor called Jean-Claude Brialy, who would soon become a cornerstone of French cinema in general and an assiduous presence in New Wave movies in particular. The movie takes place in a community of drunkards and is centered around the relationship between the rebellious Serge (Blain) and his better balanced friend François (Brialy). Bernadette got the juicy role of Serge's slutty sister-in-law and lover, Marie. This role of a very impudent and provocative woman of slightly vulgar charms allowed her to introduce the French audience to a new female image that was very much different from the ones usually found in the cinema of the period and worked as a prototype to the unforgettable gallery of "bad girl" types her cinematic work will forever be strictly associated to. The movie was very much praised along with the great performances of its actors. Bernadette was immediately featured on the cover of a recent edition of "The Cahiers du Cinéma" along with Brialy. Her rise in popularity had predictably an immediate negative impact on her relationship with Blain. The two male stars of "Le Beau Serge" were paired again in Chabrol's subsequent feature, the least interesting The Cousins (1959), but, this time, the leading female role was given to an absolutely unremarkable Juliette Mayniel. Bernadette started to grow more and more bored as Gérard was away from home to shoot the movie and even tried to contact him on the set asking for a divorce.
Bernadette teamed up again with Chabrol in the director's third released feature , Web of Passion (1959), which didn't work as well as a thriller rather than as an ironic spoof on the clichés of the genre and actor piece. The film's acting laurels go undoubtedly to Bernadette as a saucy waitress, Jean-Paul Belmondo as a cheeky young man with an alcohol problem and the glorious Madeleine Robinson (rightly awarded with a Volpi Cup at Venice Film Festival) as a troubled wife and mother. By the end of the year, Bernadette had eventually divorced from Blain and gotten into a relationship with a Hungarian sculptor she had known on her 20th birthday, Diourka Medveczky. 1960 was a turning point for her, as the work she did helped cementing her status as the female face of the New Wave. L'eau à la bouche (1960) was the first and most famous feature of Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, another critic of the Cahiers who wanted to follow the same path of his colleagues turned directors and decided to call Bernadette after seeing "Le Beau Serge". The superb The Good Time Girls (1960) was Chabrol's fourth movie and remains one of his masterworks. The film follows four girls (Bernadette, Stéphane Audran, Clotilde Joano and Lucile Saint-Simon) who are bored with their lives and waiting for a positive change to arrive, whether it's the coming of true love or the fulfillment of a dream. With many scenes set in the shop where the four characters work (a surreal place where time seems to have stopped), Chabrol was able to create something that seemed to come out of Sartre, managing to perfectly spread to the viewer the sense of loneliness and boredom weighing down the girls, seemingly trapped in the antechamber of hell. One of the film's strongest assets were three performances: tragic actress Joano gave a delicate and poetic portrayal of the ill-fated Jacqueline, Italian veteran Ave Ninchi added a lot of authority to her Madame Louise and, of course, Bernadette did the usual splendid job lending her energetic screen persona to Jane, the obvious haywire of the group, but, at the same time, a character more vulnerable and less gutsy than her usual creations. The movie allowed the actress to stretch her range and gave her a lot of good memories, such as pushing journalists on a swimming pool (which is at the heart of a key scene) along with Stéphane, somehow managing to galvanize the normally extremely shy girl. To appear in the movie, Bernadette had to decline the role of prostitute Clarisse (eventually played by Michèle Mercier) in Truffaut's masterpiece Shoot the Piano Player (1960), but it was a worthy sacrifice. The same year she gave birth to her first daughter with her now husband Diourka, the future actress Élisabeth Lafont, in the same health house where she was born. Bernadette's next collaboration with Chabrol was the remarkable Wise Guys (1961), where she got her most memorable role so far as Ambroisine, a girl who gets recruited by Jean-Claude Brialy's Ronald to create trouble in an old-fashioned environment with her modern, liberated persona, but eventually becomes impossible for him to control because of her mean-spirited nature. Her anarchic side was used to full potential for the first time, something that lead to one of the best portrayals of dark lady in a New Wave movie. But, like the other characters in the film weren't ready for a new type of woman such as Ambroisine, the movie-goers of the period seemed unwilling to fall for the charms of this revolutionary type of woman Bernadette was bringing to the screen and "Les godelureaux" was a box office flop, just like "Les Bonnes Femmes" had been. The latter, now regarded as one of Chabrol's best, was also a critical disaster, although Bernadette got positive reviews for her performance. Watched today, it's clear that both movies outclass several entries from the director's most celebrated noir cycle from the late 60's to the early 70's. But considering the tepid impact that her movies used to have with the big public, Bernadette was seen just as a half-star and icon of niche cinema exclusively and her agent used to have much trouble in finding her roles at the time. Producer Carlo Ponti once offered her to come to Italy to do some movies: now that his wife Sophia Loren was moving to Hollywood (not exactly to electrifying results), he thought there was a void in Italian cinema that needed to be filled by a feisty, curvaceous actress. This proposal lead to nothing. A project with Godard never saw the light of the day. Rivette never bothered to answer a letter by Bernadette where she had asked him to cast her in his debut feature film, Paris Belongs to Us (1961). She was offered her ticket to major stardom with Jacques Demy's Lola (1961), but she had to decline the title role in the movie because she was pregnant with her second child, David. The part eventually went to the limited Anouk Aimée, who gave the best acting she could ever be capable of, but it goes without saying that, had Bernadette played the part, she would have elevated the movie to entirely new levels.
The 60s, for most of the time, didn't prove to be a very happy decade for Bernadette as she got to face both a personal and professional crisis. Immediately after "Les Godelureaux", her talents were wasted in several obscure movies and shorts. In 1962 she appeared in And Satan Calls the Turns (1962), which boosted a high-profile cast, but was scripted by Roger Vadim, something that predictably sealed the movie's fate. Although officially directed by one-shot filmmaker Grisha Dabat, the film contained all the worst elements of Vadim's cinema and Bernadette was given such a thankless role that not even she could elevate it. One year later she was without an agent and took a break from acting, also to give birth to her third daughter, the future actress Pauline Lafont. The passion between her and Diourka had cooled down by now and the main reason they stayed together for a few years more was their common love for cinema: he was indeed planning to make his directorial debut. For the time being, they tried to make it work by opting for an open marriage where both enjoyed plenty of extra-conjugal affairs. Bernadette's friends Truffaut and Chabrol couldn't really come to her rescue either. The first sent her a letter which read: "You chose life. I chose cinema. I don' think our paths will ever cross again". The second was now engaged to Audran and was soon to enter a second phase of his career, one where he regularly did films whose central female characters weren't witty, animated provincial girls, but frozen, humourless bourgeoisie ladies that were tailor-made for Stéphane. In 1964, Bernadette had a rather unhappy "rentrée" with Male Hunt (1964) , a very disappointing comedy made by the talented Édouard Molinaro on an utterly unfunny script by Michel Audiard. Her role as a prostitute was hardly one minute long, but she had little money and a ton of debts at the time, so she had to accept everything she was offered. During the decade, she found work in a few more resonant projects such as Louis Malle's The Thief of Paris (1967), Costa-Gavras's The Sleeping Car Murder (1965) and Jean Aurel's Lamiel (1967), but she was given very indifferent roles in all of them. Once again, going after unusual projects by new, alternative auteurs was the decisive factor that helped her putting her career back on track. In Diourka's remarkable first work, the short Marie et le curé (1967), she shined as a provocative young woman who seduces a priest to nefarious consequences for both. Shortly after, she appeared in the silent movie Le révélateur (1968), which was directed by her love interest of the time, Philippe Garrel, and co-starred Laurent Terzieff, opposite whom she had always dearly desired to act. The film was shot in Spain and Bernadette helped funding it thanks to a loan from Chabrol. At around the same time, she also shot the "conjoined" shorts Prologue (1970) and Piège (1970), which were written and directed by Jacques Baratier and co-starred the great Bulle Ogier. Having seen Bulle in her most acclaimed film role in Rivette's titanic achievement Mad Love (1969), Bernadette had been astonished by the actress' monstrous amount of talent and was a bit scared by the thought of having to cross blades with her. As two thieves locked in a mysterious house by a vampiresque entity, the two actresses went on to gave a great lesson in metaphysical acting. Closer to an example of visual arts or Noh theatre than a cinematic work, Barratier's double short may feel too extreme even to some New Wave purists, but is nevertheless a fascinating watch and a must-see for the fans of the two ladies, equally impressive in the acting department and perfectly suited to create the needed physical contrast, with the taller brunette adding an earthy element and the petite blonde providing an ethereal quality. Bernadette and Bulle developed a beautiful friendship which lead to several other collaborations. In 1969, Diourka made his first feature film, Paul (1969). Jean-Pierre Léaud, a cult actor if there ever was one, had loved the Hungarian sculptor's previous shorts and sent him a letter asking to work with him, so that he would add another unique title to his genial filmography. He so earned the honour to play title character in Diourka's (only) film, as a little bourgeois who escapes from his family, joins a group of sages and meets temptation in Bernadette's form. None of these works really gave the actress a major popularity boost, however. Unlike fellow female standouts of the New Wave such as Ogier, Edith Scob, Delphine Seyrig, Jeanne Moreau and Emmanuelle Riva, Bernadette didn't have theatrical roots, but this didn't prevent her from appearing in stage productions of Turgenev's "A Month in the Country" and Picasso's surrealist play "Le désir attrapé par la queue" in this period. The official start of her career renaissance came, however, at the end of the decade with Nelly Kaplan's A Very Curious Girl (1969), a retelling of sorts of Michelet's "La Sorcière". Conceived as a monument to her talents, the transgressive movie stars Bernadette as Marie, a village girl who becomes a prostitute to settle a score with society (winning male and female hearts alike) and eventually gets revenge on all her men clients. The vendetta bit had been inspired by an off-screen feud between director Kaplan (an angry feminist) and actor Michael Constantin, who had refused to recite the line 'they were very happy and didn't have children" because he was a family man and opted for a more prudish "they were very happy and had children" instead. Bernadette's fearless performance had such a huge impact that, after the film's release, she got offers to star in porn features along with obscene proposals from the more misguided moviegoers. Once again, the public had proved not to have understood what kind of woman she represented, but auteur cinema was now going to welcome her back to a fuller extent.
The 70's were definitely a more successful decade for Bernadette. She was still seen as an alternative actress and was hardly ever offered traditional roles in conventional movies, but she didn't care about it, since she felt more at home in unique experiments such as La ville-bidon (1971), Valparaiso, Valparaiso (1971) or Sex-Power (1970). Moshé Mizrahi's feminist dramedy Sophie's Ways (1971) offered her one of her best parts as the rebellious wife of an excellent Michel Duchaussoy in one of his least charming roles. Jean Renoir himself was knocked out by her performance. In 1971, Bernadette finally got to work with Rivette for the first time in the director's epic Out 1 (1971), originally conceived as an 8 part mini-series to sell to French TV. The movie is centered around 12 main characters that work as pieces of an intricate puzzle and Bernadette was teamed up with several acting heavyweights such as Michael Lonsdale, Françoise Fabian, Juliet Berto and her former co-stars Léaud and Ogier. She played the role of Lonsdale's ex-girlfriend, a writer he tries to recruit for his mysterious dancing group. The actress, unlike other cast members, wasn't used to Rivette's working method, which involved little explanations and a lot of room for improvisation. Since it took her a lot of time to adapt to this style, she was reproached by the director, who harshly accused her of having chosen not to do anything, therefore hurting her feelings. Eventually these words helped Bernadette to find a way to incorporate her "handicap" into the character, imagining that Marie was experimenting writer's block like she had found herself unable to act. A scene where she and Léaud kept just staring at each other because they didn't know what to say was kept by Rivette because he liked the authentic feeling about it. Eventually French TV never bought "Out 1". Rivette also cut it down to 4 hours in the form of Out 1: Spectre (1972), but both versions were hardly released outside of festival circuits. One year later, Bernadette got to play her best remembered and most iconic role: Camille Bliss in Truffaut's underrated black comedy A Gorgeous Girl Like Me (1972). As a girl who's released from prison so that she can be analyzed by a student of criminology, the actress got to play a role that exemplified her career (being 'one of a kind') and felt like the summation and sublimation of all the naughty ladies she had played before: of coarse manners and vulgar laughter, indomitable, unstoppable, irreverent, incandescent and more of a destructive force that she had ever been in any of her previous movies, including "Marie et le Curé" , "La fiancée du pirate" and "Les godelureaux". Her performance won her the "Triomphe du Cinéma Français" and was stellarly received in the US, with "Newsweek" and the "New York Magazine" giving it such phenomenal praise that a French journalist wrote this comment: "Bernadette Lafont, historical monument to the U.S.A.". After bringing the female type she so often personified to its definitive cinematic form, Bernadette gradually started her image makeover. The first example was in Jean Eustache's supreme masterpiece The Mother and the Whore (1973), where she would have been the logical choice to play the title "whore" Veronika, but was actually given the touching role of the title "mother" Marie. Eustache, another former critic of the Cahiers had known her for about ten years and given her the script in 1971. After reading a couple pages she had been immediately won over and realized how much she desired to do it. The director's towering 4 hour achievement is centered around a love triangle formed of Eustache's screen alter-ego Alexandre (Léaud in his very best performance), slutty nurse Veronika (non-professional actress Françoise Lebrun, whose angelic appearance provided the perfect contrast with the nature of the character) and Bernadette's Marie, Alexandre's patient girlfriend who enjoys a very open relationship with him. Managing to convey an entire era in the characters' long, sublime dialogues, Eustache easily made one of the greatest and most significant movies of the French New Wave. Bernadette's portrayal of Marie showed a vibrant, affecting sensitivity that she had hardly done before, giving further demonstration of her talent and versatility. The film was shown in competition at the 1973 Cannes film festival, where it predictably got a mixed reception: some, including Jury President Ingrid Bergman, hated it, while others worshiped it as the future of cinema. In the end, Eustache was given the Grand Prize of the Jury. The same year, Bernadette also appeared in Nadine Trintignant's Défense de savoir (1973), which was no great shakes, but also starred two of the nation's top actors, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Michel Bouquet, both of which she greatly admired. She teamed up with the two again, respectively in The Probability Factor (1976) and Vincent mit l'âne dans un pré (et s'en vint dans l'autre) (1975). She was particularly entertaining in the second as an eccentric rich lady, proving that she could be also very convincing at playing very chic and sophisticated characters. The movie ends on a high note with the actress giving an unforgettable, sexy laugh. Daughters Élisabeth and Pauline were also given roles in the movie. The final great role Bernadette played in this period was in Rivette's misunderstood masterpiece Noroît (1976): Giulia, daughter of the Sun. Centred, like many of the director's works, on the dichotomy between light and shadow and day and night, the movie sees Geraldine Chaplin's Morag ending up on a mysterious island ruled by an Amazon-like society where males are either enslaved or, like in her brother's case, murdered. A great revenge tale not without its 'steampunk' element, the film is certainly highlighted by the transforming performance of Bernadette as a ruthless, modern day Pirate queen, cutting one of her female minions' throat with one of the most frighteningly icy expressions ever recorded by a camera and eventually facing Chaplin in a climatic knife duel on the ramparts. Unfortunately, Rivette's previous feature Duelle (1976) had been so unsuccessful that "Noroît " wasn't even released and, to this day, it remains the director's least popular work, which means that many people aren't familiar with Bernadette's sinister, against type performance, which ranks with her very best and is undoubtedly one of the great villainous turns in New Wave cinema. By 1978 there had been another change of muse in Chabrol's movies, as an astounding 24 years old Isabelle Huppert headlined the cast of one of his best works, Violette (1978), the first of a series of successful collaborations which included the director's number one masterpiece, La Cérémonie (1995). Bernadette was given a brief, but memorable cameo as Violette's cellmate. This 1969-1978 period easily represents the zenith of her career. After that, it was a bit difficult for her to deal with the changing times.
By the end of the 70's, most of the New Wave auteurs had moved on to more conventional projects and French cinema was entering a far less creative phase. Bernadette's desire to constantly challenge herself and look for different, ground-breaking projects often lead her to be part of totally unremarkable movies. Her nadir was probably represented by her two collaborations with Michel Caputo, arguably the worst French director to ever work with name actors (before he exclusively moved on to do porn under several aliases): Qu'il est joli garçon l'assassin de papa (1979) and Si ma gueule vous plaît... (1981), two supposed comic works that would make Michel Audiard's comedies look like Bringing Up Baby (1938) in comparison. But, although the modern viewer can hardly believe the existence of such detrimental works, they actually weren't unusual products of their time, but clear evidence of a scary change of taste on the public's part. Actresses like Bernadette, who used to mainly work for an audience of intellectuals, had to struggle hard to keep afloat after this change of tide and, in the early 80's, she had to lend her talents to a dozen of movies that weren't worth it. The Lee Marvin vehicle Dog Day (1984) was the second occasion she found herself working with a mega-star in an international production since her cameo opposite the legendary Kirk Douglas in Dick Clement's Swinging London abomination Catch Me a Spy (1971). Although she was given a bit more to do this time around, this title didn't add anything to her filmography either. Luckily, this wasn't the case of Claude Miller's L'effrontée (1985) a.k.a. "Impudent Girl". It's very ironic -and certainly not coincidental - that a movie going by this title and starring a 14 years old Charlotte Gainsbourg as a gutsy rebel would also feature Bernadette, who had, by all means, every maternity right on this type of character which had grown more and more diffused on the French screen thanks to her work. But the film had a much different flavour from the actress' vehicles from the 60's-70's: Gainsbourg's stubborn but ultimately good-hearted Charlotte is actually nothing like "Les Godelureaux"'s Ambroisine or "Une belle fille comme moi"'s Camille Bliss and Bernadette's Léone, the new love interest of Charlotte's father and mother of an asthmatic girl, is a very likable and moving character. Having moved on to more accessible projects, Bernadette naturally started to receive more award consideration as well, and her sweet, beautiful performance in Miller's movie was honored with a Best Supporting Actress César, one of the best and most inspired choices ever in the category. Her next project was Inspector Lavardin (1986), the second and best movie centered around Jean Poiret's unconventional police inspector and her first collaboration with Chabrol since "Violette". Wearing the most recurring name of the director's heroines, Hélène, she also dyed her hair blond for the first time on his wishes, so that she would have taken a step further in changing her screen persona. She liked the idea and would keep blond hair for the rest of her life. She worked with Chabrol for a seventh (and last) time only one year later in one of the director's most gothic-like works, the underrated Masks (1987), which stars the great Philippe Noiret as a villainous TV presenter worthy of the pen of Ann Radcliffe, Christian Legagneur, who keeps an innocent Anne Brochet imprisoned in his imposing manor and wishes to kill her to get his hands on her fortune. The juicy role of Legagneur's masseuse won Bernadette a second nomination for the Supporting Actress César.
In 1988, Bernadette's life was sadly affected by a horrible personal tragedy. In August, she was spending a holiday in the Cévennes family mansion, La Serre du Pomaret, along with son David, daughter Pauline and painter Pierre De Chevilly, her new life mate. On the 11th day of the month, Pauline left the house early in the morning to have a long walk to lose weight. By midday she hadn't come back yet. The family began to worry and David started to look for her. Bernadette was unfortunately committed to appear in a TV show in Nice and she left with her heart in her throat, hoping that, in the mean time, David or Pierre would have found Pauline. That wasn't to be. The family lived many weeks in a state of anguish, using the TV show "Avis de Recherche" to diffuse some photos of Pauline in the hope that someone could have shed some light on the mystery. There were several false reports from people who claimed to have seen her and Bernadette kept fooling herself for a long time, wanting to believe that the quest would have been greeted with success. Tragically, on the 21st November, Pauline's body was found in a ravine. Her death was officially called a hiking accident, although its circumstances are still mysterious to this day and some people considered the suicide theory. Bernadette dealt with her devastating grief by throwing herself into her job: always an extremely prolific actress, she got to work more and more and, as a result, she added a lot of unremarkable titles to her resume. She would still find a few good parts in the following decades.
Between 1990 and 2013, the actress added over 70 titles to her film and TV resume. Her talents were rather wasted in Raúl Ruiz's uneven Genealogies of a Crime (1997) and in Pascal Bonitzer's delightfully cynical Nothing About Robert (1999). She shined much more as an alcoholic mother in Personne ne m'aime (1994) (where she teamed up with Ogier and Léaud once more), a former teacher who almost ends up abducting her grandchildren in Les petites vacances (2006), an antique shop dealer who still has a great ascendancy over younger men in Bazar (2009) and a family matriarch in the comedy Prête-moi ta main (2006) opposite Alain Chabat and successor Gainsbourg. Her performance in this movie won her a third nomination for the Best Supporting Actress César. Her massive body of TV work from this period was highlighted by her performances in La très excellente et divertissante histoire de François Rabelais (2010) and La femme du boulanger (2010). She also did more stage work than ever in the 2000s. Starting from 2010, she was again employed for a few projects that had a bigger impact. First she borrowed her wonderful, husky voice to a treacherous nanny in the lovely animated feature A Cat in Paris (2010), which was Oscar-nominated. This nasty lady role felt like a homage to the characters that had made her famous. The following year, Bernadette and fellow New Wave legend Emmanuelle Riva were unfortunately the latest victims of Julie Delpy's game of playing director, as they were cast in the actress' catastrophic vanity project Skylab (2011). Delpy's latest directorial feature contained all the typical elements that she thinks are enough to make a movie: a seemingly endless family reunion, characters talking about hot hair around a table and a few off-colour gags here and there. The two glorious veterans, sadistically mortified by the granny look they had to sport, did the best they could with the material they were given, but it was just too little to begin with and, consequently, they can't possibly be considered a real redeeming factor of the terribly written, lacklusterly directed and otherwise insipidly acted film. In 2012, Bernadette got her best role in years as the title character in Jérôme Enrico's black comedy Paulette (2012). Enrico's pensioner version of Breaking Bad (2008) sees Bernadette's Paulette, a penniless, xenophobic widow, finding herself in a Walter White type of situation as she gets into drug dealing to make a living and begins to smuggle hashish right under the nose of her son-in-law, a coloured cop. The actress was immediately won over by the script, finding it modern and socially significant and decided to give a strong characterization to her character. Getting inspiration from Charles Chaplin's heroes and Giulietta Masina's performance in The Road (1954), she provided Paulette with a clown side which came complete with a funny walk and her leading turn proved absolutely irresistible. The film opened to positive reviews and got more visibility outside France than Bernadette's latest vehicles and many were foreseeing another career renaissance for her. Sadly, it wasn't to be.
In early July 2013, Bernadette was on her way to her family mansion in Saint-André-de-Valborgne (Gard) when she was the victim of a stroke. Forced to stay in Grau-du-Roi for a while, she had a second one on the 22nd and was quickly moved to the University Hospital centre of Nîmes, where she tragically died three days later. Her funeral took place at the Protestant temple of Saint-André-de-Valborgne on the 29th. Her passing was a cause of great grief for an enormous number of people, as she had gradually become a huge favourite of the French audience and a cornerstone of their cinema, and her colleagues had always adored her on both a professional and personal level. The admiration she had earned through the years had been repeatedly proved by several career tributes, including an Honorary César, the title of Officer of the French Legion of Honour and medals from the "National Order of Merit" and the "Order of Arts and Letters".
Bernadette's legacy could never be extinguished, but, in addition to everything she had already bequeathed to cinema, she graced the silver screen for a last time even after her death through her final completed movie, Sylvain Chomet's Attila Marcel (2013). The movie, recently showed at Toronto film festival and released in French theatres, was greeted with positive reviews where big kudos were reserved to Bernadette's portrayal of the eccentric adoptive aunt of Guillaume Gouix's protagonist. With the film's upcoming release in many more countries, plenty of others will have the bitter honour to see her eventually taking leave. Since the 25th October 2013, the Municipal Theatre of Nîmes has been renamed the Bernadette Lafont Theatre to honour the memory of the great actress. A once unforeseeable and absolutely logical reaching point for the barefoot girl biking in the city's streets in "Les Mistons".- Actor
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Roger Hanin was born on 20 October 1925 in Algiers, Alger, France [now Algeria]. He was an actor and writer, known for Navarro (1989), Hell Train (1985) and Le protecteur (1974). He was married to Christine Gouze-Rénal and Lisette Barucq. He died on 11 February 2015 in Paris, France.- Actor
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Paul Meurisse was the son of a bank manager and it first looked as if he would follow in his father's footsteps when he became a solicitor's clerk in Aix-en-Provence. But his passion was elsewhere and he soon did the splits appearing as a chorus boy in music-hall revues. Leaving Aix for Paris, with a letter of recommendation signed by Huguette Duflos, he found work at once, at the Trianon first, and then at the ABC in a show by realistic singer Marie Dubas. He also appeared in Pigalle nightclubs. In 1939, Édith Piaf fell in love with him and both spent long months together. As "la Môme Piaf" did not think much of his singing talent (he had specialized in singing cheerful songs in a gloomy tone) she urged him to become an actor, which he did in being her partner in Jean Cocteau's play "Le bel Indifférent", even if it was in ... a silent role. From then on, his activity on stage as well as in films never ceased until his untimely death at age 66, following an acute attack of asthma. In the theater he played either in very successful light comedies by Marcel Achard, André Roussin, Françoise Dorin or Jean Anouilh or in classics by Shakespeare or Shaw. He belonged to the Comédie Française company for 27 months. On the night before he passed away, he was still triumphing in Sacha Guitry's "Mon Père avait Raison". Most of the first films he made were mediocre but things improved in the 1950Henri-Georges Clouzot to star in Diabolique (1955), in which he played to perfection a cruel, obnoxious husband. An unforgettable interpretation indeed, but Meurisse also appeared in a fistful of interesting movies directed by Duvivier (Marie-Octobre (1959)), Renoir (Picnic on the Grass (1959)) and Melville (Second Wind (1966) and Army of Shadows (1969)). On the other hand, Meurisse proved unique and irreplaceable in a series of parodic spy movies hemmed by Georges Lautner (The Black Monocle (1961), The Eye of the Monocle (1962) and The Monocle (1964)) as Commandant Theobald Dromard aka "Le Monocle", gracing these unpretentious films with distinction, composure and irony. The quintessence of Paul Meurisse's art.- Dora Doll was born on 19 May 1922 in Berlin, Germany. She was an actress, known for Touchez pas au grisbi (1954), The Young Lions (1958) and Maniac Killer (1987). She was married to François Deguelt and Raymond Pellegrin. She died on 15 November 2015 in Nîmes, Gard, France.
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As an actor he became popular as Albert de Morcerf in a version of The Count of Monte Cristo (1954), fame and adulation followed with his Francois in Head Against the Wall (1959). As a director he became famous with anarcho-pictures, brilliant cynic comedies. His preferred actors in all decades were Michel Serrault and Jean Poiret - till the late 80s they were his leading stars. When Jeanne Moreau appeared in Le miraculé (1987), many other leading French screen-stars followed.- Writer
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Paul Gégauff was born on 10 August 1922 in Blotzheim, Haut-Rhin, France. He was a writer and actor, known for Purple Noon (1960), Frankenstein 90 (1984) and This Man Must Die (1969). He was married to Danièle Gégauff. He died on 24 December 1983 in Gjovik, Norway.- Paul Frankeur was born on 29 June 1905 in Paris, France. He was an actor, known for The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), The Phantom of Liberty (1974) and Children of Paradise (1945). He died on 27 October 1974 in Nevers, Nièvre, France.
- Jane Marken was born on 13 January 1895 in Paris, France. She was an actress, known for Children of Paradise (1945), La dame aux camélias (1934) and ...And God Created Woman (1956). She was married to André Marie Désiré Berthellemy. She died on 1 December 1976 in Paris, France.
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Before Arlette-Leonie Bathiat went to the movies she was a secretary and had posed several times as a model for different painters and photographers. In 1920 she debuted on stage at a theatre. She only began to work in movies after 1930. After World War II she was condemned to prison for having been the lover of a German official during the ocupation of France. In 1963 she had an accident which left her almost blind. Her most important movies were filmed and directed by Marcel Carné ("Hotel du Nord (1938)" or "Enfants du Paradis, Les (1945)").- Actor
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Christian Marquand was born on 15 March 1927 in Marseille, France. He was an actor and director, known for Apocalypse Now (1979), The Longest Day (1962) and The Flight of the Phoenix (1965). He was married to Tina Aumont. He died on 22 November 2000 in Ivry-sur-Seine, Val-de-Marne, France.- Actor
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Tall, bearded, heavy-set Anglo-French character actor, best known internationally for playing Deputy Commissioner Claude Lebel in The Day of the Jackal (1973) and Bond villain Hugo Drax in Moonraker (1979). The son of an English army officer (Edward Lonsdale-Crouch) and a Franco-Irish mother (Simone Béraud), he was born in Paris and spent his early childhood in England. The family moved to Morocco in 1939 where Edward found work in the fertilizer trade (he was later imprisoned by the Vichy government for political reasons). Michael returned to France in 1947 where he met actor/director Roger Blin who awakened his interest in the dramatic arts. Following acting studies, Michael made his theatrical debut at 24 and appeared on screen for the first time a year later, for much of his career billed as 'Michel' Lonsdale. Having toiled for over a decade in smallish supporting roles, he received his first major critical acclaim in two films by François Truffaut (The Bride Wore Black (1968) and Stolen Kisses (1968)). Though primarily active in French cinema, the bilingual Lonsdale made occasional (but often memorable) forays into English-language productions, his first as a reporter in Fred Zinnemann's Behold a Pale Horse (1964). Subsequent parts have included a titled landowner who sets in motion the Caravan to Vaccares (1974), a CIA agent in Enigma (1982) and a Swiss banker in The Holcroft Covenant (1985). James Ivory cast him in two of his films consecutively as a French delegate in The Remains of the Day (1993) and as King Louis XVI in Jefferson in Paris (1995). Lonsdale also had a prominent role as The Abbot who commissions the Franciscan friar William of Baskerville (Sean Connery) to investigate the murder of a monk in Jean-Jacques Annaud's Italian-German-French co-production of Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose (1986) . By and large, it is for his powerhouse performance as Roger Moore's megalomaniacal antagonist Sir Hugo Drax in Moonraker for which Lonsdale is likely to be most remembered. He received a BAFTA nomination for his role in The Day of the Jackal but only achieved major acting honors in 2011, winning a César Award as best supporting actor for Of Gods and Men (2010).
Lonsdale's career could well be described as eclectic. In 1972, he co-founded (with French composer Michel Puig) the Théâtre musical des Ulis, a musical theater company which was subsidised by the French government. The soft-spoken actor also lent his voice to radio recordings and audio books. He had a reputation as a painter of some renown and authored or co-authored more than twenty works of fiction and non-fiction.- Actress
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Romy Schneider was born on 23 September 1938 in Vienna, Austria into a family of actors. Making her film debut at the age of 15, her breakthrough came two years later in the very popular trilogy Sissi (1955). Her mother, supervising her daughter's career, immediately approved Romy's participation in Christine (1958), the remake of Max Ophüls's Playing at Love (1933), where Magda Schneider once starred herself. During the shooting, she fell in love with her co-star Alain Delon and eventually moved with him to Paris. At that time, she started her international career collaborating with famous directors such as Luchino Visconti and Orson Welles. After Delon had broken up with her in 1964, she married Harry Meyen shortly after. Although she gave birth to a boy, David-Christopher, their relationship was difficult, so they divorced in 1975. Being unsatisfied with her personal life, she turned to alcohol and drugs, but her cinematic career -especially in France- remained intact. She was the first actress, receiving the new created César Award as "Best Actress" for her role in That Most Important Thing: Love (1975). Three years later, she was awarded again for A Simple Story (1978). After a short marriage to her former secretary Daniel Biasini, being the father of her daughter Sarah Biasini, she suffered the hardest blow of her life when her son was impaled on a fence in 1981. She never managed to recover from this loss and died on 29 May 1982 in Paris. Although it was suggested she committed suicide caused by an overdose of sleeping pills, she was declared to have died from cardiac arrest.- Actress
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Born in Denmark, she came to Paris at 18. She met Coco Chanel and Pierre Cardin and started as a top model. She met Jean-Luc Godard about a cameo in Breathless (1960), but she had to be naked and she refused to play in the movie. One year later, they wed and she became famous with the "Nouvelle Vague" movies directed by him, Jacques Rivette, and Agnès Varda.
In 1967, Serge Gainsbourg wrote his only film musical Anna (1967) for her, with the hit "Sous le soleil exactement". Then, she went to Hollywood for a few movies and came back to Paris. She wrote and directed Vivre ensemble (1973) after her divorce from Pierre Fabre. She later remarried, to Dennis Berry.- Actress
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Danielle Darrieux was born in 1917 in Bordeaux, France, to Marie-Louise (Witkowski) and Germain Jean Darrieux, a physician. She was raised in Paris. She was only fourteen when she auditioned for a secondary role in Le bal (1931): she got the part, and the producer offered her a five-year contract. She had her first romantic lead in La crise est finie (1934) and scored an international hit with the historical drama Mayerling (1936) in which she played Marie Vetsera opposite Charles Boyer. In 1938, she went to Hollywood to appear in the fine comedy The Rage of Paris (1938) but quickly returned to Paris.
Darrieux remained in France during the Occupation and was one of the leading actresses during this period, starring in major hits such as Premier Rendez-Vous (1941). In 1945, she appeared both on stage (in "Tristan et Isolde") and on screen (in Au petit bonheur (1946)). In the next three decades, she found several important roles, in films like La Ronde (1950), The Earrings of Madame De... (1953) -- in which she gave her best performance, as a society lady torn between her husband and her lover -- and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967).
In 1970, she replaced Katharine Hepburn on Broadway in "Coco." Afterwards, she made occasional screen and stage appearances. But she made a triumphant comeback in 2002, playing Catherine Deneuve's mother in the international hit 8 Women (2002).
She died on October 17, 2017 in Bois-le-Roi, Eure, France. She was 100.- Actor
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Swiss-born actor Howard Vernon (né Mario Lippert) would make his infamous claim to fame as a stock lead player for the lowgrade, campy horror features of notorious director Jesús Franco, starring as Dr. Orloff, Dracula, and other terrorizers, most of them produced in Spain or France. Born in 1914 the son of a Swiss father and American mother, Howard received his dramatic training in both Berlin and Paris and was originally a stage and radio player (from 1945) before arriving in post-war French films. He articulated and personified a number of nefarious Nazis and sinister criminals in his five-decade career, although he could grab a sympathetic role from time such as in the French film The Silence of the Sea (1949), which remains one of his best. Occasionally a still photographer, he forged a long, non-creative association beginning in the early 1960s with cult director Jess Franco following his good showing for Fritz Lang in _Tausend Augen des Dr. Mabuse, Die (1960)_ [The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse]. With his piercing gaze and gravely-voiced he entered into an enduring alliance with Franco, albeit in dreadful schlock. It began promisingly enough with the horror classic The Awful Dr. Orlof (1962) [The Awful Dr. Orloff] in which he portrayed the creepy title role with a slightly sympathetic countenance, but his appearances quickly degenerated into cheap exploitation, void of deserving artistic merit. He died in Paris shortly after his 82nd birthday.- Actor
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Michel Blanc was born on 16 April 1952 in Courbevoie, Seine [now Hauts-de-Seine], France. He is an actor and writer, known for Dead Tired (1994), Monsieur Hire (1989) and The Minister (2011).- Actress
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Sandrine Bonnaire was born on 31 May 1967 in Gannat, Allier, France. She is an actress and director, known for La Cérémonie (1995), To Our Loves (1983) and Vagabond (1985). She was previously married to Guillaume Laurant.- Actress
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Jane Birkin was born on 14 December 1946 in London, England, UK. She was an actress and director, known for Evil Under the Sun (1982), Blow-Up (1966) and Death on the Nile (1978). She was married to John Barry. She died on 16 July 2023 in Paris, France.- Actress
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Tessa Charlotte Rampling was born 5 February 1946 in Sturmer, England, to Isabel Anne (Gurteen), a painter, and Godfrey Lionel Rampling, an Olympic gold medalist, army officer, and colonel, who became a NATO commander. She was educated at Jeanne d'Arc Académie pour Jeunes Filles in Versailles, France and at the exclusive St. Hilda's school in Bushey, England. She was a model before entering films in Richard Lester's The Knack... and How to Get It (1965), followed by roles in Georgy Girl (1966) and Luchino Visconti's The Damned (1969). Rampling is best known for her role in Liliana Cavani's The Night Porter (1974), where she played a concentration camp survivor who is reunited with the Nazi guard (Dirk Bogarde) who tortured her throughout her captivity. In 1974, she co-starred with Sean Connery in John Boorman's science fiction adventure Zardoz (1974), with Robert Mitchum in Farewell, My Lovely (1975), with Woody Allen in his Stardust Memories (1980), and with Paul Newman in Sidney Lumet's The Verdict (1982). An actress always willing to take on bold and meaningful roles, Rampling had perhaps the most off-beat one in Nagisa Ôshima's 1986 comedy Max My Love (1986) as Margaret, a woman in love with a chimpanzee. She has also voiced video games, such as The Ring.- Bruno Cremer went to Paris following high school. He always knew he was made to be an actor and his mother helped him. He was admitted to the Paris Conservatory. He rose to prominence in the theater playing in Shakespeare's "Pericles," Oscar Wilde's "An Ideal Husband" and Jean Anouilh's "Poor Bitos" and "Becket."
He has appeared in dozens of films, including The 317th Platoon, Is Paris Burning?, William Friedkin's Sorcerer and Bertrand Blier's Ménage. Cremer also appeared in over fifty television movies as the popular Commissaire Jules Maigret. In 2000, he wrote his memoirs in "Un certain jeune homme". - Mario David was born on 9 August 1927 in Charleville-Mézières, Ardennes, France. He was an actor, known for Fantômas (1980), Hell (1994) and Inferno (1964). He was married to Françoise Christiane Jeannette Cornu. He died on 29 April 1996 in Paris, France.
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He made his movie debut at the invitation of Gene Kelly, who cast Cassel in the 1956 Paris-filmed seriocomedy The Happy Road (1957). At least, that's what the press releases claimed; actually, the tall, elastic-faced Cassel had been plugging away in films on a minor basis since 1950. Shortly after, Cassel was perfectly cast in the naif title role in the 1958 film version of Voltaire's Candide. He has since been a stalwart in the comedies of director Philippe de Broca, nearly always playing latter-day variations of the ingenuous Candide. Since this time, he is the screen-lover of some of the best actresses like Jean Seberg, Brigitte Bardot, Claude Jade, Catherine Deneuve, Stéphane Audran or Marie Dubois. He played in Gérard Brach's The Boat on the Grass (1971) (1970) with Claude Jade and John McEnery. In 1974, Jean-Pierre Cassel added thousands of American filmgoers to his fan following with his appearances as the bumbling King Louis XIII in Richard Lester's The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers: Milady's Revenge (1974).- Actor
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Sensitive, boyishly handsome, dark-haired Gallic lead and character actor Daniel Gelin did not have an easy personal life but was warmly embraced as a talented star who appeared to fine advantage for such legendary directors as Max Ophüls, Louis Malle, Jean Cocteau, Alfred Hitchcock, and Claude Lelouch.
Born Daniel Yves Alfred Gelin in Angers, France, on May 19, 1921, he left home at age 16 to take dramatic arts classes and trained at the Cours Simon in Paris, later studying at the Paris Conservatoire with Louis Jouvet his mentor. He made his first film appearance in Miquette (1940) and for several years played extra or bit parts in French films.
His rebellious bohemian nature served him well in films, if not his private life. Adept at both light comedy and heavy drama, Gelin moved into leading roles in 1949 and went on to mesmerize audiences in such films as Rendezvous in July (1949), Edward and Caroline (1951), Dirty Hands (1951), Le Plaisir (1952), Rue de l'Estrapade (1953), Young Love (1951), Napoleon (1955) (title role), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Testament of Orpheus (1960) and many more.
Numerous starring/co-starring roles in primarily French films followed, a healthy mixture of farce and drama. These included Shadows of Adultery (1961), El niño y el muro (1965), Line of Demarcation (1966), À belles dents (1966), Witness Out of Hell (1966), La trêve (1968), Hallucinations sadiques (1969), La servante (1970), Far from Dallas (1972), Diálogos de exiliados (1975), L'honorable société (1978) and The Children (1985). His final films would be in Les ténors (1994), Des feux mal éteints (1994), Fugueuses (1995) and Les Bidochon (1996). Gelin's last few years were spent on TV with projects including roles on Chercheurs d'or (1996), Les marmottes (1998) and Madame le proviseur (1994).
Despite his enviable resume (150 films), It's generally considered that Gelin professional career was compromised by a turbulent, unhappy life off screen. Gelin lived an emotionally up-and-down rollercoaster life pocked with stormy relationships, severe depression and suicide attempts. A lengthy battle with alcohol and drugs quickly hardened his initially boyish features. One child son, Pascal, died tragically in 1957 at the age of 14 months when he accidentally swallowed pills. Another son, actor/producer Xavier Gélin, lost his battle with cancer in 1999.
Gelin was married three times, including his first to actress Danièle Delorme. He had six children in all. One daughter, actress Maria Schneider was the product of his liaison with French model Christine Marie Schneider, whom he never married. Another daughter was actress Fiona Gélin. Gélin was a writer as well, and penned a number of poetry poems, memoirs and even a manual on gardening. He died in Paris on November 29, 2002, at the age 81 of kidney failure.- Actor
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Charles Boyer studied philosophy before he went to the theater where he gave his debut in 1920. Although he had at first no intentions to pursue a career at the movies (his first movie was Man of the Sea (1920) by Marcel L'Herbier) he used his chance in Hollywood after several filming stations all over Europe. In the beginning of his career his beautiful voice was hidden by the silent movies but in Hollywood he became famous for his whispered declarations of love (like in movies with Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich or Ingrid Bergman). In 1934 he married Pat Paterson, his first and (unusual for a star) only wife. He was so faithful to her that he decided to commit suicide two days after her death in 1978.