Education
He attended the Lycée Janson de Sailly. Leaving school early, he worked as a laborer until the age of 19 when he entered show business with a bit part in a Folies Bergères production.
He attended the Lycée Janson de Sailly. Leaving school early, he worked as a laborer until the age of 19 when he entered show business with a bit part in a Folies Bergères production.
He was part of a troupe that toured South America, and upon returning to France found work at the Moulin Rouge. His performances started getting noticed, and better stage roles came along that led to parts in two silent films in 1928. He starred in the Jean Renoir masterpiece La Grande Illusion, an anti-war film that was a huge box office success and given universal critical acclaim, even running at a New York City theatre for an unprecedented six months. This was followed by another one of Renoir's great successes: La Bête Humaine (The Human Beast), a film noir tragedy based on the novel by Émile Zola and starring Gabin and Simone Simon, as well as Le Quai Des Brumes (Port of Shadows), one of director Marcel Carné's most acclaimed films. In 1946, Gabin was hired by Marcel Carné to star in the film, Les Portes de la Nuit, but his conduct got him fired again. He then found a French producer and director willing to cast him and Marlene Dietrich together, but their film Martin Roumagnac was not a success and their personal relationship soon ended. Nevertheless, he was cast in the lead role of the 1949 René Clément film Au-Delà Des Grilles that won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Gabin's career seemed headed for oblivion. However, he made a comeback in the 1954 film, Touchez pas au grisbi (Don't Touch the Loot). Directed by Jacques Becker, his performance earned him critical acclaim, and the film was a very profitable international success. Later, he worked once again with Jean Renoir in French Cancan, with María Félix and Françoise Arnoul. Over the next twenty years, Gabin made close to 50 more films, most of them very successful commercially and critically, including many for Gafer Films, his production partnership with fellow actor Fernandel.
Although the quality of the films he appeared in may vary, Gabin’s performance in each film is almost always beyond reproach.
It has been said that Gabin never acted, that he became the person he was playing in each of his films. Whatever his method, Gabin is almost entirely believable in any of his roles, bringing an almost terrifying realism to the part of the schizophrenic railway worker in La Bête humaine, whilst leaving his audience astounded by his apparent ruthlessness in Les Grandes familles.
In the early 1950s, Gabin would make a remarkable comeback. Having won awards for his roles in La Nuit est mon royaume (1951) and La Vérité sur Bébé Donge (1952), he rediscovered his mainstream success in Jacques Becker’s classic 1953 policier Touchez pas au grisbi. Gone was the romantic hero of the pre-war years. This was the birth of a new Jean Gabin, a tough anti-hero, set in his beliefs, feared and respected by all. Gabin the Godfather of French cinema had arrived.
Further successes followed, including Renoir’s French Cancan and Claude Autant-Lara’s La Traversée de Paris. With age, a new Gabin persona emerged, more solid, more self-assured, yet always human. He was as comfortable in the role as the fearless detective Maigret as he was as the ruthless patriarch of a bourgeois family (Les Grandes familles). In 1958, Gabin starred in his most controversial film, En cas de malheur, in which he played the May to December lover of a new debutante, Brigitte Bardot.
Gabin’s professional success was accompanied by a comparable fulfilment in his private life. In 1949, he married Christiane Fournier ("Dominique"), who would bear him three children and with whom he would share the rest of his life. He bought a sprawling farm in Normandy, and was as contented in his life as the country farmer as he was acting in front of a film camera.
Gabin’s last great roles were in Le Chat and L’affaire Dominici in the early 1970s. Afterwards, he would appear in lesser roles in films of varying quality. He spent his last few years on his farm in Normandy and died on 15 Novemeber 1976.
Jean Gabin leaves behind a film legacy of exceptional variety and quality. His films are highly sought after today and are regularly aired on television the world over. His name conjures up such a mix of sentiments and memories, forming an indelible link between French cinema of the Twentieth Century and the man, possibly the world’s greatest actor, who became a myth in his own lifetime.
He criticized his contemporary politics and ideology celebrates the universal humanity that transcends national and racial boundaries and radical nationalism, suggesting that mankind's common experiences should prevail above political division, and its extension: war.
Quotations:
"I don't think we should speak so much. What if we were singing a song? We split, whilst singing."
"I understood immediately that to get success I had to make for the front door, not for the back one. "