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Confessions of Michel Piccoli

2020-05-18T12:01:58.485Z


The great actor, who died at the age of 94, had established a long friendship with Gilles Jacob. The former patron of the Cannes Festival published in 2015 part of their correspondence. Bardot's partner in Le Mépris told his story without filters and with great lucidity.


Sometimes a film critic can befriend an actor. Usually not long, especially if the critic wants to be honest.

Michel Piccoli, a great lord is dead

Gilles Jacob met Michel Piccoli just after May 68. So a journalist, he admired this actor at the top of his game. He even sometimes identified with the one who had had the chance to contemplate closely Bardot's buttocks in Le Mépris , to kiss Romy Schneider in Les Choses de la vie or to allow himself to refuse to sleep with Catherine Deneuve in Belle de bunuel day .

The two men eventually tamed. Slowly. Before starting a long correspondence. Forty years of intimacy, of confidences of which Gilles Jacob, who will become patron of the Cannes festival, has traded, in the noblest sense of the term.

In I lived in my dreams , a book published in 2015 by Grasset, the former critic continued this epistolary exchange with the actor. He collected the confessions to compose a moving portrait but even more a real lesson in theater and cinema. Michel Piccoli is bombarded with questions, some quite indiscreet. The actor who died at 94 answered it without false modesty, sometimes painfully confronting these memories. He was not proud of everything. In any case, not always proud of him. But never shied away.

Did he like Romy Schneider? "No, I was never in love with her, but I knew her well , " he explains, enigmatic. Before sliding: "She and I had the weakness to indulge in not always honest gestures, but that never destroyed, as we say, the friendship we had for each other . "

From Bardot, he remembers a headline from France Dimanche during the filming of Le Mépris : "Will Piccoli resist him?" Furax, the actor called Brigitte's companion at the time to tell him that this story was nothing but madness and the author of the article to insult him. "The journalist replied that I should have been happy with this advertisement ..." , he remembered. It is true that we only lend to the rich ...

I am already in this situation where people write about me in the past.

Michel Piccoli

It is as much the Godard film as the Don Juan by Marcel Bluwal which transformed Piccoli into a star as he himself admits. Remember that on November 6, 1965, the day of its broadcast on the first French channel, twelve million people saw this wonder of TV movie that can be seen on Madelen, the platform of the INA, in a beautiful restored copy.

Michel Piccoli, we also remember the leftist activist who, over the years, has often engaged against the National Front ... Gilles Jacob dared to ask him the age-old question of the actor involved. Fortunately, the man with 200 roles did not respond. He rather evoked his meeting with François Mitterrand. "He struck me with his satisfaction at being what he was," admitted the actor, preferring by far the "sincere and courageous" temperament of a Jospin. In any case, the actor congratulated himself on not having become like Yves Montand, whom he described as upstart, "cluttered with the feeling that he had his own greatness" . He put limits on his engagement.

Piccoli wrote without filters or reservations. Playing had become more difficult for him. His memory was deteriorating. So he had thought of using an earpiece, like "that crazy Depardieu" .

Born by chance, he said, to replace an older brother who died, Michel Piccoli spoke modestly of his posterity. "Some of the films I have starred in will stay. But I don't stay any more ... I'm still alive and yet it's over. I am already in this situation where people write about me in the past… ”

The man who lived in his dreams is an actor who no longer dreams…

Source: lefigaro

All life articles on 2020-05-18

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