The most difficult compositions never put him off.
Huge on the trestles, Michel Bouquet will have marked the seventh art with his genius.
He embodied with a fair economy of gestures and with measured steps characters whose rectitude could seem almost frightening: an implacable Inspector Javert in
Les Misérables
by Robert Hossein, a lawyer corrupted by the underworld in
Borsalino
by Jacques Deray, a deceived man who becomes the assassin of Maurice Ronet in
La Femme Infidèle
by Claude Chabrol, an obstinate private detective killed by Jean-Paul Belmondo in
La Sirène du Mississipi
by François Truffaut, a vengeful cop in
Un condé
by Yves Boisset...
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If he did not hesitate to admit that he preferred the stage to the cinema, Michel Bouquet will nevertheless have shot in more than a hundred films, winning two Césars for
How I Killed My Father
(2002) and
The walker of the Champ-de-Mars
(2006).
Michel Bouquet began in the cinema with suspicion, until Jean Grémillon offered him a role written by Jean Anouilh in
Pattes Blanches
in 1948. There he played Maurice, a young marginal who uses his lover, Suzy Delair, to get revenge of his half-brother.
With his thin figure, his dark eyes and his tortured game, he burst the screen.
In
Mémoire d'acteur
, he says he is "
dazzled
" by Jean Grémillon without whom he would never have pursued the adventure of cinema.
Michel Bouquet has never forgotten:
“He had a phenomenal knowledge of history, (...) dared striking syntheses with an evocative power worthy of Shakespeare (...).
I was twenty years old.
I was almost illiterate.
Frequenting Jean Grémillon was a decisive trigger.
I said to myself: ''now you have to cultivate yourself (..) that you try to be less stupid, to understand the world too!''
”
From
The Mermaid of the Mississippi
by François Truffaut to
The Unfaithful Wife
by Claude Chabrol,
Un Condé
by Yves Boisset and
Two Men in the City
by José Giovanni with Jean Gabin and Alain Delon to
Walker on the Champs de Mars
by Robert Guédiguian , in homage to Michel Bouquet, one of the greatest but also one of the most modest actors of French cinema,
Le Figaro
presents in images the anthology of an exceptional career.
The Mississippi Mermaid
by François Truffaut in 1969, with Jean-Paul Belmondo, Catherine Deneuve, Michel Bouquet...
The Unfaithful Woman
by Claude Chabrol, in 1968, with Stéphane Audran, Michel Bouquet, Maurice Ronet...
With Claude Chabrol whom he considered "
his revealer
", Michel Bouquet shot six films.
In
La femme infidèle
, written especially for him, he plays the bourgeois assassin and becomes the archetype of the Chabrolian hero.
“In a way, he was playing for me, manipulating me.
But admirably.
That's a great acting director!
Just with his camera, he brought intensity to my interpretation”
, he confided about the director who became his friend.
Borsalino
by Jacques Deray in 1970, with Alain Delon, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Michel Bouquet, Catherine Rouvel...
A condé
by Yves Boisset in 1970, with Michel Bouquet, Françoise Fabian, Henri Garcin, Michel Constantin...
Two Men in the City
by José Giovanni in 1973, with Jean Gabin, Alain Delon, Michel Bouquet...
Les Misérables
by Robert Hossein in 1982, with Lino Ventura, Michel Bouquet, Jean Carmet...
In
Les Misérables
by Robert Hossein, he is Inspector Javert, the sleuth that Victor Hugo compares to a police dog who tirelessly chases Jean Valjean , its prey.
“I don't have Javert's skin
, he defended himself to the director in 1982.
But he fought for me to do it and by doing it, I got used to it (...).
In the end, he may have been right to ask me.
But it's not a role that I particularly like
.
Toto the Hero
by Jaco Van Dormael in 1991, with Michel Bouquet, Jo De Backer, Thomas Godet...
The Belgian director Jaco Van Dormael offered him a role as a grandiose failure in
Toto the Hero
, César for Best Foreign Film in 1992. He embodies Thomas, a retired surveyor, convinced of having been exchanged at the maternity ward with Alfred, his childhood neighbor, raised in a well-to-do family.
Trapped in this fantasy of a stolen existence, Toto, an unrepentant dreamer, misses out on his life.
How I Killed My Father
by Anne Fontaine, in 2000, with Michel Bouquet, Charles Berling, Natacha Régnier...
It is
"thanks to Anne Fontaine"
, the only woman to have directed it, that Michel Bouquet confided to having finally understood the cinema.
“Was a woman needed to obtain this delivery of a 75-year-old actor?”
he said.
In
How I Killed My Father
, he plays a doctor who reappears in the life of his son (Charles Berling) thirty years after abandoning his family to care for the sick in Africa.
Without any sentimentality, the film deciphers the tragic lack of relationship between the two men.
Both a real father and a fantasy father, Michel Bouquet is at the top of his game.
Le Promeneur du Champ de Mars
by Robert Guédiguian, in 2005, with Michel Bouquet, Jalil Lespert, Sarah Grappin...
In
Le promeneur du Champ-de-Mars
by Robert Guédiguian, he plays François Mitterrand, "
fallen into absolute solitude
" two years before dying of cancer.
"
There is a novel character in Mitterrand
", explained the actor.
"
If the film is a fiction on Mitterrand, it is also a document on the art of Michel Bouquet
", affirmed Robert Guédiguian.
And to add: “
If it hadn't been for Michel Bouquet, I don't think I would have made the film.
Michel Bouquet has a natural theatricality (...) For this role, he needed a majesty (...)
”.
Renoir
, by Gilles Bourdos, in 2014, with Michel Bouquet, Christa Théret and Vincent Rottiers.
As soon as he saw that a film was not going to be cinema, Michel Bouquet gave up committing to the project.
He had agreed to play Edmond Renoir in
Renoir
.
Because he loved the screenplay by Stéphanie Chuat and Véronique Reymond.
The film, certainly a little academic, subtly intertwines the story of the father, a painter, in the evening of his life, and the son, a filmmaker in the making (played by Vincent Rottiers), against the backdrop of the 14-18 war.
Bouquet loved playing Renoir, for his paradox: a painter of happiness that was only suffering.
And also, because he admired that the artist is always in pure emotion.
And above all, like him, that he follow his line and that nothing, and especially not the spirit of the times, make him deviate from it.
