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Actor and director Jacques Perrin dies at 80

2022-04-21T17:03:03.977Z


DISAPPEARANCE – Accomplished and respected man of cinema, he had shone as much behind as in front of the camera during his long career.


He entered the quarry as an ideal young first, he comes out of it as a magnificent commander after leading high adventures and distant races without ever losing his limpid charm.

Jacques Perrin died Thursday in Paris at the age of 80.

Nothing has hardened, shriveled, disillusioned, in some seventy years of filmmaking, as an actor, producer, director.

He knew the secret of poetic life: he invented a world where action is the sister of dream.

To discover

  • Discover the “Best of the Goncourt Prize” collection

Read alsoThe memories of Jacques Perrin, received at the Academy of Fine Arts

Because he was first of all a dreamer, this child who drank in the poems said by his mother, the actress Marie Perrin, whose name he will take.

With her, the modest life and the small apartment widened towards unknown shores, were filled with elsewhere.

 It replaced television, which we didn't have 

,” Jacques Perrin remembered with a smile.

His father, Alexandre Simonet, was a stage manager at the Comédie-Française, so he was born into the entertainment world on July 13, 1941. He went on stage at the age of 14, even before entering the Conservatoire, in along with his sister Eva.

We see him in small roles in theater and cinema, notably in

Les Tricheurs,

by Marcel Carné, success of the year 1959, and in

La Vérité,

by Henri-Georges Clouzot, in 1960. But it was Italian cinema that offered him, at the age of 20, his first major role, in

The Girl with a Suitcase,

by Valerio Zurlini (1961), drama of an impossible love with Claudia Cardinale.

It was the heyday of Franco-Italian co-productions, and Jacques Perrin made various films, notably

La Corruption,

by Mauro Bolognini, and

Journal Intime,

where he was the brother of Marcello Mastroianni, again under the direction of Zurlini, that he will be back years later for

Le Désert des Tartares,

in 1976.

Valerio Zurlini is the first great filmmaker to mark for Jacques Perrin.

 With him, he confided to us, the very young actor that I discovered rare emotions, the finesse of introspection.

And Italian Renaissance painting.

I would like to make a film about the Renaissance.

I think of this moment when Cimabue meets a kid who draws in the Florentine countryside, and immediately sees the genius: it was Giotto. 

»

Back in France, Jacques Perrin will make two capital encounters in 1964: Costa-Gavras and Pierre Schoendoerffer.

The first takes him into his

killer compartments,

before finding him for

Z.

The second enlists him with Bruno Cremer in

the 317th Section.

A military commitment, and an unwavering friendship.

Ten years after Dien Bien Phu, Schoendoerffer pays tribute to his brothers in arms by recounting the last moments of the fighters of French Indochina.

Before filming in Cambodia, the filmmaker warned his young actor: “

 There will be no comfort, no hotel, no makeup… Your only clothing will be your uniform, your only Pataugas shoes that you will wear all the time.

It will be trying.

I will not accept any complaints. 

»

With Pierre Schoendoerffer, Jacques Perrin has found his "

companion on the road and in dreams 

".

They are the same stuff of poetic empire builders.

The jungle, the ocean, the clouds are their intimate landscapes, full of silence and mystery.

They have the same sense of human adventure, speak the same language of the deep heart.

After

The 317th Section,

hailed as one of the greatest war films, they will shoot together the spellbinding

Crab-Drum

(1977),

The Honor of a Captain

(1982),

Up there.

A King Above the Clouds

(2004).

Having remained "

 caught up in the spells of Indochina 

", Jacques Perrin returned there in 2010 with

L'Empire du Milieu du Sud,

beautiful dreamlike documentary made with Éric Deroo.

“I had no experience, but conviction.

I like to accompany an idea, a personal position, like that of Costa-Gavras.

And I realized that by relying on the need, the importance of making a film, you could convince.

As a producer, I consider myself the agent of the troupe.

I'm not talking about money with bankers, I'm talking about building a dream.

»

In 1968, Jacques Perrin inaugurated a new profession, in which he would excel: he became a producer.

Nothing prepared him for it, and he would not have thought of it without the need to raise funds to allow Costa-Gavras to produce

Z,

in which he must play, alongside Jean-Louis Trintignant.

Nobody wants to finance this political film on the dictatorship of the Greek colonels.

Perrin makes it a question of non-political but personal commitment to the team, and obtains the support of the great Algerian filmmaker Lakhdar-Hamina.

"

 I had no experience, but conviction.

I like to accompany an idea, a personal position, like that of Costa-Gavras.

And I realized that by relying on the need, the importance of making a film, you could convince.

As a producer, I consider myself the agent of the troupe.

I'm not talking about money with bankers, I'm talking about building a dream. 

»

At the same time, he pursued an abundant and varied acting career, always between France and Italy.

Jacques Demy takes him into the musical.

Without knowing how to sing or dance, he says, he becomes the blond peroxide sailor of the

Demoiselles de Rochefort,

then the prince of

Donkey Skin.

He went from

L'Écume des jours,

by Charles Belmont (1968), to

La Légion saute sur Kolwezi,

by Raoul Coutard (1978), the

Roaring Forties,

by Christian de Chalonge (1982), to

Cinema Paradiso,

by Giuseppe Tornatore ( 1989), from the world of gangsters by José Giovanni, in

Une robe noire pour un tueur

(1981), to that of comedy in

Vanille fraise,

Gérard Oury (1989).

Cinema for the general public or sharp auteur cinema (with Paul Vecchiali or Pierre Kast), Jacques Perrin lavishes his charm and his talent without worrying about occupying the foreground, often in secondary characters.

Loyalty to friends and family guides his choices more than concern for his image.

He will be there for Agnès Varda, who recalls the memory of Demy in

Les demoiselles ont eu 25 ans

(1992), for Frédéric Schoendoerffer's first film,

Crime Scenes

(2000), and that of his nephew Christophe Barratier,

Les Choristes

( 2004), of which he is also co-producer.

On television, he plays in series like

La Château des oliviers,

interprets historical figures: Victor Schoelcher, Louis XI, Richelieu.

"We only know nature from what we are"

But his adventurous passion leads him elsewhere.

From

Microcosmos, Le Peuple de l'herbe,

by Claude Nuridsany and Marie Pérennou, which earned him the César for best producer in 1997, Jacques Perrin, who also produced the documentary TV series

La 25e Heure with his wife,

gradually little to widen its field of action to the dimensions of the universe.

Since childhood, he has had a taste for nature, but his alliance with cinema is made through two films,

Le Territoire des autres,

an animal documentary by François Bel, Gérard Vienne and Michel Fano, shot around the world. , which he discovered in 1970, and above all, in 1989,

Le Peuple singe,

where he collaborated with Gérard Vienne.

"

 He did not always know where he was going, more rigor was needed, said Jacques Perrin.

But he gave me the scent: what is hidden, what we guess… We only know nature from what we are.

I seek to explore what is happening without our knowledge.

Flying with birds brings another vision than ours.

And what does that mean, the sensations of colors, of speed?

I try to renew our perceptions in contact with the animal world. 

»

With

Le Peuple migrateur,

a fabulous journey alongside birds, Océans, the most viewed film in 2010 (nearly 10 million spectators worldwide), and Les Saisons, on the history of European forests, Perrin took off .

As Jean-Jacques Annaud humorously summarized (Perrin produced his first film, La Victoire en chantant), welcoming him to the Academy of Fine Arts in 2019: “

 He specializes in a genre that he is the only one to dare to confront: the naturalist documentary with a blockbuster budget! 

»

He has a knack for bringing together teams of highly skilled scientists and technicians in warm intimacy.

Forming alliances is his pride, discreet and without a spirit of domination: “

 If I have a bit of talent, it's that of bringing talented people together.

I see myself as a repository of their knowledge and energy - and bringing it all together to do something together.

Of the collective human.

These beautiful adventures that carry us… 

His weapons are time and technique.

 I believe, he said, that you have to give yourself the means and the time at all costs so that things are accomplished as they should be accomplished.

To cut short, to economize in an authoritarian way means for me to mutilate.

The risk is taken from the start.

It is important to take it to the end. 

The patience to watch, to observe, to respect nature, is combined with an extraordinary technological inventiveness to mingle with animal life: ULM cameras in the midst of birds, underwater torpedo cameras, cameras attached to all- land to follow galloping horses in the forest…”

 We are a gathering of grown-ups looking for solutions to penetrate as fairly as possible into the territory of others.

Our inventions are not patented.

We only do artisanal things, for our use… I like the technique so that it disappears.

If it is in focus, we forget it to arrive at a great simplicity: the subject observed in its movement. 

»

The sense of beauty and richness of natural life is Jacques Perrin's true commitment.

He gave us this profession of faith:

 The film speaks to the eye and to deep memory.

I believe that if we marvel at the world, we will live better.

But I want this speech to be delivered by nature itself… Animals make us penetrate the great laws of the world and we can find there a morality, a freedom.

How do we not understand that the Earth does not belong to us?

Animals and plants are as much at home there as we are.

And, if we really gave them their place, we would live better because we would stop being utilitarian.

It's very good to know the plants that can help.

But there are many things in nature that are useless.

A little humility would take us out of our certainties.

This well-being that we seek, it is given to us by the beauty of the world.

To observe it, to contemplate it, it 

»

He was nothing like a militant.

 What is most necessary today is to set an example.

People who allow us to believe.

Like a Jean Moulin in the Resistance. 

He was one of those.

Of those who illuminate the dark paths with a hurricane lamp, and take the lead of the column.

He quoted Brecht: “

 We live in dark times. 

But that was to add: “

 Clarity is a story of shadows. 

»

Source: lefigaro

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