The Eye of INA: how France became the country of Henri Garcin

In the memory of viewers, Henri Garcin is Pierre Bretteville, the neighbor and best friend of Georges, Maguy's husband.

The name of this actor who died this week at the age of 94 remains undeniably attached to a soap opera where he even ventured – these are his own words – to write one of the 333 episodes.

To discover

• Find all the results of the legislative elections

Read alsoDeath of actor Henri Garcin, anti-hero of Truffaut and figure of

He was delighted with this success, but, with a natural reserve, he said he had done many other things.

In more than 60 years of career, he has multiplied major roles and others, more modest in cinema, theater and television.

Madelen pays homage to her by inviting you to discover

.

In this satire of Victorian society in the 19th century, he plays the role of an English lord.

This is the adaptation of a vaudeville comedy by Oscar Wilde, directed in 1961 by François Gir.

Discover here

This role marks his debut as an actor on the small screen and allows him to change his nascent image and develop a register hitherto limited to sketches and songs.

He then intervenes regularly in programs that are not yet called "entertainment", starting with "36 Candles" by Jean Nohain.

The host spotted him in 1956 in Parisian cabarets, where he began by sharing the bill with other strangers, starting with Jacques Brel.

He regularly chats with him in Flemish.

He was indeed born in Belgium, in a family of Dutch industrialists.

At home, especially at the table, his parents and four brothers speak Dutch.

He interferes in the conversation as little as possible because

.

In the aftermath of the war, he hears a friend humming a new song, broadcast in a loop on the waves of the Belgian TSF:

de Charles Trenet.

It is not the verses or the melody that move him, but the word “sea” which he finds very beautiful.

That same evening, he questions his mother, who explains to him what he means in French.

This is how the teenager decides to start learning our language.

Five years later, he takes the train to Paris with the hope of exercising the profession of his dreams since his very young years: actor.

He does not know that he is going to embody more than 150 characters in very different universes.

In the theater, he has played, among others, texts by Luigi Pirandello, August Strindberg, Sacha Guitry, Jean Poiret and Romain Bouteille.

In cinema, it has been directed by Marguerite Duras, Henri-Georges Clouzot, François Truffaut, Agnès Varda, Yves Boisset and by Alex van Warmerdam.

This director born in the Netherlands hired him three times, asking him to express himself in their common native language.

He will perform his task perfectly in

,

, and

.

On the set, the director calls him by his real first name: Anton.

He is indeed the only one.

Just before starting at the cabaret, Anton Albers chose the pseudonym of Henri Garcin.

It occurred to him shortly after his arrival in Paris when he went to see a play for the first time.

Leaving the Antoine theater, where he had just attended a performance of

, by Jean-Paul Sartre, he remembered a moment that had particularly marked him: the one when a character knocks on the imaginary door hell screaming:

.

He replaced Joseph's first name with Henri's, because he thought it sounded better.

He then applied for and obtained French nationality.