Antidepressant on the small screen during confinement, Louis de Funès makes funny faces, but this time at the French Cinematheque: the temple of the 7th art dedicates him from today Wednesday July 15 an unprecedented exhibition for an actor.
The exhibition, the first devoted to an actor by the cinematheque, was due to open on April 1, but the health crisis turned everything upside down. Meanwhile, confined viewers have been watered, on French channels, euphoric reruns of the master of comics, unforgettable in La Grande Vadrouille, The Adventures of Rabbi Jacob or The Cabbage Soup …
“The success of De Funès during confinement? I am not completely surprised! He is a character like Tintin, Mickey or Uncle Scrooge, who exists beyond time, ”enthuses curator Alain Kruger.
Hoping that this “De Funès mania” has not fallen, the organizers expect, despite health constraints, the breakdown of tourism and compulsory online booking, on at least 100,000 visitors.
We will find the images already seen a thousand times: the scene in the cellar where he plays the grocer in front of the greatest of the time, Gabin and Bourvil, in La Traversée de Paris, diving in the greenish bath of La Soupe aux choux … But this exhibition, coupled with a retrospective in theaters, allows us to go further on the smallest (1m63 under the height rod, we can measure ourselves at the entrance of the exhibition) of the big players.
From a youth fed with the classics of humor, with Charlie Chaplin and the duo Laurel and Hardy as models, to the acceleration of his career at the start of the Thirty Glorious Years then the consecration under Pompidou and Giscard, the visitors discover an actor who left nothing to chance, until he became the “author” or co-author of the films in which he was filming, explains Mr. Kruger.
“From 5 to 555 years old”
Letters sent to its producers reveal his attention to detail, from financial contracts to the twists and turns of filming schedules. He could thus, to accentuate the comic effect of his small size, require to shoot only with fairly large actresses …
Among the pieces presented by the cinematheque, the thousand pieces of the 2 blue CV that a De Funès, stamped as obnoxious CEO, stamps at the start of Corniaud, (“But what am I going to do? Asks Bourvil, “Take the plane, it’s going faster!” He retorts), or the wax statue of the gendarme, loaned by the Musée Grévin.
A way of reminding that De Funès, also a pioneer of organic food in his private life, loved to make fun of authority, whose clothes he willingly put on.
The exhibition unveils an exchange of collector’s administrative letters, unearthed from the archives of the gendarmerie, where officers are questioning the advisability of helping to shoot a film (Le Gendarme in Saint-Tropez) “likely to ridicule” the uniform and “produce a deplorable psychological effect on the public”!
It is ultimately the phenomenal success of De Funès, with its millions or even tens of millions of admissions for its films with Gérard Oury (17 million for La Grande Vadrouille) which will make everyone agree on its status as a movie star. .
The idea of inviting De Funès to the cinematheque, cinephile temple, should not seem “iconoclastic or provocative”, and it should not be seen as “an audacity”, 37 years after his death, assures AFP its director Frédéric Bonnaud: “The exhibition is there to please, it is family-friendly and pleasant, while holding an educational speech”.
“I thought it was normal to bring in the greatest French comedian, who remains the hero of five generations, and had not been much recognized (at the beginning of his career) in the house of cinema”, abounds Alain Kruger , absolute fan.
“All the great comics of the 1960s have disappeared … But we don’t forget De Funès! It works from the age of 5 to 555
years ! “
Francois BECKER / AFP
–
Antidepressant on the small screen during confinement, Louis de Funès makes funny faces, but this time at the French Cinematheque: the temple of the 7th art dedicates him from today Wednesday July 15 an unprecedented exhibition for an actor.
The exhibition, the first devoted to an actor by the cinematheque, was to open on April 1, but …
–
