Un artiste rare
This is a sad day for one of my favourite actors, perhaps my favourite French actor, died this morning. Stage and movies actor (even though theatre always came first for him) but also film maker, athlete, dancer, former sailor, raider and insatiable traveller, and finally accomplished writer, Bernard Giraudeau was one of a kind. He had the good looks of a movie star yet he was first and foremost acknowledged for being a brillant stage actor, and he ended being considered a very good writer too.
He had a passion for life and art; he embodied talent, charm, humanism, subtlety, strength, generosity, cleverness and beauty. He gave a lot and burned his life up. Unfortunately, after 10 years of struggle against cancer, the gentleman lost, at 63, much too soon. I was lucky to see him on stage three times and I'm sad to think that il ne brûlera plus les planches. What we have left is pictures, several movies -- among them some popular French comedies or action movies in which he played the blue-eyed hunk in the 70's and 80's, but also the beautiful Les Caprices d'un Fleuve he directed himself, or films like Ettore Scola's Passione d'Amore (and many interesting films from the last years of his career where he excelled at playing ambiguous characters)--, and a few books. It's very little and yet more than most can hope for. It's Bernard's very own ghost ship.
Last year he talked about his beautiful book, Cher Amour, in a bookshop in Brest:
And here's a scene from Les Caprices d'Un Fleuve, a film that Bernard Giraudeau wrote like a philosophical tale even though it looks like an epic movie and is quite touching for its love story. He directed it in Senegal in 1995 and of course he played the lead.
He had a passion for life and art; he embodied talent, charm, humanism, subtlety, strength, generosity, cleverness and beauty. He gave a lot and burned his life up. Unfortunately, after 10 years of struggle against cancer, the gentleman lost, at 63, much too soon. I was lucky to see him on stage three times and I'm sad to think that il ne brûlera plus les planches. What we have left is pictures, several movies -- among them some popular French comedies or action movies in which he played the blue-eyed hunk in the 70's and 80's, but also the beautiful Les Caprices d'un Fleuve he directed himself, or films like Ettore Scola's Passione d'Amore (and many interesting films from the last years of his career where he excelled at playing ambiguous characters)--, and a few books. It's very little and yet more than most can hope for. It's Bernard's very own ghost ship.
Last year he talked about his beautiful book, Cher Amour, in a bookshop in Brest:
Click to viewAnd here's a scene from Les Caprices d'Un Fleuve, a film that Bernard Giraudeau wrote like a philosophical tale even though it looks like an epic movie and is quite touching for its love story. He directed it in Senegal in 1995 and of course he played the lead.