Turner Classic Movies 24-Hour/13-Film Jean Gabin Marathon, on Thursday August 18th, 2011, features the North American premiere of the actor's fast-paced 1953 crime drama Leur derniere nuit (Their Last Night). Columbia Pictures produced this film specifically for the French market.
If you live long enough, everything happens:
This Thursday, August 18th, for the first time in the history of American television, a twenty-four hour/thirteen-film Jean Gabin Marathon is happening on Turner Classic Movies. When you see this great French actor's films, you will immediately understand why I spent more than ten years writing and researching a two-volume biography and filmography of Gabin, World’s Coolest Movie Star (www.jeangabinbook.com).
Turner Classic Movies has even designed a new, temporary Jean Gabin website, in honor of this historic day. The website reflects Gabin's boyhood interest in trains, as well as the fact that he had portrayed train engineers in two films, 1938's La Bete humaine (The Human Beast) and 1950's La Nuit est mon royaume (The Night is My Kingdom). If you click on the title of this article, you will be immediately whisked away to this website.
In America, Gabin – Europe’s #1 movie star of all time – is today principally known only for a small handful of movies: 1937’s double-header of La Grande illusion and Pepe Le Moko, 1938’s La Bete humaine, 1939’s Le Jour se leve, and 1954’s Touchez pas au grisbi. Those five films will be a part of TCM's Marathon, as well as seven additional Gabin films which have not been screened with English subtitles, or presented in America, since the 1950s, plus one title -- 1953's film noir thriller Leur derniere nuit (Their Last Night) -- which has never before had English subtitles and never been seen in America.
You should definitely plan on TiVo-ing all thirteen of these films, so you can watch them at your convenience. Each and every film is wonderful, and this, as you will see when you watch the films, is not hyperbole.
If you are new to the world of Jean Gabin, you might want to start with the acknowledged favorites, director Jean Renoir’s anti-war classic from 1937 Grand Illusion, and that same year’s Pepe Le Moko, Gabin’s gangster classic, which was also the basis for the famous line, “Come with me to the Casbah, we will make ze beautiful muzeek togezaire.” (Just as Cary Grant never actually said, "Judy, Judy, Judy," Gabin doesn't actually utter this line in Pepe Le Moko, although everybody thinks he did.) During the Second World War, Jean Gabin's French films were so popular in America, that Warner Bros. created its famous cartoon skunk, Pepe Le Pew, based on the actor's voice and likeness.
My personal favorite films in this one-day festival are director Jean Gremillon’s double-header of Gueule d’amour (1937) and Remorques (1941). Gremillon is one of France's finest directors yet, like his countryman Gabin, he continues to be mostly unknown in the U.S. Jean Gabin is famously stoic in his films, but in his two Gremillon entries, he is decidedly "un-stoic." The festival is great because you get to see Gabin in his pre-World War II films, in which he typically plays young tragic drifter, and his later, 1950s films, in which he portrays wizened gentleman-gangsters.
I am currently re-writing, re-editing, and revising my book about Jean Gabin for a possible new, 2012 edition -- I have been re-visiting many of the films recently, and rewriting many chapters from scratch -- and I will let you know, on this blogsite, when it is available. (The edition of the book which you can currently purchase on Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com is the most current, 2009 printing. You can't pre-order the new edition yet, because I'm still writing it!)
Thank you again for your interest in film history's greatest actor, Jean Gabin.
Scroll down, and you will find TCM'S Jean Gabin Schedule for Thursday August 18th in both Pacific Standard Time (PST) and Eastern Standard Time (EST). If you’re on something offbeat and perverse like “mountain time,” you’ll have to figure it out for yourself, because there is absolutely no way human beings can ever estimate or calibrate something that arcane.
Charles Zigman,
Author,
World’s Coolest Movie Star: The Complete 95 Films (and Legend) of Jean Gabin, Volumes one and Two.www.jeangabinbook.com
FULL SCHEDULE,
THURSDAY, AUGUST 18TH, 2011,
TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES JEAN GABIN MARATHON
ALL FILMS WILL BE PRESENTED WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES.
3:00 AM PST,
6:00 AM EST
GUEULE D'AMOUR (LADYKILLER) (1937)
AMERICAN TELEVISION PREMIERE.
RARELY SCREENED IN THE U.S.
An AWOL legionnaire discovers the woman who won his heart was just in love with the uniform.
Dir: Jean Gremillon,
Cast: Jean Gabin, Mireille Balin.
BW-88 mins.
5:00 AM PST
8:00 AM EST
REMORQUES (TUGBOATS/STORMY WATERS) (1941)
AMERICAN TELEVISION PREMIERE.
RARELY SCREENED IN THE U.S.
A married tugboat captain falls for a woman he rescues from a sinking ship.
Dir: Jean Gremillon.
Cast: Jean Gabin, Michele Morgan.
BW-83 mins.
Remorques.
6:30 AM PST
9:30 AM EST
LE JOUR SE LEVE (DAYBREAK) (1939)
A young factory worker loses the woman he loves to a vicious schemer.
Dir: Marcel Carne.
Cast: Jean Gabin, Jacqueline Laurent, Arletty.
BW-90 mins.
8:00 AM PST
11:00 AM EST
L' AIR DE PARIS (THE AIR OF PARIS) (1954)
AMERICAN TELEVISION PREMIERE.
NOT SCREENED IN THE U.S. IN MORE THAN FIFTY YEARS.
An over-the-hill boxer stakes his fortune on training a young railroad-worker. This film re-teams Gabin, for the first time in fifteen years, with Marcel Carne, who had previously directed him in Le Quai des brumes and Le Jour se leve.
Dir: Marcel Carne.
Cast: Jean Gabin, Arletty, Roland Lesaffre.
BW-104 mins.
10:00 AM PST
1:00 PM EST
LEUR DERNIERE NUIT (THEIR LAST NIGHT) (1953)
AMERICAN TELEVISION PREMIERE.
NEVER BEFORE SCREENED IN THE U.S.
A schoolteacher falls for a librarian who's secretly the head of a criminal ring.
Dir: Georges Lacombe.
Cast: Jean Gabin, Madeleine Robinson.
BW-91 mins.
11:45 AM PST
2:45 PM EST
LE DESORDRE ET LA NUIT (DISORDER IN THE NIGHT/NIGHT AFFAIR) (1958)
AMERICAN TELEVISION PREMIERE.
NOT SCREENED IN THE U.S. IN MORE THAN FIFTY YEARS.
A homicide detective tries to protect a pretty drug addict implicated in a murder.
Dir: Gilles Grangier.
Cast: Jean Gabin, Danielle Darrieux, Nadja Tiller, and Hazel Scott.
BW-91 mins.
In the 1950s, it was difficult for the great African-American songstress Hazel Scott to obtain film roles in her home-country of America, so Gabin, a major fan of Scott's, personally invited her to portray a lounge singer in his film noir masterwork, Le Desordre et la nuit. (Twenty-four years earlier, Gabin had extended the same offer to another legendary African-American entertainer, Josephine Baker, who appeared with him in 1934's Zouzou.)
1:30PM PST
4:30 PM EST
MARIA CHAPDELAINE (1934)
AMERICAN TELEVISION PREMIERE.
A Canadian frontierswoman must choose from among three suitors.
Dir: Julien Duvivier.
Cast: Jean Gabin, Jean-Pierre Aumont.
BW-72 mins.
3:00PM PST
6:00 PM EST
BANDERA, LA (THE FLAG) (1935)
AMERICAN TELEVISION PREMIERE.
A murderer escapes France to join the Spanish Foreign Legion, where he finds love while pursued by the law.
Dir: Julien Duvivier.
Cast: Jean Gabin, Pierre Renoir, Annabella, Robert Le Vigan.
BW-97 mins.
Drunken barfight in La Bandera!
5:00PM PST
8:00 PM EST
PEPE LE MOKO (1937)
In the mysterious Casbah section of Algiers, love for a beautiful woman draws a gangster out of hiding.
Dir: Julien Duvivier.
Cast: Jean Gabin, Mireille Balin, Gabriel Gabrio.
BW-94 mins.
"Come with me to the Casbah..." Pepe Le Moko, starring Jean Gabin, is one of the most atmospheric, and purely enjoyable, films ever made. Gabin even sings in the film!
7:00PM PST
10:00 PM EST
LA GRANDE ILLUSION (GRAND ILLUSION) (1937)
French POWs fight to escape their German captors during World War I.
Dir: Jean Renoir.
Cast: Jean Gabin, Pierre Fresnay, Marcel Dalio, Erich von Stroheim, Gaston Modot.
BW-113 mins.
Here is director Jean Renoir, telling American audiences, in English, about his film Grand Illusion, for the film's North American re-release in the 1960s. Grand Illusion is part of the American Film Institute's list of the Best 100 Films Ever Made. Orson Welles once told Dick Cavett that if only one film could be saved for posterity, it would be Grand Illusion.
9:00PM PST
12:00 AM EST
LA BETE HUMAINE (THE HUMAN BEAST) (1938)
A railroad engineer enters an affair with his friend's amoral wife. From the novel by Emile Zola.
Dir. Jean Renoir.
Cast: Jean Gabin, Simone Simon.
BW-97 mins.
Riveting from start to finish: La Bete humaine.
11:00PM PST
2:00 AM EST
TOUCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI (DON'T TOUCH THE LOOT) (1954)
An aging gangster comes out of retirement when his best friend is kidnapped.
Dir. Jacques Becker.
Cast: Jean Gabin, Lino Ventura, Jeanne Moreau.
BW-96 mins.
Here is a trailer for Touchez pas au grisbi (1954), one of Roger Ebert's favorite French gangster films.
1:00 AM PST
4:00 AM EST
DES GENS SANS IMPORTANCE (PEOPLE OF NO IMPORTANCE) (1955)
AMERICAN TELEVISION PREMIERE.
An unhappy waitress starts an affair with a married truck driver.
Dir: Henri Verneuil.
Cast: Jean Gabin, Francoise Arnoul.
BW-99 mins.
During the Second World War, Jean Gabin lived briefly (1941-1943) in Los Angeles. Here is a portrait, photographed in Laurel Canyon.
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