Film Director/Author Florence Moncorgé-Gabin, Daughter of Jean Gabin, Visits a French Film Class

Film director/author Florence Moncorgé-Gabin, daughter of Jean Gabin, teaches a Film History course in Mordelles, France on January 19, 2010.



The website Ouest-France (www.ouest-france.fr) reported on January 20th, 2010 that forty-four students in Mordelles, France (in Brittany, in the northwest) at the private L'Immaculée high school had some very good fortune on Tuesday the 19th: Their guest speaker was Florence Moncorgé-Gabin, a great filmmaker and author who also happens to be one of the two daughters of the legendary French movie actor, Jean Gabin.

Florence Moncorgé-Gabin, who began as a script-girl on a number of films in the '70s and '80s, including her father's final film, 1976's L'Année sainte , directed her own feature film in 2008, the heart-wrenching pastoral epic Le Passager de l'été ( The Passenger of the Summer.)

Moncorgé spent the afternoon inculcating the students, in the Cinema and Literature course, with a love of great French films which are thematically similar to her own film, director Claude Berri's 1986 film adaptations of Marcel Pagnol's Jean de Florette and Manon des sources. As she told the journalist from Ouest-France, "Hopefully, watching these films will motivate the students to experience and appreciate [other relevant] authors like Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, and Alexandre Dumas." The students were apparently taken by Ms. Moncorgé-Gabin's friendliness and accessibility, a hallmark of her father's on-screen persona.

Florence Moncorgé-Gabin has written two books about her father, 2002's Quitte à avoir un père, autant qu'il s'appelle Gabin (If You Have to Have a Father, It Might as Well Be Gabin) and 2004's Gabin hors champ (Gabin, Off-Camera), co-written with her brother, Mathias Moncorge.


Ms. Moncorgé's 2002 book, a memory of what it was like to be Jean Gabin's daughter. The English language translation of the book's French title is, If You Have to Have a Father, It Might As Well Be Gabin.


Lionsgate films has made Ms. Moncorgé-Gabin's film, Le Passager de l'été, available for you to watch on-line right now, with English subtitles, at Amazon.com, as a digital download ONLY. You can download the film for one day for $2.99, or you can download it and keep it forever for $9.99. Click on the title of this article and it will take you directly to the Amazon.com page to watch the film. Unfortunately, downloading is the only way to watch the film, at present, with English subtitles; there is no DVD to buy.

2010 Begins with a New Jean Gabin DVD Release: It's 1966's Gabin/Robert Stack Team-Up, Action Man (AKA, Le Soleil des voyous)

Jean Gabin and Robert Stack in the fun 1966 heist thriller Action Man (Le Soleil des voyous). It will be available on DVD, in North America, on January 26, 2010.



Happy New Year from www.jeangabinbook.com. Thank you to everybody who gave (and received) my book, WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN, VOLUMES ONE AND TWO, for the holidays.

2010 starts out with a brand new Jean Gabin DVD release, available in an English languge version for the first time on home video:

It's director Jean Delannoy's Le Soleil des voyous (Action Man), a fun, engaging "one-last-heist picture" from 1966 which co-starred Gabin with Elliott Ness himself -- t.v.'s Robert Stack!

I'm pleased to announce that this fun Technicolor thriller is pure fun for fans of Jean Gabin, Robert Stack, as well as for anybody who enjoys great heist movies. In Action Man, Gabin and Stack heist a military payroll with tragic results for one of the two stars, but I won't reveal which one until you catch the movie.

Le Soleil des voyous (Action Man) is one of the six films which Delannoy, a distant French cousin of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, directed with his friend Jean Gabin in the lead. A literal English translation of the title Le Soleil des voyous is something like, "Sun Over the No-Goods." You can see why the American distributors re-titled it, Action Man!

Action Man, at this point, will only be available on DVD as part of a two-DVD/four movie set issued by VCI Entertainment, which VCI has entitled, "The Action Man Collection." The other three features in the set, none of which I have yet seen, do NOT have Gabin in them. The other three titles in the package are:

Peking Blonde (1967) -- An international intrigue thriller with Edward G. Robinson and Mireille Darc;
The Big Game (1967) -- soldier-of-fortune picture with Stephen Boyd, Cameron Mitchell, and Ray Milland; and
The Day of the Wolves (1972) -- bank-robbery western, starring Richard Egan, Martha Hyer, and the American comedian Jan Murray.

As far as I can tell, the print of Action Man which will be available in this package will be dubbed into English; normally, like any serious cineaste, I prefer subtitles over dubbing, but I actually saw this English-dubbed version in 2004when I began researching my Jean Gabin book (UCLA had/has a 16-millimeter print in its Film Archives), and I remember the dubbing as being quite acceptable, bordering on very, very good. Jean Gabin is one of those actors for whom the voice is a big part of the persona, but, from what I remember, whoever dubbed his voice into English did a serviceable job.



Even though Jean Gabin is the first-billed star of Action Man, VCI Entertainment, distributors of the U.S. DVD, neglected to put his picture on the box; this is understandable, however, in view of the fact that Gabin is less known in America than Robert Stack.



I have never seen the French-language print of Action Man, but I would love to, because, famously, Stack did all of his dialogue in French; Robert Stack, as I have mentioned in my Jean Gabin book, grew up on military bases throughout France, so he spoke the language fluently. Here is a five minute clip from the French print of Le Soleil des voyous/Action Man. About four-and-a-half minutes in, you will hear Stack speaking fluent French:



The mob sends thug Robert Stack to bust up Jean Gabin's bar/restaurant in Action Man (1966). When Stack arrives, he is surprised to find that the bar is owned by his good friend and war-buddy Gabin -- the American and the Frenchman fought together in Indochina, in the '50s! It won't be long before Gabin and Stack are teaming up, to get the goods on the mob.


In fact, here is a six minute interview Stack gave to French television in 1966, in which he expresses his great admiration for Jean Gabin. More of Stack speaking French:

http://www.ina.fr/art-et-culture/cinema/video/I00012196/robert-stack-47-ans-elliott-ness-est-un-grand-admirateur-de-jean-gabin.fr.html


I am looking forward to reporting on more Jean Gabin news and events in 2010, as well as telling you about my new projects.


Sincerely,

Charles Zigman,
author,
WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN,
VOLUMES ONE AND TWO.
www.jeangabinbook.com

Leonard Maltin Picks Book About Jean Gabin as One of His Best Books of 2009

Hi, Everybody:

I can't believe it's been almost two months since my last post. Thank you for your interest in Jean Gabin, and in my book WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN, VOLUMES ONE AND TWO.

I had some pretty good news this week: Leonard Maltin picked WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR as one his favorite movie books of 2009 and, as you can see, the book is in pretty good company:

http://www.leonardmaltin.com/2009YearEndBookSurvey.htm


Leonard Maltin

And now, here comes a crass sales pitch. (Believe me, I'm the least likely salesman on earth -- I hate when people try and sell me things! -- so I apologize in advance!)


If you haven't already bought WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR, now's the time: While each of the two volumes is $39.95 at Amazon.com (total, $79.90 if you buy the two volumes), Barnes and Noble.com is selling them for $35.95 for each volume -- that's a total of $71.80 if you purchase both Volume One and Volume Two (or, a savings of $8.00). And remember: This is the expanded/revised 2009/2010 edition, which features more biographical information and photographs, as well as reader-submitted additions, deletions, and corrections.

If you already own the two-volume set of WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR, please think about buying a copy or two for anybody on your holiday shopping list who likes classic movies.

Thank you!

Chuck Zigman,
author,
Los Angeles
www.jeangabinbook.com

Breaking News: Jean Gabin Book Wins First Place (Gold) in USA Book News National Book Awards

Woke up with some good news this morning:

My new book, WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN (Allenwood Press) has won First Place (Gold) in the USA Book News National Best Book Awards for 2009, in the category of Performing Arts.

The two-volume book is a complete biography and filmography of the legendary French movie star, who starred in such internationally recognized classic films as Pepe Le Moko, La Grande Illusion, Le Jour se leve, La Bete humaine, and Le Quai des brumes.

Gabin has always been considered to be France's #1 movie star of all time, and the goal of my book is for the actor to be as apreciated in the English-speaking world as he's always been in the France. To that end, the tone of the book is "fun" and "accessible," and each of the two volumes features more than 100 photographs.

Actresses Brigitte Bardot and Michele Morgan have written original forewords and David Mamet has contributed an appreciation.

Learn more about the book at:
www.jeangabinbook.com

To read about the 2009 USA Book News National Book Awards, go to:
http://www.usabooknews.com/2009bestbooksawards.html

NYC's Julien Duvivier Festival Comes to Berkeley, Includes Four Julien Duvivier/Jean Gabin Collaborations

"This cous-cous needs more tumeric!"
French acting legend Jean Gabin as smooth criminal Pepe Le Moko in director Julien Duvivier's 1937 gangster classic. This film and four other Gabin/Duvivier collaborations, will be presented in October, at Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive, as part of the Archive's sixteen-film tribute to the legendary French director, Julien Duvivier.


West Coast Jean Gabin Fans who were unable to make it to New York City this past May -- those of us who missed the Museum of Modern Art's Twenty-Two Gun (Twenty-Two Film) Salute to the legendary French director Julien Duvivier -- will now have our own chance to see the same festival, presented here, on the 'left' coast: Throughout the month of October, Berkeley's Pacific Film Archives is showing a scaled-down sixteen-film version of MoMa's twenty-two film festival, including all four of the Duvivier/Gabin collaborations which MoMa presented in NYC earlier this year. (In all Julien Duvivier directed seven features which starred his good friend, Jean Gabin.)

All of director Duvivier's films are quite good (he's a genre filmmaker who subverts traditional genre filmmaking via the inclusion of often "trippy" proto-psychedelic sections), and the director's Gabin entries are some of his very strongest.

On Thursday October 8th (@ 6:30pm) and Friday October 9th (@ 8:30pm), you'll have your chance to see the most famous Duvivier/Gabin collaboration of all, 1937's Pepe Le Moko, in which Le Gabin plays the archetype for all film noir anti-heroes to come. In this seminal film, the charismatic criminal Pepe Le Moko hides out in the weird Dr. Seuss-via-Hieronymous Bosch Casbah region of Algiers, avoiding the police who are ever on his tail.

On Friday October 16th, La Bandera (1935) comes to Berkeley. In this outstanding adventure, Gabin's character, Pierre Gilieth, kills a pimp in Paris, high-tails it out of France, joins the Spanish Foreign Legion, and runs up against a crooked cop who's bent on capturing him. Of course, he'll fall in love with a mysterious dark beauty -- Arab girl Aischa, played by Annabella (a great French actress who was also the real-life wife of Tyrone Power).

On Sunday October 18th at 5:00pm, you'll get to see the jewel in the Gabin/Duvivier crown: It's the ultra-rare 1936 confection La Belle Equipe, a warm summer idyll which has been out of circulation of late, even in France, the country of its production. In La Belle equipe, a powerful comedy-drama which has not been seen in the U.S. since its initial release seventy-one years ago in 1938 (!), Gabin and four friends together win the lottery. They use their earnings to open up a countryside guinguette (combination hotel and dance hall), with results both amusing and tragic. Gabin even sings in this one, as he did in many of his other films. (You can hear the song in this warm summer idyll, "Quand on se promene au bord de l'eau." if you visit the website for my book about Jean Gabin, at www.jeangabinbook.com. La Belle equipe is one of the best movies ever about the ramifications of The Great Depression, its after-effects having spread to Europe.)

On Friday October 30th, at 8:25pm, it's the stark raving mad Voici le temps des Assassins (U.S. release title, Deadlier Than the Male) one of the most violent, loopy, weird film noir titles ever -- it's a Jim Thompson novel on meth! Gabin is a middle-aged chef with an overbearing mother who gets grifted by a team of mother-and-daughter prostitutes, and the film displays some jaw-dropping kinkiness that seems right out of a Russ Meyer movie. Voici le temps is one of those rare movies wherein, after it's over, you won't be able to get up. (After it's over, you'll turn to the person sitting next to you and ask, vis-a-vis the genuinely shocking and one-of-a-kind ending, "Did I see what I think I just saw?" Yes, you did.) It's appropriate that Pacific Film Archives is showing this film on Halloween weekend. It's as spooky as any horror film.

The Pacific Film Archives is located at 2575 Bancroft Way (between College and Telegraph) in Berkeley.

Here is a full-schedule of the entire series. Series coordinated at PFA by Susan Oxtoby. Program notes adapted from texts by Joshua Siegel, associate curator, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and by Lenny Borger.

___________________________________
“Genius is just a word; filmmaking is a craft.”—Julien Duvivier

Jean Renoir once proclaimed, “If I were an architect and I had to build a monument to the cinema, I would place a statue of (Julien) Duvivier above the entrance. . . . This great technician, this rigorist, was a poet.” The French director and screenwriter Julien Duvivier (1896–1967), whose astonishingly varied career spanned both Europe and Hollywood, was also championed by Orson Welles, Ingmar Bergman, and Graham Greene. This retrospective offers a rare chance to discover the work of this influential filmmaker.

Working in a darkly poetic realist style—Greene wrote admiringly that “his mood is violent, and belongs to the underside of the stone”—Duvivier made popular melodramas, thrillers, religious epics, comedies, wartime propaganda, musicals, and literary adaptations of novels by Émile Zola, Leo Tolstoy, and Georges Simenon. This exhibition features rarities and revelations, as well as masterpieces starring the great actor Jean Gabin, including La belle équipe (1936), Pépé le Moko (1937), and Deadlier Than the Male (1956). Also featured is Duvivier’s favorite among his films, Poil de Carotte (1932), a heartbreaking chronicle of childhood.

Joshua Siegel
The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Friday, October 2, 2009
6:30 p.m. The Whirlwind of Paris (France, 1927). Judith Rosenberg on piano. This rare silent features Lil Dagover, a star of German Expressionist cinema, as an opera singer who becomes restless in her marriage and longs to return to the Parisian stage. (108 mins)

Friday, October 2, 2009
8:50 p.m. Poil de Carotte (France, 1932). Duvivier’s favorite among his own films is a poignant portrait of a lonely farm boy, a “classic chronicle of childhood.”— Lenny Borger (91 mins)

Sunday, October 4, 2009
4:00 p.m. La vie miraculeuse de Thérèse Martin France, 1929). Judith Rosenberg on piano. A stark and striking biography of sainted Carmelite nun Thérèse de Lisieux. (113 mins)

JEAN GABIN: Thursday, October 8, 2009 6:30 p.m. Pépé le Moko (France, 1937). Duvivier’s most influential film stars Jean Gabin as a suave Parisian jewel thief who eludes capture by taking refuge in the Casbah. “I cannot remember (a picture) which has succeeded so admirably in raising the thriller to a poetic level.”— Graham Greene (94 mins)


"Come with me to the Casbah... we will make ze beautiful muzeek togezaire, no?!" Jean Gabin didn't really say this in Pepe Le Moko (1937), but everybody thinks he did. (It's similar to how Cary Grant never really said, "Judy, Judy, Judy...")

Friday, October 9, 2009
6:30 p.m. Au bonheur des dames (France, 1930). Judith Rosenberg on piano. Depicting the life of a Parisian department store and a small shop trying to survive in its shadow, Duvivier’s final silent film is “an orgy of pure cinema (and an) alternately sincere and cynical hymn to capitalist endeavor.”—Village Voice (c. 85 mins)

JEAN GABIN: Friday, October 9, 2009 8:30 p.m. Pépé le Moko (France, 1937). See October 8. (94 mins)

Wednesday, October 14, 2009
7:00 p.m. Allo Berlin? Ici Paris! (France/Germany, 1932). Young switchboard operators in Paris and Berlin flirt across telephone lines, national borders, and romance languages in this celebration of continental cosmopolitanism between the wars. A major rediscovery that reveals Duvivier’s lighter, more experimental side. (89 mins)

JEAN GABIN: Friday, October 16, 2009 6:30 p.m. La Bandera (France, 1935). Duvivier’s sensuous and brooding Foreign Legion melodrama made Jean Gabin a star. “It looks like an exquisite newsreel taken away and baked brown to give you the feel of the air.”— Alistair Cooke (100 mins)


Aftermath of man stealing Jean Gabin's wallet in La Bandera (1935).


Saturday, October 17, 2009
5:15 p.m. The Great Waltz (France, 1938). Duvivier made his Hollywood debut with this opulent MGM musical, a symphony of lavish set pieces depicting the romantic early years of composer Johann Strauss. (103 mins)

Sunday, October 18, 2009
JEAN GABIN: 5:00 p.m. La belle équipe (France, 1936). Made in an era of political and social tumult, Duvivier’s film uses beautifully fluid camerawork, pastoral settings, and popular song to trace five workers’ efforts to rise out of poverty. Jean Gabin leads the ensemble cast. (101 mins)


Gabin and his friends decide what to do with their lottery winnings, in La Belle equipe (1936).


Wednesday, October 21, 2009
7:00 p.m. La Fin du jour (France, 1938). One of French cinema’s most poignant, and caustic, portraits of the world of theater depicts an old-age home for destitute actors who wistfully relive their past triumphs and defeats. With Michel Simon, Louis Jouvet, Victor Francen, and other greats. (100 mins)

Saturday, October 24, 2009
6:30 p.m. La Tête d’un homme (France, 1933). Harry Baur stars in “one of the first great screen incarnations of Georges Simenon’s famous sleuth, Inspector Maigret. . . . Both a classic film noir and a seminal police procedural.”—Lenny Borger (98 mins)

Sunday, October 25, 2009
3:00 p.m. Anna Karenina (U.K., 1948). Vivien Leigh stars in Duvivier’s lavish adaptation of Tolstoy’s novel. This gorgeous print highlights Henri Alekan’s moodily atmospheric cinematography. (111 mins)

Thursday, October 29, 2009
6:30 p.m. Holiday for Henrietta (France, 1952). Two screenwriters dispute the fate of their charming heroine in this enchanting classic that sends up the clash between comedy and drama. (118 mins)

JEAN GABIN: Friday, October 30, 2009 8:25 p.m. Voici le temps des assassins (Deadlier Than the Male) (France, 1956). Danièle Delorme plays the quintessential femme fatale, hooking restaurateur Jean Gabin, in “Duvivier’s darkest study of moral depravity.”—Lenny Borger (114 mins)


Chef Gabin and his young protege are both in love with an inscrutable woman who plays them against each other (it's happened to the best of us!) with tragic results, in Voici le temps des assassins (1957).


Saturday, October 31, 2009
6:30 p.m. Pot-Bouille (France, 1957). Adapting a Zola novel, Duvivier creates a scintillating satire of the Second Empire bourgeoisie. The sterling cast is headed by Gérard Philipe and Danielle Darrieux. (115 mins)



Series coordinated at PFA by Susan Oxtoby. Program notes adapted by Oxtoby from texts by Joshua Siegel, associate curator, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and by Lenny Borger.

PFA wishes to thank the following individuals and institutions for their assistance with this retrospective: Joshua Siegel, The Museum of Modern Art; Éric Le Roy and Jean-Baptiste Garnero, CNC French Film Archives; Monique Faulhaber, Cinémathèque Française; Sandrine Butteau and Delphine Selles, Cultural Services of the French Embassy, New York; Christophe Musitelli and Cecile Hokes, French Consulate, San Francisco; Gilles Venhard, Gaumont; René Chateau, Edition René Chateau; Gyslaine Gracieux and Nils Offet, TF1 International; Nathalie Graumann, Société nouvelle de distribution; Archer Neilson; and Christian Duvivier for his support of this project.

Archival prints and musical accompaniment for silent films are presented with support from the Packard Humanities Institute.


Read: WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN by Charles Zigman (www.jeangabinbook.com)

Jean Gabin Almost Played Don Vito Corleone in "The Godfather"

Here's a "new" revelation about Jean Gabin that I just learned about, courtesy of Professor Philp Horne's new article in the London Daily Telegraph:

I already knew, from watching the documentary featurettes which appear on the recent Blu-Ray release of The Godfather, that Francis Ford Coppola wanted Marlon Brando to play Don Vito Corleone, and that Paramount was constantly fighting him on the idea, and suggesting other actors. I didn't know, however, that Jean Gabin was on the movie studio's short list to play movie history's greatest mafioso patriarch.

Of course, it makes sense: During this period of his career, Jean Gabin had made a habit of playing level-headed, white-haired crime family patriarchs. In 1969's crackerjack suspense thriller The Sicilian Clan, directed by Henri Verneuil, Gabin even played a Mafia Don -- Don Vittorio Manalese.


Here is Professor Horne's illuminating new article about The Godfather, featuring a mention of Jean Gabin.

THE GODFATHER: 'NOBODY ENJOYED ONE DAY OF IT'
Just like the film, the making of 'The Godfather’ was an ugly story of fear and dysfunction.
By Philip Horne
London Daily Telegraph, September 22, 2009

"What was the formula that made The Godfather one of the most successful films of all time? Surely it would take an unusually harmonious combination of talents working in concert, a rare balance of commercial entertainment and artistic challenge, a run of luck those involved couldn’t miss.

"The Godfather... was nominated for 11 Oscars, winning three, and on its $6 million budget, [it] grossed $101 million for Paramount within 18 weeks on release.

"'It was the most miserable film I can think of to make,' declares its producer, Al Ruddy. “Nobody enjoyed one day of it.” Coppola agrees: 'It was just non-stop anxiety and wondering when I was going to get fired.' The novel by Mario Puzo could easily not have been written: eight publishers passed on the outline for a would-be best-seller pitched by a middle-ranking, mid-forties writer with a bad gambling habit and big debts. Only bumping into a friend had led to his actually writing The Godfather. Its 67 weeks topping the New York Times best-seller list surprised everyone.

"Paramount bought an option when Puzo had only written 100 pages, for a mere $12,500, rising to $50,000 if the novel was filmed. But maybe – if we’re to credit Paramount’s head of production Robert Evans – Paramount very nearly didn’t acquire it. There was a bidding war: they were 'one day away from Burt Lancaster buying The Godfather, and Burt wanted to play the Don.'

"Coppola was no one’s first choice. A pack of others were considered: Arthur Penn, Peter Yates, Costa-Gavras, Otto Preminger, Richard Brooks, Elia Kazan, Fred Zinnemann, Franklin J Schaffner, Richard Lester… All said no. Finally, Evans decided Mafia movies hadn’t worked because, 'they were usually written by Jews, directed by Jews and acted by Jews' – and the only Italian-American director with any track record was the up-and-coming Coppola. He almost said no, too, thinking Puzo’s opus 'a popular, sensational novel, pretty cheap stuff.'

"But Coppola relented, partly because his company American Zoetrope was broke. Once aboard, he saw in this blockbuster the profound story of 'a king, almost Greek – a king with three sons.' Puzo liked him. Henceforth, though, everything was a fight. The studio wanted to keep costs down by setting the film in present-day Kansas City; Coppola refused, demanding and getting a $5 million budget. He demanded an 80 day shooting schedule; Paramount gave him only 53.

"Then there was the question of who would play Don Vito Corleone? Paramount had sounded out Anthony Quinn; but also on their list were Laurence Olivier – who was ill – George C Scott, Jean Gabin, Vittorio De Sica, John Huston, Paul Scofield, Victor Mature… Coppola wanted Marlon Brando, whose name was then dirt with the studios due to unreliability and a string of flops. Paramount president Stan Jaffe declared, 'Marlon Brando will never appear in this picture,' even forbidding further discussion. But Coppola pleaded to the bosses that Brando was the greatest living screen actor, and finally, extravagantly, collapsed on the carpet before their eyes. They thought he’d had a heart attack brought on by an excess of sincerity and gave in, though on tough terms.

"The rest of the casting was problematic, too. Paramount wanted Robert Redford or Ryan O’Neal as Michael, the Don’s son; happily the Redford deal fell through. Rod Steiger wanted to do it. Warren Beatty turned it down. Martin Sheen, David Carradine and Dean Stockwell were considered. Even Robert De Niro tested for it: the footage that survives is remarkable. Only Coppola saw Al Pacino’s depths; casting director Fred Roos found him 'this sort of runty little guy.' Coppola prevailed. Pacino was paid only $35,000, but came through.

"James Caan, already a name, was tested for Michael, but was best suited for the part he got, Sonny. John Cazale as Fredo was perfect. For Robert Duvall’s part as the consigliere Tom Hagen, both John Cassavetes and Peter Falk approached Coppola. Coppola objected to casting his sister, Talia Shire, as Connie Corleone, yelling at their mother that Shire was too pretty. But she stayed in, and it became a family film: he eventually included his parents, and even his three-week-old daughter, Sofia.

"The shoot itself was a nightmare. 'My history with The Godfather was very much the history of someone in trouble,' says Coppola. He knew early on 'they were not happy with what I had done…,' and expected to be fired at any moment. In the men’s room he heard crew members talking: about the film – 'What a piece of junk!;' and about him – 'This guy doesn’t know what he’s doing.' Coppola was constantly undermined. Indeed, Elia Kazan was lined up as a possible replacement. Coppola 'kept dreaming that Kazan would arrive on the set and would say to me, 'Uh, Francis, I’ve been asked to…’' But Brando nobly said he would walk off the picture if Coppola was fired. Pacino, too, expected the boot: 'I always felt that I still had to win these people over.' He was convinced 'I was out – and then the Sollozzo scene came.' They loved his intensity as he takes bloody revenge in that great sequence in the restaurant.

"Brando came good. Coppola notes that 'without exception, every one of his crazy ideas I used turned out to be a terrific moment.'

"Coppola wanted to fill the film with 'hundreds and hundreds of interesting specifics,' one example being the cat Brando cradles in the first scene. It wandered onto the set, Coppola befriended it and settled it on Brando’s lap.

"Further disagreements abounded. Evans thought it unnecessary to shoot the Don’s death scene, now one of the best-remembered moments of the film. Cinematographer Gordon Willis thought Coppola unprofessional – Coppola said Willis 'hates and misuses actors.' Still, the end result is tremendous, radiating a powerful darkness. Even the now iconic music, by Nino Rota, was disliked by Evans. A favourable preview audience saved its bacon.

"Finally, there’s the length. Coppola chopped it down, on Paramount’s strict instructions, to a paltry 135 minutes (for exhibitors’ convenience). Then, Evans says, he himself turned on Coppola: 'You shot a saga, and you turned in a trailer. Now give me a movie.' The film was restored to its nearly three hours, and the rest is history – and movie legend."

Philip Horne teaches literature and film in the Department of English at University College London

Michele Morgan vs. Qatar!

Jean Gabin and Michele Morgan, as they appear in director Jean Delannoy's searing 1952 melodrama, La Minute de verite (1952).

For more than twenty years, the iconic French actress Michele Morgan, who co-starred with Jean Gabin in four great motion pictures -- Le Recif de corail (1938), Le Quai des brumes (1939), Remorques (1939/41), and La Minute de verite (1952) -- lived in the Hotel Lambert, a 17th Century mansion on the eastern tip of Paris. In 2007, a Qatarian Sheik bought the hotel, and he is now seeking to refurbish it in a way which many conservationists feel to be anachronistic with the original intent of the building. Morgan, who is today 89 years old, is working with the conservationists to try and stop this from happening.


Here is a very good article about the situation, written by Hannah Westley on September 12, 2009, for The National, the daily newspaper of the United Arab Emirates:



"Its façade may be less recognisable than the Louvre or the Sacré Coeur, but the history of the Hôtel Lambert, the 17th-century mansion at the eastern tip of Paris’ Ile Saint Louis, is in many ways no less remarkable. Currently at the heart of a polemic concerning its restoration, this hôtel particulier was once the epicentre of romantic Paris when it welcomed the likes of Voltaire, Chopin, Delacroix and George Sand. It is the mansion’s history and the way it is intertwined with the very fabric of the building’s construction that has made the Hôtel Lambert a cause célèbre for the Ile Saint Louis’s celebrity residents.





It was bought in 2007 by Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, brother to the Emir of Qatar, from the Baron Guy de Rothschild for a sum estimated to be somewhere between €60 million (Dh321m) and €80m. The building’s restoration project was handed to Alain-Charles Perrot, the chief architect of France’s historic monuments, and whose responsibility is their safeguarding and protection. The Qatari Prince wishes to restore the Lambert, classed as a Unesco heritage site, to its original function as a family home by uniting the present three apartments into a single dwelling. While this would appear to be a relatively unproblematic undertaking, what have caused more concern among conservationists are the proposed plans for an underground car park, which critics suggest could put at risk the building’s foundations, a lift and new bathrooms. Concerns have also been raised about the proposed transformation of the mansion’s hanging garden. In a move to protect against these changes, an association for the protection of historic Paris has gone to court to try to reverse official approval of the project.



Designed by Louis le Vau, the architect responsible for enlarging the Château of Versailles and building the famous castle Vaux-le-Vicomte, the Hôtel Lambert was constructed between 1639 and 1644 for Jean-Baptiste Lambert, secretary to Louis XIII. It houses some spectacular works of art including wall paintings and murals by le Brun, who went on to paint Versaille’s world-famous Galerie des Glaces. Armed with a petition of 8,000 signatures, lawyers for historic Paris have argued that the plans should be abandoned in the interests of national pride. Members of the hallowed Académie Française have also raised their objections. “Would they drill through the beams and floorboards of the Villa Medici to make room for an elevator shaft?” the academician Jean-Marie Rouart was heard to ask.




Other voices of dissent have come from more surprising quarters and include celebrities such as the comedian Guy Bedos, the singer Georges Moustaki and the iconic film star Michèle Morgan, who lived in the Lambert for 20 years. Other support has come from abroad, including Barry Bergdoll, the chief curator at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Italian architects Ricardo Florio and Edoardo Piccoli, the Canadian professors Myra Nan Rosenfeld and Georges Teyssot and the British art historian Mary Whiteley.



One of the problems with the architect’s original proposal was his intention to restore the mansion to its 17th-century glory, thereby suppressing the 18th-century elements as well as the 19th-century stained glass windows. Guidelines for the restoration of historic monuments, as laid out in the 1964 Venice Charter, indicate that unity of style should not be the aim of restoration, which should seek to conserve historical additions made over the centuries.



At the time of the prince’s purchase of the Lambert, many commentators remarked upon how France’s close diplomatic ties with Qatar are beginning to yield significant commercial advantages. Since the independence of Qatar in 1971, France has maintained strong links with this Francophile state, which has become a major economic force in Europe. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa was the first Arab head of state invited to the Elysée palace by Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007. The Sheikh is said to have a direct line to the Elysée and the two men enjoy a close working relationship. It can only be hoped that the Hôtel Lambert does not come between them."


Here's the Hotel Lambert's "new owner," Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani (not to be confused with Frank Zappa's alter-ego "Sheik Yerbouti" from the 1978 double album) and, apparently, he thinks nothing of placing a glass elevator in a 17th-century building! Hopefully, thanks to Michele Morgan and her hearty team of conservationist-commandos, he will soon have a healthy sense of "buyer's remorse!"