JEAN GABIN: LATE SPRING/EARLY SUMMER 2011 UPDATE

Lithograph "Jean Gabin" (1982) by Raymond Moretti (1931-2005).
Available to purchase at: http://www.forgottentreasurez.com/servlet/the-2216Raymond-Moretti-JEAN-GABIN/Detail


HAPPY 108th BIRTHDAY, JEAN GABIN!








MAY 30th, 2011
This is my first blog entry in almost four months – I wrote my previous posting all the way back on February 1st. I apologize for my lack of new entries. Besides editing my text for a possible future edition of World’s Coolest Movie Star: The Complete 95 Films (and Legend) of Jean Gabin, a never-ending process, I am also completing work on my first chldren’s book – which should be out this fall.


HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JEAN GABIN:
First, I would like to wish Happy Birthday to Jean Gabin, because May 17th would have been his 108th birthday. Gabin, of course, passed away in November 1976, at the relatively young age of seventy-two, after completing his ninety-fifth and final film, director Jose Giovanni’s exceptional Deux hommes dans la ville (Two Men in Town), in which he co-starred with Alain Delon. This is a great movie about the justice system which is pretty easy to find on Amazon.com.


JEAN GABIN IS THE FACE OF THE 2011 CANNES FILM FESTIVAL:
Charles H. Meyer reported in the May 11th issue of the on-line magazine Cinespect that the 64th Annual Cannes Film Festival, which was held between May 11th and May 22nd this year, chose to honor Jean Gabin’s birthday this year, by selecting the legendary performer as the face of the 2011 Festival. Guests of this year’s Festival who arrived by train at the Cannes train station were met by a huge mural of Gabin, and in the photograph used to make this mural, Gabin is Jacques Lantier, Emile Zola's doomed anti-hero from Marcel Carne's haunting 1938 classic La Bete humaine.

Link to Article:
http://cinespect.com/setting-the-scene-cannes-journal-entry-one/

















SACRAMENTO FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL PROGRAMMER CECILE DOWNS CHOOSES JEAN GABIN’S INSPECTOR MAIGRET CHARACTER AS “GREATEST FRENCH MOVIE DETECTIVE OF ALL TIME,” IN A MAY 27TH ARTICLE.
My friend Cecile Downs, who runs the Sacramento French Film Festival each June, wrote an article for the May 27th issue of the on-line magazine France Today, in which she handpicked Jean Gabin’s character of Inspector Maigret – Gabin portrayed Maigret in three wonderful films – as the Greatest French Movie Detective. Here is the article:

http://www.francetoday.com/articles/2011/05/25/greatest_french_movie_detectives.html
Cecile's 10th Annual 2011 Sacramento French Film Festival will be held from June 17th to June 26th, and the schedule’s just gone up. I went last year to present a weekend of Gabin films, and the selection of new films and old ones was fantastic.
http://www.sacramentofrenchfilmfestival.org/


Jean Gabin played author Georges Simenon's legendary Inspector Maigret in three films. Here is a poster for the American release of the first one, 1957's Maigret tend un peige (Maigret Sets a Trap). United Artists, the film's American distributor, worried that Americans wouldn't know who Maigret is, so for it's U.S. release they luridly re-titled the picture Woman Bait, which isn't exactly incorrect because in the film, Inspector Maigret uses a woman as 'bait,' in order to lure the killer into his trap.

A GERMAN-LANGUAGE RADIO BIOGRAPHY OF JEAN GABIN IS IN THE WORKS:
I have been corresponding recently with Dr. Christian Buckard in Berlin. Dr. Buckard is currently preparing a one-hour biography of Jean Gabin for German radio, which should air either later this year or at the beginning of next year, and he told me that he would be very interested in preparing a simultaneous English-language version of the radio program, for which he is interviewing Gabin’s friends and family, but I am at a loss at trying to help him because I don't know anybody here in the U.S. who produces one-hour radio biographies. If anybody who is reading this knows anybody, at any radio organization, that might be interested in helping Dr. Buckard to subsidize an English version of such a program, please email me at author@jeangabinbook.com, and I will pass the information along to him. Years ago, one-hour radio biographies seemed to be very prevalent on American public radio, but I haven’t heard too many of them lately.


GWYNETH PALTROW TO PLAY MARLENE DIETRICH FOR HBO, AND AN “UNNAMED FRENCH ACTOR” HAS BEEN CONFIRMED TO PLAY HER LOVER, JEAN GABIN:
In my February 1st blog posting, I neglected to mention something that I had just read on Indiewire.com. On December 29st, 2010, Indiewire posted that HBO’s three-hour Marlene Dietrich biopic was being fast-tracked for production, that Gwyneth Paltrow had been chosen to portray Dietrich, and that an unnamed actor has already been chosen to play Dietrich’s lover, Jean Gabin. As Gabin and Dietrich fans know, Dietrich dated thousands of people in her life, but she always considered Gabin to be the one, true love of her life, and they even co-starred in a movie together, 1946’s criminally unknown Martin Roumagnac.


I think the reason I didn’t mention this ‘news’ back in February, is because the same announcement was made back in 2006; in 2006, Dreamworks announced that it was about to star Paltrow in a Dietrich biopic for theatrical release – but it didn’t happen. I think that Paltrow, if the film ever gets made, will be a fine Dietrich – she doesn’t look exactly like Dietrich, but I think she can really ‘convey’ the Dietrich persona, and if you saw Country Strong or watch "Glee," you already know that she sings really well – but I confess to being a bit concerned about how the Gabin character will be treated in the film. Since most Americans still aren’t too familiar with Gabin, I am sure that the Gabin role in this telepic will be some kind of generic ‘French lover’ role, even though Gabin always abhorred that kind of caricature and rejected it when it was offered to him. But I suppose I shouldn’t nitpick. We should be thankful that there will be a Gabin character in the HBO film at all, no matter how small the part will inevitably be. Some Gabin is better than no Gabin...


Below, are eight minutes and twenty-one seconds of real-life lovers Marlene Dietrich and Jean Gabin in the only film they made together, director Georges Lacombe's Martin Roumagnac (1946). The film has an undeserved bad reputation in the United States, because back in 1948, the film's American distributor, offended by the fact that Dietrich's character was a prostitute, cut the film by more than 40 minutes, apparently rendering it incomprehensible. The film has not been shown in the United States, in any form, since 1948 -- it has never been revived on television, or in retrospective theaters, or on bootleg videos, or anywhere. I hope that soon one of those dedicated film fans who makes 'fan subtitles' will issue an English subtitled DVD of the uncut French print, because Martin Roumagnac, in its uncut state, is a truly magical film, another of Gabin's best.

The link to Indiewire’s Paltrow/Dietrich/Gabin article is:
http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/archives/gwyneth_paltrow_to_play_marlene_dietrich_in_tv_biopic/


GABIN’S FAMILY LOBBIES TO GET HIS NAME RESTORED TO PRESTIGIOUS FRENCH ACTING AWARD:
In February 1976, France held its first annual nationally televised film awards, the Cesars, and that first broadcast was co-hosted by Jean Gabin, only nine months before his death, and actress Romy Schneider. Between 1981 and 2006, the award given to each year's Best New Actor was called the Jean Gabin Award, and some of its notable recipients have included some names who are familiar to American viewers of contemporary French cinema -- Thierry Lermitte, Tcheky Karyo, Jean-Hughes Anglade, Vincent Perez, Olivier Martinez, Matthieu Kassovitz, and Yvan Attal.

In 2007, organizers of the Cesars changed the name of this award to the Patrick Dewaere Award, re-naming it after Dewaere, the sensitive young French actor who took his life in 1982, at the age of thirty-five. Dewaere will be known to U.S. audiences for having starred in director Bertrand Blier’s international hit from 1977, Preparez vos mouchoirs (Get Out Your Handkerchiefs) in which he had co-starred with Gerard Depardieu and Carol Laure. (I snuck into a theater to see Handkerchiefs when I was eleven years old, and I am forever haunted by the scene in which the bullies taunt a little boy by chanting, "Dip his d**k in shoepolish!" over and over...)

It was reported on April 20th, 2011 by the French wire service AFP that Jean Gabin’s children, Florence Moncorge and Mathias Moncorge, are currently lobbying to get their father’s name restored to this award. This blogsite firmly supports this action, and if you agree that Jean Gabin’s named should be restored to the award, you might want to shoot an email, send a letter or fax, or make a phone call to either the President of the Cesars, Alain Terzain, or the Vice-Secretary, Gilles Jacob. (Everybody who knows me knows that I am an enemy of subtlety in all of its pernicious forms; I have already done all of the above, and more than once. To make any changes in this life, you really have to hit people hard. Let subtlety be your enemy, too.)

Contact information for the muckimucks/wheels of the Cesar Awards is as follows:

M. Alain Terzain or M. Gilles Jacob
Cesar Awards
16, avenue Elisee reclus
75007 Paris
Phone: + 33 53 64 05 25
Fax: + 33 1 53 64 05 24

Link to this article:
http://www.commeaucinema.com/cannes/afp/la-fille-de-jean-gabin-conteste-l-heritage-revendique-par-le-prix-patrick-dewaere,206734

Here is Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, starring Patrick Dewaere, in its entirety:




LE PORT DU DESIR (1955) AND LA VERITE SUR BEBE DONGE (1952)
TWO NEW GABIN MOVIES ARRIVE ON DVD IN MAY, 2011,
ENGLISH-SUBTITLED FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME:
In my last blog entry, dated February 1st – four months ago – I mentioned that ten Jean Gabin films had just been issued on DVD, with English subtitles for the first time. Those titles were Du haut en bas (1933), La Belle equipe (1936), Gueule d’amour (1937), Des gens sans importance (1956), Voici le temps des assassins (1957), Le Desordre et la nuit (1958), Le Cave se rebiffe (1961), Le Soleil des voyous (1966), Le Pacha (1968), and Le Tueur (1972). As I also mentioned in that posting, these are not ‘legitimate’ DVD releases from major home video companies, and you won’t find them for sale on Amazon.com. Rather, these are ‘fan-subtitled’ videos. Thanks to some very recent digital technology, fans of foreign-language movies are buying non-English-subtitled DVDs from Europe, and making their own subtitles on their home computers; and as I mentioned in the previous posting, the quality of many of these titles, both pictorially and as far as the quality and accuracy of the subtitles, is often brilliant – sometimes, it’s even Criterion Collection quality. Can you imagine subtitling an entire two-hour film just for “fun?” These dedicated film fans do it, and they sell or trade the finished product on-line, on auction websites like www.ioffer.com and www.ecrater.com – ioffer and ecrater go deeper than eBay, when it comes to offering the really rare stuff. The two specific links you need to find these rare Gabin titles are: http://www.ioffer.com/selling/shls18520 (based in the UK) and http://www.ecrater.com/search.php?keywords=Jean+Gabin (based in the US), although both sellers will send you DVDs that are region free, so that you can play them on either a PAL DVD player, if you live in Europe, or an NTSC machine, if you live in North America. These sellers also offer a number of French and Italian genre pictures from the 1920s up through today, sans Gabin, which fans have also subtitled into English for the first time, and fan-subtitling, as I mentioned in my previous posting, is great, because it really democratizes film distribution for the first time, in the sense that,if you want to see a movie and it's not available with English subtitles, you can simply make your own! These sellers additionally sell a great many fan-subtitled movies that do not have Gabin, wonderful genre movies from France, Italy, and Germany.

Anyway, now it is the end of May, and I am happy to report that two additional Jean Gabin movies have just been released on ‘fan-subtitled’ DVDs this month, and the quality of both titles is great.

The first Jean Gabin movie to arrive on a fan-subtitled DVD this month, is another of the actor's great and atmospheric noirs, 1955’s Le Port du desir, which was released in North America as House on the Waterfront in 1958, and which has never revived in the US subsequently to 1958. This film is a kind of a waterfront Casablanca, in which Gabin’s ‘Rick’ character, who is called LeQuevic, owns a waterfront cabaret/bar in the French port of Brest. A stripper has disappeared and it’s up to Gabin to find her before the mob gets to her first. In the film’s most amusing sequence, we actually get to see Gabin in full deep sea-diving gear, and when his crew lifts his heavy steel diving helmet off of his head, he’s got a cigarette dangling from his maw. (Only in France!) Le Port du desir is the only Gabin film to have been directed by Edmond T. Greville, who was equally at home making French-language movies in France and English-language movies in England, and if you’re an American or a Brit, you might already be familiar with Greville, because he directed the 1962 British cult-classic Beat Girl, which starred Adam Faith and Oliver Reed. Le Port du desir is fast paced, Gabin is great in it, and it’s one of those films which definitely deserves to be better known. (And: The film’s underwater sequences are credited to a very young Louis Malle!)























The second Gabin title to be released this month on DVD with English subtitles, is director Henri Decoin’s ultra-weird 1952 film noir offering, La Verite sur Bebe Donge (The Truth About Bebe Donge), from a novel by Maigret creator Georges Simenon, in which Jean Gabin’s captain of industry, Francois Donge, marries Bebe, one of the craziest femmes-fatales you’ll ever see, and she’s played by another French film legend, Danielle Darrieux, an actress who is still appearing in movies to this day – in fact, in 2009, Darrieux supplied the voice of the grandmother to director Marjane Satrapi's feature-length French animation Persepolis, a film which is so gut-wrenchingly heart-breaking, you forget you're watching animation. Danielle Darrieux would appear opposite Gabin later in 1952, in Marcel Ophuls' anthology tryptych Le Plaisir -- the uncut version of Le Plaisir just appeared on Turner Classic Movies on May 21st -- and the actress would also appear opposite him in 1958’s noir Le Desordre et la nuit, which was released on a fan-subtitled DVD back in February.



In La Verite sur Bebe Donge, Darrieux’s Bebe insinuates herself into Gabin’s life, and since she can’t wait to get her meathooks on his fortune, she does the only thing that a proper femme-fatale can do -- she poisons him with mercury! Therefore, the entire movie is narrated by Jean Gabin’s Francois character as he languishes in a coma, in the hospital. If this narrative device seems a bit odd, it's not the first time that such a device had been utilized: Two years prior to Bebe Donge, in 1950, in Billy Wilder’s classic Sunset Blvd., William Holden narrated the whole movie from beyond the grave as he lay dead in Gloria Swanson’s swimming pool. (Movies with ‘unreliable narrators’ are interesting enough, but movies with ‘unconscious narrators’ are way more interesting.) I don’t know if I would consider Bebe Donge to be one of Gabin’s best movies, but it is certainly one of his most offbeat entries, and it is definitely worth a view. This film was never released theatrically in America.

And speaking of Bebe Donge, as I was about to publish this posting, I learned something new about it, so here is a new/late-breaking/related story:


ITALIAN BAND NAMES ITSELF AFTER JEAN GABIN'S 1952 FILM LA VERITE SUR BEBE DONGE, AND USES CLIPS FROM THE FILM IN ITS MUSIC VIDEOS:
In my 2008 book World's Coolest Movie Star: The Complete 95 Films (and Legend) of Jean Gabin, I mentioned that there are two musical artists in Europe who have been so inspired by the French actor, that they have named their acts for him -- specifically, in the book, I mentioned the Italian techno/dance band Gabin (you can see their videos on YouTube) and the French rapper MC Jean Gabin.

Well now, as of 2011, there is a brand new Italian band, based in Rome, called "Bebe Donge!" The band's frontwoman, singer/songwriter Fiammetta Jahier, is such a fan of the 1952 Jean Gabin/Danielle Darrieux film La Verite sur Bebe Donge, which is apparently considered to be a cult film in Italy (I didn't know that!), that she has named her group after the film. Here are Fiammetta, Max, Alessio, Federico, Francesco and Tommaso performing their new track "Sono Sola," which contains clips of Gabin and Darrieux from the Bebe Donge film:



Bebe Donge, "Sono Sola," Copyright 2011 by Il Sid Records.

AND FINALLY:

DID YOU KNOW THAT JEAN GABIN DOES NOT HAVE A STAR ON THE HOLLYWOOD WALK OF FAME?
I live in Los Angeles, and it bothers me to no end that Jean Gabin's name does not appear on a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, on Hollywood Blvd. (Gabin's co-stars from 1942's Moontide, Ida Lupino and Thomas Mitchell have stars, but Gabin does not have one.) I have been doing a bit of research into the process of how to make this happen. As a layman, I -- or you -- can download a form from the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and nominate Gabin for a 2012 Star. If the Chamber of Commerce votes "yes," then, at that point the nominating committee (me and whoever else might be interested in working with me on the project) would be responsible for sending the Chamber of Commerce a check for $25,000.00, which is the cost of a star -- this money also pays for permanent maintenance of the star as well as the ceremony on Hollywood Blvd. when the star is unveiled to the public. Yes, you have read it correctly: It costs twenty-five thousand dollars to have a star's name added to the Walk of Fame and, apparently, the Chamber of Commerce distributes every penny of this 25K among local charities. Does anybody have any interest in helping me to make this happen, either this year or next year? Let's discuss, at author@jeangabinbook.com. (PS, Don't send me any checks just yet, because, as David Letterman used to say back in the '80s, if you do, I'll just use them for candy and gum.)






THANK YOU!
Thank you again for supporting my two-volume book WORLD’S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN (www.jeangabinbook.com). I am currently editing the text for a possible new edition – I’ve been working on this for about a year-and-a-half – so if you have any comments or suggestions, please email them to me.


Jean Gabin, Circa 1936.












Have a great Memorial Day.

-- Charles Zigman,
author@jeangabinbook.com

2011 Begins with Ten (10) Jean Gabin Movies, on English-Subtitled DVDs for the First Time

Did you know that the legendary filmmaker G.W. Pabst directed Jean Gabin and Peter Lorre in a 1933 ensemble comedy, Du haut en bas, which was styled after the American film of the previous year, Grand Hotel? You probably didn't, because it has been "missing" for more than seventy years, even in France, the country of its production. But as of January 2011, a rediscovered Du haut en bas (pictured, top) and eight other Jean Gabin are now available on DVD, with English subtitles for the very first time.

Hope everybody is having a very good New Year. Thank you again for supporting my book WORLD’S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN. At some point in 2011 or 2012, I hope there will be a newly updated Third Edition. I have spent the last year-and-a-half engaging in a good deal of re-writing – writers are never happy, especially me – and I will probably also be adding additional information, and more photographs, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, as 2011 begins, there is fantastic news afoot for all English-speaking Jean Gabin fans – not one, not two, not three, but TEN (10) Jean Gabin movies have suddenly become available on DVD with English subtitles for the very first time. In WORLD’S COOLEST MOVIE STAR, I bemoaned the fact that many of Gabin’s movies have never been available with English subtitles, but thanks to some very recent digital technology which has emerged only over the last two years, and thanks to some rather enterprising classic movie fans, this is no longer the truth.

Understand: These are not legitimate releases from the major home-video distribution companies. These ‘bootleg’ DVDs are made by fans, and the quality of most of them – and here I an referring to both pictorial image as well as to the quality of the digital English subtitles – is almost uniformly very good. In a few cases, I would even say the quality is commensurate with DVDs being offered by the Criterion Collection.

Over the last two years, some very dedicated and polylinguistic fans of classic movies have been purchasing DVDs of foreign-language films which are not subtitled into English and, thanks to some new ‘bit-torrent’ software (don’t ask; I’m practically Amish when it comes to anything technical) are adding their own digital English subtitles. Can you imagine subtitling an entire movie, just for enjoyment? Many do.

All of these ‘fan-subtitled’ films are currently available for you to buy on-line, but you won’t find them at Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble.com. Since these are privately made DVDs, which are exchanged privately from collector to collector, you will have to go to the two main auction sites, eBay and iOffer – and iOffer, which is a kind of ‘extreme eBay’ for super hard to find curios – is your best bet. On iOffer especially, the individual sellers often change – one week one seller might offering a particular film and the following week, that seller might not be offering it but three other sellers might have it in stock. So I won’t list the names of the individual sellers in this post, but you will definitely find English-subtitled versions of these films if you head over to iOffer or eBay and type the names of the following films into your search. What is even more amazing, is that new foreign-language titles, from all over the globe, are being painstakingly subtitled into English, by fans, every month.

Two of the films in this list, 1936’s La Belle equipe, directed by Julien ‘Pepe Le Moko’ Duvivier and 1937’s Gueule d’amour, directed by the highly underrated Jean Gremillon, a filmmaker who deserves some serious study, are worth a special mention: In France, they are considered to be two of Gabin’s very best films from Gabin’s very important Poetic-Realist period of the mid-to-late 1930s – in France they are part of that same pantheon which includes Pepe Le Moko, La Grande illusion, La Bete humaine, Le Jour se leve, and Le Quai des brumes – yet this is the first time we are seeing them on home video with English subtitles.

Here are the ten newly-subtitled-into-English Jean Gabin movies which I have been able to purchase from private, on-line sellers over the last month:


1. Du haut en bas (From Top to Bottom, 1933): Did you know that Jean Gabin, early in his career, was directed by the legendary German Pandora's Box filmmaker G. W. Pabst? It’s true. This rare early comedy – I would characterize it as being a kind of Grand Hotel set in a socialist-utopian apartment complex in which rich and poor live together in peace – is so rare today, in the sense that there aren’t even any prints of the film France, that when I initially saw the film, back in 2004, I had to go all the way to Belgium to see the only remaining print, at the Royal Cinematheque of Brussels, and because the print did not have English subtitles, I needed to have a human translator sit with me and tell me what the characters were saying. Incredibly, just over this past year, somebody in Germany actually found an ancient 35mm print of Du Haut en bas in the original French, with German subtitles! Whoever discovered the print had the foresight to film-chain a DVD copy and he has been circulating it among classic movie lovers, and on-line movie fans have now, just over the last several months, created their own digital English subtitles for the film, which are very clear and easy to read. As far as visual quality, the print itself hasn’t been restored – the DVD is made from an original 1934 film print, so it has a fair amount of scratches and pops – but it is an uncut print, and what it lacks in visual perfection, it more than makes up for in rarity.

Jean Gabin is endearingly funny as the building’s favorite resident, Austria’s Number One soccer player Charles Boulla, and you might call Boulla ‘The David Beckham of 1934.’ You’ll also see another French acting legend in Du haut en bas – it’s Michel Simon, France’s very famous answer to Charles Laughton, playing one of his great slovenly eccentrics, and five years after Du haut en bas, in 1938, Gabin and Simon would, of course, star together in Marcel Carne’s haunting Poetic-Realist classic, Le Quai des brumes. And if the combination of G.W. Pabst, Jean Gabin, and Michel Simon isn’t enough to grab you, what if I sweeten the deal and tell you that the film also features Peter Lorre, in just a few scenes, as a silent, stumbling vagabond. Du haut en bas was made a few years after Lorre had starred in Fritz Lang’s M, but because the actor was apparently addicted to morphine, directors would only hire him for small roles, including his small-but-important role in this film. I received my English-subtitled copy of this film from an iOffer seller, and if you don’t see it listed on the website, place a free want ad on the site asking for it and, spy-movie like, “someone will be right with you.” You will really enjoy all seventy-nine minutes of Du haut en bas.


Here's the poster for 1933's Du haut en bas. Jean Gabin was about one year away from becoming France's number one mega-star, so even though he is first billed in the film itself, it's Gabin's co-star Michel Simon, "the French Charles Laughton," who appears on the poster. Of course, Simon will co-star with Gabin more famously in 1938's Le Quai des brumes, in which Simon will play the sadistic Zabel.



2. La Belle equipe (The Good Team/They Were Five, 1936): In WORLD’S COOLEST MOVIE STAR, I lamented the fact that it is beyond tragic that Julien Duvivier’s great 1936 ensemble comedy La Belle equipe has not been shown with English subtitles since its brief American theatrical release, as They Were Five, seventy-three years ago, back in 1938. Thanks to a digitally and polylinguistically-inclined Jean Gabin fan who has made his own digital English subtitles and married them to a French-language DVD copy of the film, it finally, as of January 2011, exists in an English-subtitled version and, as with Du haut en bas, I obtained my English-subtitled DVD of La Belle equipe from a seller on iOffer.com. La Belle equipe goes against the grain of Gabin’s other films, because it is a comedy. Not only are the subtitles accurate and easy to read, but this DVD is made from a restored print.

In the late 1930s, Gabin played a tragic figure in a number of his films, but in La Belle equipe, he is part of a warm ensemble comedy, in which five out-of-work factory employees win the lottery on a ticket they purchased together and use their earnings to restore, and open, a beautiful country guinguette (hotel/restaurant/holiday camp), with results which are both happy and tragic. I say both happy and tragic, because the film has always had, and this is quite uncharacteristic for Gabin’s mid-to-late 1930s films, a happy ending – but last year, in Germany, a sleuthing film fan actually found an original pre-release print featuring director Julien Duvivier’s original tragic ending, which was deemed too upsetting for general release, and which was shelved, and presumed to be lost for more than seven decades. The very good print on the English-subtitled DVD ends with the director’s newly-discovered, original tragic ending – it was screened at the Museum of Modern Art for the first time in 2010 – and, after the film is over, you will also get to see the happy ending by which the film has always been known. After you see the film and watch both of the endings, please email me – author@jeangabinbook.com – and tell me which ending you prefer; I think we can get some pretty healthy debate going over this one, because the ending I like better is not necessarily the correct choice!


The fan-subtitled DVD of La Belle equipe features the director's original ending, not seen since 1936!











3. Gueule d’amour (Lady Killer, 1937): When I wrote about this extraordinary film in the First and Second Editions of my book, in 2008 and 2009, I think I gave it rather short shrift. I mentioned that, when I first saw Gueule d’amour in 2002, I had enjoyed it, but I didn’t give it too much thought, nor did I go into the film too deeply. Now, in 2011, I have revisited the film for the first time in nine years, on a great quality fan-subtitled DVD, which I found through a seller on iOffer.com, and it is truly another of Gabin’s best films. In most of his movies from this time period of the mid-to-late 1930s, Gabin’s tragic drifter characters are always quiet and stoic, heading off peacefully to their unpleasant fates without complaint, but in this picture – without giving anything away – director Jean Gremillon really pulls an incredible, non-stoic, full-of-feeling performance out of the typically laconic actor. I guarantee that even the steeliest viewers will shed a tear during the last several minutes of this film, and if you are familiar with Edvard Munch’s painting “The Screamer” – that’s Gabin at the end of this film.

In Geule d’amour, Gabin is freewheeling Lucien Bourrach, member of the SPAHI, the elaborately costumed French cavalry, and he is known, by the characters in the film, as ‘Lady Killer.’ Lady Killer is a man who has no problem getting any woman he wants, but he is unable to get the one woman he has ever actually loved, the beautiful society woman Madeleine, as played by Mireille Balin – she will of course deign to have a brief, torrid affair with him, but she’s not interested in a long-term coupling with him because of what she perceives to be his lowly social class. Madeleine taunts Lady Killer into committing the hauntingly savage act which will up the film. Previously in the same year of 1937, Balin, one of France’s most popular pre-War actresses, had appeared opposite Gabin in Pepe Le Moko, and in Le Moko, of course, it was Gabin’s smooth criminal character who held the cards in the on-screen Balin-Gabin relationship.
























4. Des gens sans importance (People of No Importance, 1956): Last year, on this blog site, I mentioned that a fan-subtitled version of the 1955 thriller Gas-Oil, which co-starred Gabin with Jeanne Moreau, in which Gabin played a laconic truck-driver, had been released in a very good quality bootleg DVD, with fan-made English subtitles. Gas-Oil was so popular in France when it was first released that, one year later, Gabin played a laconic truck-driver one more time, in director Henri Verneuil’s atmospheric Des gens sans importance, or The People of No Importance, and this film is now available – you can find your very good, English-subtitled copy from sellers on iOffer.com – as well. In this film, Gabin’s trucker character, Viard, carries on a relationship with a young barmaid who is played by Francoise Arnoul – Gabin and Arnoul had previously, five years earlier, appeared in Jean Renoir’s French Cancan – and the results are bittersweet. In Des gens sans importance, Gabin fears that is trucking company is phasing him out and, to that extent, this is one of the best films on the subjects of ageism and aging that you will ever see. Very highly recommended.























5. Voici le temps des assassins (Time of the Assassins, 1957): If you mixed a Jim Thompson novella with a Russ Meyer movie, you would get the incredible, fast-paced noir, Voici le temps des assassins, in which Gabin is a middle-age chef who gets grifted by a team of hophead mother-daughter prostitutes! It’s fast-paced, thought provoking, dark, and another of my very favorite Jean Gabin movies. It even boasts a couple of rather ‘kinky’ touches which seem like they might be more at home in a Russ Meyer movie than in a Jean Gabin movie, and the film is especially memorable for its “Did that really just happen?”-ending, an ending which, without any exaggeration, you will not get out of your head for the rest of your life.























6. Le Desordre et la nuit (Disorder in the Night/Night Affair, 1958): Another very cool Gabin noir from the ‘50s features Our Anti-Hero as Inspector Vallois, a middle-aged police inspector who falls in love with a twentysomething hophead prostitute, played by Nadja Tiller. This wonderful movie is also important because it features, in a supporting role, Hazel Scott, the dynamic African-American singer who, like Josephine Baker twenty or thirty years before, also caught many of her best breaks in Europe, rather than in her home country of the U.S. It is available as a DVD, with fan-made English subtitles, through sellers on iOffer.com.
























7. Le Cave se rebiffe (The Counterfeiters of Paris,1961): In 1964, MGM released director Gilles Grangier’s outstanding widescreen thriller, in North America, as The Counterfeiters of Paris. While MGM apparently continues to have an English-subtitled print of the film in its vault, the studio is not permitted to screen it in North America, because shortly after the film’s initial American release forty-six years ago, the rights reverted back to the film’s French production company, Cite Films. However, here comes some good news: Thanks to some fans who have made their own digital, English-language subtitles, you can now, as of the beginning of 2011, obtain a really great widescreen print from various iOffer sellers. In Le Cave se rebiffe, Gabin portrays the world’s greatest counterfeiter, Le Dabe, which translates into English as, “The Dude:” Yes, thirty-seven years before Jeff Bridges played a character called “The Dude” in The Big Lebowski, Gabin had played a character with that very monicker! Le Cave se rebiffe has a lot of humor, too, thanks to dialogue by the prolific French screenwriting genius Michel Audiard, and as far as tone in concerned, I would compare it to two great French thrillers from 1964 which do not feature Gabin, director Georges Lautner’s double-header of Les Tontons flingueurs and Les Barbouzes, two Lino Ventura-starring films which you can also find on iOffer as a fan-subtitled DVDs. The plot, in brief, is that Gabin is France’s most successful counterfeiter of all time. He’s retired to Venezuela, and is pulled out of retirement to supervise ‘one more job’ in Paris. This film is a successful mélange of action and humor, and it’s got all the double and triple-crosses you can handle, and then some.
























8. Le Soleil des voyous (The Sun Shines Over the No-Goods/Action Man,1966): Le Soleil des voyous is a fun, candy-colored – it was filmed in the old IB Technicolor process – heist movie, and it is the only movie to co-star Jean Gabin with American television’s Elliott Ness, the one and only Robert Stack. In this fun film, Parisian bar-owner Gabin and American mercenary Stack team-up to rob a U.S. Army payroll truck. In 2009, Image Home Video released a legitimate DVD version of Le Soleil de voyous on the North American market, which I wrote about it in an earlier posting on this blogsite, and while the good news is that the Image Entertainment print is uncut and letterboxed, the bad news is that it is dubbed into English, so you’re not hearing Gabin’s real voice – one of the basic pleasures of watching a Gabin movie is hearing his legendary voice – or Stack’s real voice, and what is particularly annoying about seeing a dubbed version of this film, is that it is the only film in which Robert Stack, who grew up on French military bases, speaks all of the film’s dialogue in perfect French! Well, thanks to a fan who has made his own English subtitles, I have just been able to obtain, from an iOffer seller, a great quality DVD of Le Soleil des voyous in its original French language, with excellent digital English subtitles. In the case of Le Soleil des voyous, skip Image Home Entertainment’s dubbed version, and head for the original French-language version with English subtitles. Robert Stack’s French is impeccable, and because the film was clearly made to capitalize on the James Bond craze, Stack does some amazing Kung-Fu in the film, as well.


One day I prayed to God, and I asked Him, "Dear God, could you please put Jean Gabin and Robert Stack in a movie together?" He did, and it was good. So mote it be.







9. Le Pacha (The Showdown, 1968): In this very decent Technicolor policier, Jean Gabin’s crusty old police inspector, Joss, avenges his partner’s death in the way in which Charles Bronson would also gain revenge in American cinema ten years later. The film is occasionally available in an English-dubbed version on VHS – I found mine on eBay about eight years ago, and I obtained it from a seller in Greece – but now, as of 2011, an original French-language print, with excellent, fan-made English subtitles, is available from an iOffer seller. A high-spot of the film is that Inspector Joss happens upon a pretty unusual murder lead: One of the murder suspects is the drummer in Serge Gainsbourg’s band, so Serge makes an appearance, performing the hip tune “Requieum pour un con,” which the film made successful in France. Georges Lautner, born in 1926, is the director of this film, and while I would not rank Le Pacha as one of his best films, he did direct a number of excellent thrillers, many of them seasoned with droll humor, in a career which has spanned forty years. He hasn’t directed a film in ten years – his last project was a few episodes of a French t.v. series, in 2001 – but here’s hoping that, if he is able, he will give us one more classic.
























10. Le Tueur (The Killer, 1972): In my Jean Gabin book, I mentioned that most of Jean Gabin’s movies are great, but there are just a few which aren’t so hotsy-totsy. Director Denys de La Patelliere's Le Tueur is one of these forgettable efforts, and it is a pretty sub-standard procedural in which Gabin plays an almost-ready-for-retirement police inspector who is searching for a psychotic killer, as played by the Italian '70s action hero with the most masculine name I've ever heard, Fabio Testi. (I wish my last name could be ‘Testi!’) It’s one of the few movies in which Gabin looks not just stoic and laconic, but actually exhausted, as though he would rather be home at his farm in Normandy than making this movie. Still, for Gabin completists, you might want to check this French-German co-production out, due to its rarity in North America. (Horrible, flat cinematography in this film: In one sequence, set in police headquarters, it appears that the filmmakers couldn’t afford ‘fill’ light, and the actors cast inept looking shadows on the walls behind them, as you might find in somebody’s uncle’s bad home movies from the ‘70s.)
























Also, don’t forget the fan-subtitled DVDs which were released last year, 1955’s fantastic noirs Razzia sur la chnouf (if you like Touch of Evil, you'll love Razzia sur la chnouf) and Gas-Oil.

Additionally: There are six Jean Gabin films which used to be available from eBay sellers as VHS tapes with English subtitles,but they are now out of print, and iOffer sellers are now offering some good quality English-subtitled DVDs. The titles are: 1934’s Marie Chapdelaine, which stars Gabin as a Canadian fur-trapper; 1959’s Un Singe en hiver, which is the only film to co-star Gabin with Jean-Paul Belmondo; 1961’s Le President, featuring Gabin as the French Prime-Minister; 1962’s Le Gentleman d’Epsom, starring The World’s Coolest Movie Star as a racetrack grifter; and 1968’s Le Tatoue, a madcap comedy starring Gabin with rubber-faced comedian Louis de Funes, who is sometimes called the French Jerry Lewis.

Remember, all of the titles I have just mentioned are available from sellers on either eBay.com or iOffer.com, but iOffer is actually a better place to check for them than eBay. iOffer works the same way as eBay, in the sense that one must sign up in order to use it, but it is free. A special trick, is that if you don’t see a particular film title listed on iOffer, just place a free want ad, asking for it, and you will be surprised how quickly somebody who has the title in stock will get back to you. Some of the people on iOffer who are offering these fan-subtitled Gabin DVDs are traders instead of sellers, and they will not accept money for the films they are offering, but they will ask you to trade hard-to-find films from your own DVD collection for them. That’s not a problem, though, because if you’re a serious collector of classic movies on DVD, your present collection is sure to contain a few rarities.

HOUSEKEEPING NOTES: Many of these fan-subtitled DVDs will be in the European 'PAL' format, which means that they won't play on most North American 'NTSC' format DVD players, however for between $80.00 and $200.00, you can purchase an international, 'codeless' or 'region free' DVD player which will play both NTSC and PAL format DVDs. You won't find these machines in a brick-and-mortar store, but if you Google "codeless DVD player" or "region free" DVD player, you will find some good ones available from on-line sellers, and the $80.00 machines work just as well as the more expensive units. I personally own two codeless DVD players, and I bought them both here:
http://www.planetomni.com/Prod_MSDVD.shtml. And don't be scared if you don't see the English subtitles immediately when you slide your disc into the tray: Just click on the 'subtitle' key on your codeless DVD player's remote control, turn on the English subtitles and, like magic, they will appear... And here is some good news for those who don't want to spring for a new DVD player: Both NTSC and PAL DVDs will play on your computer's DVD drive, no matter what country your computer is from.

Also, for U.S. Gabin fans who subscribe to Dish Network or DirectTV, there is an optional French-language, English-subtitled cable station which you can add for a one-time extra fee of about $100.00, and thereafter, you pay about $10 a month for it, but it is supremely worth it: It’s TV Monde 5, and this French-language/English-subtitled channel frequently broadcasts rare French movies with English subtitles, in addition to French news and entertainment programming. Last year, in 2010, I noticed that TV5 presented three Jean Gabin movies which are not shown with English subtitles too much: 1971’s Le Chat, the only film to co-star Gabin with Simone Signoret, as well as 1958’s Maigret Tend un piege and Le President.

Ten new Jean Gabin movies on DVD, with English subtitles for the very first time? Yes! They are made by fans and for fans, and so while you won’t find any fancy packaging – although some of the sellers have been known to make their own cover-art – you will be seeing wonderful movies which have not been seen in the U.S. in decades, or ever. In addtition to subtitling Jean Gabin movies, these classic movie superfans are subtitling decades worth of other French (and German, and Italian, and Spanish, and any other language you can think of) movies into English for the first time, and they are providing a truly revolutionary service, because they are opening up a whole new world of classic films to people who would otherwise, due to the language barrier, have no way to see them. Some of the legitimate home video companies will never subtitle these 'deep inventory' films, which they consider to be a very small niche, into English, because they might feel there is not enough profit to be made from doing so, but the language barrier is now crumbling, and home video is quickly becoming democratized, due to the brand new and exciting world of fan-subtitled DVD.

Happy 2011 from www.jeangabinbook.com.


UPDATE, 2/5/11: Because a few readers have asked me, if you click on the title of this article, it will take you directly to the www.ioffer.com store for the gentleman who is offering many of the abovementioned films on DVD, with fan-made English subtitles. The quality is uniformly excellent.




He loves her and she loves somebody else. Such is life. Jean Gabin and Mireille Balin in the terrific Gueule d'amour (1937). This YouTube clip doesn't have any English subtitles, but the DVD does. The film is directed by the criminally underrated Jean Gremillion.

9th Annual Sacramento French Film Festival Honors Jean Gabin on June 26-27, 2010!

Sacramento Honors World's Coolest Movie Star Jean Gabin with a Two-Film Tribute.


If you plan on being in Northern California between Friday, June 18th and Sunday, June 27th, 2010, why not head to the 9th Annual Sacramento French Film Festival (www.sacramentofrenchfilmfestival.org)?

Held at the historic Crest theater, this two-weekend festival will screen eight new French films and four great classics.

Two of the classics, director Julien Duvivier’s 1937 masterwork Pepe Le Moko and Henri Verneuil’s 1970 The Sicilian Clan star none other than the great French movie legend Jean Gabin.

Charles Zigman (me!), author of the new book World’s Coolest Movie Star: The Complete 95 Films (and Legend) of Jean Gabin, Volumes One and Two, will be on-hand to introduce the two Gabin films, and if you miss Pepe Le Moko and Sicilian Clan on Saturday the 26th (Pepe Le Moko screens at 11:00am, and Sicilian Clan unspools at 1:20pm), both films will be repeated on Sunday the 27th – Sicilian Clan at 10:15 am and Pepe Le Moko at 1:00pm.

At the time this posting goes to press, Mary Moncorgé, granddaughter of Jean Gabin, is also scheduled to make an appearance at one or more of the screenings.

On Sunday, author Zigman will even host un Petit Dejeuner – a French breakfast in honor of Jean Gabin – prior to the 10:15 am screening of The Sicilian Clan.

There’s also an Opening Night Reception on Friday, June 18th and a Closing Night Party on Sunday, June 27th.

More more information about the Festival (including a full screening schedule), to purchase tickets, and to learn about a great hotel to stay at if you visit Sacramento, go to
www.sacramentofrenchfilmfestival.org.

The Crest Theater is at:
1013 K Street
Sacramento, CA 95814-3803
(916) 442-5189




Looking forward to meeting you at the Crest Theater for The Sacramento French Film Festival!

Give Jean Gabin for Mother's Day... and Save 50% (at Barnes and Noble.com)

If you wanted to buy author Charles Zigman's two-volume book WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN, but you felt that the cost was too prohibitive, here's some good news for you.

Each of the two volumes of the filmography/biography WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR -- Volume One (Gabin's Early Life, 1904 to 1953) and Volume Two (Gabin's Later Life, 1953 to 1976) -- retail at $39.95, so if you buy both volumes, you pay $79.90. That's a lot of money, in the present, or in any, economy.

But between now and May 10, 2010, if you're a paid member of Barnes and Noble's Book Club, with an up-to-date membership number on your B&N membership card, each of the two volumes is only $19.97, when you buy on line at www.barnesandnoble.com.





Here's how the 50% discount breaks down:

Each of the two volumes of WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR retails at $39.95.

Barnes and Noble is already offering the book to ALL customers at 10% off ($39.95).

If you're a currently-enrolled member of Barnes and Noble's Book Club, and you enter Coupon Code D7P3D8K during the on-line checkout process, Barnes and Noble.com will lower the price by an additional 40%, bringing the cost of each volume all the way down to $19.97. When you buy both volumes you're saving about $40.00.

If you already own Volume One, and you haven't yet purchased Volume Two, this fifty- percent discount might hopefully be some extra incentive. If you don't own either of the two volumes yet, this is the best time of all to get them.

Barnes and Noble.com is also providing free postage on the books.

Jean Gabin, star of La Grande illusion and Pepe Le Moko, has always been considered to be one of Europe's greatest movie stars -- a true giant in cinema, his importance, in Europe, commensurate with that of Humphrey Bogart or Spencer Tracy. (In fact, Gabin has been called 'The French Bogart' and 'The French Tracy.') While Gabin has always had an incredible cult following in America, true stardom has eluded him here. Hopefully, this book will redress the balance.

WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN, VOLUMES ONE AND TWO, are now 50% off at Barnes and Noble.com, through May 10, 2010.

Buy them today!

(PS, Barnes and Noble will only let its members take the discount on one book per order, so to order the two volumes, please place two separate orders.)

Jean Gabin: Spring 2010 News, Includes 50% Discount on Jean Gabin Book

Hope everybody is having a nice spring. Sorry I have not updated this blogsite lately. Here are some recent Jean Gabin odds-and-ends for Spring 2010:


HAPPY 90TH BIRTHDAY TO MICHELE MORGAN.
1. On March 1, 2010, the luminous French actress Michèle Morgan turned 90. Morgan, who lives in Paris, co-starred with Jean Gabin in 1938's Le Quai des brumes, 1939's Le Recif de corail, and 1952's La Minute de verite, and their love scene together in Quai des brumes remains one of the most memorable scenes of that nature in the history of French cinema. In the 2008 film Atonement, a character is even seen in a movie theater, watching Jean Gabin and Michele Morgan on screen together.



A NEW FILM OPENS IN L.A. AND N.Y., DIRECTED BY SON OF FAMOUS JEAN GABIN COLLABORATOR.
2. There's a new French movie playing in the U.S., Un Prophete (A Prophet), a contemporary gangster movie which opened up in New York in Los Angeles on February 26th, and it's still playing. The film was even nominated for an Academy Award, in the Best Foreign Language Film category, however it lost out to an Argentine film, director Juan Jose Campanella's El Secreto de sus ojos (The Secret in Her Eyes). Still, this great French movie is definitely worth seeking out. It should be expanding to more cities as this blog posting is going to press.

Un Prophet is relevant to this website because the film's writer and director is 58-year-old Jacques Audiard. Jacques Audiard's late father, Michel Audiard, wrote eighteen of Jean Gabin's ninety-five films -- Gas-Oil (1955), Le Sang a la tete (1956), Le Rouge est mis (1957), Maigret tend un piege (1958), Les Miserables (adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel, 1958), Le Desordre et la nuit (1958), Archimede, le clochard (1959), Maigret et l'affaire Saint-Fiacre (1959), Rue des Prairies (1959), Le Baron de l'ecluse (1960), Les Vieux de la vieille (1960), Le President (1961), Le Cave se rebiffe (1961), Un Singe en hiver (1962), Le Gentleman d'Epsom (1962), Melodie en sous-sol (1963), Le Pacha (1968), Sous le signe du taureau (1969), and Le Drapeau noir flotte sur la marmite (1971, also directed by Audiard). Audiard Sr. also wrote a five-minute television film for Gabin in December of 1960, which was broadcast in France, for Christmas. Here is the website for Un Prophete: http://www.sonyclassics.com/aprophet/






LOS ANGELES JEAN RENOIR FILM FESTIVAL FEATURES THREE FILMS STARRING JEAN GABIN.
3. In March and April 2010, the Bing Theater at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is screening a nineteen-film tribute to the legendary humanist director, Jean Renoir. This screening includes three films which Renoir directed, starring Jean Gabin. On Saturday March 13th, it's 1955's French Cancan (which also features the Mexican actress Maria Felix); On Friday March 19th, it's La Bete humaine (1938), based on the novel by Emile Zola, and starring Gabin with Simone-Simon; and on Friday March 26th, it's perhaps the most well-known French film ever made, Renoir's anti-war classic La Grande illusion (1937), which co-stars Gabin with Pierre Fresnay, Marcel Dalio, and Eric von Stroheim. All films begin at 7:30pm and are part of double features. For the full schedule, address of LACMA, and prices, please go to http://www.lacma.org/programs/FilmSeriesSchedule.aspx




THE AMERICAN CINEMATHEQUE IN LOS ANGELES WILL SCREEN GLENN FORD'S REMAKE OF A JEAN GABIN CLASSIC ON SATURDAY APRIL 10TH, 2010.
4. On Saturday April 10th 2010 at 9:15pm, the American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theater at 6712 Hollywood Blvd., will unspool a rare 35-mm print of Human Desire, director Fritz Lang's rarely shown American 1953 remake of Jean Renoir's 1938 classic, La Bete humaine. In this fast-paced American remake, Glenn Ford plays the role which Jean Gabin played in the earlier film, and Gloria Grahame assays the role that was originally played by Simone-Simon. Lang's entertaining remake is a very good companion piece to the original Renoir/Gabin version, and it also happens to feature a powerhouse performance by Broderick Crawford as Grahame's paranoid, jilted husband. This screening will be part of the American Cinematheque's 12th Annual Film Noir Festival, programmed by Eddie Muller, and twenty-four other Noir classics will be screened, mostly as double-features, between April 2nd and April 18th, 2010. For more information about the screening of Human Desire, and about other films in the 12th Annual Festival of Film Noir, be sure to visit http://americancinematheque.com/mastercalendar.htm






















TWO-VOLUME JEAN GABIN BOOK IS HALF OFF UNTIL APRIL 12, 2010, FOR BARNES AND NOBLE BOOK CLUB MEMBERS ONLY, WITH CHECK-OUT CODE W4U9C8A.
5. If you're a member of Barnes and Noble's book club, you can buy the book WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN for fifty percent off. Barnes and Noble.com is already discounting Volume One and Volume Two of the book at 10% off, and if you enter coupon code W4U9C8A at checkout, they are taking an additional 40% off. Since you may take the discount only on one book per order, it is suggested that you place two separate orders -- one order for Volume One and the second order for Volume Two -- if you want to take the discount on both books. B&N is also offering free postage. Remember, this is ONLY for PAID MEMBERS of Barnes and Noble's book club. Until April 12, 2010, each volume is only $19.97, in lieu of the usual $39.95. Basically, with this discount, you're getting two volumes for the price of one. Click on the title of this article to go right to the Barnes and Noble.com Jean Gabin Book Page.


Have a wonderful spring.

Charles Zigman,
Author,
WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN,
VOLUME ONE: TRAGIC DRIFTER (ISBN #978-0-9799722-0-1) and
VOLUME TWO: COMEBACK/PATRIARCH (ISBN #978-0-9799722-1-8).
www.jeangabinbook.com

When Trevor Howard Met Jean Gabin

Trevor Howard, that finest of British film actors.


Part of the joy of maintaining this blogsite – which, I admit, I don’t do as much as I should – includes the fact that, on occasion, I receive very nice fan mail for my two-volume filmography/biography, World’s Coolest Movie Star: The Complete 95 Films (and Legend) of Jean Gabin (www.jeangabinbook.com) – of course, World's Coolest Movie Star is the very first English-language book about France’s greatest film actor. Even better, sometimes a reader of my book will relate to me an anecdote about Gabin with which I had been previously unfamiliar.

Yesterday, I was delighted to receive just such an email from Michael Pointon, a television producer who, back in the 1980s, interviewed one of the greatest of all British film stars – the legendary Trevor Howard, who will be familiar to you from such films as Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter (1945) and Lewis Milestone's Mutiny on the Bounty (1962).

In his email, Pointon illuminates me as to a meeting between Trevor Howard and Jean Gabin, which transpired in Paris. I was not aware that these two fine thespians had ever met, so I thank Mr. Pointon for sending me the email.

Here is that email:



“Dear Mr Zigman,

I am enjoying your comprehensive, meticulously-researched and warmly enthusiastic Jean Gabin book. I have been a follower of Gabin’s work for many years, and such a work is long-overdue.

It's clearly a labor of love on your part, and I have an anecdote you may not have heard that might be of use.

I have worked in radio and television documentaries for many years, and one of my assignments, in the early ‘80s, was to interview Trevor Howard, who is probably Britain's finest screen actor.

After asking Howard all of the usual questions and talking with him about his long career, I decided to ask him who his favorite cinema actors were. He instantly named Spencer Tracy and Jean Gabin, two actors to whom his own work had been compared.

Howard was a remarkably reserved man and it had taken a long time for me to persuade him to consent to an interview – probably something he had in common with Gabin. I never thought of asking if he'd actually met Gabin so, to my surprise, some years after his death, one of his biographers wrote of an encounter between Howard and Gabin which has the ring of truth: It seems that Howard was in Paris to publicize a movie he'd made and, as was his wont, he was drinking in a bistro with the film’s producer. Suddenly, to his surprise, a trenchcoat-wearing man crossed the darkened room towards his table, thrust his hand towards Howard, and introduced himself by name, very simply: “Gabin.” Howard stood up in surprise, grasped the outstretched hand, and replied, just as simply, “Howard.” Apparently Jean Gabin and Trevor Howard embraced and left the bistro together – and the producer of Howard’s film didn't see him again for another two days!

Somehow this feels true and, in fact, Howard’s producer related the incident to author Terence Pettigrew. This anecdote is referenced in Pettigrew’s book, TREVOR HOWARD: A PERSONAL BIOGRAPHY...


Kind regards and best wishes,

Michael Pointon”



France's Jean Gabin, the World's Coolest Movie Star.


World’s Coolest Movie Star: The Complete 95 Films (and Legend) of Jean Gabin, Volumes One and Two, is available at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com, and it may also be ordered at a bookseller near you. You may take 40% off the book at Barnes and Noble.com between now and February 10, 2010, when you enter coupon code U4C7L7Y at checkout. (Barnes and Noble is offering the book at 10% off already, so this coupon code entitles you to an extra 30% off. You can only get the discount on one book per order, so to get the discount on each of the two volumes, simply place two orders. These books are postpaid.)

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

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)