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

50% OFF JEAN GABIN BOOK THROUGH 3/29/10, BARNES AND NOBLE.COM BOOK CLUB MEMBERS ONLY! ONE WEEK ONLY!

BULLETIN:

Spring into daylight savings time with 50% off on the book WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN, VOLUMES ONE AND TWO, by Charles Zigman. Normally, each of the two volumes sells for $39.95, but through March 29, 2010, you can buy BOTH volumes for a total of $39.95 -- or $19.97 each.


SPRING SPECIAL FOR MEMBERS OF BARNES AND NOBLE BOOK CLUB, ONLY: Between now and March 22, 2010, members of Barnes and Noble.com's Book Club may take 50% off of the book "World's Coolest Movie Star," by entering coupon code U7J7W8J during the checkout process. (B&N is offering 10% off, plus the coupon code entitles you to take an extra 40@% off.) Free postage is included, as well.

Click on the title of this article and you will be taken directly to the WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR page on Barnes and Noble.com.

IMPORTANT: Please note that this discount applies to Barnes and Noble Book Club members ONLY. You may only take the fifty percent discount on one book in each order, so to order both Volume One and Volume Two at the fifty percent discount, you must place two separate orders.

Until March 29, 2010 buy WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR at $19.97 instead of the usual $39.95!

WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR is the first book in the English language about the amazing French movie legend Jean Gabin. It is part biography and part filmography and features more than 200 photographs, many of which have never appeared in print. Brigitte Bardot and Michele Morgan have contributed forewords to the book and Gabin fan David Mamet has supplied an Appreciation.

Thank you for your interest in Jean Gabin.

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)

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!"

Don't "Come with me to the Casbah:" On the Getty Center's Disappointing Algiers Exhibit

Visitors from France recently -- the Bardet/Danton family, who helped me when I was in France a few years ago, researching, and viewing films for, my book WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS AND LEGEND OF JEAN GABIN, VOLUMES ONE AND TWO (www.jeangabinbook.com).

The Bardet family -- husband and wife Lolo and Jean-Paul and their two kids Laetitia and Louis -- had never been to the Getty Center in Los Angeles, so I thought it would be a good excuse for me to catch up with the Getty's temporary exhibit, WALLS OF ALGIERS: NARRATIVES OF THE CITY, which will be in place through October 18th.

Of course, the famed Casbah section of the city of Algiers is famous for having appeared in Jean Gabin's legendary 1937 film Pepe Le Moko. I was looking forward to this exhibit, because I thought I would be treated not only to breathtaking images of Algiers, but also (maybe, I had hoped) some props or an original poster from the film? In short, I thought this exhibit would give me a comprehensive lesson in "all-things Casbah."

I was very disappointed to find that the Getty has relegated its Algiers exhibit to a small, 12 x 12 square-foot bedroom-sized room in a minor building, in the very back of the Getty Center, called The Exhbition Gallery. Very literally, the exhibit features two hanging maps of Algiers, a photo of a woman in a caftan, a couple of pictures of Jean Seberg visiting the Casbah in the '60s, and a glass table with a musical instrument and a scarf under it. That's it.

The Getty really dropped the ball on this one. You'll learn much more about Algiers just by watching the first six minutes of director Julien Duvivier's Pepe Le Moko, in which a narrator explains that the dusky Casbah is the home to Arabs, Berbers, black Africans, Turks, and kulughli (the offspring of Turkish solderis and Algerian women). Here are those first six minutes:




If you want to learn more about Algiers and the Casbah, watch Pepe Le Moko in its entirety, or read the great new 283-paged book which the Getty Center has produced in connection with its exhibit. (For some reason, Getty put a lot into the book, but not so much into the exhibit.) The book, like the exhibit, is called Walls of Algiers: Narratives of the City Through Text and Image, and the editors are Zeynep Celik, Julia Clancy-Smith, and Frances Terpak. You can buy it from Amazon.com, for $37.19.

You can also buy my own book, WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN, from Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com.

Detroit Artist Guy Budziak Creates Woodcuts Inspired by Jean Gabin and Other Great Film Noir Notables

I would like to take a brief moment to point you toward a great website:


http://www.filmnoirwoodcuts.com/

Artist Guy Budziak, in Detroit, makes and sells some really gorgeous woodcuts, inspired by great, key moments from film noir cinema's greatest masterpieces. In Guy's precision pieces, you'll see great performers like Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Robert Ryan, Marie Winsdor, Joan Blondell, Ruth Roman, Robert Mitchum, Elisha Cook, Jr., Tyrone Power, Veronica Lake, Dana Andrews, and many more.

One of Guy's selections happens to be a great woodcut of Jean Gabin, culled from a sequence in director Julien Duvivier's haunting 1937 proto-noir, Pepe Le Moko . Guy tells me that he is currently working on a second Jean Gabin woodcut, which will soon be on the way.

Here's Guy's Gabin/Pepe Le Moko woodcut:

Jean Gabin is not the only French star to appear in one of Guy's woodcuts: The French author Ginette Vincendeau used Guy's woodcut of Alain Delon, from the 1967 neo-noir Le Samourai, for the front jacket of her 2008 book Les Stars et le Star-Systeme en France. (This book was published in France, by L'Harmattan.)


I definitely recommend that you visit Guy Budziak's website www.filmnoirwoodcuts.com, where you will see samples of his great work.

Happy 75th Birthday, Brigitte Bardot!

Here, Brigitte Bardot appears alongside Gabin in director Claude Autant-Lara's 1958 motion picture En cas de malheur.


Happy Birthday Brigitte Bardot, who wrote the foreword to my book WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN, VOLUME TWO. (Go to www.jeangabinbook.com to find out how you can buy both volumes.)

Bardot appeared in forty-five feature films made between 1952 and 1973, including 1958's En cas de malheur, in which she co-starred, for the first and only time, with Jean Gabin. In Malheur, prostitute Bardot robs a store, and is defended by crusty old barrister Gabin, who is forty years her senior -- and of course, it's not long before the two of them are carrying on a tempestuous affair, with a tragic result. The literal title of the film means "In Case of Accident," but the film was released very briefly in the U.S., by Kinglsey Pictures, under the more lurid title, "Love is My Profession."

Brigitte Bardot has not appeared in a movie in thirty-six years, and today she continues to dedicate herself to the plight of cruelty against animals. To this end, she has created the Brigitte Bardot Foundation (it's the French equivalent of the American organization, P.E.T.A.), and you may read more about Ms. Bardot and her continuing great work by going to her website:

The ENGLISH-LANGUAGE HOMEPAGE FOR THE "FONDATION BRIGITTE BARDOT" is at:
http://www.fondationbrigittebardot.fr/site/homepage.php?Id=2

The FRENCH-LANGUAGE HOMEPAGE FOR THE "FONDATION BRIGITTE BARDOT" is at:
http://www.fondationbrigittebardot.fr


Happy 75th Birthday to Brigitte Bardot!


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Trailer for En cas de malheur, starring Jean Gabin and Brigitte Bardot
www.jeangabinbook.com

Jean Gabin Book: The 2009/2010 Expanded/Revised "Second Edition" is Now Here: Press Release

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Here is Jean Gabin in the hypnotic 1939 film Le Recif de corail (The Coral Reefs, 1939), one of the films discussed in the book WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN, VOLUMES ONE AND TWO, by Charles Zigman. While it was made during the same period when Gabin starred in such internationally recognized classics as Pepe Le Moko, La Bete humaine, Le Jour se leve, La Grande illusion, and Le Quai des brumes, Recif is completely unknown in America. In fact, because the film was considered to be "lost," it was unknown even in France, the country of its production, until 2004! The film actually had its French premiere in 2004, sixty years after it was produced.



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

For More Information, contact: publisher@allenwoodpress.com



“Jean Gabin is one of the greatest actors who ever lived. He is, to me, the paradigm of the perfect actor. He’s still. He’s honest. He’s brave. He would never make anything up. He would never add any emotion to it… And he performs with such simplicity, that it can only be understood as artistic courage…”
David Mamet



ALLENWOOD PRESS ANNOUNCES AN OCTOBER 1, 2009 RELEASE DATE FOR
AWARD-WINNING FILM HISTORIAN/AUTHOR CHARLES ZIGMAN’S 2009/2010 “SECOND EDITION” OF WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN VOLUMES I & II


Awarded “Best Performing Arts Book” by Independent Publisher Book Awards in 2009 and “Book of the Year” for Best Performing Arts Book by Foreword Magazine in ‘08
Los Angeles, CA – Allenwood Press announces October 1, 2009 as the release date of the 2nd edition of a revised and expanded version of Film Historian/Author, Charles Zigman’s Award-Winning Two-Volume Set on the prolific film career of Actor Jean Gabin entitled, WORLD’S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN VOLS I AND II. Awarded “Best Performing Arts Book” by Independent Publisher Book Awards in 2009 and “Book of the Year” for Best Performing Arts Book by Foreword Magazine in ’08, the newly expanded and revised 2nd edition includes new photographs and twelve completely re-written chapters, with new information discovered via reader feedback from the First Edition.

The twelve film chapters which have been completely re-written from scratch for The Second Edition are for the films Coeurs joyeux (1933), La Bandera (1935), La Belle equipe (1935), Gueule d'amour (1937), Remorques (1941), Moontide (1942), Impostor (1944), L'Air de Paris (1954), Gas-Oil (1955), Razzia sur la chnouf (1955), Voici le temps des assassins (1957), and Le Chat (1971). Most of the other chapters feature important revisions, alterations, and deletions, as well.


Considered to be one of the greatest movie stars of all time by movie fans throughout the world, the legendary French actor Jean Gabin’s entire prolific film career is documented in the WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN, VOLUMES ONE AND TWO. These are the very first filmography books on Jean Gabin and his ninety-five films in any language, not to mention the very first books ever written about Jean Gabin in the English-language. “For many people around the world,” Ian Birnie, film curator of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has said, “Jean Gabin is, and has always been, French cinema.”
The legendary actress Michele Morgan, who appeared with Gabin in some of his best known feature films, wrote the foreword to Volume One. Actress Brigitte Bardot penned an original foreword to Volume Two; Playwright/Director David Mamet has provided an “appreciation” in the same volume.


WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN, VOLUMES I AND II is for Jean Gabin newbies and completists alike: For the un-initiated, both books feature lengthy biography and introductory chapters which place Gabin and his famous big-screen persona into perspective; and for film buffs, Film Historian/Author Charles Zigman presents ninety-five separate chapters dedicated to Jean Gabin's ninety-five theatrical feature films. Each of the two volumes features over 100 rare archival photographs, never seen before in other published French-language books about Jean Gabin.


More than sixty motion pictures which have never been subtitled into English have been translated by native speakers and written about by Author Zigman in WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN, VOLUMES I AND II, allowing English-speaking readers to feel, by reading about the films, that they’re actually ‘seeing’ them. Excerpts included from original U.S. and European newspaper reviews, written between the 1930’s and the 1970’s, demonstrate how prominent movie critics received Gabin's pictures when they were first released.
Throughout the world, Jean Gabin is considered to be film history’s consummate everyman, and he continues to be a huge cult figure in the United States. In 2002, week-long Jean Gabin festivals were presented at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’ and at the Walter Reade Theatres in New York to sold-out crowds. In September of 2008, Author Zigman, in connection with the release of the First Edition, presented a two-night Jean Gabin Screening Event and Book Signing at the American Cinematheque at Hollywood’s Egyptian Theater.


During the 1930s and 1940s, Gabin's popularity in the U.S. equaled that of Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, and Bette Davis. Volume One, subtitled "Tragic Drifter," explores the period between 1930 to 1953, and covers the first forty-six of Gabin’s films, including the internationally renowned GRAND ILLUSION, as well as the 1937 gangster classic PEPE LE MOKO in which, as in other films made during this period, the actor reucrringly plays international movie history's most famous tragic drifter.


Volume Two, subtitled "Comeback/Patriarch," covers Films 47 through 95, which Gabin made between 1954 and 1976. During this period, instead of playing the tragic drifter, the star played a series of mega-cool gentleman-criminals and world-weary yet life-loving patriarchs. Gabin even turned out comedies during this period, films which have been previously unknown to English-speaking audiences.
Film Historian/Author Charles Zigman’s goal is to introduce as many people as possible to Gabin’s films and life in a fun, informative, comprehensive way. The 2nd edition of WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN, VOLUMES I AND II will be available October 1, 2009. The two volumes are sold separately.


Film Historian/Author Charles Zigman, a native of Los Angeles, has taught Film and Television at Augusta State University, Georgia. Zigman is a graduate of both UCLA’s undergraduate filmmaking program and Columbia University’s Graduate Department of Film in New York, where he co-wrote a screenplay with writing legend Terry Southern. Zigman has also contributed articles to NEW TIMES LOS ANGELES, CULT MOVIES MAGAZINE, THE HOLLYWOOD STOCK EXCHANGE, WORD.COM, and L.A. TRIBE.COM, not to mention several chapters to the 2001 book GIG: AMERICANS TALK ABOUT THEIR JOBS AT THE TIME OF THE MILLENNIUM (Crown Books). For the past ten years, he has traveled the world, researching and writing about all ninety-five films of Jean Gabin. He currently resides in Los Angeles, CA. For more information, go to www.jeangabinbook.com and www.allenwoodpress.com.



Volume One: Tragic Drifter: ISBN: #978-0-9799722-0-1. ($39.95 U.S./£25.00 U.K./ €26.85 European Union.) Hardcover, 6 x 9, 576pps., 113 black and white photos, Pub. Date: October 1, 2009.

Volume Two: Comeback/Patriarch: ISBN: #978-0-9799722-1-8. ($39.95 U.S./£25.00 U.K./ €26.85 European Union.) Hardcover, 6 X 9, 532pps., 100 black and white photos, Pub. Date: October 1, 2009.

Distributed by: Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr, Amazon.ca, Baker and Taylor, Barnes and Noble, Bertram’s, Blackwell Book Services, Coutts, Cypher Library Supplier, Gardner’s, Holt Jackson, Ingram, NACSCORP, Book Depository.

-END-

Richard Schickel: Time Magazine Critic Prefers Jean Gabin to Spencer Tracy (Yes!) and Says Goodbye to LACMA's Film Program

In October 2009, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will shutter its 37-year film program, which included a popular twelve-film 2002 tribute to Jean Gabin.

by Charles Zigman, August 5, 2009.


On July 28, 2009, Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, announced that his museum's prestigous Friday and Saturday night film screenings, a Los Angeles mainstay for more than thirty-seven years, will be shut down, in October, due to lack of financing and because it's been bleeding money: The program has lost, according to Govan, more than $1 million over the last ten years. (During a bad economy, as this author has discovered elsewhere, the arts -- especially film -- is the first thing to go.)

It's tragic, because LACMA is one of the few places left in the entire country where one can regularly go to see great old movies, projected in a theater, and the films programmed by former curator Ian Birnie were often brilliant and neglected. (How long before L.A.'s American Cinematheque and N.Y.'s Film Forum are boarded up?)

On August 1, Time Magazine's illustrious film critic Richard Schickel wrote an Opinion piece for the L.A. Times, entitled, "LACMA's Cruelest Cut," in which he decried LACMA's savage cut. In the same piece, he extolled some of the great movies and filmmakers he had witnessed at LACMA's Leo S. Bing Theater over the last many years.

Especially, in his Times piece, Schickel celebrated the great French actor Jean Gabin, the subject of this author's two-volume biography/filmography WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN, which was released on July 20, 2008 (www.jeangabinbook.com). The all-new, expanded/revised version of the book will be released on September 1, 2009.

In his L.A. Times piece, Schickel wrote:

"[At LACMA], you could have witnessed the great Jean Gabin (weary, taciturn and the kind of actor Spencer Tracy aimed to be but never quite became) in Touchez pas au Grisbi, experiencing a screen portrayal at its highest and most subtle level."

Above, Schickel has referenced the fact that American journalists have always called Jean Gabin "the French Spencer Tracy," but that, in his opinion, Gabin is superior to Tracy. (This author loves both actors, but has to agree with Schickel.)

LACMA's 2002 twelve-film tribute series to Jean Gabin was, principally, what lit the fire under me to write my book about Gabin. I had seen a number of his films before, but LACMA screened some of the actor's films which had rarely been screened in Los Angeles, in beautiful 35 millimeter prints, and I couldn't wait to write about them.

And of course, while I'm devastated to see LACMA's film series go, and while I try to stay away from editorializing on this blogsite (as well as in my life), I can also see the other side of the picture as well, in the sense that, while LACMA's Friday and Saturday night film presentations are one of my favorite things about L.A., I'm also hopelessly pragmatic; I understand that the series had lost more than $1 million over the last ten years, because of underattendance. (Usually, only 250 out of the theater's 600 seats are sold.) So while I feel horribly that LACMA's film series has to be axed, I have to say that I also agree with director Govan. Some people, on line, are "making petitions" in the hopes of restoring LACMA's film program, but if the petitioners are really interested, what they should really do is send LACMA some money, instead of some signatures. I try not to add any vitriol to this blog site, but it always infuriates me, to no end, when groovy artsy-craftsy people want something done, but they always think it should come out of somebody else's pocket, and I am guilty of this grievous sin sometimes, too. If you want LACMA to continue its series, as I do, you should be thinking, as I am thinking right now, about writing LACMA a check, because the arts don't run themselves, especially during a Recession. Just like anything else worth doing, you have to fight for it, and the way we fight, here in America, is with green paper with pictures of presidents on it, and not by signing a passive-agressive petition. And, yes, I am completely serious about this.

What I'm trying to say, most ineffectively, is that I hope LACMA can restore its Friday and Saturday night film presentations, but if it can't, it can't. Money talks. I thank the Museum for the years of pleasure its film screenings have given me and others in L.A.

And I thank Richard Schickel for pointing out, correctly, in his Los Angeles Times piece, that Jean Gabin is "the real Spencer Tracy!"



Rene Dary and Jean Gabin starred in Touchez pas au grisbi, which was screened at LACMA, in 2002, as part of the Museum's Gabin Film Festival.

The all-new 2009 edition of WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN, VOLUMES ONE AND TWO, will be available on September 1, 2009. Check this blogsite for updates!

Michele Morgan, 89, Jean Gabin's Greatest Co-Star, wins Legion of Honor Award in Paris!

Some great news!

This past week, on July 14, the great and luminiscent French actress Michele Morgan, who is 89 years old, was one of six recipients of the Legion of Honor award in France, a prize which she shares with actress Bernadette Lafont, directors Jerome Deschamps and Macha Makeieff, former Minister of Justice Albin Chalandion, and academician Jean-Marie Rouart.

Morgan, for Anglophone movie fans who might not familiar with her, is one of France's leading movie stars of the Golden Age, as popular in her native country as Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, and Bette Davis are in the United States.

Of course, she is probably also Jean Gabin's greatest co-star; in fact, in director Michele Carne's 1938 classic of French Poetic Realism, Le Quai des brumes (Port of Shadows), Gabin tells Morgan, "T'as de beaux yeux, tu sais" (translation: "You have the most beautiful eyes, you know"). (In terms of its paramount importance, this line of dialogue is right up there with "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn," from Gone with the Wind, where French film scholars and film fans are concerned.) In real-life, Gabin and Morgan were an item for awhile, in the late '30s and early '40s, as well.




Very literally, this is the most famous line in the history of French cinema:
"T'as de beaux yeux, tu sais." (It's not 'what' Gabin says swooningly to Morgan, but how he says it.)




Right before she co-starred with Gabin in 1939's Le Quai des brumes, Morgan, who was then only 17, first appeared alongside the actor in 1938's Le Recif de corail (The Coral Reef), and she and Gabin also co-starred together in 1941's Remorques (Tugboats/Misty Wharves) and 1952's La Minute de verite (The Moment of Truth). Additionally, Gabin and Morgan appeared separately in director Sacha Guitry's undernourished 1952 epic, Napoleon,which might be the only 'bad' film associated with either actor.

Michele Morgan, who was born Simone Roussel on February 29, 1920 (a leap year), first came to the attention of the French moviegoing public with her starring role in director Marc Allegret's 1937 Gribouille, a sort of pre-cursor to Lumet's Twelve Angry Men, and she appeared in more than seventy movies and television roles up until the time she retired from the screen, in 1999. During the Second World War, when Germany invaded France, many French film notables, including both Gabin and Morgan, temporarily moved to Hollywood where they appeared in a number of American-made English-language films.

Morgan has been married three times -- to the American actor William Marshall, to the French actor Henri Vidal, and to the director Gerard Oury, and her son by William Marshall, Mike Marshall, who passed away in 2005, was a film actor as well.

Today, retired from performing, the multifaceted Michele Morgan continues to be a painter of great repute, with occasional gallery exhibitions in France. Here she is on June 11, 2008, still beautiful and engaging at the age of 88:



And of course, Morgan has also contributed an original foreword to my book WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN (www.jeangabinbook.com). The First Edition of WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR was released on July 20, 2008, and the all-new revised/updated/expanded Second Edition should be released around September 1, 2009. Keep your eyes on this blogsite for more details as they become available.

Congratulations to Michele Morgan on her great honor!

Happy Bastille Day from Jean Gabin Book.com!

Happy Bastille Day from
www.jeangabinbook.com.

Today is July 14th. It's the perfect day to celebrate a great French holiday, Bastille Day... and it's also a perfect day to buy a copy of a book about a great French movie star:
WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN, by Charles Zigman

From Wikipedia:

Bastille Day is the French national holiday, celebrated on 14 July each year. In France, it is called Fête Nationale ("National Celebration") in official parlance, or more commonly le quatorze juillet ("14 July"). It commemorates the 1790 Fête de la Fédération, held on the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789; the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille fortress-prison was seen as a symbol of the uprising of the modern nation, and of the reconciliation of all the French inside the constitutional monarchy which preceded the First Republic, during the French Revolution.

Festivities are held on the morning of 14 July, on the Champs-Élysées avenue in Paris in front of the President of the Republic.

The parade opens with many cadets from the École Polytechnique, Saint-Cyr, École Navale, and so forth, then other infantry troops, then motorised troops; aviation of the Patrouille de France flies above. In recent times, it has become customary to invite units from France's allies to the parade; in 2004 during the centenary of the Entente Cordiale, British troops (the band of the Royal Marines, the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment, Grenadier Guards and King's Troop, Royal Horse Artillery) led the Bastille Day parade in Paris for the first time, with the Red Arrows flying overhead.[1]

Traditionally, the students of the École Polytechnique set up some form of joke.[citation needed]

The president used to give an interview to members of the press, discussing the situation of the country, recent events and projects for the future. Nicolas Sarkozy, elected president in 2007, has chosen not to give it. The President also holds a garden party at the Palais de l'Elysée.

Article 17 of the Constitution of France gives the President the authority to pardon offenders, and since 1991 the President has pardoned many petty offenders (mainly traffic offences) on 14 July. In 2007, President Sarkozy declined to continue the practice[2].



www.jeangabinbook.com

Jean Gabin in GRAND ILLUSION: Watch It Right Here/Right Now

Hello:

I'm Chuck Zigman, author of WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR, THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN, VOLUMES ONE AND TWO.

I'm hard at work on the all-new, expanded/revised 2009 edition of my book, which should be available around September 1st (keep checking back at this blogsite for the exact date), and this is why I haven't been posting blog entries regularly.

In the meantime, how would you like to watch a Jean Gabin movie right now?

Here you go:



Director Jean Renoir's 1937 classic, La Grande illusion, is perhaps the best known of all of Gabin's ninety-five feature films and, of course, it's considered to be one of the Top 100 Movies of All Time by almost every serious film critic on earth.

Grand Illusion is, primarily, the story of three World War One fighter pilots -- an aristocrat (Pierre Fresnay), a member of the working-class (Jean Gabin), and an 'eternally wandering Jew' who fits in with neither of those two classes (Marcel Dalio) -- and how their friendship will overcome their differences, especially when they are captured and placed in various POW camps. Their 'foil,' who turns out to be good-hearted, is the German colonel Von Rauffenstein, who's played by Eric von Stroheim (his is an iconic role; even if you've never seen Grand Illusion, you've probably, at some point in your life, seen an image of Stroheim from this film -- bald-headed, monocle, standing collar, etc.).

I hope you enjoy Grand Illusion. The film has been uploaded in 15 chapters, but don't worry, you don't have to do anything; at the end of each chapter, the film will automatically proceed to the following chapter.

To read more about Jean Gabin and Grand Illusion, buy a copy of WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN, VOLUMES ONE AND TWO. The New/Expanded/Revised 2009 Edition should be available on September 1, 2009.

Thank you! Hope you're having a nice summer.

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

Jean Gabin Book, Wins Two Book Awards in 2009

Some good news this month, as my book, WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN, won two book awards, taking home the bronze award in both competitions:

WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR is the winner of the 2009 Independent Publishing (IP) Book Awards (Bronze), in the category of Performing Arts. (The First Place/Gold winner was Quincy Jones's autobiography, The Complete Quincy Jones and the Second Place/Silver winner was Inside Beethoven's Quartets, from Harvard University Press.) My book tied for third place (bronze) with Robert Osborne's 80 Years of Oscar: The Official History of the Academy Awards and Historic Photos of Broadway by Leonard Jacobs.

WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR is also the winner of ForeWord Magazine's 2008 Book of the Year Awards (Bronze), in the category of Performing Arts and Drama. (The First Place/Gold winner was What We Do: Working in the Theater, from Infinity Press, and the Second Place/Silver Winner was the new English translation of Book of Dreams, by Federico Fellini, from Rizzoli Press.)



The newly revised/updated 2009 Edition of WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN ("Version 2.0"), from Allenwood Press, will be available to purchase later this summer. Check back to this blogsite for more details.

For more information about WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR, please email or phone Allenwood Press: publisher@allenwoodpress.com or (323)297-2130.

Jean Gabin: Plumber?

I was having lunch yesterday at a great L.A. diner, the Good Neighbor Restaurant on Cahuenga Blvd., when I happened to notice this van in the parking lot.

Apparently, Jean Gabin -- besides being THE WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR (per the title of my book) -- is now, also, a plumber!

The all-new Second Edition (aka, 'The First 2009 Edition') of WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR will be available later this summer. Keep your eyes on this blogsite for more information.

Chuck Zigman,
Author,
World's Coolest Movie Star: The Complete 95 Films (and Legend) of Jean Gabin, Volumes One and Two.
www.jeangabinbook.com

Swine Flu Completely Unrelated to "World's Coolest Movie Star" Jean Gabin

I was trying to find a connection between the current Swine Flu hysteria and Jean Gabin, and there isn't one -- although this photo has recently surfaced!


www.jeangabinbook.com

Parisians See Bracelet Given by Jean Gabin to Marlene Dietrich

Here's an article I found recently on AFP: Between now and July 2009, visitors to the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris can see art deco jewelry designed by Jean Despres -- including a bracelet which Jean Gabin presented to Marlene Dietrich, when the two dated in the 1940s:




Art Deco's life in the fast lane
Mar 21, 2009

PARIS (AFP) — Art Deco was so ahead of its time that its practitioners were accused of being "too modern" and their work looks contemporary today, even though it is more than 80 years old.

The Musee des Art Decoratifs in Paris has mounted a major retrospective to celebrate Jean Despres, one of the fathers of modern jewellery, and other leading "modernist" jewellers working in the Roaring Twenties and Thirties.

"Life was going faster. Cars, planes, trains, everything was going faster. They wanted things to be monumental, so they could be seen from a distance," explains Laurence Mouillefarine, associate curator of the show, picking out some big, showy brooches to illustrate the point.

"They also wanted their work to be more affordable, so they used silver or silver plating instead of gold, and semi-precious stones like citrine, onyx, moonstones and rock crystal, much cheaper than diamonds."

Lacquer, which the Chinese brought to Europe during the war, when it was used as glue on aircraft propellers, was also popular.

The new style was known as "sports jewellery" or "travel jewellery" and still tended to be worn only by an elite, avant-garde set.

"It's hard to appreciate how very daring this was at the time. Costume jewellery didn't exist," says Mouillefarine.

Despres had 80 of his pieces rejected by the jury for the Salon D'Autumne trade show in 1928 for being "too modern," says Melissa Gabardi, who wrote the first monograph on Despres 10 years ago.

Despres was very influenced by Cubism: the painter Georges Braques was his best friend.

During World War I he worked on aircraft engines and his early jewellery was openly inspired by machinery and engine parts, like his camshaft ring.

He initially used silver, because he didn't have the money for more expensive materials, together with coral, onyx, enamel and lapis lazuli.

The ring remained his favourite. "What I enjoy mostly and that I can do in a different way from the others," he told the engraver Etienne Cournault, with whom he collaborated.

The exhibition has a showcase with a chronological display of rings from the 1920s to 1970s and a small room wallpapered with his designs, which "are very easy to wear even today," says Gabardi.

"He was very successful in his lifetime. His work was collected by stars, like Josephine Baker and Andy Warhol," says Gabardi.

But because he didn't have children to carry on the business, he had largely been forgotten by his death in 1980.

Art Deco had already fallen out of fashion by the 1940s. In fact, it wasn't until 1969 that the term "Art Deco" was coined by the British historian and journalist Bevis Hillier to refer to the geometric style of the 20s and 30s.

Apart from the Despres pieces which the artist himself donated to the museum, 80 percent of the exhibits come from private collections, more than half abroad. One of the major contributions is from the American model and face of Victoria's Secret, Stephanie Seymour.

Highlights include a 1930 Cartier bracelet of ballbearings set in gold which actor Jean Gabin gave Marlene Dietrich and a 1932 rock crystal bracelet owned by Gloria Swanson.

A silver pendant with green and black lacquer by Jean Fouquet was acquired in the 1970s by Chanel's chief designer Karl Lagerfeld, a notoriously avid art collector.

A bracelet by Suzanne Belperron was worn by the style icon, American Vogue editor Diana Vreeland.

Apart from jewellery, exhibits include exquisite objets d'art -- ultra-slim cigarette cases, rendered obsolete by today's no-smoking laws, with such symbols of modernity as a racing car or a typewriter.

There is even a sleek little vanity case. Once only prostitutes wore make-up, but by the 1920s free-spirited women even dared to make themselves up in public.

It took the curators a full year to track down the items they wanted for the exhibition, as most are in private hands. And even then, sometimes they were frustrated.

"An old lady with a bracelet said she couldn't bear to lend it to the exhibition because she didn't have that much more time left to wear it. I didn't insist," says Mouillefarine.

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