The actor Alain Emery, born August 5, 1940 in Marseille, “joined Folco at the Guardians’ Paradise!“, said in an Instagram post this Thursday, May 23, Aldo Bastié, director of the Château de Tarascon, involved in the defense of Provencal culture. Alain Emery was a shooting star of cinema, playing at 11 years old the little fisherman Folco who becomes a friend of White Mane in Albert Lamorisse’s magnificent film (1953), an ode to freedom, childhood and nature.
Shot in the Camargue, the film is a tribute to its winter light, to its very particular rhythms, to its men and women, herdsmen, bull breeders, fishermen, who give this land an incredible wild beauty.
In this film shot in black and white, Crin-Blanc is the leader of a herd of horses living freely. One day, he was captured by men, then managed to escape. He only lets himself be tamed by Folco, a young fisherman sharing this same character trait. A deep friendship will then be born between the two protagonists…”I wasn’t cut out to be an actor. But Crin-Blanc turned my life upside down“, recounted Alain Emery in THE Children of the cinema by François-Guillaume Lorrain (Grasset).
In 1951, a classified ad from Provencal takes him on a shoot in Saintes-Marie-de-la-Mer. He is 11 years old and has never left Marseille. Alain is welcomed at Mas de Cacharel by Denys Colomb de Daunant. He discovers the world of herdsmen, horses, learns to ride, and becomes a larger-than-life Folco, a little blond and fierce savage, clinging to Crin-Blanc.
After “a bohemian life”, Alain Emery settled in a village in the Alpilles, less than an hour from Cacharel.
