70 years of career serving the media, from “Figaro” to “Grosses Têtes”

PARIS PREMIERE – SATURDAY JANUARY 11 AT 9 P.M. – DOCUMENTARY

Ninety-five years of existence, seventy of marriage, as many careers, spent writing thousands of articles and columns for Le Figaro, France-Soir, Nice-Morning, Paris Match… and above all to host shows that have become monuments in the history of radio and television: “Les Grosses Têtes” (which RTL entrusted to him without believing it a 1^is April 1977) and “Le Théâtre de Bouvard” (launched in 1982). Even reduced to their most succinct forms, the thousand and one lives of Philippe Bouvard impress. Evoking them in just over an hour is a challenge.

So the two directors uncovered their secret weapon: getting Philippe Bouvard to receive them in his villa in Cannes and to speak – also – about his private life. Hence the presence, also rare, of his wife, Colette, alongside the many friends of this talent scout: Muriel Robin, Michèle Bernier, Mimie Mathy, Philippe Chevallier, who worked at “Le Théâtre de Bouvard”; the former “Big Heads” Jacques Mailhot, Francis Perrin and Macha Méril; the journalist Jérôme Béglé, but also David Lisnard (mayor of Cannes) and Nicolas Sarkozy, nostalgic: “He believed in me from a very young age. »

“He understood that the public is very intelligent”deciphers Macha Méril. It is the same for this film initially titled Philippe Bouvard, his life is a game − in reference to his all-consuming passion −, opening the special evening dedicated to him on Paris Première. In return, as dozens of archives show, his audience has always remained attached to him.

“The representative of the average Frenchman”

He also risks feeling frustrated, as the extracts from his flagship shows are so brief. Only Jean Yanne and Jacques Martin are doing well, ahead of Johnny Hallyday and Thierry Le Luron. When Serge Gainsbourg is just audible, and Jean Dutourd barely glimpsed. On the other hand, the narration is talkative. And the staging makes extensive use of sequences from his self-interviews (before AI), in which Bouvard interviewed Bouvard.

In his nineties, the latter is not the one who intervenes the most. His followers will appreciate his confidences, particularly about his difficult childhood, abandoned at birth by his father (who left with his mother’s savings!), a little Jewish boy hunted down during the war and a dunce at school. Also interesting is the story of professional ascension. “He felt that he was the representative of the average Frenchman. He was rarely wrong.”underlines Philippe Chevallier, very accurately throughout the film. Even if it means not supporting contradiction, hurting people, driven by their thirst for success.

We are therefore surprised from a man so demanding that the end of the “Grosses Têtes” show is truncated: “In 2014, “Les Grosses Têtes” stopped”states the narrator. However, RTL thanked Philippe Bouvard for the first time in the summer of 2000 to put the younger Christophe Dechavanne in his place. What the public neither understood nor followed. To the point that, extremely rare, RTL recalled Philippe Bouvard, who took over “Les Grosses Têtes” from February 2001 to the start of the 2014 school year. There, at 84, he gave way to Laurent Ruquier – another absentee here –, but will continue to work for RTL until… December 2024.