A final tribute to the “anxious clown”: the funeral of the actor and director Michel Blanc, who died suddenly at the age of 72, was celebrated this Thursday in Paris in the presence of many personalities from cinema and theater, in the Saint-Pierre church. Eustache, in the very center of the capital where the actor lived.
The actor’s coffin arrived around 3:45 p.m. to applause… and a few drops of rain.
Several hundred admirers came to honor the memory of the actor. Father Yves Trocheris, priest of the church, hosted the ceremony. A sound broadcast was organized in front of the church.
“Fuck, Michel, what did you do to us? »
Members of Splendid, the “friends for life” coffee theater troupe, spoke during the ceremony to pay their last respects.
“Fuck, Michel, what did you do to us? Because of you, we find ourselves like idiots with dark glasses and handkerchiefs in a church,” declared director Jean-Paul Rouve, according to BFMTV.
A Jean-Claude Dusse at the bottom of the church
The ceremony was not without humor, with a cult line from Michel Blanc in the mass book – “I feel that I am going to conclude” – and, at the back of the church, a man in sportswear. winter, skis included, reference to the second part of the Tanned.
The ceremony ended around 5:30 p.m. The First Lady Brigitte Macron and the Minister of Culture Rachida Dati, who were present, left the church among the first. His friends from Splendid, the last ones.
Victim of anaphylactic shock
A major actor in comedic cinema in the 1980s before moving towards dramatic roles and a career as a director, Michel Blanc suffered a heart attack during the night from Thursday to Friday after a routine examination, and was transported to a Paris hospital where he died. The Paris prosecutor’s office said it was not aware of his death.
According to his entourage, the actor was the victim of anaphylactic shock, a rare but violent allergic reaction to a food, a drug or venom, which can lead to death in a few minutes. In the case of Michel Blanc, it was a medication that caused the brutal allergic reaction.
A shower of tributes
The death of the eternal Jean-Claude Dusse, this character as exasperating as he is touching who for a time confined Michel Blanc in the roles of hypochondriac or clumsy, has sparked a shower of tributes.
The first of the Splendid troupe to leave, his former comrades Christian Clavier, Gérard Jugnot, Josiane Balasko, Thierry Lhermitte, Marie-Anne Chazel and Bruno Moynot expressed “with one voice” their “immense pain”. All seven of them were still posing in April for the weekly Paris Matchon the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the troupe which was formed at the high school.
Upon the announcement of his death, Head of State Emmanuel Macron spoke of the loss of a “monument of French cinema”, while Prime Minister Michel Barnier estimated that “we [avait] all a little bit of Michel Blanc in us.”
