Didier Kaminka, traveling companion of the laughing party!

Monsieur Nostalgie tells us about Didier Kaminka, actor, dialogue writer, screenwriter and director who died last September and who made the big nights of French comedy on television and in the cinema.

Comedy is the poor relation of cinema. She's the one who keeps the pot boiling and when it comes to paying tribute to her, even if it's just a sweet note in thanks for the work done, no one responds to the call. Recognition of the belly is very timid in our country. We turn our backs on it for fear of dirtying our minds. Without embarrassment, the influential media will always prefer to praise an obscure director from successive new waves, with a sticky and victimizing neo-realism, the genre that gives lessons and terrors from the studios, financed by our taxes to better caricature our French populism. The masochism of cultural exception knows no limits in France. And yet, when we ask the public about their deep tastes and their memories of feature films, they do not draw their thoughts from a heavy encyclopedia but from the Sunday evening classics.

The humor of yesteryear

Straight away, he remembers Ripoux and Under-gifted with a certain voluptuousness and mischief. His face lights up, the jokes and the farce do not displease him, the tradition comes from far away, from Rabelais and Molière. The absence of seriousness is still the most beautiful mark that a civilized people can show to the world. It is there, in the stampede of the two hooded branques (Jugnot and Auteuil) of the inescapable For a hundred bricks, you have nothing left that this damn French identity is nestled and not on the pediment of the Town Halls. The crucible of our nation is found in Philippe Noiret “taking” a bullet in the gut to save the day for his colleague or in Guy Marchand singing Destiny in a “love-computer” of seaside resorts.

Also read: Don’t touch my Bordeaux!

If the elites are incapable of understanding this saving impulse towards entertainment, they can do nothing more for us. The link is permanently broken. In the past there was The Big Mop et Le Corniaudthese two tutelary milestones have united dysfunctional families more than the declarations of an Under-Secretary of State for Social Cohesion. Then in the 1980s, there was the signature Didier Kaminka (1943-2024). He was part of all the comic adventures of the decade, in the shadow of Claude Zidi, Édouard Molinaro, François Leterrier, Christian Gion and Pierre Richard. In maneuver, as an actor or director, accomplice of Georges Beller and Luis Rego, he had won the ideological battle among the adolescents of my generation by imposing an uninhibited and good-natured humor which was intended to make people laugh, without being worry about differences, without the fear of hurting or insulting the Other. The drama of our time where the slightest remark is perceived as a questioning of the human person. This freedom of expression, which was in no way claimed as a militant or political act, today seems a distant asylum. We are nostalgic for this nonsense which was a common good shared by all and where the second degree was inherent in the art of conversation and self-deprecation, an advanced form of politeness. It wasn't all drama and tears.

An all-terrain artist

Coluche as a rogue from “Planète assistance” or as a disaster inspector would only be perceived by our frightened people of the moment as a crude character, whereas he was a two-faced clown, both hilarious in his spinelessness and ultra-sensitive in his solitude.

Also read: “I place the chronicle at the same literary rank as the novel!”

Didier Kaminka, blue eyes and tousled hair, was a lunar actor and an all-round artist, with a wide palette ranging from the irresistible pain in the ass on the big screen to the contemporary artist. One of his jack-of-all-trades, capable of acting, directing a film, writing on commission and painting an “unstructured pop” picture. Among his filmography, I have a weakness for Criminal association and this magical reply from François Cluzet: “ I earn 10 bricks a month, what am I going to steal from a rotten mob? “. By going behind the camera, he notably realized Sofa promotion which deserves to be praised by critics, with the very talented actress Margot Abascal and What are you thinking about? with Richard Anconina whose trailer is absolutely a must-see on YouTube. And if that wasn't enough to convince you, Kaminka was in the credits of an episode (Weekend in Deauville) from the series Sam and Sally with Georges Descrières and Corinne le Poulain. He is therefore untouchable!