Five years ago, the French actor, screenwriter and director looked back on the key films of his career for Première.
The disappearance of Michel Blanc is a shock to anyone who grew up with the Splendid comedies. Died last night following a heart attack, this very popular actor, also acclaimed for his work as a screenwriter and director, had always known how to renew himself throughout his career, not letting himself be crushed by his interpretation of the loser Jean-Claude Dusse In The Bronzedwhich achieved enormous success in the late 1970s.
In 2019, at the time of the theatrical release of Doctor?by Tristan Séguéla, he returned to our pages on the films that marked his career. Whether he is in front of or behind the camera, solo or with the Splendid gang, we owe Michel Blanc some of our greatest cinema memories.
Comments collected by Thierry Cheze and Christophe Narbonne.
Michel Blanc is dead: the Splendid actor was 72 years old
THE TENANT by Roman Polanski (1976)
Between 1974 and 1978, Michel Blanc played small roles. Sometimes he only has one scene to play like here, where he plays a neighbor of Polanski annoyed by the noise and who is sharply put in his place by Bernard Fresson.
“At the time, with my friends, we chased the cachet in more or less important productions. Margot Capelier, the great casting director, kept an eye on young people like us, from the café-theater. She always had a something to offer us. One day, she asked me if I knew how to ride a bike to play a postman in Monsieur Klein, a role that I didn’t get. She was the one who recommended me to Polanski. remember that I had an appointment on a Monday morning, at eight o’clock. I went there, scared to death, Roman, who had to return from Gstaad where he spent his weekends, had a problem. with his private plane. He ended up arriving around four p.m. Suffice it to say that my anxiety had had time to build up. It ended up going very well.”
THE BRONZED by Patrice Leconte (1978)
With this film, he became a star. His character as a difficult flirt, Jean-Claude Dusse, goes down in history.
“When it came to adapting our piece Love, shellfish and crustaceansour first wish was that Patrice Leconte would direct; we resisted a little Yves Rousset-Rouard, producer and uncle of Christian Clavier, who had other names in mind. While shooting, we didn’t think for a second that the film would work as well as it did and that it would stay with us for the rest of our lives. As for Jean-Claude Dusse, he has become an archetype almost in spite of me. At Splendid, we didn’t write our own roles but those of everyone else. However, quite quickly, we saw who was going to play what. When it turned out that Dusse was for me, I thought it was lucky. I hadn’t yet found my comedy job. I thought of Woody Allen, a neurotic, physically fragile character, who not only fails to seduce, but is not even noticed by women. I did not participate in the writing of Tanned people go skiing. I found it vulgar to make a sequel, but it is better than the first!”
WALKING IN THE SHADE by Michel Blanc (1984)
Michel Blanc becomes Patrice Leconte’s favorite actor: Come to my place, I live with a friend, My wife’s name is come back et Move around, there’s nothing to see! capitalize on his weak and hypochondriac character. Then, he decided to move on to directing.
“I wrote with Patrice Come to my house…. et My wife..., big successes. It was he who pushed me to realize Walk in the shadow which I had the idea of and which I had proposed to him. I was taken aback, but he managed to convince me. He told me to hire a good first assistant and a great technical advisor, in this case Patrick Dewolf with whom I wrote the structure of the story. Then, I had to choose my partner. I wanted Gérard Lanvin at all costs, who had refused to do Come to my house…replaced by Bernard Giraudeau. Christian Fechner, the producer, then told me that it would be rude not to work again with Bernard, who ultimately declined, finding himself too old for the role. And Gérard accepted this time, to my great relief.”
EVENING ATTIRE by Bertrand Blier (1986)
Sudden change of register for Michel Blanc, who plays a straight man seduced by Gérard Depardieu. Prize for Best Actor at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival.
“I thought for a long time that Bertrand Blier didn’t like me. It went back to a casting for a beer ad that he directed and where I was very bad. He then filmed The Valseuses where Jugnot and Lhermitte appeared, which confirmed my conviction. Years later, at the beginning of 1985, I met him at the César luncheon. He comes to see me and says: “I’m making a film with Depardieu and Giraudeau, then I’m thinking about something for you.” Shortly after, he called me and offered to send me his script. This is where I learned that Giraudeau, again, declined the role at the last moment. I then ask Bertrand how he plans to do it, I don’t particularly have Bernard’s physique and playing style… “When you change actors, it’s better to completely change your point of view”he answers me. With Gérard, things went very well despite a difficult start. It turns out that I had gotten into the habit of going to New York to work on my roles for a few days. Gérard was angry and tried to dissuade me. I then told him that it was like that and not otherwise. He was then very considerate.”
Michel Blanc: these 80s that changed everything
MR HIRE by Patrice Leconte (1989)
Michel Blanc moves a little further away from comedy with this very dark adaptation by Simenon on a misanthropic character, suspected of a murder he did not commit.
“I consider the character of Mr. Hire to be my first truly major compositional role. I was in fact an actor who was given a lot of dialogue and who gesticulated a lot. Mr. Hire is precisely the opposite: he doesn’t move not and expresses himself solely through his gaze, at my request, Patrice scrupulously monitored this. Something special happened to me during filming. On the last day, we reshot the ending scene which didn’t work – the one where Hire falls. from the roof. We quickly put it away, then I returned home, I saw a police cordon and commotion. A worker, who was working on the fifth floor of my building, had fallen to his death. I was both shaken and disturbed by this terrible coincidence. I am not a mystic, but I admit that I asked myself questions.
VERY TIRED by Michel Blanc (1994)
Michel Blanc plays Michel Blanc, whose double makes multiple mistakes that end up falling on him. A second award-winning achievement at Cannes.
“I wanted to talk about the strange relationship between the public and celebrities. But it took me a while to find how. I tried without success with Josiane Balasko and Jacques Audiard. Then it was suggested to me to work with Bertrand Blier who taught me to write because until then, I restricted my imagination by my obsession with perfectly structuring each scene. Whereas Bertrand follows the opposite logic: he imagines a first scene without having the sequel in mind. This is also why I quickly understood that our duo would lead to nothing: what I proposed to him never fit with his creative freedom so Bertrand wrote a first version alone. And it was so Blier that. I didn’t see the point in directing it, but he had the idea of having actors play their own roles. And when I learned that Depardieu wanted to take over the project. I reclaimed it, obviously inspired by Bertrand’s discoveries.”
I FIND YOU VERY BEAUTIFUL by Isabelle Mergault (2005)
Throughout his career as a director (Mauvaise Passe and Kiss Who You Will), Michel Blanc, actor, kept a low profile for ten years, but returned to the top of the bill with this role of a farmer in search of a soul mate. Love is in the meadow before its time!
“The same public phenomenon happened with this film as with In the Name of the Earth. I didn’t imagine for a moment that we would end up with 3 million admissions when I read the script. I wanted this film because Isabelle offered me a role that was usually offered to Jugnot! Much more sentimental than I was used to, I was a little afraid of going through it, but I accepted for it. broaden my range of play. It was during the promotional tour in the provinces that we felt that something was happening! I even received the Order of Agricultural Merit. At first, I declined because I found it so. indecent towards the farmers until it was explained to me that it was they who insisted on thanking us for showing their loneliness, their financial and emotional difficulties in the cinema. were doing.”
I find you very handsome: Michel Blanc does not need a misunderstanding to conclude
STATE EXERCISE by Pierre Schoeller (2011)
Michel Blanc confirms his growing ease in evolving in dramatic registers with this role which earned him a César.
“I had dreamed for a long time of playing a character with convictions stronger than anything: a man of the Church, a soldier… This chief of staff belongs to that family. He has the same relationship with the State as a priest with God. Impossible to say no despite my anxiety of not being up to him, so far away from me. It was Pierre’s gaze that carried me. He had researched a lot, had met directors of. cabinet and had a very precise idea of how I should embody this character At first, I was too nice: a director must be courteous, but not nice. In the end, there was only one scene. where neither he nor I knew where we were going. The one where I recite Jean Moulin’s entry speech into the Pantheon While performing it, I caught all of Malraux’s emotion in the face and decided to. playing it as if I were listening to an opera aria. It’s the only moment in the film where we can sense this man’s skin-deep sensitivity.”
DOCTOR? by Tristan Séguéla (2019)
Michel Blanc has never broken with comedy. He excels here as a jaded doctor, forced to team up, one Christmas evening, with a young delivery man who knows nothing about medical matters.
“My agent assured me that I rarely read such well-written comedy scripts. And I share his point of view. I immediately liked this idea of two characters who each need the other to evolve and save themselves mutually in an almost filial relationship But to say yes, I needed to know my partner Because without wanting to play with him, I knew I was incapable of interpreting this doctor. , I had the same enthusiasm as him. Hakim is extremely funny with an originality, an extraordinary truth, even in the way of playing, of articulating, of moving with someone like that. generation keeps me on my toes. Because like our characters, we were able to learn a lot from each other. In any case, he taught me a lot.
Doctor? – Michel Blanc: “It’s also a film about transmission”
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