Overview

Jean Gabin did more than star in the iconic movies still screened in classic film festivals the world over. From Le Quai des Brumes and La Grande Illusion to Touchez Pas au Grisbi and French Cancan, his 95 roles during his 45-year career form a mosaic of French life. As the director Costa-Gavras put it, “When you saw Gabin, it was France.” In this first full-length biography of him in English, Joseph Harriss shows graphically how and why Gabin, almost despite himself, became, under directors like Julien Duvivier, Marcel Carné, and Jean Renoir, a first-magnitude actor. He details Gabin’s reluctant start in show business as a song and dance man at the Moulin Rouge and Folies Bergère, and his precursive part in the réalisme poétique and film noir movements of the 1930s and `40s. Also covered are the politico-economic context of the time, Gabin’s unhappy Hollywood years, and his largely unknown role in the World War II liberation of France. Gabin’s tumultuous, often painful affairs with Michèle Morgan and Marlene Dietrich, and his real-life role as a Normandy gentleman farmer round out an intimate, revealing portrait of this shy, reserved man who became a monument of 20th-century cinema.

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9781476676272

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A thorough, well-researched biography --Los Angeles Times; fascinating and thoroughly researched.... This is the first full-length account of Gabin's colorful life in English and is likely to be the book of choice for film scholars and Anglophone French cinema fans for some time to come.... Harriss brings narrative skill and sweeping historical context to the Gabin saga.... Harris weaves the threads of Gabin's life into a coherent chronological story covering 72 years, from his birth in 1904 to his death in 1976. He avoids the star-struck tone of so many such biographies and lets the story tell itself. And the story is riveting. --Facts & Arts; This beautifully written, fast-moving book is immaculately researched. One of the best film bios I have ever read, it will be a useful work of scholarship for many years to come. --Charles Zigman, Los Angeles based screenwriter and teacher of film studies

This beautifully written, fast-moving book is immaculately researched. One of the best film bios I have ever read, it will be a useful work of scholarship for many years to come. --Charles Zigman, Los Angeles based screenwriter and teacher of film studies

Author Information

Joseph Harriss’s articles and columns from his posts in Paris, North Africa, Brussels and Washington have appeared in many newspapers and magazines, including Time, The New York Times, Smithsonian, and The American Spectator. He lives in Paris, France.

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