(Paris) French cinema mourns its oldest member: actress Micheline Presle, who shot more than 150 films, including a few in Hollywood, died Wednesday at the age of 101.
“Micheline passed away peacefully, at the National House of Artists in Nogent-sur-Marne” in Val-de-Marne, her son-in-law Olivier Bomsel announced to AFP, adding that the funeral would take place privately. .
Born in Paris in August 1922, she remained for a long time one of the three favorite stars of the French with Danielle Darrieux and Michèle Morgan.
In her career, she will meet Alain Resnais, Abel Gance, Jacques Demy and Joseph Losey.
It was Pabst, the German filmmaker – he had filmed Greta Garbo and Louise Brooks in the 1920s – who discovered the young Micheline Chassagne, barely 17 years old, and offered her a role in “Young Girls in Distress” in 1939.
Her name was Presle in the film, she will make it her stage name. But it’s Lost paradise (1940) by Abel Gance who made her known to the general public.
The German Occupation made her the great French star of the free zone.
At the Liberation, she took another step in notoriety with Falbalas (1945) by Jacques Becker, Suet ball (1945) by Christian-Jaque and especially The devil in the body (1947) by Claude Autant-Lara with Gérard Philipe.
Her naturalness and classic beauty led her straight to Hollywood where she married actor and director Bill Marshall.
Hollywood, which had never really been successful for French stars of the time, imposed a draconian contract on him.
“I didn’t do anything interesting there,” she confided. I even managed the feat of making his least interesting film with Fritz Lang, Guerrilla warfare in the Philippinesa commissioned work on the return of General MacArthur.
She can’t turn The Cicero affair of Mankiewicz because she is pregnant, with her daughter Tonie Marshall.
She then returned to France where she toured The love of a woman by Jean Grémillon then, in London, Inspector Morgan’s investigation by Joseph Losey. At the end of the 1950s, the New Wave ignored it.
With directors like Jean Delannoy or Édouard Molinaro, she transitions with ease from roles from elegant bourgeois women to likeable fools. But it was on the small screen that she achieved her greatest success with The darling saints, with Daniel Gélin. A soap opera about the little quirks of married life.
At the beginning of the 1970s, she met a new family at the theater with the Grand Magic Circus by Jérôme Savary, with its delirious style.
Later, she will film with her daughter, director, notably Venus Beauty (institute)in 1999. By receiving the César for best director, the latter, who died in March 2020, will pay tribute to her mother, “always ready to get up at 5 a.m. to wade in the rain and make a first film in the ‘enthusiasm “.