Marcel Bluwal, director of the golden age of television, is dead

“My sorrow is immense”, reacted on Facebook the actress Ariane Ascaride, who was his student. Director and theater director Marcel Bluwal, an iconic figure in the golden age of television, died on Saturday at the age of 96, his agent said on Sunday (October 24th).

Born in Paris on May 26, 1925 to Polish Jewish immigrant parents, he entered television in the 1950s where he began by directing children’s programs (“Jeudi après-midi”) before embarking on the television adaptation of chefs. works of theater and literature.

His Dom juan de Molière, shot in 1965 with Michel Piccoli and Claude Brasseur, in natural settings devoid of human presence, marked the history of television and is still cited as a model for adapting a piece for the small screen.

“I never felt like a guru or a nerd”, he declared to Release In 1994. “The year after [Dom Juan] moreover, I continued with Vidocq, which was the symbol of vulgarity. You think: a soap opera! “ Vidocq, with Bernard Noël then Claude Brasseur and Danièle Lebrun (who will become his wife), will achieve considerable success.

His forays into the cinema – like Pile-ups with Louis de Funès (1963) or The most beautiful country in the world (1998) with Claude Brasseur – were more modest and received a mixed reception.

Engaged on the left, he was a member of the PCF, which he left in 1981. In 2008, after 13 years of absence from television, he directed the miniseries To the right all, devoted to the rise of the extreme right in France during the years 1935-1937 through the formation of La Cagoule, an underground organization which fomented the overthrow of the Republic.