French filmmaker Serge Korber died this Sunday, January 23 at the age of 85 in the 18th arrondissement of Paris. This big name in cinema was particularly famous in the 1970s by being in the making of a dozen films during the decade. As an eclectic filmmaker (he was a fan of The new wave of Truffault and Varda but also biting comedies by Michael Audiard), it is by directing Louis de Funès twice that he is remembered.
Coming from a Parisian Jewish family, Serge Korber was forced to spend part of his youth hidden by a Protestant family in Haute-Loire. Destined to become an upholsterer, it was through contact with young communists that he discovered literature (Henry Miller, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck) then the history of art. It is with his circle of close friends that he sets up Le Cheval d’Or, a cabaret in the heart of the Latin Quarter which has seen a parade of many beginner artists such as Raymond Devos, Pierre Perret and Pierre Richard. Frequenting the cinematheque and the entertainment world, he worked for the Olympia and met both Edith Piaf and Josephine Bakerthat François Truffaut and Agnès Varda who offered him small roles in Slacker 62 and Cleo from 5 to 7.
Then the meeting with Jean-Louis Trintignant, who became famous alongside Brigitte Bardot after his role in And God created the woman of Roger Vadimproves to be essential since it will allow him to make his first major film: The Seventeenth Heaven. Subsequently he collaborated with Michel Audiard, Bernard Blier, John LefebvreAnnie Girardot, Bernard Lecoq or Jean Rochefort. But it is indeed his association with Louis de Funès in Perched on a tree and The orchestra man which attracted particular attention. Indeed, by offering less traditional roles to the comic star of the time, he marked a new page in his career. Serge Korber explained in 2001: “In the mind of Louis de Funès, The One-Man Orchestra was a very inflated project: a musical with thirty-year-old guys set to pop music by a little virtuoso with revolutionary methods. Compared to the gendarmes of Saint-Tropez, it was almost avant-garde!”
He married in 1962 with Marie Claire Korber, chief editor of almost all of her films. Together they have a son, Thomas.