the actress in five unforgettable films and a cult series

The great actress who died on Wednesday began her career in cinema in the 1930s, before working with the biggest names in French cinema.

Micheline Presle, one of the most popular French actresses of the 1940s, who died on Wednesday February 21 at the age of 101, knew how to alternate light and dramatic roles. Here are five of the main films she starred in and a famous series.

1 “The Fantastic Night” (1942)

In this film directed by Marcel L’Herbier under the Occupation, Micheline Presle forms the ideal couple with Fernand Gravey. She plays a mysterious woman dressed in white that Denis dreams of every night. Obsessed by this fantasy, he turns away from his companion and follows this image, carried away into a dreamlike universe.

2 “Ball of Suet” (1945)

In this film by Christian-Jaque, which adapts the eponymous short story by Guy de Maupassant, she replaces Viviane Romance who refuses to play “a patriotic whore”. The director will send Micheline Presle to the Pyrenees to gain weight for the role.

She thus plays a prostitute with a big heart who saves, during the Prussian occupation in 1870, the passengers of a stagecoach. She will only get contempt for any thanks. This film will truly launch his career.

3 “Falbalas” (1945)

Another decisive film for the career of Micheline Presle in the immediate post-war period (even if the film was shot during the Occupation), Falbalasby Jacques Becker, both remarkable melodramatic marivaudage and painting of the world of Parisian fashion (the production also asked the couturier Marcel Rochas to create all the dresses in the film).

Micheline Presle plays Micheline Lafaurie, a young bourgeois woman from the provinces who arrives in Paris to prepare for her marriage to a silky man from Lyon and falls in love with the best friend of her fiancé. But this couturier, unrepentant seducer – masterful Raymond Rouleau – gets caught in his own trap…

4 “The Devil in the Body” (1947)

It was she who chose Gérard Philipe as a partner in this adaptation of Raymond Radiguet’s novel. The two stars play the loves of a high school student and a nurse, newly married to a soldier during the First World War. The adaptation in black and white and in Scope by Claude Autant-Lara causes scandal for incitement “to the exaltation of adultery“and antimilitarism, before becoming a classic.”We love the characters, we love that they love each other, we hate with them the war and the public relentlessness against happiness“, had defended Jean Cocteau.

Micheline Presle is crowned best actress at the Victoires du cinéma français, ancestors of the Césars. She would admit years later to having fallen in love with Gérard Philipe during filming.

5 “The Nun” (1967)

The actress, forgotten after almost ten years in the United States, will experience a new rebound with the New Wave. After great success on stage in Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?she was spotted by Jacques Rivette with whom she toured The nun, adapted from Diderot’s epistolary novel. She plays the superior of a young novice (Anna Karina), forced to take the veil.

The film was censored in 1966, accused of “seriously offend the feelings and consciences of a very large part of the population“. It was finally released in 1967 in five theaters in Paris, prohibited for those under 18, which established its success.

6 “Les Saintes Chéries” (series, 1965-1971)

The television series in 39 episodes, broadcast from 1965 (and until 1970) on the first ORTF channel, presents itself as the smiling ideal of France before May-68, in black and white then in color . Written by Nicole de Buron and produced for the most part by Jean Becker, this humorous study of morals presented everyday life and the little worries of Ève and Pierre Lagarde, a wealthy Parisian couple.

The series became the star of Saturday evenings and the Lagarde couple (Daniel Gélin and Micheline Presle) the symbol of average French people, at the heart of the Thirty Glorious Years.