Films starring Gerard Depardieu

Gérard Depardieu dominates French cinema as no one since Jean Gabin. His achievement is all the more remarkable, however, for the obstacles he has had to overcome in the often traumatic years since he was born on 27 December 1948.

Raised in the Berry town of Châteauroux, the young Depardieu inherited his wastrel father Dédé’s tendency... show more >

Gérard Depardieu dominates French cinema as no one since Jean Gabin. His achievement is all the more remarkable, however, for the obstacles he has had to overcome in the often traumatic years since he was born on 27 December 1948.

Raised in the Berry town of Châteauroux, the young Depardieu inherited his wastrel father Dédé’s tendency towards silence, tantrums and staccato sentences. He also developed strong anti-bourgeois sentiments and a proclivity to revel that was exacerbated by his contact with the nearby USAF base, where he was seduced by American fashion, luxury and culture, and began adopting the mannerisms of Brando and Dean, as well as homegrown yé-yé singers like Johnny Hallyday and Eddie Mitchell.

Getting into all manner of scrapes, the teenage Depardieu also identified with Antoine Doinel in François Truffaut’s Les 400 coups (1959). Yet, while he was a bit of a Jacques the Lad, Depardieu was never institutionalised. Indeed, he looked much tougher than he actually was (thanks to the broken nose acquired during a passing enthusiasm for boxing) and he spent two summers in the mid-1960s charming well-heeled guests as a beach boy on the Riviera.

So, by the time he arrived in Paris in 1965, Depardieu had already discovered that he had a natural actor’s gift for fitting into sundry situations. But he still had trouble communicating and it wasn’t until he began attending acting classes with Jean-Laurent Cochet that the source of his taciturnity was revealed by speech therapist Alfred Tomatis, who used Mozart to correct an imbalance in Depardieu’s hearing. This enabled him to speak with increased confidence and channel his mental energy into greater powers of concentration and memory.

Suddenly something of a cultural gourmand, Depardieu began atoning for his lack of schooling and counted stage director Claude Régy and novelist-cum-filmmaker Marguerite Duras among his tutors. He was also adopted by veteran actors Jean Gabin and Bernard Blier, with the latter’s director son, Bertrand, affording him his first big screen break in Les Valseuses (1974), alongside fellow Théâtre National Populaire alumni, Patrick Dewaere and Miou-Miou.

Despite calls for it to be banned by the Catholic Church and press fears it would spark Clockwork Orange-style copycat delinquency, Les Valseuses was hailed for launching a much-needed brand of post-New Wave iconoclasm and Blier reinforced his reputation as a literate auteur with Préparez vos mouchoirs (1978), which landed the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in the face of furious accusations of misogyny by American feminists that were, ironically, repudiated by their French sisters.

Depardieu would again be charged with chauvinist boorishness in Blier’s Trop belle pour toi (1989), in which he played an affluent car dealer who deserts his perfect family for unprepossessing secretary, Josiane Balasko. But he was now a very different actor, who chose films for the risks they involved and the potential on-set cameraderie they promised. He had also begun drawing on what he called his ‘genetic memory’ to find the requisite emotional tools to bring authenticity to his performance.

Consequently, he no longer settled for lovable palookas with a dangerous streak, but undertook diverse roles that married psychological conflict with quality dialogue. Despite his prolific output, Depardieu rarely essayed similar personalities twice. Yet, like the icons of Hollywood’s Golden Age, he invariably played variations on himself that were impeccably tailored to suit the truth of the scenario. Hence his happy knack of being credible in both historical and contemporary settings, for example playing an actor in Nazi-occupied Paris besotted with co-star Catherine Deneuve in Truffaut’s The Last Metro (1980), for which he won a César, and a bourgeois who is lured into an affair with old flame Fanny Ardant in the same director’s Woman Next Door (1981).

Many see the 1980s as Depardieu’s purple patch, as he teamed with such artists as Alain Resnais on My American Uncle, Maurice Pialat on Loulou (both 1980) and Andrzej Wajda in Danton (1983). However, he reached a wider audience in four costume pictures that were dismissed in some quarters for their chocolate-box accessibility, yet whose crossover success finally brought Depardieu international acclaim and the unlikely status of sex symbol.

As the medieval peasant returning to his village after years away and the sculptor Auguste Rodin respectively in Daniel Vigne’s The Return of Martin Guerre (1982) and Bruno Nuytten’s Camille Claudel (1988), Depardieu exuded an irresistible mix of raw masculinity and sensitive compassion, while he broke hearts as the hunchback cheated out of his water supply by scheming peasants Yves Montand and Daniel Auteuil in Claude Berri’s Jean de Florette (1986) and as the warrior-poet whose embarrassment at the size of his nose prevents him declaring his love in Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s Cyrano (1990).
Best actor prizes at Cannes and the Césars and an Oscar nomination finally convinced the sceptics that there was more to Depardieu than an imposing physical presence. Despite periodic threats to retire and concentrate on his vineyards, he continues to work at an unrelenting pace and now has over 150 film and TV credits to his name, including such small-screen outings as The Count of Monte Cristo (1998) and Napoléon (2002).

Depardieu has even played a key role in the revival of the French film musical, appearing alongside Oscar winner Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose (2007), and returning to his best form in years as the small-time variétés crooner who finds solace in an emotionally fragile estate agent in The Singer (2006).

There’s no knowing in what guise Depardieu will next materialise. But whatever it is, it’s guaranteed to be compelling and memorable. < show less