From the band We will all go to Heaven, he was the last. Claude Brasseur joined his friends Victor Lanoux, Jean Rochefort and Guy Bedos. Not sure that they will be able to redo a game of tennis but they will be able to share thousands of anecdotes on French cinema since the post-war period.
Like his accomplices, Claude Brasseur has gone through its entire history, since his first steps on the screen in a comedy with Robert Lamoureux in 1956 and then, quickly, as a cyclist, son of Jean Gabin, in ? Rue des prairies. But Claude Brasseur had a special place with the public.
Find in the video below his career in pictures:
A dynasty of actors
First of all because he was part of a family of actors. The child born in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1936 has as parents Pierre Brasseur, theater and cinema monster of the previous generation, and Odette Joyeux, actress then writer.
Also read. From “Vidocq” to “Camping”: five of its outstanding roles
It even belongs to a dynasty of artists dating back to the XIXe century. He himself had subtitled his memoirs published in 2014, Father and Son Brewer, House founded in 1820. In the evening, before going to bed, Claude, godson of the writer Ernest Hemingway (a friend of his father), sees Maria Casarès, Jean Vilar, Louis Jouvet or Jean-Paul Sartre arrive at the house. A childhood where he suffers, however, from the absence of his parents but nourished holidays near Saint-Tropez.
Side of the dynasty, Claude will become himself the father of an actor, Alexandre Brasseur, had in 1971 with Michèle Cambon. But this is another story.
After an apprenticeship photo-reporter attempt, the young Claude took comedy lessons and passed the Conservatory on the advice of Elvire Popesco.
He begins to appear on theaters and film sets, but the general public’s love for this actor is really built with television. First in the guise of Rouletabille in ? The mystery of the yellow room, then in?Vidocq. TAll the viewers of the 1970s have a lasting memory of his sideburns XIXe.
“Pretty cars and fast women”
In the minds of the French, Claude Brasseur becomes this somewhat cheeky, sturdy and party-loving actor who confided in us in 2015: ? “I like nice cars and fast women. “ An image between Gabin and Ventura but who could be a friend. His physical strength, tested as a parachutist for three years in Algeria, helps him.
Two other films finish installing this image. We will all go to Heaven and its sequel, ?An elephant cheats a lot, already mentioned.
These Yves Robert films earned him his first César. The second he got it with The police war by Robin Davis. Another feature film almost got him a third trophy, ? A simple story, twice appointed.
This film by Claude Sautet with Romy Schneider symbolizes a whole different level of Claude Brasseur’s career, that of films close to our life, typical of French cinema of the 1970s.
This did not prevent Brasseur from playing for the restless Truffaut, Godard or Costa Gavras, as with the Lautner, Zidi and Boisset and de Broca. Without forgetting Claude Pinoteau.
We arrived at the beginning of the 1980s and Pinoteau offered him another role which settled him definitively in the hearts of the French, that of Sophie Marceau’s father in ?The party and its sequel. His notoriety having grown even further, the public also discovers Claude Brasseur on the private side, for example as a great sportsman when he wins the Paris-Dakar with Jacky Ickx. Or as chairman of Snowdrop, for the benefit of mentally handicapped young people.
Faithful to the theater
In total, Claude Brasseur has played in nearly 110 films, often cops, bandits and private individuals, without ever giving up the theater, in particular to interpret The stupid dinner with Jacques Villeret.
Moreover, passing through the Anjou festival in Maine-et-Loire, in 2012, to play Tartuffe, he confided to our colleague Laurent Beauvallet: ? “The cinema is funny but, without it being pejorative, it is not our job. It is that of the technicians. If we play well and it’s poorly filmed, we are like idiots; conversely, a good cut can transform a bad actor into a genius… In the theater, there is the obligation to concentrate permanently. “
Three years later, he was back in Angers to play Clemenceau on the boards.
In the 2000s, he experienced a new youth of popularity with ?Camping by Fabien Onteniente where he cultivates the art of wearing shorts for aperitifs, in the role of Jacky.
We had known him to be sick for several weeks, but he did not have the Covid, his agent said yesterday. He will be buried in Paris in accordance with sanitary rules and will rest alongside his father in the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris.
His dates
1936. Born in Neuilly-sur-Seine (Hauts-de-Seine), under the name of Claude Espinasse.
1955. First steps in the theater in Judas, by Pagnol.
1959. First leading role in Prairie Street by Denys de La Patellière,
1964. Bobsleigh accident while he was selected, with his team, for the Winter Olympics in Innsbruck.
1971. Plays Vidocq, in Marcel Bluwal’s series for television. Birth of his son Alexandre, who will also become an actor.
1977. César Award for Best Supporting Actor for An elephant cheats a lot, by Yves Robert.
1980. César Award for Best Role for Police war de Robin Davies.
1980. The party by Claude Pinoteau.
1983. Win the Paris-Dakar rally.
1993. Stupid dinner by Francis Veber (theater)
2003. Plays the policeman Franck Keller in the eponymous series of TF1.
2006. Camping, by Fabien Onteniente.
2020. Disappeared, at the age of 84.
“He is part of a generation that is disappearing”
Philippe Labro, journalist and director: ? “It’s a great emotion. He is part of a generation that is dying out. “
Gilles Jacob, former president of the Cannes film festival: “Yves Robert’s elephant was him. An elephant who wasn’t mistaken, who looked you in the face. “
Patrick Chesnais, actor and director: “His business was life. “
A regular at the Festival d’Anjou
Claude Brasseur came to the Festival for the first time to The diner, in 1990, then played there My father was right, by Sacha Guitry and The Tartuffe de Molière, in 2009 and 2012, with his son Alexandre. “Theatrically speaking, this is my second home”, he told us in 2015, during two performances in Anjou of Wrath of the Tiger, play by Philippe Madral in which he played Clemenceau opposite Monet.
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