Lino Ventura

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Lino Ventura (born July 14, 1919 as Angiolino Giuseppe Pasquale Ventura in Parma , Italy , † October 22, 1987 in Saint-Cloud , France ) was an Italian-French film actor . For decades he was one of the most popular French character actors .

life and work

Early years

The son of Giovanni Ventura and Luisa Borrini came to France with his mother in 1927 at the age of eight; they lived first in the Italian quarter of Montreuil , then in the 9th arrondissement of Paris . Lino never met his father, who had left the 20-year-old pregnant mother. To support his mother, Lino left school at the age of nine, worked, among other things, as a newspaper seller, porter, accountant and salesman for baby clothing and was a wrestler (under the name Lino Borrini) for eight years . During the Second World War he was drafted into the Italian army, deserted in 1943 and hid in a barn in Baracé until the end of the German occupation .

In the post-war period he appeared as a catcher . After he had to give up this sport - in which he was very successful - due to a leg injury, he worked quite profitably as a competition organizer. Ventura remained good friends with his former catcher colleagues.

Through the mediation of an old friend who worked in the film business, he got a role alongside Jean Gabin and Jeanne Moreau in the gangster film When Night Comes in Paris (1953). As an opponent of Gabin, the production company was looking for a well-built man who could credibly appear as an underworld.

Lino Ventura had been an avid movie-goer since his youth, but had no experience of acting himself and initially had no ambitions to work in this profession. After successful test recordings, in which he was positively noticed by his instinctive acting, he got the role of the gangster Angelo Fraiser. When night falls in Paris it was a box-office hit and made the public and the film world aware of the hitherto completely unknown Ventura.

Since he was well received by the audience and stood out in the studio for his professional way of working, he was booked more and more frequently. In the mid-1950s, Ventura gave up his other activities and became a full-time film actor.

Rise to character actor

Due to his impressive stature and distinctive physiognomy , Ventura was initially still cast as a bodyguard or underworld figure . With the action crime thriller Der Gorilla lets schön greetings (1958), in which he appeared as a powerful secret agent "Gorilla", he was finally able to establish himself as a film star. However , he turned down a well-paid contract for several gorilla films because he did not want to remain committed to such a type.

Rather, Ventura embodied the character of the taciturn inspector in a trench coat for decades. He took on one of the first roles of this kind in 1958 in the Nouvelle Vague classic Elevator to the Scaffold . In 1960, he played alongside the young Jean-Paul Belmondo in The Panther is hounded the gangster Abel Davos, who tries in vain to leave his criminal past behind. From the early 1960s, he advanced to become one of the most popular character actors in Europe with an expanded range of roles in the footsteps of Gabin .

He played leading roles under leading international directors such as Claude Sautet , Vittorio De Sica , Carlos Saura and Jean-Pierre Melville and stood in front of the camera with the great stars of French cinema (such as Jean Gabin, Alain Delon , Jean-Paul Belmondo and Simone Signoret ) . Ventura has appeared in numerous film classics such as Elevator to the Scaffold (1958), Die Abenteurer (1967) or Army in the Shadow (1969), in which he slipped into the role of a resistance fighter.

In The Clan of the Sicilians (1969) he completed the star cast around Delon and Gabin. In the grotesque comedy Die Filzlaus (1973) he parodied his own image and played a taciturn professional killer whom a babbler and suicide candidate ( Jacques Brel ) steals the last nerve. In 1976 he took on the lead role in Francesco Rosi's political drama The Power and its Price . In the psychological thriller The Horror of Medusa (1978), he convinced alongside Richard Burton . In 1981 he played an acting duel with Michel Serrault in the criminal chamber play Das Verhör, which was equally successful with audiences and critics . In 1982 he played the galley convict Jean Valjean in The Legion of the Damned (Les Misérables) . His role as Commissioner Verjeat in Adieu, Bulle is also fondly remembered .

Acting profile

Ventura designed its roles with rather economical means. His film characters were often taciturn and sullen, but acted intelligently and decisively. Ventura's characters were surrounded by an aura of melancholy , behind whose rough shell the viewer could guess humanity and sensitivity. He enriched his roles with a subtle humor, for example by consistently taking the role of the notorious curmudgeon to an extreme. The actor with the distinctive character head represented an unwavering morality in the old-fashioned way and expressed himself less through words than through deeds and gestures. Ventura enjoyed great respect from international colleagues like Richard Burton and Jack Nicholson .

Private life

Ventura's grave in the Val-Saint-Germain cemetery

Lino Ventura was married to his wife Odette Lecomte († 2013) for over four and a half decades without headlines and insisted on the utmost discretion with regard to his private life. The couple had met in 1935, had been married since January 8, 1942 and had four children together. The politically conservative Ventura was described by many as a loner who hardly cultivated friendships or close contacts on the film set. Exceptions were his fellow actors Jacques Brel and Hardy Krüger , with whom he was close friends.

Ventura was not only very popular because of its representations. In the mid-1960s he and his wife founded the Perce-Neige (Snowdrop) Foundation because of the severe disability of their second youngest daughter, Linda . The purpose of the foundation is to collect donations for the establishment of homes for the disabled. The actor used his popularity specifically to promote the foundation among his compatriots, which underpinned his status as a French institution .

Lino Ventura died in 1987 at the age of 68 from complications from a heart attack. Thousands followed his coffin through the streets of Paris.

Filmography

Others

In the Asterix band Streit um Asterix (OT: La Zizanie) from 1970, the centurion Caius Aerobus unmistakably bears the features of Lino Ventura.

literature

Web links

Commons : Lino Ventura  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Ventura, Lino
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ventura, Angiolino Giuseppe Pasquale (maiden name); Ventura, Angiolino Joseph Pascal (full name); Borrini, Lino (stage name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French actor
DATE OF BIRTH July 14, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Parma , Italy
DATE OF DEATH October 22, 1987
Place of death Saint-Cloud , France