Michel Piccoli

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Michel Piccoli, 1993

Jacques Daniel Michel Piccoli (born December 27, 1925 in Paris , † May 12, 2020 in Saint-Philbert-sur-Risle ) was a French theater and film actor . He also worked as a screenwriter , director and film producer. Piccoli's acting career spanned 70 years; he is considered one of the most important character actors in France.

Life

youth

Michel Piccoli, 1945

Michel Piccoli was the son of a family of musicians of Italian origin who had lived in Paris for several generations. His father Henri Piccoli was a violinist and his mother Marcelle Expert-Bezançon was a pianist . Piccoli attended the Collège d'Annel, the École Alsacienne and the Collège Sainte-Barbe in Paris and then took acting lessons from René Simon . As a student he had previously participated in various amateur performances. After his acting training, he appeared on various Parisian stages; For example, in 1954 he played in the world premiere of the piece La Soirée des proverbes by Georges Schehadé , directed by Jean-Louis Barrault at the Petit Théâtre Marigny. For a time he was director of the Théâtre de Babylone .

Career

Piccoli made his film debut in 1944. He played under well-known directors, initially often only in smaller roles, including as Captain Valorgeuil in Jean Renoir's French Can Can (1954), as Maurice Rouger in Kurt Maetzig's Ernst Thälmann - Leader of His Class and as James Putnam in Die Hexen von Salem ( 1956). His embodiment of religion in the form of the priest Lizzardi alongside Georges Marchal and Michèle Girardon in Luis Buñuel's Breath of the Jungle ( La mort en ce jardin , 1956) was his first major role.

His first leading role was the music hall director Jacques Forestier , who was in love with Annie Cordy in the romance Tabarin (1958). After another role in Buñuel's Diary of a Maid , it was the character of the writer Paul Javal in Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt (1963) who made him famous. His extensive repertoire included the roles of the unscrupulous blackmailer alongside Catherine Deneuve in Buñuel's Belle de Jour - Beauty of the Day , by the romantic music shop owner Simon Dame, whom Danielle Darrieux did not want to marry in Jacques Demy's Die Mädchen von Rochefort because of his name (“Madame Lady ”), and a suspected spy man in A Man Too Much by Costa-Gavras .

Alfred Hitchcock hired him in 1968 along with other popular French stars such as Claude Jade , Dany Robin and Philippe Noiret for his thriller Topas . Piccoli played the boss of the spy ring Topas, who was ultimately exposed. His film partner Claude Jade reported that Hitchcock later regretted not having given Piccoli the central lead that Frederick Stafford had played. At that time Piccoli was still abandoned for a younger man, as in Catherine Deneuve in La Chamade - Palpitation .

With The Things of Life began his work with the director Claude Sautet . He plays with him, often together with Romy Schneider , leading roles in Das Mädchen und der Kommissar , Mado and Vincent, François, Paul and the others . With Schneider, he also formed a film couple with other directors, for example in their last film The Walker of Sans-Souci . From the beginning of the 1970s, Piccoli often played abysmal representatives of bourgeois society on the border with anarchism . As a powerful rendition of his role is considered grunting proletarians in wordless Themroc of Claude Faraldo .

Michel Piccoli, 2000

In addition to his film work, Piccoli appeared in theater productions and was seen in productions by Luc Bondy , Peter Brook and Robert Wilson, among others. In 2007 he was appointed to the competition jury of the 60th Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the European Film Prize for his leading role as Henri Husson in Manoel de Oliveira's drama Belle Toujours .

Political commitment

Like many other film and theater colleagues, Piccoli was also involved in the political left in France. For example, he campaigned for the communist and pacifist Mouvement de la paix and for Amnesty International . In 2007 he supported the socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal in an appeal signed by 150 intellectuals and artists .

Private life

In 1954 Michel Piccoli married the actress Éléonore Hirt . The marriage produced a daughter. After an affair with Romy Schneider, he married Juliette Gréco in 1966 ; the marriage was divorced in 1977. From 1978 until his death he was the third wife of the screenwriter Ludivine Clerc , with whom he adopted two children. Michel Piccoli died on May 12, 2020 at the age of 94 on his estate in Saint-Philbert-sur-Risle in Normandy as a result of a stroke .

Filmography (selection)

Awards (selection)

documentary

  • The amazing Monsieur Piccoli. (OT: L'extravagant monsieur Piccoli. ) Documentary, France, 2016, 55:15 min., Script and director: Yves Jeuland, production: Kuiv Productions, arte France, INA , Cine +, first broadcast: May 28, 2017 on arte, Summary of ARD .

Web links

Commons : Michel Piccoli  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b mf: Michel Piccoli in the Munzinger Archive , retrieved from the Internationales Biographisches Archiv 44/2010 on November 2, 2010 ( beginning of the article freely available)
  2. ↑ Call and list of names in: "Avant qu'il ne soit trop tard." In: Nouvel Observateur , March 13, 2007. ("Before it's too late.")
  3. ^ Michel Piccoli, "Mort dans les bras" de Ludivine, sa dernière femme: qui est-elle? In: gala.fr. May 18, 2020, accessed on May 18, 2020 (French).
  4. ↑ Michel Piccoli on Frankreich-Sued.de
  5. ^ Catherine Balle: Mort de Michel Piccoli, acteur de légende du cinéma français. In: leparisien.fr . May 18, 2020, accessed on May 18, 2020 (French).
  6. ↑ Film and theater actor: Michel Piccoli is dead. In: faz.net . May 18, 2020, accessed May 18, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Michel Piccoli is dead. In: zeit.de . May 18, 2020, accessed May 18, 2020 .
  8. ^ L'acteur Michel Piccoli est décédé chez lui dans son manoir de Saint-Philbert-sur-Risle, dans l'Eure. In: paris-normandie.fr. Retrieved May 18, 2020 (French).
  9. ↑ mohāğer ( Persian [ Fārsī ]) - emigrant
personal data
SURNAME Piccoli, Michel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Piccoli, Jacques Daniel Michel (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French actor
DATE OF BIRTH December 27, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris , France
DATE OF DEATH May 12, 2020
Place of death Saint-Philbert-sur-Risle