Jean Gabin The Actor Who Was France

This first full-length biography of him in English, shows graphically how and why Jean Gabin, almost despite himself, became, under directors like Marcel Carné and Jean Renoir, a first-magnitude actor. He details Gabin's reluctant start in show business, and his precursive part in the réalisme poétique and film noir movements of the `30s and `40s.



Jean Gabin did more than star in the iconic movies still screened in classic film festivals the world over. From Le Quai des Brumes and La Grande Illusion to Touchez Pas au Grisbi and French Cancan, his 95 roles during his 45-year career form a mosaic of French life. As the director Costa-Gavras put it, “When you saw Gabin, it was France.” In this first full-length biography of him in English, Joseph Harriss shows graphically how and why Gabin, almost despite himself, became, under directors like Julien Duvivier, Marcel Carné, and Jean Renoir, a first-magnitude actor. He details Gabin’s reluctant start in show business as a song and dance man at the Moulin Rouge and Folies Bergère, and his precursive part in the réalisme poétique and film noir movements of the 1930s and `40s. Also covered are the politico-economic context of the time, Gabin’s unhappy Hollywood years, and his largely unknown role in the World War II liberation of France. Gabin’s tumultuous, often painful affairs with Michèle Morgan and Marlene Dietrich, and his real-life role as a Normandy gentleman farmer round out an intimate, revealing portrait of this shy, reserved man who became a monument of 20th-century cinema.