Michel Simon is an actor of Swiss nationality, born the April 9th 1895 with Geneva and dead the May 30th 1975 with Bry-sur-Marne (the Valley-of-Marne). He is the father of the actor François Simon.

Beginnings

“It never rains but it pours”. As it pleasantly pointed out it, Michel Simon had been born the same year as the Cinématographe. His/her father was porkbutcher with Geneva and Protesting.

Quickly, Michel Simon is diverted studies and of his family to go up to Paris where he lives with the Renaissance hotel, street Saint Martin's day, then with Montmartre. He exerts various small trades to remain (giving lessons of boxing or selling lighters of smuggling on the run). He is also famous to devour all the books which fall to him under the hand (with a predilection for the writings of Courteline).

Its beginnings in the entertainment world are modest: it makes the clown and the acrobat for a number of dancers called “to put forward” (Ribert' S and Simon' S), then for a conjurer.

Recalled in Swiss at the time of the First World War, he is an undisciplined soldier and spends most clearly its time to the stops or the shade of the dungeons. Quickly, its health feels some and it must be hospitalized.

In 1915, during a permission, it sees Georges Pitoëff making his beginnings of actor in French language, in the Hedda Gabler , of Ibsen, with the theater of the Comedy of Geneva. It then decides to become actor in his turn, but it is only in October 1920 that it will make his appearance in the troop of Pitoëff by saying three counterparts of Mesure for Measurement, of Shakespeare (in the role of the clerk). He then practices also the trade of photographer.

At the beginning of 1922, its troop comes to be established with the Comédie of the Fields-Élysées.

Dedication

It leaves it the following year to become actor of boulevard, playing of the light comedies of Tristan Bernard, Yves Mirande and Marcel Achard. This last presents it to Dullin, in the company of which Simon plays a part of Achard, I do not love you with Valentine Tessier. He will also play of the musical comedies like Happiness Mesdames and the joys of Capitole , written by Albert Willemetz.

He is then engaged by Louis Jouvet which replaced Pitoëff with the Comedy of the Fields-Élysées. It is with Jouvet, in a part of Achard, Jean of the moon , that Michel Simon asserts himself in a bright way, on April 18th 1929. Its inimitable talent transforms the secondary role of Cloclo to make the principal attraction of the part of it.

The theatrical career of Michel Simon will continue, of success in success (he plays Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw, Pirandello, Oscar Wilde, Gorski, Bourdet and Bernstein), but it is the cinema which will bring an immense popularity to him.

It begins with the screen in 1925, initially while playing side of Ivan Mosjoukine in Feu Mathias Pascal , of Marcel the Herbarium, according to Pirandello, and almost at the same time while taking part in a film carried out in team in Switzerland, with Jean Choux: the vocation , of Andre Carel (according to the methods of artisanal productions completely identical to those whose French “new wave” of 1958 will assert the originality).

To the silent film, it brings especially an astonishing physique and a not very banal face, of an exceptional mobility. A mobility which it takes great care not to transform into tics, as it too often arrives by facility at this kind of actors: to see for example how much quickly, at the same time, the play of Fernandel will be sclerosed! Michel Simon plays of the shapes of his body with an infinite virtuosity: intelligent ugliness or sympathetic nerve, kindness or naivety, with the grotesque or worrying ugliness, cocasse or stupid, malicious or cruel.

Its true cinematographic career starts only with “speaking” when one realizes that the elocution and the stamp of voice of the actor are as original as his physique and its play. Here Michel Simon appears “unclassable”: comic, dramatic, tragic, light comedy, it can all play with an equal talent. Very quickly, he affirms himself in the comedy. To its credit, 55 parts of 1920 with 1965, and 101 of 1965 with 1975.

Michel Simon dies on May 30th 1975. He rests with the Cemetery with the Large-Lancy in Geneva near his parents, according to his last wills. In the Old city of Geneva, Main street, a commemorative plaque announces the house where Michel Simon was born on April 9th, 1895.

A double life

Michel Simon was also a large friend of the animals, and in particular of the birds. He was also a large amateur of Pornographie. He had a remarkable collection of objects, images and films pornographic which was dispersed with its death. He turned itself several pornographic small films for his personal use.

D´après a biography published in 1989, Michel Simon would have been an agent of the Soviet Secret services of pre-war period. The bibliography does not bring however any proof, just a beam of presumptions.

Catalog of films

Years 1920

Years 1930

Years 1940

Years 1950

Years 1960

Years 1970

Television

  • 1960 : Boubouroche of Stellio Lorenzi

  • 1964: Cinema of our time: Documentary Jean Vigo of Jacques Rozier - Testimonys
  • 1965: Six actors without character of Jean-Emile Jeannesson
  • 1965: Cinema of our time: Documentary Sacha Guitry of (nonknown realizer) - Testimonys
  • 1966: the night listens to Claude Santelli
  • 1966: Cinema of our time: Portrait of Michel Simon by Jean Renoir or Portrait of Jean Renoir by Michel Simon or direction of actors: dialog Documentaire of Jacques Rivette - Témoignages
  • 1968: Of the wind in the branches of Sassafras of Jacques Duhen - John-Emery Rockfeller
  • 1969: Cinema of our time: Clear Rene Documentary of (nonknown realizer) - Testimonys
  • 1973: Welcome in Michel Simon Documentary of Jacques Audoir - Testimonys
  • 1974: History of the French cinema by those which one makes Documentaire Armand Panigel - Témoignages
  • 1995: Documentary Michel Simon of Brace Maatouk

References and sources

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