Sacha Guitry

Sacha Guitry , of its complete name Alexandre Georges-Pierre Guitry, actor, author of parts of Theater, director, dialogist, scenario writer and realizer of Cinema French, born the February 21st 1885 with Saint-Pétersbourg, deceased the July 24th 1957 with Paris. He is the son of Lucien Guitry (1860 - 1925), large very famous actor at his time, and of Renee of Bridge-Jest.

Biography

Theater with the cinema

Poor pupil, Sacha Guitry appears brilliant actor very early, and well quickly an author and excellent director. He writes itself his own parts, sometimes in less than three days, and ensures of it the setting in scene and interpretation. Nono (1905) gains a sharp success. But the failure of the Key , in 1907, discourages a time Sacha Guitry, and it is the unwavering support of its large elder Octave Mirbeau which gives him courage to continue: admiring and grateful, Sacha Guitry will request a foreword of him for its Petite Holland , in 1908, and will devote a part, a subject of novel , which will be created, on January 4th, 1924 to him, by his/her father Lucien Guitry, in the role of the great writer, and also owed the being by Sarah Bernhardt, in the role of Alice Regnault - but the Divine one died before the first.

Man of spirit to caustic humor, it is Sacha Guitry which discovers and launches Raimu in Faisons a dream. He makes the delights of the public but also attracts himself the jealousy of criticisms. He is a little the opposite of the theater of the Trust of the four created amongst other things by Louis Jouvet and Charles Dullin. Sacha Guitry uses with the theater the techniques which it will use with the cinema: to adapt the rules, the codes of a kind for better endorsing them.

But with the cinema, the reports/ratios initially will be very tended. It makes a first attempt in 1915, by carrying out Those of on our premises , in reaction to an exciting German proclamation the Germanic culture. He films certain friends of his father, Rodin and Renoir father and wire inter alia. He notes their words and repeats them during the public diffusions. By doing this, Guitry quite simply had just invented what was going to become the postsynchronization and doubling. But he is not convinced.

Like Jouvet, it reproaches the cinema for not having the same power as the theater, and puts itself at it only in 1935. Understanding that the cinema allows a survival, by fixing the images on the film, it decides to put out of box some of its plays. Initially Pasteur , written by Sacha for his/her father Lucien Guitry, and interpreted by this last, giving free course to its passion for the historical History and characters. Prophetic work because in a scene, Louis Pasteur, played by Sacha Guitry, declares with its fellow-members: “Sirs, I know that I do not use the conventional style to which you are accustomed”. Heavy direction phrases which seems intended for criticisms which disparage it since it makes theater. The same year, it carries out Good luck and gives the first feminine role to his wife Jacqueline Delubac. The style of Guitry continues there a little more.

In 1936, it realizes starting from the part that it wrote the new will . So in Pasteur , there were sufficient scenes in outsides to make forget the theatrical adaptation, it is not the case here. The feeling of door-close which each one of its own theatrical adaptations gets will be being accentuated with time. Then, always in 1936, it carries out the novel of a cheater , for much its masterpiece. In this film, carried out as a dumb man, except for some scenes of dialogs, Guitry in scene the single novel puts that he wrote, Mémoires of a cheater . He is the narrator of film, and already its taste for the told stories appears. If the history can seem banal, it is in fact a frightening praise of the cinema, art of the illusion. Any Guitry is contained in its first four films: play with the filmic processes, reconstitution of events or biography of historical characters, theatrical adaptations.

In the years 1930, all goes for best in the life of Guitry. The only black spot is its divorce with Jacqueline Delubac, but it is comforted quickly and married Genevieve de Séréville who will be the only one of her five wives to bear the name of Guitry. In connection with the women, Guitry declared: “the women, I am against… against”. In 1939, he is elected with the Goncourt Academy, and carries out They were nine single people , with many high-speed motorboats of which Elvire Popesco. Guitry milked there of the phony marriage, topic eternal. But the film is in almost direct catch with the topicality because the history starts from a decree which obliges the foreigners to leave France. To crown the whole, the shortly after the first of its film, the war bursts.

Black years

The situation becomes complicated for Parisian Guitry which does not want to leave the capital. He plays of his influence to obtain the release of personalities, in particular the writer Tristan Bernard and his wife, and manages to put in scene the fabulous Destiny of Desired Clary , work cocardière on the famous one promised in marriage of Napoleon, and Donne me your eyes . With the Release, it is victim of a hunting for the witches, like Henri-Georges Clouzot for the corbel . Its attitude with the German occupant is considered to be obliging and he is imprisoned 60 days without reason. He is then denounced - on unfounded rumors - by writers like Pierre Descaves, the actress Helene Perdrière or certain journalists of the Figaro (directed then by Pierre Brisson, of which he had been made an enemy). He will not obtain, in 1947, a withdrawal of case as ambiguous as late (he will acknowledge later that he would have preferred a lawsuit). Its detractors forget that he was always opposed so that its parts are played in Germany. It of will remember and when he declares in Pauline Carton, in the credits of the Poison , that the decoration of the cell was carried out starting from its memories, one feels to sting the bitterness in his voice. Trying to take the thing with humor, he declares: “Release? I can say that I of it was the first prevented ”. It will publish its memories in the form of two accounts: Four years of occupation for the period of 1940 in August 1944 and 60 days of prison for the two months painful and humiliating which followed. He explains his behavior in the lame Devil , biography of Talleyrand which supports several modes with a single aim of serving the size of France.

The Thirties were years of dreams and the Forties of the black years; the Fifties will be a two decades synthesis past. He writes the scenario of Adhémar or the toy of fate , but the realization entrusts some to Fernandel, which already carried out a film, because he is sick. In front of the result, Guitry is estimated betrayed and brought a lawsuit with Fernandel. Lawsuit which it loses. This film announces the continuation of the work of the scenario writer. The tone is more melancholic person ( the actor , Deburau , the Treasury of Cantenac ), sometimes caustic ( I was to it three times , the Poison , the life of an honest man ), but always comic ( Toâ , With the two doves , You saved me the life ). His/her friends support it and the recognition comes with the order from large historical productions: If Versailles to me were told , Napoleon , If Paris to us were told . Witty remarks and prestigious distribution make the charm of these frescos. He does not forget his arrest and carries out the very caustic Assassins and robbers , taken along by the duet Jean Poiret - Michel Serrault, and Darry Cowl made there his beginnings in a practically impromptu but laughing scene. the three make the pair is the last film which it carries out with the assistance of the actor-producer-realizer Clément Duhour, because the disease weakened it much. Film-nap on the cinema of Guitry where one finds all that makes the salt of its work: play with the filmic processes, fidelity with certain actors, caustic humor. Its artistic will is the scenario of the Life with two which it writes and where it remelts several of its parts; it is Clément Duhour who will carry it out after the death of the scenario writer, with a pleiad of high-speed motorboats come to pay homage to the Master.

Sacha Guitry and actors

Sacha Guitry holds the main role of almost all its films. But it can be sometimes erased when that is necessary, as in film with sketch They were nine single people , with great names with the credits: Saturnin Fabre, Elvire Popesco, Gaston Dubosc. The man is a faithful friend, and Pauline Carton will be practically all its films, Guitry sometimes inventing roles to him. He entrusts the main role of the poison and of the Life of an honest man to Michel Simon, as that of its last film the three make the pair that Simon did not like but that he agreed to play by friendship for Guitry then dying. Actor but also director, it can detect the new talents: Louis de Funès, Darry Cowl, Michel Serrault, Jacqueline Delubac to quote only these, is launched by Guitry. Raimu, grateful towards that which launched it, agrees to play free in the Pearls of the crown , and Guitry written to measure, for Fernandel, the scenario of Adhémar . He often requests Gaby Morlay to play from the plays, and two of his films.
Parmi the already quoted great names, also let us announce Erich Von Stroheim, Orson Welles, Jean Cocteau, Jean Gabin, Gerard Philippe, Jean Marais, Danielle Darrieux, Michele Morgan, Pierre Larquey, Jean-Louis Barrault, Arletty, Edith Piaf, Robert Lamoureux, Yves Montand, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Luis Mariano, Jacques Varennes, Suzanne Dantès, Saturnin Fabre, Brigitte Bardot… Throughout her work, Guitry will be made the cantor of actor, of his father in particular. He carries out a biography the actor , and a theatrical adaptation, My father was right . For him, Lucien Guitry and Sarah Bernhardt are the two larger actors of the world, and it does not fail to recall it in the many articles which it signed. Remainder, some of its films seem to be conceived for the actors: the Pearls of the crown , They were nine single people , the Treasury of Cantenac , or its historical trilogy.

Sacha Guitry and criticism

With criticism, Sacha Guitry always maintained the conflict relations, and this as of its work with the theater. Guitry invents a style which clean, is based to him on incisive and percussion dialogs, often déclamés by him. It is its statute of complete author, and the success which it obtained, which returned it imbuvable to the eyes of criticisms. Remainder, Guitry will be avenged throughout its work and will not cease scoffing this profession which forever desired to make the effort include/understand it. One reproaches his films for being only “filmed theater”. But Guitry, like of Provence the Marcel Pagnol, another dramatic author of theater and cinema, imposes its style, builds a universe with whole share. Often, criticisms reproached Guitry for revealing the artefacts of turning. The scenario writer, by showing his style, affixes his claw and prevents whoever from copying it. Height is reached with They were nine single people : at the end of film, Guitry mixes reality and fiction while making accept “the serious lover” of Elvire Popesco that both are making a film. Reality goes more quickly than the fiction. And the film was reduced by criticism, in spite of positive reactions.
Parmi criticisms most virulent, one regularly finds the charge of megalomania, claim. When Guitry puts in scene If Versailles to me were told , film showing the castle of Versailles of its birth at our days, one reproaches him for being last beside its subject and for having carried out a visit with the Grévin museum. Criticism demolishes film and forgets that Guitry is realizer with all the responsibilities that implies, but also scenario writer, dialogist and actor. Few scenario writers assume as many loads. Specify that Orson Welles, which played in If Versailles to me were told and Napoleon , regarded Guitry as its Master. Remainder, there exist several common points between the two artists: both men of theater, radio, set on literature, having the same direction of humor.
Another assumption can be planned to explain its reports/ratios tended with criticism: virtuosity and the obvious facility with which the Master is driven in the filmic universe. When it carries out the fabulous Destiny of Desired Clary , it places the credits right in the middle of film and offers the luxury to change several interpreters with a rare smoothness. Cinema, Guitry declared: “It is a magic lantern. The irony and the grace should not be excluded about it”. Another anecdote summarizes the character: during the turning of If Versailles to me were told , a technician, by viewing the rushes, points out to Guitry which one sees a camera in the field. The scenario writer answers him: “My friend, the public suspects well that we used cameras to carry out this film. ” Ease, elegance, smoothness and humor combined with a solid control technical. That had what to attract the scandalmongerings and the jealousies. He was rehabilitated by the New wave and François Truffaut in particular, which saw in him the complete author, like Charlie Chaplin.

He will write to measure for his second wife Yvonne Printemps, several musical comedies with very great success ( Mozart , love masked …) and also seven reviews with his/her friend Albert Willemetz.

Theatrical work

  • the K.W.T.Z. (1905).
  • Nono (1906).
  • At Zoaques (1906).
  • the Key (1907), which knew a furnace.
  • Small Holland (1908, foreword of Octave Mirbeau).
  • the Night watchman (1911).
  • the Catch of Berg-COp-Zoom (1912).
  • Pèlerine Scottish (1914).
  • Two covers (1914).
  • a pair of slaps
  • a well typed letter
  • Deburau
  • the jealousy (1915)
  • Let us make a dream (1916)
  • Jean of the Fountain (1916)
  • One evening when one is alone (1917)
  • the husband, the woman is the lover (1919)
  • My father was right (1919)
  • the actor (1921)
  • a subject of novel (1924), part inspired by the couple of Octave Mirbeau and Alice Regnault.
  • Désiré (1927)
  • the new will (1934)
  • the Word of Cambronne (1936)
  • Quadrille (1937)
  • the Beloved (1940)
  • do not listen, Mesdames (1942)
  • Mozart , comedy in three acts
(nonexhaustive list)

Catalog of films

All films (except exception) as: realizer, scenario writer, dialogist, actor . Mentions of adaptation of its own parts, and their dates of first representation, remain to be raised.

Work written

  • memories of a cheater
  • 1947 Four years of occupation .
  • 1949 60 days of prison (facsimiled manuscript, illustrated by drawings of the author).
  • 1979 the small red notebook and other new memories

Documentary

  • Those of on our premises (1915 - 1952)
    Credity like realizer, scenario writer, dialogist and narrateur.
    La first version of 1915, dumb, lasted 22 minutes. The first wiring for sound goes back to 1939, and the altered final version of 1952, which lasts 44 minutes, credits Frederic Rossif as collaborator.

Catalog of films (scenario writer)

(nonexhaustive list)

Adaptations of its work

  • Life with two (1958), of Clement Duhour, adapted of five parts of Sacha Guitry (" Désiré" , " Illusionniste" , " A pair of gifles" , " The White and Noir" and " Françoise") connected between them by a scenario-pretext. One does not know which was the exact share of Guitry in the writing of the sequences of connection (probably the fact of its secretary Stephan Prince, which would hide behind the mysterious " Jean Martin" credited by the credits as coscenarist). The posters of film present " Life with deux" as the last film of Sacha Guitry… which died nearly one year before the beginning of turning (!).
  • With the robber! (1960), of Ralph Habib, according to a new original screenplay, altered and adapted by Jean-Bernard Luc
  • Beaumarchais insolates it (1995), of Edouard Molinaro, adapted new part " Beaumarchais" and of the new scenario him also " Franklin and Beaumarchais"
  • Desired (1996), of Bernard Murat, according to the part and the film éponymes
  • Squares (1996), of Valerie Lemercier, according to the part and the film éponymes
  • the Actor (1996), of Christian de Chalonge, according to the part and (all things considered) the film éponymes
  • a crime with the paradise (2000), of Jean Becker, remake of the film " Poison" , with Josiane Balasko, Jacques Villeret and Andre Dussolier. The action was freely transposed of beginning of the year 50 at the dawn of the Eighties.

(nonexhaustive list)

Other participations

Sacha Guitry also appears as an actor with the credits of two silent films of 1917 (" A aventures" and love story; , he also wrote the scenario) and 1922 (epilog filmed of his part " A small hand which place"), but still, if one refers of it to 1°) a article published in the tele press with the beginning of the year 80 2°) the catalog of films established by Claude Gauteur and André Bernard in the republication 1984 of the work " Sacha Guitry, the Cinema and Moi" , in:

These two sources also mention Genevieve de Séréville like appear at the sides of her husband-to-be lasting this caméo furtive. Nevertheless, the film re-examined on copy of the subtitled American version, the couple does not appear absolutely with the image (sequence cut to the assembly?).

A married misogynist five times

In spite of its posture of misogynist, Sacha Guitry was married five times, and only with actresses (still that the three last never had strictly speaking the " vocation"). One recognizes to him moreover many connections with actresses and artists, among whom the dancer " Beautiful Époque" Jane April, actresses of cinema Simone Paris (which will devote several chapters of its Memories to the detailed account of their lovesong) and Yvette Lebon, etc

  1. Charlotte Lysès (1877-1956) and Sacha Guitry marries on August 14th, 1907 with Honfleur, to the great displeasure of Lucien Guitry, ex-lover of Charlotte… She creates 19 parts of her husband and takes again " Nono" in 1910. Separated in April 1917, their divorce will be marked on July 17th, 1918.

  2. It marries Yvonne Printemps (1894-1977) in Paris on April 10th, 1919, with like witnesses Sarah Bernhardt, Georges Feydeau, Lucien Guitry (with which it has been just reconciled) and Tristan Bernard. Yvonne Printemps creates 34 parts of Sacha Guitry, takes again 6 others and interprets of them one of its films, " A aventures" and love story; (1918). Separated on July 15th, 1932 (Yvonne Printemps leaves it for Pierre Fresnay, that she will never marry, which on its free side for her the actress Berthe Bovy), their divorce will be marked on November 7th, 1934.
  3. It Marie with the young person Jacqueline Delubac (1907-1997) in Paris on February 21st, 1935, 28 years its junior. As it has 50 of them, it asks to him whether she would agree to be her half… (and consequently, for the beauty of the word and the exactitude of the accounts, Jacqueline will claim to be born in 1910 and not in 1907). She will play 23 parts of her husband, including 10 creations and 13 recoveries in Paris and in round, and will interpret 11 of her films. Separated on December 15th, 1938, their divorce will be marked on April 5th, 1939.
  4. Its marriage with Genevieve de Séréville (1914-1963) is celebrated July 4th and 5th 1939 in Fontenay-the-Fleury. She creates 5 parts of her husband in Paris, takes again 4 others in Paris or in round and interprets 5 of its films of them. Separated in April 1944, their divorce is marked on July 25th, 1949.
  5. It marries finally Lana Marconi (1917-1990) on November 25th, 1949 in Paris. It creates 7 parts of her husband, takes again 2 others and interprets 13 of its films of them.

Anecdotes

  • Sacha is the Russian diminutive of Alexandre. The tsar Alexandre III was indeed his godfather.
  • As he explains it in his speech of one hundred lines , pronounced at the time of the banquet of the centenary of Janson-of-Sailly, he was expelled of 11 different colleges. He explains in one of his works which it is following displacements of his/her father why he redoubled his sixth 10 times. Indeed, at the time, one started again the year if establishment were changed, which was periodically its case. He celebrated his 18 years in sixth and stopped his brilliant studies there.
  • During the winter 1889, at 4 years, his/her father, Lucien Guitry, in full separation of with his wife, leaves with Sacha to seek cakes with the corner of the street, and from corner of street in corner of street (because the best pastry making was further) it removes it at once as far as Russia, place of its future representations. Sacha will play child there in front of the Tsar and the imperial family. It will be over there that he will hear that his father " will play every evening for travailler".
  • In spite of the sharp support of Tristan Bernard and many personalities of resistance, Sacha Guitry wrongfully was suspected of collaboration to the Libération, and was imprisoned during 60 days (from where its book " 60 days of prison"). A complete withdrawal of case was marked. “It thus did not take place there! ”, Sacha Guitry commented on ironically, which declared in addition: “Release? I can say that I of it was the first prevented ”. For the little story, it was Alain Decaux which avoided the plundering of its house because it at the time was mobilized and that it had, knowing Guitry, requested to supervise its house. In remembering this beautiful gesture, Lana Guitry offered emerald to him that Sacha carried and who throne from now on on the handle of its sword of academician. Of its arrest, he will say: “they took me along handcuffed to the Town hall. I believed that one was going to marry me of force! ”
  • the divorce by consent not being recognized at one time, of the mutual abusive letters were required on behalf of the two parts to obtain the delivery from it. In the divorces relating to Sacha Guitry, in particular that balancing its marriage with Yvonne Spring, one clearly recognizes his leg of humorist in the letters provided by the " deux" parts.

Quotations

  • I remember that it is Sacha Guitry which found the slogan “Eleska they are exquisite” . , Georges Perec, I remember, 56.
  • If the greatest pleasure of the men is to treat to the body of the women, I understand that the greatest pleasure of the women is to treat to the head of the men!
  • the reason and logic cannot anything against the stubbornness and the stupidity.

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