- \n
- Film<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
18 September, 2019<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"\/standpoint\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/GettyImages-162559075.jpg\" "\\"Feature")
<\/p>\nA museum opened this summer in the south of France to commemorate the most popular French actor of all time. Not Gerard Depardieu, not Catherine Deneuve, but a short, bald, pretty much self-taught comic actor almost completely unknown in the English-speaking world. The choice tells us a lot about the people who loved him.<\/p>\n
Louis de Fun\u00e8s didn\u2019t pay for taxis. He\u2019d write out a cheque for the fare, signing it with his most magnificent signature. The driver would usually prefer to keep it than cash it.<\/p>\n
It would still work now, probably. <\/p>\n
Many of those queuing to get into the new Louis de Fun\u00e8s Museum in St Raphael weren\u2019t even born when France\u2019s most
\npopular actor died in 1983. Let alone their
\nchildren:<\/p>\nMe:<\/i> What do you like about him?<\/p>\n
Geoffrey (aged nine): <\/i>His enjoyment at making films.<\/p>\n
Me: <\/i>What\u2019s your favourite?<\/p>\n
Geoffrey: The Gendarme de St Tropez<\/i>. <\/p>\n
[Fun\u00e8s\u2019s Gendarme<\/i> series, begun in 1964, had almost as many sequels as Star Wars<\/i>]<\/p>\n
Me: <\/i>Is there a particular scene you like?<\/p>\n
Geoffrey:<\/i> When he\u2019s on the beach.<\/p>\n
Me:<\/i> What does he do?<\/p>\n
Geoffrey:<\/i> I can\u2019t remember.<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t either. I checked later. De Fun\u00e8s uses military skills that look as if they were learned during the Battle of Algiers to round up nudists.<\/p>\n
People have watched de Fun\u00e8s films on the telly a total of 400 million times. He played in over 140 movies. A French person who hasn\u2019t seen at least four may not be truly French. The new museum is also a good example of characteristic French dirigisme<\/i> in arts policy. The museum, incorporating a largely existing collection of posters, photos and memorabilia, cost just under \u00a31 million, all of it public money. It took only six months to build and open it. <\/p>\n
The news weekly Valeurs Actuelles<\/i> put de Fun\u00e8s on its front cover recently, simply to mark his birthday. Laurent Dandrieu, the culture editor, says the actor created his comic character during the \u201cgrey pasta years\u201d of his difficult early career, struggling to attract attention while playing short walk-on parts. \u201cHe used grimaces and mimics and little accidents\u2014when he had to walk across a courtyard, for example, he\u2019d trip up on a stone or walk in a puddle\u2014whatever he could think of to get a laugh.\u201d The body and extreme facial expressions played a big role, presaging modern-day emojis. \u201cHe expresses with his face our emotions in their most basic and extreme form.\u201d<\/p>\n
Especially the\u00a0 angry face emoji. <\/p>\n
In a much-loved scene in the 1967 film Oscar<\/i>, for example, our hero, a small business owner (a favourite de Fun\u00e8s role, along with chefs, waiters, and restaurantcustomers) responds to an aggravating phone call by furiously miming, Pinocchio-style, the elongation of his nose. As his baffled employees watch in silence, he twists it, chokes on it, strangles himself with it and repeatedly chops it off. <\/p>\n
Like Charlie Chaplin, he always played the same character\u2014a unique, personal archetype. But, while Chaplin was the soft-hearted little man, de Fun\u00e8s was smug, short-tempered authoritarian; obsequious with the powerful, cruel with the weak. <\/p>\n
What could that possibly tell us about the French?<\/p>\n
S\u00e9bastien Terreau, the creator of a Facebook page called \u201cJust Louis de Fun\u00e8s\u201d with 1.3 million followers, says his character is \u201ctherapy\u201d for the French, who see their worst sides embodied and ridiculed. Cl\u00e9mentine Deroudille, the museum\u2019s curator, admits: \u201cI am very French. I get angry all the time. But we are capable of seeing this in ourselves and we are a little ashamed, because deep down we\u2019re not so bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
In life, Louis de Fun\u00e8s was also\u2014another French characteristic though not a comic one\u2014a cultivated man. In the quiet of his chateau (yes, just as Hollywood stars live in villas, French ones have chateaux) he would re-write his dialogues, tend to his roses, and enjoy the piano that in his early, cash-strapped days, he played for money
\nin a bar. <\/p>\nHe went to church on Sunday and read the classics\u2014Moli\u00e8re for example, whose Miser<\/i> he brilliantly portrayed in a film adaptation: in one church scene he sinks deeper in prayer every time he hears the shake of the collection box.<\/p>\n
Some of his gags were not so much low-brow as 60 centimetres below it. And yet this year the temple of po-faced cinephilia, the Cinemath\u00e8que de Paris, is putting on a Louis de Fun\u00e8s retrospective for the first time. Three decades after his death, France\u2019s most popular actor is finally being taken seriously.<\/p>\n
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