Gérard Philipe, or the Key to Recollections

Grażyna Stachówna

Abstract

Stachówna writes that Gérard Philipe was the type of a romantic lover. This type of the historically changeable emploi represents the ideal of a man for women, and offers the model of masculinity for men. Philipe was young and comely, slightly neurotic and subtle. In the 1940s, he mostly played the roles of youths who were unhappy in love, melancholic and weak, e.g. François in Devil in the Flesh, Fabrice in The Charterhouse of Farma or Faust in Beauty and the Devil. In the 1950s, Philipe wanted to change his image, and managed to do so with the role of a villain in Christian-Jacque’s Fanfan la Tulipe, which helped him achieve fame internationally. Philipe created an extremely different part in Allégret’s Les orgueilleux. He was an alcoholic and a wreck, who regained dignity and a life goal thanks to a woman. As time went by his heroes, while still charming, withdrew behind the wall of cynicism and untruth (Monsieur Ripois, Les Grandes Manoeuvres and Dangerous Liaisons). Fever Mounts at El Paso was his last film but he was already ill and soon died of liver cancer. His death marked the end of cinéma de papa, which was supplanted by a new wave of new acting (Belmondo Trintignant, Léaud).