FERNANDEL

(1903-1971)

Actor and director. Fernandel was born Fernand Joseph Contandin in Marseille. His father was a performer (the stage name was Sined) in the café-concerts, and Fernandel and his younger brother frequently joined him onstage as children. The father's mobilization for war in 1915 put an end to this, but the desire to become an entertainer was instilled early in Fernandel. Obliged to work to help support his mother, Fernandel found jobs at a bank and soap factory and elsewhere. He continued to pursue the stage in his spare time. During this period, Fernandel met Jean Manse. The two became close friends. Manse would go on to work on nearly all the screenplays for Fernandel's films, and Fernandel married Jean's sister, Henriette, in 1925. The stage name, Fernandel, is reputed to have come from Jean's mother, Mme. Manse, who referred to Fernand as "Henriette's Fernand" or "her Fernand," that is, "le Fernand d'elle."

Fernandel's first big career break came in 1926, when he was hired on as a feature act at the Odéon theater in Marseille. From there, Fernandel traveled from theater to theater. At about the same time, the cinema began to take note. In 1929, Paramount Europe hired Fernandel to do minifilms of his act as entertainment between films in their movie theaters. And in 1930,Marc Allégret, who had seen Fernandel onstage, cast him inLe Blanc et le noir, an adaptation of a play bySacha Guitry. Fernandel was an enormous success, and he went on to make 150 or so films.

There is no mistaking the fact that Fernandel was a popular actor and primarily a comic actor. He is probably the best-known comic actor in French film history. Most of his films are not critical master-pieces, but they were nearly all popular successes. That he is an icon of French cinema is attested to by the fact that more than thirty years after his death, you could stop any one of nearly any age in France and ask who Fernandel was and they could tell you.

Some of his best-known films from the first half of his career include Dominique Bernard-Deschamps'sLe Rosier de Madame Husson(1931);Marcel Pagnol'sAngèle(1934),Regain(1937),Le Schpountz(1938), andLa Fille du puisatier(1941);Christian-Jacque'sJosette(1936),François Ier(1937),Raphaël le tatoué(1939); andClaude Autant-Laraand Maurice Lehmann'sFric-Frac(1939).In these, as in most of his films, and certainly most of those made up to World War II, Fernandel is cast in predictably warm and amusing roles, as the type of characters that cannot help but inspire warm-hearted laughter.

During the war, Fernandel remained in France. He worked for the Nazi-owned production companyContinental Films, and not only acted, but also tried his hand at directing, perhaps at the request of the management of Continental, who may have sought to exploit his popularity and his good-natured image. He directed two films with Continental,Simplet(1942) andAdrien(1943). He would make only one other attempt at directing and that much later, in 1951, withAdhemar ou le jouet de la fatalité.

After the war, Fernandel continued to make films at a steady pace. Although comedy remained his mainstay, there is a bit more diversity to the films' roles in the postwar period, as Fernandel also began to perform in melodrama and crime films. The best-known films from the latter half of his career include Richard Pottier'sMeurtres (1950); Autant-Lara'sL'Auberge rouge(1951);Julien Duvivier'sLe Petit monde de Don Camillo(1951),Le Retour de Don Camillo(1953),L'Homme à l'imperméable(1956), andLe Diable et le dix commandements(1962); Jean Boyer'sCoiffeur pour dames(1952),Le Couturier de ces dames(1956), andSénéchal le magnifique(1958);Henri Verneuil'sLe Fruit défendu(1952); Yves Allégret'sMam'zelle Nitouche(1954); Clément Duhour'sLa Vie à deux(1957); Christian-Jacque'sLa Loi c'est la loi(1958); and Gilles Grangier'sLa Cuisine au beurre(1963),L'Age ingrat(1964), andL'Homme à la Buick(1966).

Without a doubt, the Don Camillo films, particularly the two directed by Duvivier,Le Petit monde de Don CamilloandLe Retour de Don Camillo, are Fernandel's best-known films. In them, he plays a country priest in a village in postwar Italy. The film gives Fernandel a format for his comedy, but also for the warmth with which he is often associated. Duvivier's realist eye also explores, in a warm and funny way, the tensions in Italian life between Communism and Catholicism, between the forces of tradition and those of change, forces that France also had to grapple with. The films, which were French-Italian coproductions, remain classics in both countries. Fernandel, a devout Catholic, once said of the films that they were the proof he was, despite what anyone might say, a great actor, since his costar in the films was God himself (Don Camillo dialogues with God in the films, and God sometimes answers). Though he made many other films, it is these that have left the most vivid imprint in the cultural memory.