Bourvil

(1917-1970)

   Actor and singer. Born André Raimbourg in 1917, Bourvil, as he was known professionally, would go on to be-come a beloved actor, singer, and comedian in France. He never knew his father, who was killed in World War I. He spent his childhood in northwestern France, where he lived with his mother and brother.

   In 1945, Bourvil made his film debut, appearing very briefly in the film La Ferme du pendu by Jean Dréville. At the time Bourvil was already a known singer and radio personality, and the entire role consisted of him singing a song. As a result in 1946, Pathé offered him an exclusive contract to record his routines and songs. The same year Jean-Jacques Vitray gave him a role in the film La Bonne hôtesse, also a singing role. As his career in cinema began to pick up, the roles became larger, the range required became broader, and fewer and fewer of the parts required him to sing. Bourvil would star in such films as Jean Boyer's Le Trou normand (1952), Claude Autant-Lara's La Traversée de Paris (1956), Michel Boisrond's Le Chemin des écoliers (1958), Jean-Paul Le Chanois's Les Misérables (1958), in Marc Allégret's Un drôle de dimanche (1958), André Hunébelle's Le Bossu (1960), in René Clair's Tout l'or du monde (1961), Alex Joffe's Le Tracassin ou les plaisirs de la ville (1961), Jean-Pierre Mocky's L'Étalon (1970), and Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Cercle rouge (1970).

   Bourvil must have considered 1963 as the pinnacle of his career, however, since it was in that year that he starred opposite his long-time hero, Fernandel, in Gilles Grangier's La Cuisine au beurre. From 1964 on, Bourvil worked predominantly with Gérard Oury and Jean-Pierre Mocky. Perhaps he preferred to work with familiar faces at that point, since in 1968, he was diagnosed with Kahler's disease, a fatal form of bone cancer. He well exceeded the few weeks the doctors gave him to live, going on to appear in Melville's Le Cercle rouge (1970), among other films. Like some of the other great icons of his day, he has remained popular long after his departure. He seems to be fixed eternally into a privileged space of French cinema. Some thirty years after his death, people who were not even born when he died recognize him and know his films.