Navarre, René

(1877-1968)

   Actor and director. Born in Limoges, René Navarre became one of the great stars of silent film. He got his start at Gaumont in 1911, and from the beginning he worked closely with Louis Feuillade. He starred in more than sixty films at Gaumont, and nearly all were directed by Feuillade. Among the Feuillade films in which Navarre appeared were La Vie telle qu'elle est (1911), Quand les feuilles tombent (1911), Le Poison (1911), Aux lions les Chrétiens (1911), André Chenier (1911), which Feuillade codirected with Etienne Arnaud, Les Vipères (1911), Le Mort vivant (1912), L'Anneau fatale (1912), L'Homme de proie (1912), La Hantise (1912), Un scandale au village (1913), codirected with Maurice Mariaud, Les Audaces de coeur (1913), codirected with Léonce Perret, Erreur tragique (1913), Le Secret du forçat (1913), Le Revenant (1913), Le Guetapens (1913), L'Écrin du rajah (1913), La Gardienne du feu (1913), La Petite Andalouse (1914), Le Diamant du sénéchal (1914), Manon de Montmartre (1914), Pâcques rouges (1914), and Le Calvaire (1914).

   Without any doubt, however, Navarre's most famous role was in Feuillade's Fantômas series, which ran in 1913 and 1914. Navarre played the title character, and in many ways he was Fantômas, bring to life the slippery evil genius mastermind of a diabolical criminal gang. Given the longstanding reputation of the Fantômas series as one of the classics of the silent cinema and one of the most important and influential film series ever made, it is not an exaggeration to say that Navarre himself passed into legend with his role in Fantômas.

   Navarre left Gaumont in 1915, the year in which he was mobilized for service in World War I. He was discharged shortly after, at which point he founded his own production company, Films René Navarre, for which director Henri Diamant-Berger and director and producer Serge Sandberg both directed films. Navarre, himself, also tried his hand at directing during this period, making such films as Le Document secret (1918), Tue la mort (1920), Le Sept de trèfle (1921), La Reine lumière (1921), L'Homme aux trois masques (1921), and L'Aiglonne (1921).

   Navarre also returned to acting, appearing in more than twenty films between 1918 and 1946, including Jean Kemm's Vidocq (1922), Gaston Ravel's Le Gardien du feu (1924), Mariaud's Mon oncle (1925), Luitz-Morat's Jean Chouan (1926), in which he starred, Maurice Champreux's Judex 34 (1934), Diamant-Berger's Arsène Lupin, détective (1935), Léon Mathot's Chéri-bibi (1937), Jean Dréville's Son oncle de Normandie (1938), Pierre Caron's Bécassine (1940), and Maurice de Canonge's Les Trois tambours (1946). During this second phase of his career, Navarre was primarily a supporting actor. Like many other silent film-era actors, he found it difficult to maintain his profile in a medium that had changed dramatically.