Presle, Micheline

(1922- )

   Actress. Micheline Presle made her screen debut in 1937. She had small roles in Pierre Caron's La Fessée (1937), Jean de Limur's Petite peste (1938), and Christian Stengel's Je Chante (1938) before being "discovered" by director Georg Wilhelm Pabst, who cast her in a leading role in his film Jeunes filles en détresse (1939). Presle went on to appear in more than one hundred films after that, including films on both sides of the Atlantic. She has also worked extensively in television. She is one of the most prolific actresses ever to have worked in French cinema.

   In the 1930s and 1940s, Presle appeared in such films as George Lacombe's Elles étaient douze femmes (1940), Marc Allegret's Parade en sept nuits (1941), La Belle aventure (1942), and Félicie Nanteuil (1945), Marcel L'Herbier's La Nuit fantastique (1942), Jacques de Baroncelli's Fausse alerte (1945), Christian-Jacque's Boule de suif (1945), Claude Autant-Lara's Le Diable au corps (1946), and Jean Delannoy's Les Jeux sont faits (1946). She went to Hollywood in the early 1950s after marrying American actor and producer William Marshall. She spent two years working in Hollywood, where she appeared in such films as Jean Negulesco's Under My Skin (1950) and Marshall's The Adventures of Captain Fabian (1951) but returned to making films in France when the American response was lukewarm.

   Presle's career seemed only to reach another high point in France in the 1950s. She starred in such films as Raymond Bernard's La Dame aux Camélias (1953), Sacha Guitry's Si Versailles m'était conté (1954) and Napoléon (1955), Pierre Gaspard-Huit's La Mariée est trop belle (1956) and Christine (1958), and André Hunébelle's Treize à table (1956). Her career went from strength to strength, and she appeared in a number of films in the 1960s and 1970s including Delannoy's Le Baron de l'écluse (1961), Philippe de Broca and Claude Chabrol's Les Sept péchés capitaux (1962), Julien Duvivier's Le Diable et les dix commandements (1962), Raoul Lévy's Je vous salue, mafia! (1965), Jacques Rivette's La Religieuse (1966), de Broca's Roi de coeur (1966), Allegret's Le Bal du comte d'Orgel (1970), Jacques Demy's Peau d'âne (1970), Christian-Jacque's Les Pétroleuses (1973), and Claude d'Anna's Trompe l'oeil (1975).

   During the late 1970s and 1980s, Presle worked predominantly in television. Those film roles she had were in fairly insignificant films. Some exceptions were her roles in Chabrol's Le Sang des autres (1984), Gérard Frot-Coutaz's Beau temps mais orageux en fin de journée (1986), and Alain Resnais's I Want to go Home (1989). Presle has acted in a fair number of films in the last two decades. Among her other roles, she has appeared in Alexandre Jardin's Fanfan (1993), her daughter Tonie Marshall's Pas très catholique (1994), Enfants de salaud(1996), Vénus beauté (institut) (1999), and France boutique (2005), Claude Lelouch's Les Misérables (1995), Danièle Dubroux's Le Journal du séducteur (1996), Gérard Jugnot's Fallait pas! (1996), Francis Girod's Mauvais genre (2001), and Merzak Allouache's Chouchou (2003). Presle has acted in a wide variety of genres, but she is a particularly good comic actress.