Jaque Catelain
Encyclopedia
Jaque Catelain was a French actor who came to prominence in silent films of the 1920s, and who continued acting in films and on stage until the 1950s. He also wrote and directed two silent films himself, and he was a capable artist and musician. He had a close association with the director Marcel L'Herbier
. (He was born as Jacques Guérin-Castelain; other variations of his name used at different times were Jaque-Catelain, Jacques Catelain, Jacques Catelin, and Jacque Cathelain.)
in the Pavillon Henri IV (he was said to have been born in the same room as Louis XIV). His father was then the mayor of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and also moved in literary and theatrical circles, which allowed the young Jacques to encounter many famous names in his childhood, including Catulle Mendès
, Anatole France
, Sarah Bernhardt
, and Gabrielle Réjane
. He showed early enthusiasm for the arts and music, and at the age of 16 he entered the Académie Julian
in Paris to study fine arts. With the outbreak of war in the following year, he changed direction and chose to study acting at the Conservatoire
, enrolling in the class of Paul Mounet
, before being mobilised into the artillery.
, Don Juan et Faust, L'Inhumaine
, and Le Vertige, and they made Catelain into a leading star who was in demand to appear in foreign films as well as in productions of other French directors such as Léonce Perret
(in Kœnigsmark). In 1922 he was working in Munich under contract to a German film company and he returned there in 1925 to appear in Robert Wiene
's (silent) production of Der Rosenkavalier. Also in 1925 he was offered a seven-year contract by MGM
to work in America, but he turned this down.
Jaque Catelain's activities in this period extended beyond acting. He had already worked as an editor on L'Homme du large, and when Marcel L'Herbier set up his own production company Cinégraphic in 1922, its first project became Le Marchand de plaisirs which Catelain directed as well as acting a double role in it. In the following year he wrote and directed a second film, La Galerie des monstres (1923/24). Both films were successful enough to cover their costs. He devised controversial make-up for some of the actors in L'Inhumaine, and his artistic skills were put to further use in two set designs for L'Argent
As a pianist he would sometimes step in to provide improvised accompaniment for previews of L'Herbier's films.
Catelain successfully made the transition from silent to sound films, starring in L'Herbier's L'Enfant de l'amour (1929), but during the 1930s he took fewer leading film roles and started to act in the theatre. In February 1933 Catelain married Suzanne Vial, a friend since childhood who had become a production assistant to L'Herbier in the 1920s and continued working with him until 1944. Soon afterwards in 1933/1934 Catelain was employed by the daily newspaper Le Journal to go to Hollywood to carry out a series of interviews with leading personalities such as Chaplin, Stroheim and Sternberg.
In May 1940, Catelain left France for a four-month theatrical tour of South America, but within a month France was occupied by the Germans and his absence lasted for six years. In Buenos Aires he became so ill with pneumonia that he was given the last rites, but he recovered and went to Canada for the next three years for work in the theatre and propaganda broadcasts. In 1943 he was invited to Hollywood and remained there for a further three years taking bits parts and film dubbing jobs. He returned to Paris in 1946, and resumed an occasional career in films, appearing in minor roles in three of Jean Renoir
's films in the 1950s. In 1950, he published a biography and appreciation of the work of Marcel L'Herbier
.
Catelain died in Paris in 1965, and he was buried in Passy Cemetery
.
, saw his restrained and economical technique as a significant development away from the exaggerated theatrical acting which was still common in films, and praised the sincerity and natural quality of his performances. Catelain himself was sufficiently thoughtful on the subject of acting to develop his views about the differences between 'interior' and 'exterior' performance in a journal article published in 1925. His own performance in L'Homme du large illustrates his understanding of the importance of movement and posture in relation to the camera frame at a time when a more 'expressionist' style of acting was common.
Sound films
Marcel L'Herbier
Marcel L'Herbier, Légion d'honneur, was a French film-maker, who achieved prominence as an avant-garde theorist and imaginative practitioner with a series of silent films in the 1920s. His career as a director continued until the 1950s and he made more than 40 feature films in total...
. (He was born as Jacques Guérin-Castelain; other variations of his name used at different times were Jaque-Catelain, Jacques Catelain, Jacques Catelin, and Jacque Cathelain.)
Early life
Jaque Catelain was born in Saint-Germain-en-LayeSaint-Germain-en-Laye
Saint-Germain-en-Laye is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris from the centre.Inhabitants are called Saint-Germanois...
in the Pavillon Henri IV (he was said to have been born in the same room as Louis XIV). His father was then the mayor of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and also moved in literary and theatrical circles, which allowed the young Jacques to encounter many famous names in his childhood, including Catulle Mendès
Catulle Mendès
Catulle Mendès was a French poet and man of letters.Of Portuguese Jewish extraction, he was born in Bordeaux. He early established himself in Paris and promptly attained notoriety by the publication in the Revue fantaisiste of his Roman d'une nuit, for which he was condemned to a month's...
, Anatole France
Anatole France
Anatole France , born François-Anatole Thibault, , was a French poet, journalist, and novelist. He was born in Paris, and died in Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire. He was a successful novelist, with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters...
, Sarah Bernhardt
Sarah Bernhardt
Sarah Bernhardt was a French stage and early film actress, and has been referred to as "the most famous actress the world has ever known". Bernhardt made her fame on the stages of France in the 1870s, and was soon in demand in Europe and the Americas...
, and Gabrielle Réjane
Gabrielle Réjane
Gabrielle Réjane was the stage name of Gabrielle-Charlotte Reju, , a French actress.Born in Paris, the daughter of an actor, she became a pupil of Régnier at the Conservatoire, and took the second prize for comedy in 1874. Her debut was made the next year, during which she played attractively a...
. He showed early enthusiasm for the arts and music, and at the age of 16 he entered the Académie Julian
Académie Julian
The Académie Julian was an art school in Paris, France.Rodolphe Julian established the Académie Julian in 1868 at the Passage des Panoramas, as a private studio school for art students. The Académie Julian not only prepared students to the exams at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts, but offered...
in Paris to study fine arts. With the outbreak of war in the following year, he changed direction and chose to study acting at the Conservatoire
CNSAD
The Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique is France's national drama academy in Paris...
, enrolling in the class of Paul Mounet
Paul Mounet
Paul Mounet , born Jean-Paul Sully, was a French actor.- Biography :The younger brother of actor Jean Mounet-Sully, Paul was born in Bergerac, Dordogne, and studied to become a medical doctor prior to his career in acting, only making his debut in 1880 in Paris Odéon's production of Horace...
, before being mobilised into the artillery.
Career
In 1914 Catelain met Marcel L'Herbier, then a writer and critic, who became a major influence on his life and career, and with whom he formed a lifelong friendship. When L'Herbier began directing films in 1917, Catelain became his leading man of choice and starred in twelve of his silent films, starting with Le Torrent. The first major role to attract attention was that of the dissolute son of a Breton fisherman in L'Homme du large (1920). This was followed by El DoradoEl Dorado (1921 film)
El Dorado is a French silent film directed in 1921 by Marcel L'Herbier. The film was notable for integrating a number of technical innovations into its narrative of a "cinematic melodrama"...
, Don Juan et Faust, L'Inhumaine
L'Inhumaine
L'Inhumaine is a 1924 French drama-science fiction film directed by Marcel L'Herbier. It was notable for its experimental techniques and for the collaboration of many leading practitioners in the decorative arts, architecture and music...
, and Le Vertige, and they made Catelain into a leading star who was in demand to appear in foreign films as well as in productions of other French directors such as Léonce Perret
Léonce Perret
Léonce Perret was a prolific and innovative French film actor, director and producer. He also worked as a stage actor and director...
(in Kœnigsmark). In 1922 he was working in Munich under contract to a German film company and he returned there in 1925 to appear in Robert Wiene
Robert Wiene
Robert Wiene was an important film director of the German silent cinema.Robert Wiene was born in Breslau, as the elder son of the successful theatre actor Carl Wiene. His younger brother Conrad also became an actor, but Robert Wiene at first studied law at the University of Berlin. In 1908 he also...
's (silent) production of Der Rosenkavalier. Also in 1925 he was offered a seven-year contract by MGM
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
to work in America, but he turned this down.
Jaque Catelain's activities in this period extended beyond acting. He had already worked as an editor on L'Homme du large, and when Marcel L'Herbier set up his own production company Cinégraphic in 1922, its first project became Le Marchand de plaisirs which Catelain directed as well as acting a double role in it. In the following year he wrote and directed a second film, La Galerie des monstres (1923/24). Both films were successful enough to cover their costs. He devised controversial make-up for some of the actors in L'Inhumaine, and his artistic skills were put to further use in two set designs for L'Argent
L'Argent (1928 film)
L'Argent is a French silent film directed in 1928 by Marcel L'Herbier. The film was adapted from the novel L'Argent by Émile Zola, and it portrays the world of banking and the stock market in Paris in the 1920s.-Background:...
As a pianist he would sometimes step in to provide improvised accompaniment for previews of L'Herbier's films.
Catelain successfully made the transition from silent to sound films, starring in L'Herbier's L'Enfant de l'amour (1929), but during the 1930s he took fewer leading film roles and started to act in the theatre. In February 1933 Catelain married Suzanne Vial, a friend since childhood who had become a production assistant to L'Herbier in the 1920s and continued working with him until 1944. Soon afterwards in 1933/1934 Catelain was employed by the daily newspaper Le Journal to go to Hollywood to carry out a series of interviews with leading personalities such as Chaplin, Stroheim and Sternberg.
In May 1940, Catelain left France for a four-month theatrical tour of South America, but within a month France was occupied by the Germans and his absence lasted for six years. In Buenos Aires he became so ill with pneumonia that he was given the last rites, but he recovered and went to Canada for the next three years for work in the theatre and propaganda broadcasts. In 1943 he was invited to Hollywood and remained there for a further three years taking bits parts and film dubbing jobs. He returned to Paris in 1946, and resumed an occasional career in films, appearing in minor roles in three of Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...
's films in the 1950s. In 1950, he published a biography and appreciation of the work of Marcel L'Herbier
Marcel L'Herbier
Marcel L'Herbier, Légion d'honneur, was a French film-maker, who achieved prominence as an avant-garde theorist and imaginative practitioner with a series of silent films in the 1920s. His career as a director continued until the 1950s and he made more than 40 feature films in total...
.
Catelain died in Paris in 1965, and he was buried in Passy Cemetery
Passy Cemetery
The Passy Cemetery is a famous cemetery located at 2, rue du Commandant Schlœsing in Passy, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, France.-History:...
.
Reputation
Jaque Catelain won considerable popularity in the early 1920s through his film roles as romantic lead or jeune premier. His good looks were of a rather bland and pretty kind which did not commend him so much to later audiences, and he was often criticised for wooden and inexpressive performances. Some contemporary critics however, notably Louis DellucLouis Delluc
Louis Delluc was a French film director, screen writer and film critic, many of whose late 1910s film writings for French newspapers were collected in the volume Cinema et cie...
, saw his restrained and economical technique as a significant development away from the exaggerated theatrical acting which was still common in films, and praised the sincerity and natural quality of his performances. Catelain himself was sufficiently thoughtful on the subject of acting to develop his views about the differences between 'interior' and 'exterior' performance in a journal article published in 1925. His own performance in L'Homme du large illustrates his understanding of the importance of movement and posture in relation to the camera frame at a time when a more 'expressionist' style of acting was common.
Selected filmography
Silent Films- Le Torrent (1917)
- Rose-France (1918)
- Le Bercail (1919)
- Le Carnaval des véritésLe Carnaval des véritésLe Carnaval des vérités is a 1920 French silent film written and directed by Marcel L'Herbier.-Background:After completing a commercial film for Léon Gaumont, Marcel L'Herbier was offered a contract to work on a prestigious series of films which would be known as "Gaumont Série Pax"...
(1920) - L'Homme du large (1920) (also assistant editor)
- El DoradoEl Dorado (1921 film)El Dorado is a French silent film directed in 1921 by Marcel L'Herbier. The film was notable for integrating a number of technical innovations into its narrative of a "cinematic melodrama"...
(1921) - Don Juan et Faust (1922)
- Le Marchand de plaisirs (1922) (also directed)
- Kœnigsmark (1923)
- La Galerie des monstres (1924) (also wrote and directed)
- L'InhumaineL'InhumaineL'Inhumaine is a 1924 French drama-science fiction film directed by Marcel L'Herbier. It was notable for its experimental techniques and for the collaboration of many leading practitioners in the decorative arts, architecture and music...
(1924) - Le Prince Charmant (1925)
- Der RosenkavalierDer Rosenkavalier (1926 film)Der Rosenkavalier is a 1926 Austrian silent film of the opera of the same name by Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal . Directed by Robert Wiene, it premiered on 10 January 1926 at the Dresden Semperoper, which had also hosted the actual opera's premiere 15 years earlier.The music during the...
(1925) - Le VertigeLe Vertige-Production:Robert and Sonia Delaunay, and Robert Mallet-Stevens contributed to the set and costume design for the film.-External links:...
(1926) - Le Diable au cœur (1928)
- Nuits de prince (1929)
Sound films
- L'Enfant de l'amour (1930)
- Château de rêve (1933)
- Le BonheurLe Bonheur (1934 film)Le Bonheur is a 1934 French film directed by Marcel L'Herbier. It was adapted from Henry Bernstein's play Le Bonheur, which Bernstein had staged in Paris in March 1933 with Charles Boyer and Michel Simon in leading roles; Boyer and Simon took the same parts in the film.-Background:In 1934 Marcel...
(1934) - La Route impériale (1935)
- La MarseillaiseLa Marseillaise (film)La Marseillaise is a film about the early part of the French Revolution. The film was directed by Jean Renoir. La Marseillaise is shown from the eyes of the citizens of Marseille, counts in German exile and, of course the king Louis XVI each showing their own small problems.-Cast:* Pierre Renoir ...
(1938) - Adrienne Lecouvreur (1938)
- Le Voleur de femmes (1938)
- Entente cordialeEntente cordiale (film)Entente cordiale is a 1939 French drama film directed by Marcel L'Herbier and starring Gaby Morlay, Victor Francen and Pierre Richard-Willm. The film depicts the 1904 signing of the Entente Cordiale creating an alliance between Britain and France and ending their historic rivalry. It was based on...
(1939) - La Comédie de bonheur (1940)
- La Révoltée (1948)
- Les Derniers Jours de PompéiThe Last Days of Pompeii (1950 film)The Last Days of Pompeii is a French-Italian drama film, directed by Marcel L'Herbier "in collaboration with" Paolo Moffa, who was also the director of production. It was adapted from Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel The Last Days of Pompeii...
(The Last Days of Pompeii) (1950) - French CancanFrench CancanFrench Cancan is a 1954 French musical film written and directed by Jean Renoir and starring Jean Gabin and María Félix.-Plot:Set in 1890s Paris, Henri Danglard is the owner of a cafe, which features his mistress, Lola, as a belly dancer...
(1954) - Éléna et les hommesElena and Her MenElena and Her Men is a 1956 film directed by Jean Renoir and starring Ingrid Bergman, and was her first film after leaving husband Roberto Rossellini. The film's original French title was Elena et les Hommes and in English-speaking countries, the title was Paris Does Strange Things.-External links:*...
(Paris Does Strange Things) (1956) - Le Testament du docteur CordelierThe Doctor's Horrible ExperimentThe Doctor's Horrible Experiment is a 1959 French television film directed by Jean Renoir. The film is a retelling of the novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson set in 1950s France. Jean-Louis Barrault plays Dr. Cordelier/Opale, the substitute for Dr...
(1959)
External links
- Jaque Catelain at L'Encinémathèque [in French]
- Photographs and literature