Maurice Ronet
Encyclopedia
Maurice Ronet was a French
Cinema of France
The Cinema of France comprises the art of film and creative movies made within the nation of France or by French filmmakers abroad.France is the birthplace of cinema and was responsible for many of its early significant contributions. Several important cinematic movements, including the Nouvelle...

 film actor, director and writer.

Biography

Maurice Ronet was born Maurice Julien Marie Robinet in Nice
Nice
Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...

, Alpes Maritimes, the only child of professional stage actors Émile Robinet and Gilberte Dubreuil. He made his stage debut in 1941, along side his parents, in Sacha Guitry
Sacha Guitry
Alexandre-Pierre Georges Guitry was a French stage actor, film actor, director, screenwriter, and playwright of the Boulevard theatre.- Biography :...

's Le Deux couverts, in Lausanne
Lausanne
Lausanne is a city in Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and is the capital of the canton of Vaud. The seat of the district of Lausanne, the city is situated on the shores of Lake Geneva . It faces the French town of Évian-les-Bains, with the Jura mountains to its north-west...

. He entered the Paris Conservatoire
CNSAD
The Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique is France's national drama academy in Paris...

 in 1944, where Jean-Louis Barrault
Jean-Louis Barrault
Jean-Louis Barrault was a French actor, director and mime artist, training that served him well when he portrayed the 19th-century mime Jean-Gaspard Deburau in Marcel Carné's 1945 film Les Enfants du Paradis .Jean-Louis Barrault studied with Charles Dullin in whose troupe he acted...

 was one his mentors. When he made his film debut at twenty-two in Jacques Becker
Jacques Becker
Jacques Becker was a French screenwriter and film director.Becker was born in Paris, in an upper class background. During the 1930s he worked as an assistant to director Jean Renoir during his peak period, which produced such cinematic masterpieces as Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game...

's Rendez-vous de juillet
Rendezvous in July
Rendezvous in July is a 1949 French comedy film directed and written by Jacques Becker. It was entered into the 1949 Cannes Film Festival.-Cast:* Daniel Gélin as Lucien* Brigitte Auber as Thérèse* Nicole Courcel as Christine Courcel...

(1949), in a role that was written specifically for him by Becker, he had little interest in pursuing an acting career. After completing the film, he married Maria Pacôme (a French stage actress and playwright) and they departed to Moustiers-Sainte-Marie
Moustiers-Sainte-Marie
Moustiers-Sainte-Marie, or simply Moustiers, is a commune in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence department in southeastern France, a part of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region....

 in Provence
Provence
Provence ; Provençal: Provença in classical norm or Prouvènço in Mistralian norm) is a region of south eastern France on the Mediterranean adjacent to Italy. It is part of the administrative région of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur...

, where he tried his hand at ceramics. After completing his military service, he returned to Paris in the early 1950's where he took courses in philosophy and physics, and pursued his passion for literature, music (piano and organ), film and painting. His artwork, part of the peinture non figurative movement, was exhibited along with friends Jean Dubuffet
Jean Dubuffet
Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet was a French painter and sculptor. His idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so called "low art" and eschewed traditional standards of beauty in favor of what he believed to be a more authentic and humanistic approach to image-making.-Life and work:Dubuffet was...

 and Georges Mathieu
Georges Mathieu
Georges Mathieu is a French painter in the style of lyrical abstraction.-Biography:He was born in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, and gained an international reputation in the 1950s as a leading Abstract Expressionist. His large paintings are created very rapidly and impulsively...

. He also acted occasionally in small roles in the films of French directors like Yves Ciampi
Yves Ciampi
Yves Ciampi was a French director, born 1921, died 1982. He was married to Japanese actress Kishi Keiko from 1957 to 1975.-Filmography:*1950 : Suzanne et les brigands*1950 : Un certain monsieur*1951 : Un grand patron...

 and René Wheeler
René Wheeler
René Wheeler was a French screenwriter and film director. He co-wrote the story of the film A Cage of Nightingales with Georges Chaperot, for which they both received an Academy Award nomination in 1947. Their story would later serve as an inspiration for the hugely successful film The Chorus...

, with ambitions of becoming a filmmaker himself. Gradually, however, he came to discover a freedom in acting, and a creative satisfaction that provided a synthesis of all his interests.

Career

Maurice Ronet went on to become one of European cinema's most popular and prolific actors. Between 1955 and 1975 he appeared in over sixty films. He often portrayed characters who were in conflict with themselves or society.

He first garnered acclaim at the 1953 Cannes Film Festival
1953 Cannes Film Festival
-Jury:*Jean Cocteau *Louis Chauvet *Titina De Filippo *Guy Desson *Philippe Erlanger *Renée Faure *Jacques-Pierre Frogerais *Abel Gance *André Lang...

 for a supporting role in Jean Dreville's Horizons sans fin and over the next few years, notably as the romantic lead in André Michel's La Sorcière
La Sorcière (film)
La Sorcière is a 1956 drama film directed by André Michel based on a screenplay by Paul Andréota and Jacques Companéez. Adapted from the Alexander Kuprin novel Olesya...

, 1956 and in Jules Dassin
Jules Dassin
Julius "Jules" Dassin , was an American film director, with Jewish-Russian origins. He was a subject of the Hollywood blacklist in the McCarthy era, and subsequently moved to France where he revived his career.-Early life:...

's Celui qui doit mourir (He Who Must Die
He Who Must Die
He Who Must Die , is a 1957 French film directed by Jules Dassin. It is based on the novel Christ Recrucified by Nikos Kazantzakis. It was entered into the 1957 Cannes Film Festival.-Cast:* Jean Servais - Photis* Carl Möhner - Agha...

, 1957). It was at the presentation of "La Sorcière", at Cannes, where he met a creative and an intellectual counterpart in Louis Malle
Louis Malle
Louis Malle was a French film director, screenwriter, and producer. He worked in both French cinema and Hollywood. His films include Ascenseur pour l'échafaud , Atlantic City , and Au revoir, les enfants .- Early years in France :Malle was born into a wealthy industrialist family in Thumeries,...

. Two years later he made his international box-office breakthrough as Julien Tavernier in Malle's first feature film, Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (Elevator to the Gallows
Elevator to the Gallows
Ascenseur pour l'échafaud is a 1958 French film directed by Louis Malle. It was released as Elevator to the Gallows in the USA and as Lift to the Scaffold in the UK. It stars Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet as criminal lovers whose perfect crime begins to unravel when Ronet is trapped in an elevator...

, 1958). He is probably most known for originating the role of Philippe Greenleaf in the French adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley
The Talented Mr. Ripley
The Talented Mr. Ripley is a psychological thriller novel by Patricia Highsmith. This novel first introduced the character of Tom Ripley who returns in the novels Ripley Under Ground, Ripley's Game, The Boy Who Followed Ripley and Ripley Under Water...

(Plein soleil
Plein Soleil
Purple Noon is a 1960 film directed by René Clément, based on The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith, and starring Alain Delon in his first major movie...

, Rene Clement, 1960).

Ronet's defining role reunited him with Malle and Jeanne Moreau
Jeanne Moreau
Jeanne Moreau is a French actress, singer, screenwriter and director.She made her theatrical debut in 1947, and established herself as one of the leading actresses of the Comédie-Française...

, in their finest collaboration:
Le Feu follet ("The Fire Within", 1963), playing an alcoholic writer. His indelible portrayal of depression and suicide garnered him the highest acclaim of his prolific career. He was awarded France's Étoile de Cristal (Crystal Star) and the prize for Best Actor at the 1965 São Paulo Film Festival; the film also won a Special Jury Prize
Special Jury Prize (Venice Film Festival)
The Special Jury Prize is an award given at the Venice Film Festival. It is awarded to one or two films per year and is considered less prestigious than the main award, the Golden Lion.-Awards:*1951 A Streetcar Named Desire by Elia Kazan...

 at the 1963 Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...

.

He was also a collaborator of Claude Chabrol
Claude Chabrol
Claude Chabrol was a French film director, a member of the French New Wave group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s...

. He appeared in four of his films including Le Scandale
The Champagne Murders
Le scandale is a 1967 French suspense thriller directed by Claude Chabrol and starring Anthony Perkins. It was the first of two films that Chabrol made with Perkins, who is most famous for his role in Psycho directed by Alfred Hitchcock, who Chabrol admires above all other directors.For his role...

(1966), for which he won the Best Actor award at the 1967 San Sebastián International Film Festival, La Ligne de démarcation
Line of Demarcation (film)
Line of Demarcation. is a 1966 film written and directed by Claude Chabrol. Its title in French is La Ligne de démarcation. It is based on upon the memoir Mémoires d'un agent secret de la France libre et La Ligne de démarcation by Gilbert Renault under his pseudonym Colonel Rémy.-Plot:A small...

("Line of Demarcation", 1966) and La Femme infidèle
La Femme Infidèle
The Unfaithful Wife is a 1968 French film directed by Claude Chabrol. It was remade in English in 2002 as Unfaithful, directed by Adrian Lyne. The film had a total of 682,295 admissions in France. -Plot:...

("The Unfaithful Wife", 1968). He co-starred with Alain Delon
Alain Delon
Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon is a French actor. He rose quickly to stardom, and by the age of 23 was already being compared to French actors such as Gérard Philipe and Jean Marais, as well as American actor James Dean. He was even called the male Brigitte Bardot...

 and Romy Schneider
Romy Schneider
Romy Schneider was an Austrian-born German film actress who also held French citizenship.-Early life:Schneider was born Rosemarie Magdalena Albach in Nazi-era Vienna, six months after the Anschluss, into a family of actors that included her paternal grandmother Rosa Albach-Retty, her Austrian...

 in La Piscine
La Piscine (film)
La Piscine is a 1969 Italian-French film directed by Jacques Deray. It is set in a villa with a pool in August at the Côte d'Azur...

(Jacques Deray
Jacques Deray
Jacques Deray was a French film director and screenwriter. Deray is prominently known for directing many crime and thriller films.-Biography:...

, 1969).

Other highlights include: La Dénonciation (1962, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze
Jacques Doniol-Valcroze
Jacques Doniol-Valcroze was a French actor, critic, screenwriter, and director...

, the co-founder of the Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du Cinéma is an influential French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine Revue du Cinéma involving members of two Paris film clubs — Objectif 49 and...

); The Victors
The Victors
"The Victors" is the fight song of the University of Michigan . It was composed by UM student Louis Elbel in 1898 following the last-minute football victory over the University of Chicago that clinched a league championship...

(Carl Foreman
Carl Foreman
Carl Foreman, CBE was an American screenwriter and film producer who wrote the notable film High Noon. He was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studio bosses in the 1950s.-Biography:...

, 1963); Trois chambres à Manhattan, (Marcel Carné
Marcel Carné
-Biography:Born in Paris, France, the son of a cabinet maker whose wife died when their son was five, Carné began his career as a film critic, becoming editor of the weekly publication, Hebdo-Films, and working for Cinémagazine and Cinémonde between 1929 and 1933. In the same period he worked in...

, 1965); Lost Command
Lost Command
Lost Command is a 1966 war film directed by Mark Robson and filmed in Spain. The screenplay was written by Nelson Gidding, based on the 1960 novel The Centurions by Jean Lartéguy...

(Mark Robson
Mark Robson
Mark Robson was a Canadian-born film editor, film director and producer in Hollywood.-Career:Born in Montreal, Quebec, he moved to the United States at a young age. He studied at the University of California, Los Angeles then found work in the prop department at 20th Century Fox studios...

, 1966); Il giardino delle delizie (Silvano Agosti, 1967); How Sweet It Is!
How Sweet It Is!
How Sweet It Is! is a 1968 comedy movie starring James Garner and Debbie Reynolds, with a supporting cast including Terry-Thomas and Paul Lynde. Garner plays a photographer who brings his wife, Jenny, and teenage son, David, along on a Paris shoot, with both husband and wife struggling to stay...

(Jerry Paris
Jerry Paris
Jerry Paris was an American actor and director best known for playing Jerry Helper, the dentist and next door neighbor of Rob and Laura Petrie, on The Dick Van Dyke Show.-Life and career:...

, 1968) starring Debbie Reynolds
Debbie Reynolds
Debbie Reynolds is an American actress, singer, and dancer.She was initially signed at age 16 by Warner Bros., but her career got off to a slow start. When her contract was not renewed, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer gave her a small, but significant part in the film Three Little Words , then signed her to...

; Raphaël ou le débauché, (Michel Deville
Michel Deville
Michel Deville is a French film director and screenwriter.Deville started his filmmaking career in the late 1950s, paralleling the emergence of the French New Wave directors...

, 1971); Beau-père
Beau-père
Beau-père is a 1981 French film directed by Bertrand Blier. It was entered into the 1981 Cannes Film Festival. The film had a total of 1,197,816 admissions in France...

(Bertrand Blier
Bertrand Blier
Bertrand Blier is a French screenwriter and film director.Born in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. He is the son of Bernard Blier....

,1981) and, one of his final films, Bob Swaim
Bob Swaim
Robert F. "Bob" Swaim is an American film director, born in Chicago on November 2, 1943. He grew up in the Reseda area of Los Angeles and graduated from Reseda High School in 1961 and with a degree in anthropology from California State University, Northridge, then called San Fernando Valley State...

's La Balance
La Balance
La Balance is a 1982 French film directed by Bob Swaim and starring Nathalie Baye, Philippe Léotard, Tchéky Karyo, Maurice Ronet and Jean-Paul Comart...

, 1982. He was originally cast to play Ali in Lawrence of Arabia
Lawrence of Arabia (film)
Lawrence of Arabia is a 1962 British film based on the life of T. E. Lawrence. It was directed by David Lean and produced by Sam Spiegel through his British company, Horizon Pictures, with the screenplay by Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson. The film stars Peter O'Toole in the title role. It is widely...

. However, he was replaced on location by Omar Sharif
Omar Sharif
Omar Sharif is an Egyptian actor who has starred in Hollywood films including Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and Funny Girl. He has been nominated for an Academy Award and has won two Golden Globe Awards.-Early life:...

 due to difficulties with his accent.

Ronet made his own directorial debut in 1964 with Le Voleur de Tibidabo
The Thief of Tibidabo
The Thief of Tibidabo is a 1964 Spanish-French crime-comedy film directed by Maurice Ronet and starring Anna Karina.-Cast:* Luis Ciges* Enrique Herreros* Anna Karina* José Nieto* Jesús Puche* Maurice Ronet* Amparo Soler Leal* Salvador Soler Marí...

, a self-reflexive, picaresque crime story shot in Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

, in which he also starred. He followed it up with two documentaries: Vers l'île des Dragons (1973), an allegorical journey to Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

 to film the Komodo dragon
Komodo dragon
The Komodo dragon , also known as the Komodo monitor, is a large species of lizard found in the Indonesian islands of Komodo, Rinca, Flores, Gili Motang and Gili Dasami. A member of the monitor lizard family , it is the largest living species of lizard, growing to a maximum length of in rare cases...

 and a report on the building of a dam in Caborabassa, Mozambique
Mozambique
Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique , is a country in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest...

, for French television. He directed and produced more programs for television: his own acclaimed adaptation of Herman Melville
Herman Melville
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....

's Bartleby in 1976 (which was released theatrically in 1978), as well as adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

 and Cornell Woolrich
Cornell Woolrich
Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich was an American novelist and short story writer who sometimes wrote under the pseudonyms William Irish and George Hopley....

 stories. He also authored two books: "L'ile des Dragons" (1973), a personal recollection and a chronicle of the making of Vers l'île des Dragons, and "Le Métier de Comédien" (1977), an honest and thorough discussion of the acting profession.

Personal life

His marriage to Maria Pacôme quickly ended in a separation, and they divorced in 1956. He dated actress Anouk Aimée
Anouk Aimée
Anouk Aimée is a French film actress. Aimée has appeared in 70 films since 1947. She began her film career in 1947 at age 14. In 1958 she portrayed the tragic artist Jeanne Hébuterne in the film Les Amants de Montparnasse...

 from 1958-60. In 1966 he designed and constructed his home in the village of Bonnieux
Bonnieux
Bonnieux is a commune in the Vaucluse department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France.-Geography:Bonnieux is one of the many historic "hill villages" in the region. Dating back to Roman times, it rests on top of the Luberon hills casting a watchful gaze across the rest of...

, in Vaucluse
Vaucluse
The Vaucluse is a department in the southeast of France, named after the famous spring, the Fontaine-de-Vaucluse.- History :Vaucluse was created on 12 August 1793 out of parts of the departments of Bouches-du-Rhône, Drôme, and Basses-Alpes...

, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur or PACA is one of the 27 regions of France.It is made up of:* the former French province of Provence* the former papal territory of Avignon, known as Comtat Venaissin...

. He lived with Josephine Chaplin
Josephine Chaplin
Josephine Hannah Chaplin is an actress and the daughter of actor/comedian/director Charlie Chaplin and his last wife, Oona O'Neill. Her siblings include Geraldine Chaplin, Christopher Chaplin and Michael Chaplin. She was also half-sister to Sydney Chaplin, Charles Chaplin, Jr...

 from 1977 until his death; their son Julien was born in 1980. He died in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, of cancer, a month before what would have been his 56th birthday. He is buried at the cemetery near his home.

See also

  • Le Guérisseur
    Le Guérisseur
    Le Guérisseur is a French drama film from 1953, directed by Yves Ciampi, written by Jacques-Laurent Bost, starring Dieter Borsche and Jean Marais...

    (1953)
  • Death of a Corrupt Man
    Death of a Corrupt Man
    Death of a Corrupt Man is a 1977 French crime film directed by Georges Lautner and starring Alain Delon.-Cast:* Alain Delon - Xavier 'Xav' Maréchal* Ornella Muti - Valérie* Stéphane Audran - Christiane* Mireille Darc - Françoise...

    (1977)

External links

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