Michel Simon
Encyclopedia
Michel Simon was a Swiss actor. The actor François Simon
François Simon (actor)
François Simon was a Swiss film actor. He appeared in 35 films between 1936 and 1982. He was the son of actor Michel Simon.-Selected filmography:* Charles Mort ou Vif * Body of Love...

 is his son.

Early years

Simon used to say about himself that he was born in 1895 and, "as misfortune never comes singly, cinema was born the same year".

Son of a Protestant sausage maker, Simon soon left his family and town to go to Paris, where he first lived at the Hotel Renaissance, Saint-Martin Street, then in Montmartre
Montmartre
Montmartre is a hill which is 130 metres high, giving its name to the surrounding district, in the north of Paris in the 18th arrondissement, a part of the Right Bank. Montmartre is primarily known for the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré Cœur on its summit and as a nightclub district...

. He worked many different jobs to survive, such as giving boxing lessons or peddling smuggled lighters. He devoured every book he could find, with special preference for Georges Courteline
Georges Courteline
Georges Courteline was a French dramatist and novelist.Born Georges Victor Marcel Moinaux, in Tours in the Indre-et-Loire département, his family moved to Paris shortly after his birth...

's writings.

His artistic beginnings in 1912 were modest: magician, clown
Clown
Clowns are comic performers stereotypically characterized by the grotesque image of the circus clown's colored wigs, stylistic makeup, outlandish costumes, unusually large footwear, and red nose, which evolved to project their actions to large audiences. Other less grotesque styles have also...

 and acrobat
Acrobatics
Acrobatics is the performance of extraordinary feats of balance, agility and motor coordination. It can be found in many of the performing arts, as well as many sports...

 stooge
Stooge
A stooge is a person who is under the control of another. Being called a stooge is an insult. Stooge can also sometimes be used to mean "idiot".* Stooge , a member of a comedy double act who feeds lines to the other comedian...

 in a dancers' show called "Ribert's and Simon's", in the Montreuil-sous-Bois Casino.

Conscripted into the Swiss Army in 1914, he was often insubordinate, spending a lot of time in the stockade. He also contracted tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

.

In 1915, while on leave, he saw Georges Pitoëff's early work in the French language, at the Theatre de la Comédie of Geneva, acting in Hedda Gabler
Hedda Gabler
Hedda Gabler is a play first published in 1890 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The play premiered in 1891 in Germany to negative reviews, but has subsequently gained recognition as a classic of realism, nineteenth century theatre, and world drama...

.

He then decided to become an actor too, but had to wait until 1920 before making his first brief appearance on stage, with Pitoëff's company, speaking three lines for the registrar role in the Shakespeare's Measure for Measure
Measure for Measure
Measure for Measure is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1603 or 1604. It was classified as comedy, but its mood defies those expectations. As a result and for a variety of reasons, some critics have labelled it as one of Shakespeare's problem plays...

. He also worked at this time as the company's photographer. He was spotted for the first time in a supporting role in George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

's Androcles and the Lion
Androcles and the Lion (play)
Androcles and the Lion is a 1912 play written by George Bernard Shaw.Androcles and the Lion is Shaw's retelling of the tale of Androcles, a slave who is saved by the requited mercy of a lion. In the play, Shaw portrays Androcles to be one of the many Christians being led to the Colosseum for torture...

. In 1922, his company moved to Paris at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées.

He quit the following year to become a light comedy actor in plays by Tristan Bernard
Tristan Bernard
Tristan Bernard was a French playwright, novelist, journalist and lawyer.-Life:Born Paul Bernard into a Jewish family in Besançon, Doubs, Franche-Comté, France, he was the son of an architect...

, Marcel Achard
Marcel Achard
Marcel Achard was a French playwright and screenwriter whose popular sentimental comedies maintained his position as a highly-recognizable name in his country's theatrical and literary circles for five decades...

 and Yves Mirande. Marcel Achard presented him to Charles Dullin
Charles Dullin
Charles Dullin was a French actor, theater manager and director.-Life:Dullin was a student of Jacques Copeau...

, in whose company he acted in Je ne vous aime pas with Valentine Tessier.

Later years

Louis Jouvet
Louis Jouvet
Louis Jouvet was a renowned French actor, director, and theatre director.- Life :Overcoming speech impediments and sometimes paralyzing stage fright as a young man, Jouvet's first important association was with Jacques Copeau's Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier, beginning in 1913...

, who had meanwhile replaced Pitoëff, hired him at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées. Simon then gave a brilliant performance in Jean de la Lune, a play by Marcel Achard. His inimitable talent transformed his Cloclo supporting role to the big attraction of the play.

His theatrical career then blossomed with a large repertoire: Shakespeare, Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

, Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello was an Italian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934, for his "bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage." Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written...

, Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

, Bourdet, Henri Bernstein
Henri Bernstein
Henri-Léon-Gustave-Charles Bernstein was a French playwright associated with Boulevard theatre.The far-right royalist Camelots du Roi youth organization of the Action française organized an anti-Semitic riot against a production of one of his plays in 1911...

, but it was film that made him most popular. His first film appearance was Feu Mathias Pascal
Feu Mathias Pascal
Feu Mathias Pascal is a 1925 French silent film written and directed by Marcel L'Herbier. It was the first film adaptation of Luigi Pirandello's novel Il fu Mattia Pascal.-Background:...

, adapted from Pirandello and directed by 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...

. Very soon after, he appeared in La vocation d'André Carel, directed by Jean Choux. The film used small-scale production methods, just as the Nouvelle Vague would do starting in 1958.

In silent movies, he brought his amazing appearance and his unusual face - a talent with an exceptional mobility, but truly without mannerism. He easily played with his body using an unlimited virtuosity, especially his ugliness, evolving from smartness to sympathy, goodness to naivety, ludicrousness to frightening, stupidity to comical, mischievousness to cruelty.

His film career was really boosted with the advent of talking pictures. People remarked that his elocution and voice tone were as original as his appearance and play. He then revealed his unclassifiable talent: action comedy, drama, tragedy, light comedy.

He appeared in 55 plays from 1920 to 1965, and 101 from 1965 to 1975.

He appeared in Dreyer's
Carl Theodor Dreyer
Carl Theodor Dreyer, Jr. was a Danish film director. He is regarded by many critics and filmmakers as one of the greatest directors in cinema.-Life:Dreyer was born illegitimate in Copenhagen, Denmark...

 1928 The Passion of Joan of Arc
The Passion of Joan of Arc
The Passion of Joan of Arc is a silent film produced in France in 1928. It is based on the record of the trial of Joan of Arc. The film was directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer and stars Renée Jeanne Falconetti...

. He acted in films for 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...

 (La Chienne, Boudu Saved From Drowning), Jean Vigo
Jean Vigo
Jean Vigo was a French film director, who helped establish poetic realism in film in the 1930s and was a posthumous influence on the French New Wave of the late 1950s and early 1960s.-Biography:...

 (L'Atalante) and 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...

 (Port of the Shadows, Bizarre, Bizarre).

In the 1950s, he reined in his activities following an accident involving a makeup dye that left part of his face and body paralysed.

In 1967, he won the Silver Bear for Best Actor
Silver Bear for Best Actor
The Silver Bear for Best Actor is the Berlin International Film Festival's award for achievement in performance by an actor.- Awards :- External links :*...

 at the 17th Berlin International Film Festival
17th Berlin International Film Festival
The 17th annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from June 23 to July 4, 1967.-Jury:* Thorold Dickinson * Rüdiger von Hirschberg* Knud Leif Thomsen* Michel Aubriant* Sashadhar Mukerjee* Aleksandar Petrović* Willard Van Dyke...

 for his role in Le vieil homme et l'enfant (The Two of Us).

He died at 80 years of age from a pulmonary embolism and is buried in the Grand-Lancy Cemetery of Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...

, next to his parents, as per his testamentary wishes.

The eccentric

In the 1920s/1930s, Simon enjoyed associating with the Parisian lower classes.

Simon would say that he preferred "living with animals than humans". He lived for a long time in a kind of bohemian house in Noisy-le-Grand
Noisy-le-Grand
Noisy-le-Grand is a commune in the eastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris.The commune of Noisy-le-Grand is part of the sector of Porte de Paris, one of the four sectors of the "new town" of Marne-la-Vallée.-Name:...

, near Paris. The house was surrounded by rank weeds, and filled with amazing bric-a-brac, including his large collection of erotica
Erotica
Erotica are works of art, including literature, photography, film, sculpture and painting, that deal substantively with erotically stimulating or sexually arousing descriptions...

, including photographs and films. This collection was dispersed after his death.

Select filmography

  • 1925 Feu Mathias Pascal
    Feu Mathias Pascal
    Feu Mathias Pascal is a 1925 French silent film written and directed by Marcel L'Herbier. It was the first film adaptation of Luigi Pirandello's novel Il fu Mattia Pascal.-Background:...

    by 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...

     ... Pomino
  • 1928 The Passion of Joan of Arc
    The Passion of Joan of Arc
    The Passion of Joan of Arc is a silent film produced in France in 1928. It is based on the record of the trial of Joan of Arc. The film was directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer and stars Renée Jeanne Falconetti...

    by Carl Theodor Dreyer
    Carl Theodor Dreyer
    Carl Theodor Dreyer, Jr. was a Danish film director. He is regarded by many critics and filmmakers as one of the greatest directors in cinema.-Life:Dreyer was born illegitimate in Copenhagen, Denmark...

  • 1931 On purge bébé
    On purge bébé
    On purge bébé is Jean Renoir's first sound film. It is a 1931 comedy about a supposedly unbreakable chamberpot and a constipated baby. It is noted for mocking the French bourgeoisie....

    by 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...

  • 1931 La Chienne
    La Chienne
    La Chienne is a French film by director Jean Renoir. It is the second sound film by the director and the twelfth of his career.The literal English translation of the film's title is "The Bitch", although the movie was never released under this title...

    by 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...

     ... Maurice Legrand
  • 1932 Boudu Saved from Drowning by 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...

     ... Priape Boudu
  • 1933 High and Low
    High and Low (1933 film)
    High and Low is a 1933 French drama film directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst.-Cast:* Ariane Borg – * Pauline Carton – Seamstress* Janine Crispin – Marie de Ferstel * Christiane Delyne* Jean Gabin – Charles Boulla...

    by G. W. Pabst
  • 1934 L'Atalante
    L'Atalante
    L'Atalante is a 1934 French film directed by Jean Vigo and starring Jean Dasté, Dita Parlo and Michel Simon. It has been hailed by many critics as one of the greatest films of all time.-Plot summary:...

    by Jean Vigo
    Jean Vigo
    Jean Vigo was a French film director, who helped establish poetic realism in film in the 1930s and was a posthumous influence on the French New Wave of the late 1950s and early 1960s.-Biography:...

     ... Old Jules
  • 1934 Le Bonheur
    Le 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...

    by 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...

     ... Noël Malpiaz
  • 1937 Bizarre, Bizarre by 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...

     ... Irwin Molyneux
  • 1938 Boys' School by Christian-Jaque
    Christian-Jaque
    Christian-Jaque was a French filmmaker. He was married to actress Martine Carol from 1954 to 1959.Christian-Jaque was born at Paris....

     ... Lemel, the drawing teacher
  • 1939 Port of Shadows by 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...

     ... Zabel
  • 1939 Le Dernier tournant
    Le Dernier tournant
    Le Dernier tournant is a 1939 French drama film directed by Pierre Chenal, written by Charles Spaak and Henri Torrès, based on novel "The Postman Always Rings Twice" by James M...

  • 1939 Fric-Frac by Claude Autant-Lara
    Claude Autant-Lara
    Claude Autant-Lara , was a French film director and later Member of the European Parliament .-Biography:...

     & Maurice Lehmann ... Jo
  • 1940 Les Musiciens du ciel
    Les Musiciens du ciel
    Les Musiciens du ciel is a 1940 French language motion picture drama directed by Georges Lacombe, based on novel "Musiciens Du Ceil" by René Lefèvre who co-wrote screenplay with Jean Ferry. The music score is by Arthur Honegger and Arthur Hoérée...

  • 1940 La Comédie du bonheur by 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...

     ... M. Jourdain
  • 1941 The Story of Tosca by Carl Koch ... Scarpia
  • 1946 Panic
    Panique
    Panique is a French film directed by Julien Duvivier, made in 1946 and released in 1947, starring Michel Simon and Viviane Romance. In 1989 Patrice Leconte remade the film as Monsieur Hire, with the title rôle played by Michel Blanc.-Plot:...

    by Julien Duvivier
    Julien Duvivier
    Julien Duvivier was a French film director. He was prominent in French cinema in the years 1930-1960...

     ... Monsieur Hire
  • 1947 Les Amants du pont Saint-Jean
    Les Amants du pont Saint-Jean
    Les Amants du pont Saint-Jean is a 1947 French film directed by Henri Decoin. It was entered into the 1947 Cannes Film Festival.-Cast:* Nadine Alari - Augusta* Odette Barencey - Amélie* Pauline Carton - Tante Marguerite* Marc Cassot - Pilou...

  • 1949 Fabiola
    Fabiola (film)
    Fabiola is a 1949 Italian language motion picture historical drama directed by Alessandro Blasetti, very loosely based on the 1854 novel of the same name by Nicholas Patrick Wiseman. The film stars Michèle Morgan, Henri Vidal and Michel Simon...

  • 1950 La Beauté du diable by René Clair
    René Clair
    René Clair born René-Lucien Chomette, was a French filmmaker.-Biography:He was born in Paris and grew up in the Les Halles quarter. He attended the Lycée Montaigne and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. During World War I, he served as an ambulance driver. After the war, he started a career as a journalist...

     ... Mephistopheles/Old Professor Henri Faust
  • 1951 Poison
    La poison
    La Poison, is a French comedy drama film from 1951, directed by Sacha Guitry, written by Sacha Guitry, starring Michel Simon and Louis de Funès.- Cast :*Michel Simon : Paul Louis Victor Braconnier, horticulturist...

    by Sacha Guitry
    Sacha Guitry
    Alexandre-Pierre Georges Guitry was a French stage actor, film actor, director, screenwriter, and playwright of the Boulevard theatre.- Biography :...

     ... Paul-Louis Victor Braconnier
  • 1952 Monsieur Taxi
    Monsieur Taxi
    Monsieur Taxi , is a French comedy film from 1952, directed André Hunebelle, written by Jean Halain, starring by Michel Simon and Louis de Funès. It is about Pierre Verger, who is nicknamed Monsieur Taxi and always in company of a smart young dog called "Gangster". -Plot:Monsieur Taxi comes across...

  • 1953 La Vie d'un honnête homme
    La Vie d'un honnête homme
    La Vie d'un honnête homme , is a French comedy drama film from 1953, directed by Sacha Guitry, written by Sacha Guitry, starring Michel Simon and Louis de Funès.- Cast :* Michel Simon : Albert and Alain Ménard-Lacoste...

    (1953)
  • 1953 L'Étrange Désir de monsieur Bard
    L'Étrange Désir de monsieur Bard
    L'Étrange Désir de monsieur Bard , is a French drama film from 1954, directed by Géza von Radványi, written by Géza von Radványi, starring Michel Simon and Louis de Funès.- Cast :* Michel Simon : Auguste Bard* Yves Deniaud : Antonio...

    (1954)
  • 1955 The Impossible Mr. Pipelet
    L'impossible Monsieur Pipelet
    L'impossible Monsieur Pipelet , is a French comedy drama film from 1955, directed by André Hunebelle, written by Jacques Gut, starring Michel Simon and Louis de Funès. The film is known under the titles "The Impossible Mr...

    by André Hunebelle
    André Hunebelle
    André Hunebelle was a French director born September 1, 1896 in Meudon , died 27 November 1985 in Nice .Hunebelle was a former publisher of a French newspaper called La Fleché...

     ... Maurice Martin
  • 1959 Die Nackte und der Satan by Victor Trivas ... Professor Abel
  • 1960 Pete the Tender by François Villiers
    François Villiers
    The filmmaker François Villiers , Chevalier of the Legion of Honor was a French film director. He was responsible for several films, from Hans le marin in 1949, to Manika, une vie plus tard, in 1989 which won the Prix du Public at Cannes.As a film director and television producer of quality dramas,...

     ... Pierrot
  • 1960 Candide ou l'optimisme au XXe siècle
    Candide ou l'optimisme au XXe siècle
    Candide ou l'Optimisme du XXe siècle is a 1960 French comedy drama film directed by Norbert Carbonnaux and written by Carbonnaux and Albert Simonin. It stars Jean-Pierre Cassel as Candide, Pierre Brasseur as Pangloss, Louis de Funès as the officer of the Gestapo, and Daliah Lavi as Cunégonde...

  • 1962 Le Diable et les Dix Commandements
    Le Diable et les Dix Commandements
    Le Diable et les Dix Commandements , is a French comedy-drama film from 1963, directed by Julien Duvivier, written by David Alexander and Michel Audiard, starring Michel Simon and Louis de Funès...

    by Julien Duvivier
    Julien Duvivier
    Julien Duvivier was a French film director. He was prominent in French cinema in the years 1930-1960...

  • 1964 The Train by John Frankenheimer
    John Frankenheimer
    John Michael Frankenheimer was an American film and television director known for social dramas and action/suspense films...

  • 1967 The Two of Us by Claude Berri
    Claude Berri
    Claude Berri , born Claude Berel Langmann, was one of the great all-rounders of French cinema: an actor, writer, producer, director and distributor. "Out of my failure as an actor was born my desire to direct. Then my relative failure as a director forced me to become a producer. In order to get my...

     ... Pepe
  • 1971 Blanche
    Blanche
    -Places:* Blanche Harbor, in the Solomon Islands* Blanche Rock, Tasmania* Blanche, Alabama* Blanca, Colorado, a town in the United States* Blanche Ely High School, in Pompano Beach, Florida* Blanch, North Carolina, formerly called Blanche...

    by Walerian Borowczyk
    Walerian Borowczyk
    Walerian Borowczyk was a Polish film director. He directed 40 films between 1946 and 1988. His career as a film director was mainly in France.-Biography:...

  • 1972 The Most Wonderful Evening of My Life by Ettore Scola ... Attorney Zorn
  • 1975 The Red Ibis by Jean-Pierre Mocky
    Jean-Pierre Mocky
    Jean-Pierre Mocky is the pseudonym of Jean-Paul Adam Mokiejewski, a French film director, actor, screenwriter and producer...

     ... Zizi with Michel Serrault
    Michel Serrault
    Michel Serrault was a celebrated French actor who appeared in over 150 films.-Biography :...

     and Michel Galabru
    Michel Galabru
    Michel Louis Edmond Galabru is a French actor born on 27 October 1922 in Safi, Morocco.-Career:Over the course of his career, Galabru appeared in over 200 movies and worked with such renowned directors as Bertrand Blier, Costa-Gavras, Luc Besson , and Jean-Luc Godard...


External links

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