Why everyone loved Jean Rochefort
The mustachioed dandy shares the screen with Claude Brasseur in Un éléphant ça trompe beaucoup this Monday evening on Arte.
In 1976, Jean Rochefort teams up with good friends: Claude Brasseur, Guy Bedos and Victor Lanoux in the cult comedy An elephant cheats a lot. The fine team plays a group of forty-somethings from the lower middle class, all facing setbacks in their personal lives. Facing them, a female quartet led by Danièle Delorme, Anny Duperey, Marthe Villalonga. Claude Brasseur plays a homosexual character far from prejudices and caricatures, for which he wins the César for best supporting actor, and Jean Rochefort plays Etienne, a stiff man torn between his insipid family life and his love at first sight for Charlotte, a beautiful young woman glimpsed in a parking lot.
Directed by Yves Robert (The War of the Buttons) and co-written with Jean-Loup Dabadie, An elephant cheats a lot was so successful that a sequel came to the screen a year later: We will all go to Heaven.
The first part can be seen on Arte tonight from 8:55 p.m. And on this occasion, let’s pay tribute to one of the emblematic French actors of an entire generation.
Tribute to Jean Rochefort published after his death, October 9, 2017: Who didn’t like Jean Rochefort? Take the test, look at the saddened faces around you: everyone receives the news of the actor’s death like a hammer blow. Almost a personal shock. He was part of the daily life of at least three generations of French people: those who enjoyed Yves Robert’s comedies in the 70s; those who were lulled by his warm and reassuring voice when he “hosted” the Disney Channel period Winnie the Pooh ; those who had only recently discovered him thanks to the “boloss des belles lettres” tab… Jean Rochefort made the link between the generation of the Conservatoire (the friends Belmondo, Marielle, Noiret…) and that of the Chabat-Baer-Canet, who had made him a sort of tutelary figure, a crazy uncle, an eccentric godfather. He united De Broca and Terry Gilliam (their unfinished Don Quixote), Angelique, Marquise of Angels And RRRrrr!!!
Jean Rochefort: “I have always been consumed by doubt”
Which film should be remembered at the time of the tribute, among the 160 titles listed by IMDb? Everyone has their favorite, their favorite Rochefort. The impeccably drawn silhouettes of philosophical foils or diabolical villains, in Cartridge, The Tribulations of a Chinese in China Or The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe. The great shady seventies roles at Schoendoerffer (The Drummer Crab), Cavalier (A strange journey), Tavernier (The watchmaker of Saint-Paul, Let the festivities begin). The entire series of films shot with Patrice Leconte, from Veces were closed from the inside has The Man on the TrainPassing by Tandem, The hairdresser’s Husband, Tango, Ridiculous and the underestimated The Grand Dukes. The films weren’t always great, but he never disappointed. Even the insurance ads were better because of him. The names of his characters seem to tell a vision of the world: Maître Albert Légal, Colonel Louis Marie Alphonse Toulouse, Martin Belhomme, Henri Sauveur, Michel Marteau, Inspector Tantpis.
Terry Gilliam’s tribute to Jean Rochefort
Jean Rochefort was the incarnation of the France of the Trente Glorieuses, or at least the fantasized reflection that France wanted to send back of itself. Especially since the Trente Glorieuses were nothing more than a distant memory… Over the course of his roles, he had invented a person uniquely amused gentleman laughing in his beard (well, his moustache), choosing to counter every cloud of melancholy with a witticism. His personality had ended up going beyond the cinema to become a permanent lesson in elegance. The Americans have Bill Murray, but we had him, the original dandy. It is said that, on the mantelpiece of his Parisian apartment, a terracotta bust of Don Quixote turned its back on the visitor to face a reproduction representing a grinning death’s head.
There are over 100 films by Jean Rochefort, perhaps as many TV appearances, but if we had to choose just one, it would be An elephant cheats a lotthe one who fixes in the collective consciousness his public image, an idea of tightrope-walking cinema, free as a bird and a cavalier. Yves Robert had seen in him an alter ego and sublimated him into a Pompidolian bourgeois, a seducer in spite of himself, a heartbreaker and an ideal boyfriend. As an irresistible smooth-talker, above all, thanks to the flow of Dabadie’s dialogues. You who enter my heart, do not pay attention to the disorder.to quote the most beautiful of all. Jean Rochefort gave the impression that for him, life was light, easy. It was an illusion of course. But the sleight of hand was perfect.
