Michel Blanc, It Wasn’t Just Bronze: Proof With This Extraordinary TV Movie Released 20 Years Ago

To say that Michel Blanc’s untimely and brutal death at the age of 72 evokes strong emotions. Not only among his companions in the Splendid gang, but also among the audience and moviegoers who were amazed by the films of this great actor-director.

An actor we’ve long relegated to the comic register, with his unforgettable role as the flirtatious loser and hypochondriac Jean-Claude Duce from Les Bronzés. A role that did a lot for his popularity. But what prevented him from diversifying into an acting profession, like a ball and chain he couldn’t get rid of.

After his death, many cited, and rightly so, the many roles in which he shone in the dramatic register as many examples of his immense talent. Witnesses of Andre Techine. An evening gown by Bertrand Blier that won her the Interpretation Prize at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival.

Extraordinary and disturbing in Monsieur Hire, by Patrice Leconte. Fabulous and brilliant in Claude Berry’s masterpiece Uranus, where in the midst of the purges in France he plays a communist activist and a father burning with a secret passion for his neighbor.

A big (television) movie passed in silence

There is a film – quite rarely – made for television, which nevertheless fully deserves its place in the main roles of the actor: 93, rue Lauriston.

Broadcast on Canal+ in 2004 and directed by Denys Granier-Deferre, this brilliant television film, which would not be unworthy of a cinema, goes right back to the dark period of the occupation. story? Henri Lafont, a petty crook, was suddenly given the title of godfather, and his deputy, Pierre Bonny, a dead policeman, was arrested on August 30, 1944, then quickly tried and executed four months later. During the occupation, they went beyond the scope of cooperation. Their names and the address of their headquarters: 93, rue Lauriston, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.

It was at this address, unfortunately known by the nickname “Carlingua”, that thugs raped, tortured and killed in the name of the Germans and themselves. Michel Blanc brilliantly plays Inspector Blot, who arrested Lafont and Bon and was responsible for investigating the aftermath of the French Gestapo, with his connections all over Paris.

The conclusion of his thick investigation will be compromising for certain public figures who frequented the two collaborators. But by the end of the purge, no one cared, or almost no one, about his accusations… Then came the creation of a myth of resistance and a heroic France that would be shattered by an extraordinary documentary by Marcel Ophuls. Sorrow and Sadness, 1969

In a solid screenplay written by Jean-Claude Grumberg, who records his memories of the period in regularly lit sequences, Denis Granier-Deffery brings the cast around Michel Blanc, including Samuel Le Bihan, who plays Léon Jabin, the young naïveté. A provincial who joins the French Gestapo.

To our knowledge, 93 rue Lauriston has only been broadcast twice on the small screen. It was once available in the Amazon Prime catalog, but unfortunately that’s no longer the case. To see this gem, you need to go for the DVD edition.