He made his debut in cinema 94 years ago, today you all know him! Did you know this young actor?

Do we still need to introduce Jean Gabin, the French actor whose career spans over 30 years? Most of his films are known at least by name, even if we haven’t seen them: La Grande illusion, Le Quai des Neiges, Pépé le Moko, Touchez pas au Grisbi, La Traversée de Paris, Le Cave se rebiffe, Mélodie in. The Cellar, The Sicilian Clan and Two Men in the City have become film classics.

But in which film did he start his career?

Before working in cinema, Jean Gabin was a music hall artist: a member of Mistinguett’s group. He mainly played in operettas, in which he often played the role of the young protagonist. Talking cinema arrived in France in 1928, and in 1930 he was offered a role in the French version of the romantic musical Le Chemin du paradis by Wilhelm Thiel and Max de Vaucorbeil. He turns it down in favor of another project, Everyone Has a Chance, which is therefore his first film.

To Every His Chance is also a kind of operetta staged for the cinema. There are several songs performed by Gabin, the script seen and discussed. The actor plays Marcel Grivot, a shop assistant who borrows a fancy suit and finds himself confused by the noble Marcel de Monteville. Misunderstandings and misunderstandings are the order of the day.

Founding meeting with Duvivier

Since everyone has a chance, Jean Gabin works hard: 14 films in three years! Not all of them are masterpieces, but let him collaborate with Anatole Litvak or Georg Wilhelm Pabst and interfere with the director who will succeed him: Julien Duvivier. The latter brought him to another level of popularity with La Bandera (1935), in which Gabin played an assassin who joins the Spanish Legion to escape persecution.

His career reached a milestone and continued with La Belle Équipe, Les Bas-fonds, Pépé le Moko and La Grande illusions. Then, films that became classics proliferated during his rich career, despite the forced American experience, participation in World War II and crossing the desert after the war ended.