“He is probably the most admired actor”: When he met Jean Gabin for the first time, this legendary French actor made a huge impression.

Jean Gabin was the king of well submitted proposals! We remember, for example, his laconic opinion on Citizen Kane, but he also had as many opinions on the world of cinema… probably without believing a word! At least, that’s what Philippe Noiret, who worked on a feature film with the actress, thinks.

In 2000, at the microphone of Patrick Simonini TV5 WorldThe star of Cinéma Paradiso and Coup de torchon reflected on his meeting with Jean Gabin, an actor who respected him:

“It meant a lot to me, first of all because he was probably the actor I admire the most, the French one for sure, and because it was an important step in my professional life.”

His film with Gabin

It was in 1964 that he crossed paths with Jean Gabin on the set of Monsieur, a film by Jean-Paul Le Chanois in which he portrayed a wealthy industrialist employed by Jean Gabin as a butler. Another important role that opened the door to Les Copains (1965) and La Vie de château (1966).

“Often I have had perfectly dishonest judgments about the cinema. I remember the sentence he said to me: ‘They begin to annoy me with their cinema’, as if it were not part of it. I learned a lot. It is a great pleasure. It is the only advantage we have in old age is to accumulate such an encounter, to enjoy it.”

Noire worked for “Gabin”!

Noire again suited Gabin, albeit indirectly, in Le Voyage du père (1966) with Fernandel, produced by the latter, and Jean Gabin with their production company Gafer. Father’s Journey is the second of nine films they will co-finance.

As for Philippe Noiret, he continued his rise until filming Yves Robert’s Alexandre le bienheureux (1968), which finally put him at the top of the bill and made him known to the general public. He won two Césars for Best Actor for Robert Enrico’s The Old Weapon and Bertrand Tavernier’s Life and Nothing Else.