Lino Ventura

Biography: life and films

Gabin, Delon and Ventura - three names, three very distinct personalities, the three men who defined the French policier for three decades. Gabin was the quietly powerful manipulator, Delon the cool, solitary angel of death, Ventura the archetypal heavy. All three were icons of French cinema, but whilst Gabin and Delon enjoyed high profile international careers, their worldwide celebrity enduring to this day, Ventura's fame is mostly confined to the French-speaking world. And yet, of the three actors, it is Ventura who is most widely loved and respected in France, admired as much for his humanitarian work as for his acting. Lino Ventura wasn't just a top brand movie phenomenon, appearing in 75 films over three and a half decades, he was also an immense force for good.

Ventura's achievements are all the more impressive considering his humble origins. Named Angiolino Giuseppe Pasquale Ventura, he was born in Parma, Italy on 14th July 1919, to Italian parents. The 8-year-old Angiolino accompanied his mother Luisa to France, to settle with his father Giovanni who had emigrated to the country a few years earlier to find work. After failing to find her husband, Luisa Ventura was forced to take on menial jobs to support herself and her son. Lino would never see his father again.

Aged nine, Lino left school and turned his hand to any work he could find to supplement the meagre family income. It was at the age of 16 that he discovered his passion for wrestling. He trained hard and had hopes of pursuing a career in the sport. Whilst working as a courier for a travel agency firm, he met his future wife, Odette Lecomte, whom he married in 1942. During the Second World War, Ventura served in the Italian army, but deserted after the fall of Mussolini and beat a hasty retreat back to France. After the war, he took up wrestling professionally, winning the title of middleweight Champion of Europe in 1950. Not long after this, he had to give up the sport after sustaining two leg fractures in a fight with Henri Cogan. Thereafter, he derived an income as a trainer.

Lino Ventura's acting career began in 1953, when director Jacques Becker gave him a significant supporting role opposite Jean Gabin in a film that was to become a landmark polar - Touchez pas au grisbi. Ventura had no previous acting experience and accepted the role only after Becker agreed to offer him the same salary as its lead actor, a million francs. The film's success launched Ventura's movie career and established his screen persona - as a tough gangster thug with no scruples and an ever-ready iron fist. Gabin became a close personal friend and the two actors appeared together in several prominent films of the 1950s and '60s - Razzia sur la chnouf (1955), Crime et Châtiment (1956), Le Rouge est mis (1957), Maigret tend un piège (1958) and Le Clan des Siciliens (1969).

It was made-to-measure roles in Le Gorille vous salue bien (1958) and Le Fauve est lâché (1959) that put Ventura firmly on a star footing. With his distinctive jowled features and powerful broad-shouldered frame, the actor brought a striking physicality to his performances that perfectly suited his impulsive brutish portrayals, accentuating the hard-edged noir reality of his films. By the early 1960s, he was one of France's most bankable leading actors, although he was almost invariably cast as the heavy, be it as the merciless gun-toting gangster or doggedly determined cop.

Ventura worked with many important directors of the policier genre - notably Jean-Pierre Melville (Le Deuxième souffle, L'Armée des ombres), Jacques Deray (Avec la peau des autres), Robert Enrico (Les Grandes gueules) and Claude Pinoteau (Le Silencieux). He was also partnered with some of the most prominent actors if the day, including Jean-Paul Belmondo (Class tous risques, Cent mille dollars au soleil), Marlène Jobert (Dernier domicile connu) and Alain Delon (Les Aventuriers).

By the mid-1960s, Lino Ventura had muscled in on another popular genre - the gangster film parody. Directed by Georges Lautner, he notched up a series of successes in this genre, in films that have become enduring classics: Les Tontons flingueurs (1963), Les Barbouzes (1964) and Ne nous fâchons pas (1966). The actor found relief from his habitual tough guy roles in a number of popular comedies that revealed a gentler, more engaging side to his nature - Le Bateau d'Émile (1961), L'Aventure c'est l'aventure (1972), La Bonne année (1973), La Gifle (1974). It is a curious feature of Ventura's work that only in the last decade of his career did his screen portrayals come to evince the warmth and humanity of the man himself.

International fame came in the early 1970s, after starring as a mafia boss alongside Charles Bronson in Terence Young's The Valachi Papers (1972). By the 1980s, Ventura's screen persona had softened markedly. No longer the indomitable tough guy, he was often cast as a victim of off-screen machination, particularly in some memorable examples of the emerging neo-polar genre - Adieu poulet (1975), Cadavres exquis (1976) and Espion, lève-toi (1981). He even came to parody his earlier brutish persona in a number of films, particularly L'Emmerdeur (1973), in which he formed an unforgettable comedy double act with the singer-turned-actor Jacques Brel.

Ventura's last notable role was as an implacable police inspector harrowing Michel Serrault in Claude Miller's Garde à vue (1981). The following year, he gave a creditable portrayal of Jean Valjean in Robert Hossein's lavish production of Les Misérables. He bowed out with a fleeting appearance in Roger Hanin's La Rumba (1987) - his next two planned films (Maledetto ferragosto and La Jonque) were abandoned when he died suddenly from a heart attack in Saint-Cloud on 22nd October 1987. He was aged 68.

As noteworthy as it was, Ventura's acting career represented just one part of his life. An equally important part was his devotion to the rights of the disabled. In 1966 the actor and his wife Odette founded a charitable institution, Perce-Neige, devoted to improving the life chances of handicapped children. Having a disabled daughter of their own, the couple had experienced for themselves the difficulty of parents in their position. It was lack of support available to them in France that motivated them to launch a national appeal in October 1965 to raise funds for an association dedicated to supporting disabled children and their parents. Perce-Neige remains one of the most important institutions of its kind in France, actively involved in shaping legislation that respects the rights of disabled people. As the charity proclaims on its website: Le combat initié par Lino Ventura continue.

Filmography

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