Le Comédien (1948)
Directed by Sacha Guitry

Film Review

The war did not end well for Sacha Guitry.  During the Liberation of Paris in August 1944, he was arrested by members of the French Resistance and thrown into prison for sixty days without charge.  His protests of innocence were ignored. Although he was subsequently released it was not until 1947 that he was formally acquitted.  In the meantime, many of his former friends shunned him and his detractors delighted in dragging his name through the mud.  The slur of collaboration would stick to Guitry for many years.  All this was bound to have a profound impact on the man who had, just a few years previously, enjoyed the reputation of one of France's greatest living playwrights.

One thing that must have struck Guitry during these wilderness years is the transience of fame.  One minute you're a star, the next you're nobody.  It was to preserve the memory of his father, the legendary stage actor Lucien Guitry, that he first began making feature films in 1935, faithfully imitating his father's portrayal of Louis Pasteur in his film adaptation of his play Pasteur.  Guitry had also written a detailed biography on his father, Lucien Guitry raconté par son fils, first published in 1930, and one of the last plays that Lucien Guitry appeared in before his death in 1925 was a biography of himself written by his son, Le Comédien.  It is perhaps not surprising that, after his own near-brush with obscurity, Sacha Guitry would once again devote himself to reviving the memory of his illustrious father, by adapting for the cinema Le Comédien.

Given what he had recently experienced, we might have expected the film to betray Guitry's bitterness and resentment for his ill-treatment.  But no, that would come later.  Here, Guitry has one purpose: to pay tribute to his father and glorify the career to which he had devoted his life, acting.  The cynicism, reproach and self-pitying sourness that crept into some of Guitry's later films - most notably Le Diable boiteux (1948) and La Poison (1951) - are completely absent here.  In fact, Le Comédien is one of Guitry's warmest, most sincere films.  Naturally, only one actor could be trusted with the responsibility of portraying Lucien Guitry on screen - Sacha Guitry himself - and as Sacha Guitry alone could play Sacha Guitry, the film's chief delight (or biggest self-indulgence, you decide) is that of seeing Guitry père and fils appear on screen, often in the same scene, played by the same actor.  By combining whip pans with some sharp editing, Guitry does indeed create the illusion that his father lives again, apparently appearing in the same shot as his son.  Such is the magic of cinema.

Guitry's admiration for his father is apparent throughout the film, but he doesn't set out to make him a flawless individual, au contraire.  Lucien Guitry, as his son portrays him, is a great actor but an imperfect human being, willing to sacrifice even love for his art, and doing so with almost reckless nonchalance.  The relationship between the father and the son appears distant and one-sided, the love that Sacha has for his father scarcely acknowledged, let alone reciprocated by the man he places on the highest of pedestals.  Through this incisive and meticulous portrait of a great artist Guitry reveals not only his love of his father but the enormity of his devotion to the profession he rated above all others. In Guitry's eyes, actors stand high at the pinnacle of human achievement, and watching him perform in Le Comédien, mocking himself whilst venerating his father, you are tempted to agree with him.

Film Synopsis

At the age of eight, Lucien Guitry has already made up his mind to become an actor.  The son of a shopkeeper, he plays truant from school so that he can memorise the great classics of the French stage.  Encouraged by his father, Guitry takes acting lessons and, aged 17, make his debut at the Théâtre d'Étampes.  Three years later, he declines an offer to join the Comédie-Française and instead leaves for a tour of Russia, where his son Sacha will be born.  On his return to France, he soon becomes a giant of the Parisian stage.  How sad that the woman he falls in love with, Catherine Maillard, should have aspirations of becoming an actress.  Realising she has no talent in this direction, Lucien Guitry has no choice but to let her leave him.  In later years, Guitry triumphs in plays written especially for him by his son, Pasteur and Le Comédien...