- Actor Kirk Douglas died on Wednesday at the age of 103.
- He was a legend of American cinema.
- He has appeared in a hundred films. Its most significant roles, like that of Spartacus, date back to the 1950s and 1960s.
Kirk Douglas, who died this Wednesday at 103, will remain in the history of cinema as a legend of the golden age of American cinema. He has appeared in hundreds of films, the most significant of which, dating back to the 1950s to 1960s, have become classics. Close-up on five of them.
- " The champion "
Thanks to this 1949 film by Mark Robson, Kirk Douglas won the first of his three Oscar nominations and a contract with the Warner. This role, that of an ambitious boxer whose rise and fall we follow, was his springboard to glory.
"Until I made the champion, I didn't think I was solid and then I became a tough guy," he told the Hollywood Reporter .
- " Twenty thousand leagues under sea "
This adaptation of Jules Verne's novel, released in 1954, is Disney's first film in live action. For this major production, directed by Richard Fleischer, the studio calls on Hollywood stars. Kirk Douglas thus embodied the Canadian harpooner Ned Land.
- "The passionate life of Vincent Van Gogh"
With this biopic on the Dutch painter produced by Vincente Minnelli, Kirk Douglas moves away from his badass roles to slip into the skin of the tortured artist. Banco: his performance will be awarded a Golden Globe in 1957.
"I almost got lost in the character," said the actor in his memoirs, Le Fils du chiffonnier , published in 1988. "Sometimes I had to stop touching my ear to verify that she was there. (…) It was a frightening experience close to madness ”.
- "The paths of glory"
Kirk Douglas was one of the first Hollywood actors to get into production in order to help certain films to exist. He therefore allowed Stanley Kubrick to make, in 1957, this war film, or rather, this antimilitarist pamphlet in black and white that is The paths of glory . A shock such as this feature film was banned in several countries, including in France for twenty years. His role as colonel Dax will not bring him any reward, however.
- "Spartacus"
In 1960 Kirk Douglas produced Spartacus , directed by Stanley Kubrick, and found what will remain as the most significant role of his career, that of the slave who became the leader of an entire people against the Roman Empire.
After a long and difficult shooting, the film made a hit all over the world and consecrated the actor as a Hollywood star but also as a rebel against the big studios, helping to defeat the system which had manufactured it.
In the midst of a “witch hunt” targeting personalities suspected of being of Communist sensitivity, he notably features in the credits of the film a screenwriter ostracized in Hollywood. His commitment to McCarthyism was one of his greatest prides, as he explained in his tenth book, I am Spartacus .
"You have to get involved, the greatest American power abroad is Hollywood," said the actor, who became 100 years old, a fierce opponent of President Donald Trump.
Serial roles
Kirk Douglas did not shy away from television series. In the 1950s, he appeared in an episode of The Jack Benny Program . In 1966, we find him in the cult sitcom in the United States The Lucy Show . Kirk Douglas then played in the mini-series Arthur Hailey's the Moneychangers in 1976 and Queenie in 1987. For episode 18 of the seventh season of The Simpsons , the actor lends his voice to the tramp Chester Lampwick. In 1991, more than 30 years after The Paths of Glory , he found the trenches in the Yellow episode of Tales from the Crypt . The last appearance of Kirk Douglas in a TV series dates back to Touched By an Angel in 2000.
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