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In France you grow up with the name Brasseur like with baguettes and croissants.
There's always one of those types.
That was already the case in the middle of the 19th century.
The Brasseurs are an actor dynasty.
The oldest that exists in France.
Claude Brasseur, who has now died at the age of 84, paid homage above all to his father Pierre Brasseur in his memoirs, which were an enormous success in his home country a few years ago.
No wonder: He was one of the most distinctive faces of the poetic-realistic cinema of the thirties and forties.
Lovers of film art such as Marcel Carnés also know in Germany.
All you have to do is call them the title “Harbor in the Fog” or “Children of Olympus”.
And when they have fought their way through the veil of tears of their emotion and come to their senses again, they say to themselves: That's right, there wasn't just Jean Gabin and Jean-Louis Barrault (not to mention Michèle Morgan, Arletty, Maria Casarès) .
Pierre Brasseur was always there.
In a way, the straightforward one among the romantics.
With an angular face
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His son adopted this profile and sharpened it.
Claude Brasseur was next to Jean-Paul Belmondo the warrior among the French screen heroes.
With a more angular face than the handsome Belmondo, however.
You might not want to know exactly what Claude Brasseur was up to in the Algerian war.
He volunteered for him as a young man and was awarded medals of bravery.
That was in the fifties.
He was not a child of sadness: Claude Brasseur
Source: Foc Kan
Claude Brasseur made his film debut in 1964 under Godard: "La bande à part" ("The Outsider Gang") set him early on the image of the hard-nosed, but also clever and a little opaque power guy.
In such a role he also reached a large audience in Germany.
Older readers will remember the series "The Adventures of Monsieur Vidocq".
From 1971 to 1973 it flickered over the German screen, as they said at the time.
Vidocq was the highest police spy in the first third of the 19th century.
A man who seldom left the house without a top hat.
But all too often it ended up in some poorly lit gutter.
Because Monsieur Vidocq did not shy away from the physical confrontation with the crime.
German kids like the writer of these lines loved this early evening series!
More than a hundred films
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However, Claude Brasseur celebrated his greatest triumphs in 1980 in the cult film "La Boum" ("The Fete"), which, due to its great popularity, had a sequel: "La Boum 2" ("The Fete goes on").
Shot in the venerable walls of the Parisian elite high school Lycée Henri IV (right behind the Panthéon and in the middle of the Latin Quarter), the film portrayed a liberal French bourgeoisie at the end of the Giscard era.
He could also play classic theater roles: Claude Brasseur as Josephe Fouché (right) next to Claude Rich as Talleyrand in the play "Le souper" in Paris 1989
Source: AFP via Getty Images
The understanding father, played by none other than Claude Brasseur, allies himself with his lovesick consuming daughter and even confides in her that he has a lover.
The daughter, think!
Pretty daring.
The fact that adolescents listen to pop music extensively in children's rooms and no parent intervenes was considered remarkable at the time.
How does it all affect 15-year-olds today?
Presumably quite dusty, because Mr. Papa was of course not a buddy for his children anyway, and of course appeared at meals with a tie and jacket.
Now Claude Brasseur is no longer either.
He stood in front of the camera until the end.
He has made well over a hundred films.
But don't worry: the French will continue to grow up with the name Brasseur.
Claude's son Alexandre, also an actor, has been around for a long time.
The traditions on the other side of the Rhine don't die that quickly!