Guest of Michel Denisot in "Icons", Saturday on Europe 1, actor Tahar Rahim praised the "natural" of Jean Gabin, actor with whom he identified from childhood and which he kept as a model at the beginning of his cinema studies.
INTERVIEW
Almost 80 years and a thousand developments in cinema separate them.
However, when he has to quote an actor with whom he identified during his studies, Tahar Rahim spontaneously names Jean Gabin, an actor "close to reality".
Guest of Michel Denisot in
Icons
, Saturday on Europe 1, the interpreter of Malik in
A Prophet
, said all his admiration for a monument of French cinema, timeless because terribly modern in his eyes.
>> Find all of Michel Denisot's interviews every Saturday at 8.45am on Europe 1 as well as in podcast and replay here
"A handover, or rather a revolution"
"I remember a film in particular, which marked me a lot, which is called
The day rises
by Marcel Carné [released in 1939,
note
]", begins Tahar Rahim.
"There is the great Jules Berry, who is a huge actor, and even more at that time. And then Gabin, who is still young. He arrives and they have a scene with Arletty, all three at the counter. a bar."
Tahar Rahim then describes "the shock of two ways of playing, but of two different generations, as if there was a handover, or rather a revolution".
"Gabin brings a way of speaking that comes from the street and also a way of moving, of looking and an ease… It was a rather strong shock, which one can often observe, in general, in the major changes of the cinema."
The one who plays a ruthless assassin in the new Netflix series
The Serpent
thus draws an analogy with an even older cinema.
"It already existed in the silent: I had seen a film called
L'argent,
by L'Herbier [released in 1928,
note
], where we have a young actress and a slightly older actor, and we already feels that there is a difference in play. "
"A cinema in which I could identify a little"
In addition to this "difference", it is the credible side of the "anti-hero" Jean Gabin that immediately appealed to the young Tahar Rahim.
"I thought he was a bit like our Brando [Marlon Brando, the American
Godfather
actor
]. When I watched him and I watched some Hollywood movies from the same era, he was more natural, more real, more close to reality. "
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- Jean Gabin in three key films
"And it is true that the cinema he was making was very social", continues the actor of Algerian origin, the youngest of a modest family of 10 children.
"I think it was a cinema in which I could identify a little while in the French cinema of the time of my childhood, I could not because the representation of people from my social stratum did not resemble not to those who were my neighbors or whom I saw through the window. "