A national tribute paid to Michel Bouquet on April 27 at the Invalides

Europe 1 with AFP 3:10 p.m., April 14, 2022

A national tribute will be paid to actor Michel Bouquet on April 27 at the Invalides, "in accordance with the wishes of the family", the Elysée announced on Thursday.

Emmanuel Macron, who will still be in office whether or not he is re-elected on April 24, will preside over the ceremony, in honor of the actor who died on Wednesday at the age of 96, and hailed by the Head of State as a "monster sacred" and an "unforgettable, irreplaceable master for generations of actors".

For seven decades, Michel Bouquet brought theater and cinema to the highest degree of incandescence and truth, showing man in all his contradictions, with an intensity that burned the boards and burst the screen.

A sacred monster has left us.

pic.twitter.com/l3V5mz6EXd

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) April 13, 2022

A monument of theater and cinema

"For seven decades, Michel Bouquet has brought theater and cinema to the highest degree of incandescence and truth, showing man in all his contradictions, with an intensity that burned the boards and burst the screen", added President Emmanuel Macron on Twitter.

Michel Bouquet, monument of the French theater is known for having played no less than 800 times

of Ionesco but also for his roles on the big screen with Chabrol and Truffaut.

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The actor had also marked the cinema by embodying an astonishing Mitterrand on the evening of his life in "Le Promeneur du Champ-de-Mars" by Robert Guédiguian (2005).

He showed his preference for the theater which he marked by making known in France the work of Harold Pinter and by putting himself at the service of great classical texts (Molière, Diderot or Strindberg) and contemporary (Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Albert Camus or Thomas Bernhard).