(1897-1975)
Actor. Born Pierre Laudenbach in Paris, Pierre Fresnay studied drama at the Paris Conservatoire d'art dramatique and then went on to begin his acting career on the stage. He established himself as a talented stage actor and was in residence at the Comédie Française from 1915 until 1929. Fresnay made his film debut during the silent-film era, appearing in such films as Henri Pouctal's France d'abord (1915), Charles Burguet's L'Essor (1920), Les Mystères de Paris (1922) and his series La Bâillonnée (1922), André Hugon's series Le Diamant noir (1922), Charles Maudru's series Rocambole (1924), and Luitz-Moratz's La Vièrge folle (1929). Fresnay married the actress Berthe Bovy in 1923, but the two divorced in 1929.
The breakthrough role in Fresnay's career came early in the sound era, however, when Marcel Pagnol cast him as the lead in Marins (1931). Fresnay, not at all from the south, had to learn the Marseille accent for the role. However, his efforts were worth it, and the film made him an instant star. He reprised the role in two subsequent Pagnol films, Fanny (1932) and César (1936).
After Marius, Fresnay worked steadily in cinema, with one major role after another throughout the 1930s and 1940s. He had starring roles in Abel Gance's La Dame aux camélias (1934) and Roman d'un jeune homme pauvre (1935), Maurice Tourneur's Kônigsmark (1935) and La Main du diable (1943), Marc Allégret's Sous les yeux d'occident (1935), Léon Mathot's Chéri-Bibi (1937), Pierre Billon's La Bataille silencieuse (1937), Jean Renoir's La Grande illusion (1937), Marcel L'Herbier's Adrienne Lecouvreur (1938), Julien Duvivier's La Charette fantôme (1939), George Lacombe's Le Dernier des six (1941), Le Journal tombe à cinq heures (1942), and L'Escalier sans fin (1943), Henri-Georges Clouzot's L'Assassin habite au 21 (1943) and Le Corbeau (1943), Jean Anouilh's Le Voyageur sans bagages (1944), Henri Decoin's La Fille du diable (1946) and Au grand balcon (1949), Jean Dréville's Le Visiteur (1946), Maurice Cloche's Monsieur Vincent (1947), and Richard Pottier's Barry (1949). Fresnay's costar in many of these films was the actress Yvonne Printemps, whom he married in 1934.
As evidenced by the sheer number of films in which he starred during the 1930s and 1940s, Fresnay was a major star on a par with Jean Gabin. The two were very different actors, however, fulfilling different roles in cinema. This is, perhaps, best illustrated by the characters the two played in Renoir's classic film, La Grande illusion (1937). Fresnay's De Boeldieu is clearly an aristocrat, the last of a disappearing class, whereas Renoir's Maréchal is clearly a man of the people.
Fresnay, despite the broad range of characters he brought to the screen (including the very "man of the people" Marius), always had a classical air to his performances, a bit of a sophisticated edge, whereas Renoir, however refined his characters, was always of the people. Beyond La Grande illusion and the Pagnol trilogy, Fresnay's best-known, and probably greatest, film is Clouzot's Le Corbeau (1943), in which Fresnay played the very complex Dr. Rémy Germain. It is also worth noting that he had a very brief, but central, role as Louis Bernard in Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934).
In the 1950s, Fresnay continued to act in films, but the roles became either less prominent or more difficult to find. He, like Gabin and Arletty, was an icon of a previous age, of the classic era of French film, and cinema was trying to move in different directions. He appeared in such films as Jean Delannoy 's Dieu a besoin des hommes (1950) and La Route Napoléon (1953), Henri Diamant-Berger's Monsieur Fabre (1951), Jean-Paul Le Chanois's Les Évadés (1955), Léo Joannen's L'Homme aux clefs d'or (1956) and Tant d'amour perdu (1958), Alex Joffé's Les Fanatiques (1957), Allégret's Les Affreux (1959), and Gilles Grangier's Les Vieux de la vieille (1960), among other films. For the most part, however, Fresnay returned to working on the stage. He did not act in films after 1960, his only screen roles being on the small screen after that.
Historical Dictionary of French Cinema by Dayna Oscherwitz & Mary Ellen Higgins
Guide to cinema. Academic. 2011.