Source: National Archives & Historic Records of Switzerland
Cinema • Historical Archive • 🇨🇭 Switzerland • 0 views

Michel Simon 🇨🇭

François Michel Simon (Known as "The Monster of Genius")
Master Actor, Titan of French Cinema, Star of L'Atalante, Boudu sauvé des eaux, and La Chienne
Born Apr 09, 1895 🇨🇭 Geneva, Switzerland
Passed Away May 30, 1975 Bry-sur-Marne (near Paris), France
Lifespan 80 years old
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"I have never acted in my life; I simply lend my face and my heart to those who are misunderstood."

Archival Overview

Monumental Swiss-born French actor with a gargoyle face and immense poetic tenderness who starred in Jean Vigo's L'Atalante, Jean Renoir's Boudu sauvé des eaux, and Claude Berri's The Two of Us (Le Vieil Homme et l'Enfant).

Biographical Record

Son of a Geneva butcher, Simon lived as an acrobat, boxer, and smuggler before joining Georges Pitoëff's theater company in Geneva. Possessing an asymmetrical, heavily sculpted visage and a rumbling, tender growl, he could move audiences from terrifying monstrosity to heartbreaking vulnerability in seconds.

In Jean Renoir's La Chienne (1931) and Boudu sauvé des eaux (1932), he created anarchic, immortal characters. In Jean Vigo's 1934 masterpiece L'Atalante, his role as the eccentric old sailor Père Jules surrounded by his cats and bizarre exotic curiosities is one of the supreme performances in cinematic history.

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Final Resting Place

Perpetual Memorial
Grand-Lancy Cemetery
Lancy (Geneva), Switzerland
GPS: 46.1833, 6.1167
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