Marcel Mangel was born into a Jewish-Polish family in northern France. His father owned a kosher deli in Lille, and was a fairly successful businessman, but he was not happy. Mangel Snr. had always dreamed of being a singer, and his dulcet tenor could often be heard echoing off the sides of beef hanging in his butchery. His wife was unhappy, too; she missed Poland, and spent her time getting lost in the books that piled on her nightstand. The Mangel household was full of love for performance, and culture. It was a pining love, but a shared one – the family never missed a show if they could help it, and they knew everything that was worth seeing in Lille. No-one was surprised when Marcel, the youngest boy, took up the theatre. Yet it was not the bombast of Racine, the slick verse of Molière or the passions of Chekhov that moved him, but the craft of the actors themselves – the minutiae of movement that enabled them to embody and inhabit their characters. Marcel also frequented the movie hall after school, spending whole Sundays there studying the giant faces and muted emotions. When he saw Chaplin’s Tramp on the big screen for the first time, he understood that he was not alone. Marcel’s inspiration was drawn not only from these imaginary characters, but from all that went on around him. He saw everything as ripe for observation and creation – the way his father held a spoon, the way his older brother combed his hair in front of the mirror, his mother’s gait. He loved to imitate, to reproduce, to absorb the smallest details of these habits that no-one else seemed to see.
Marcel Mangel developed a vocabulary for the art of mime, which he called “mobile statueness.” Because his voice was shrill and muted, he decided to become a mime rather than an actor. He had not inherited his father’s pipes, nor his barrelled butcher’s chest. He knew by heart the way his mother turned her pages, and he had her discreet, unobtrusive ways. He did the rounds of all the cabarets to perform in his unique language. But the life of a mime was difficult, and often misunderstood, and so Marcel ended up back at his father’s side, the butcher’s assistant once again. If there was a fear that boredom would set in among the steaks and chopped livers, it was unfounded. He fed upon the movement of the knives, the bending of arms, the sway of bodies. The movement of the butchers was a dance in itself, a living performance. Still, sooner or later Marcel would need to make himself understood. He had seen much, and knew he had a story to tell.
One day, a tragic event befell the Mangel family. Marcel’s father was arrested in his shop, as his son looked on in terror. He saw his father’s petrified face, the unmaskable fear in his eyes, and the brutality of the police. That moment was branded in Marcel’s memory forever after. The Second World War was about to break out, and the Mangel family’s prospects were bleak. Marcel heard no more news about his father; Mangel Snr. would die at Auschwitz without ever saying goodbye or seeing his family again, the meat-slicing tenor reduced to just another number.
When his cousin asked him to join the Resistance, Marcel did not hesitate for a moment. He owed it to his father, and to all his fellow Jews. He took a resistance name: Marceau, and found work as a summer camp chaperone for children. Of course, the camps were not real holidays – they were a means to get Jewish children across the Swiss border, lest they be deported. The police did not have the heart to search the innocent children as they chatted gaily on the train. Of course, the story did not end there. Marceau’s gift was to help them forget their fear; he had them rolling with laughter, and his miming warmed their hearts. He was a selfless hero to the children. But their journey was perilous, and they had many paths to tread through forests, rivers, barbed wire and Swiss military checkpoints. The children ran and climbed and sneaked their way across, driven to survive, with freedom only a few steps away.
When France was liberated Marcel kept his Resistance name, and became known as Marcel the Mime. Post-war Paris, with its clamouring dance halls, street singers and bustling markets, became his inspiration. He nourished his characters with art forms from around the world: Noh theatre, Kabuki, oriental masked theatre and commedia dell’arte. Soon he became a great mime, and received top billing on every Morris column in the capital. He was a child at heart but had the vision of wisdom, and he dissected the comic tragedy of life with a lucidity that brought the audience chills. He embodied an entire era, telling a story all his own. Marcel the Mime always wore flared white trousers, a striped sailor’s shirt, a grey corset with big round buttons and a hat adorned with a scarlet flower. His huge twirling eyebrows flitted in the middle of a white face, and his blood-red lips spoke silent screeds. Of his body he had made a spectacle, a whole universe even. Marcel became one of France’s most famous artists.
Decorated many times over for his bravery and courage in saving the lives of Jewish children, Marcel passed away in 2007, and was buried in the cemetery of Pere Lachaise, Paris.
Alan Alfredo Geday
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