Louis de Funès had a difficult childhood, growing up without a father but supported by a loving mother. His early years were somewhat tumultuous. He was raised by his mother, whom he himself said was his first teacher of comedy. She would chase him round the kitchen table crying, “Eye....vill...keeel...you!” Léonor had a devilish sense of humour; without knowing it, she had the gift of a born performer. Louis de Funès started boarding school a few years later. As a boy he was a dreamer, ill-disciplined and taciturn, with a slender physique, a long nose and a frightened look that made him the whipping boy for the other pupils. At sixteen, after his secondary studies at the Lycée Condorcet, and on the advice of his brother who was working as a furrier, Louis de Finès entered the Professional School of Furriers, located near the Bastille in Paris, but was sent down for disruptive behaviour. He then worked for various furriers, in a number of different posts. He was an accountant, a window dresser and even a decorator. But his inevitable firings, his world-weariness and his career misadventures eventually led his mother to enrol him, in 1932, in the Technical School of Photography and Cinema, where he would elect to study cinema just down the road from his home. In 1942 the man who would go on to become the ‘Great Clown’ joined the renowned Cours Simon theatre group, after auditioning with a scene from Scapin the Schemer by Molière. Then would come a great stroke of fortune: Louis de Funès was getting off a car on the Paris metro when he spotted Daniel Gélin, whom he knew from his class at René-Simon, getting on another. The door was just closing when Gélin cried: “Call me tomorrow, I might have a part for you!”
The children all knew him, and considered him one of their own. His clowning around and his impressions made the adults laugh, and the children adored him. Even today, on television or in cinema reruns, Louis de Funès remains instantly recognisable. He would not allow himself to be compared to Charlie Chaplin, such was his admiration for the actor, but his comedic genius was endlessly pored over. His was also the kind of story no longer found in French cinema. Louis de Funès remains a mystery; the indefatigable energy he brought to the screen, the performances that would be shown again and again down the years, and the way he so perfectly captured the Frenchman of a certain age. And what Frenchmen he played! There was Cruchot in The Troop of Saint Tropez, Pivert in Rabbi Jacob, and there were also Charolais, Fourchaume and Brisebard. Then, of course, there was Saroyan in The Sucker. The list went on and on, but all things must come to an end – indeed, by the time Louis de Funès had come to fame he was no longer a young man; and still in just two years he brought twenty-five million people into the dark halls of French cinemas.
In The Sucker, a character played by Antoine Maréchal sets out on his summer holidays in his blue 2CV model car. Having driven only a few metres through the streets of Paris, his car is smashed to pieces by a Rolls Royce driven by Léopold Saroyan, a man of Armenian origin who is the head of an import-export firm. Who now could forget the scene in which poor Antoine Maréchal asks the driver who ran into him:
“What shall become of me?”
“Well, a pedestrian I should think!”
Although he starts off in bad faith, the latter soon admits to his wrongdoings, and offers Maréchal the chance to continue his holiday, with all expenses paid, by driving a superb Cadillac convertible (owned by one of his American clients) from Naples to Bordeaux. It was Gérard Oury who created the famous Youkounkoun, “the biggest diamond in the world” hidden in the Cadillac’s horn. Director Gérard Oury’s masterstroke was casting Louis de Funès in the role of an insufferable bully, knowing he had the range to give the character a sense of humanity. For Louis de Funès was deeply human, as far as his heart could bear it. Eventually his heart failed him, for he had poured all its joy and laughter into the hearts of millions of viewers.
Alan Alfredo Geday
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