Jean Gabin

Book excerpt: Jean Gabin was more than just a star of iconic movies still screened in film festivals around the world. To many, he was France itself. During his 45-year career, he acted in 95 films, including Le Quai des Brumes, La Grande Illusion, Touchez Pas au Grisbi and French Cancan. From his start as a reluctant song and dance man at the Moulin Rouge and Folies Bergere, Gabin became a first-magnitude actor under such directors as Julien Duvivier, Marcel Carne and Jean Renoir. This revealing biography traces his involvement in the realisme poetique and film noir movements of the 1930s and 1940s, his unhappy Hollywood years, his role in the World War II liberation of France, his tumultuous affairs with Michele Morgan and Marlene Dietrich and his real-life role as a Normandy gentleman farmer.