Pierre Larquey

Biography: life and films

A little middle-aged man with thinning hair and a small moustache. He might be a bank clerk, a concierge, even a street sweeper. He is the sort you hardly notice, the Monsieur Tout-le-Monde who goes quietly about his business, always with a friendly smile to anyone who cares to look his way. We walk past dozens of his sort every day, his presence scarcely registering. Yet this particular little middle-aged man with thinning hair and a small moustache was one of the best loved French films actors of his time, and also one of the most prolific. His name was Pierre Larquey, and in his time he probably had more admirers than any other actor in France. There was never anything fancy about him. He never gave himself airs and graces or played the grande vedette that he undoubtedly was. He was the same quiet, unassuming little man on screen that he was off, always coming across as a friendly neighbour or a favourite uncle. It is easy to feel that all is right with the world when Pierre Larquey pops up out of nowhere in one of the seemingly infinite number of films he lent his talents to in the 1930s, '40 and '50s. Le Père Larquey was just the reassuring father figure that France needed in its greatest period of turmoil

Pierre Raphaël Larquey was born on 10th July 1884 in Cénac, near to Bordeaux in southwest France. The son of a carter, he had great difficulty as a young man deciding what career to follow. Unable to choose between being a priest or a soldier he gave up and instead opted to become an actor. After graduating from the Bordeaux Conservatoire with a first prize he joined the Théâtre des Variétés in Paris, where he stayed for 15 years, perfecting his art in a wide variety of productions that included comedies, dramas and operettas. Larquey appeared in plays by Sacha Guitry and Louis Verneuil, and in 1928 he was given the role of Tamise in the original 1928 staging of Topaze by the play's author, Marcel Pagnol. Once he had become a film actor, Larquey would reprise the role in two films, the 1933 version starring Louis Jouvet and directed by Louis J. Gasnier, and its 1951 remake directed by Pagnol with Fernandel.

Pierre Larquey had no interest in becoming a film actor during the silent era, although he did appear in three silent films, the earliest being Albert Capellani's short Le Nahab (1911). The actor was 47 years old when his film career began in earnest, in 1931. Over the next thirty years he would become almost omnipresent in French cinema, cropping up in over 200 films, mostly in small supporting roles. Early in his film career, directors were already casting Larquey for his sympathetic 'every man' persona - he played the unfortunate club-footed Hippolyte in Jean Renoir's Madame Bovary (1933) and in Richard Pottier's Si j'étais le patron (1934) he was an emblem of the proletariat. He even made a likeable hoodlum in Maurice Tourneur's Justin de Marseille (1934), and in René Pujol's Titin des Martigues (1938) he forms an adorable comedy trio with Henri Alibert and Rellys. The charming comedy Monsieur Coccinelle (1938) was one of the few films in which Larquey took the lead role, hilarious as a civil servant saddled with a dragon of a wife.

It was H.G. Clouzot who gave Pierre Larquey his best-known role as Dr Michel Vorzet in Le Corbeau (1943), made for the German-run company Continental at the time of the Nazi Occupation. This was one of the few occasions where the actor was allowed to play against his likeable avuncular image and project a more sinister and mysterious persona. His character's ambiguous nature is reflected in his famous line: 'Où est l'ombre? Où est la lumière?', which he delivers whilst gesturing to a light bulb. Vorzet's apparent split personality was a stark metaphor for France under Occupation, a place where it was impossible to see where the light ended and the darkness began. Larquey would play a similar role in Raymond Leboursier's Le Furet (1949) - the crystal ball gazer Professeur Star who is not quite as benign as he first appears and ends up as the creepiest character the actor played. Clouzot had previously given Larquey another interesting part in L'Assassin habite au 21 (1941) and would use him again in Les Diaboliques (1955), where he is perfectly at home as a down-trodden schoolteacher and convenient doormat for Simone Signoret.

During the Occupation, Larquey was well used as a supporting artiste in many notable films - Tourneur's La Main du diable (1942), Jean Stelli's Le Voile bleu (1942) - and in Robert Vernay's Le Père Goriot (1943) he turned in one of his more poignant performances in the title role. He earned a place in film legend in Stelli's La Tentation de Barbizon (1945), by being the first person to speak to Louis de Funès on screen. Audiences had to wait six year to witness Larquey attempting to asphyxiate himself with a gasmask in René Pujol's Faut ce qu'il faut (1946) - a patriotic comedy that was shelved when the Nazis took over the country in 1940. The part that Larquey plays in this film - the affable but accident-prone Monsieur Bibi - is how everyone who loves him remembers him, a cross-between Mr Bean and Abbé Pierre.

By now, Pierre Larquey was so popular with the French cinemagoing public that he was inundated with offers of work and, in his eagerness to please, the actor took on roles that were hardly suitable for him. He was an odd choice for the part of an aristocrat in Claude Autant-Lara's Sylvie et le Fantôme (1946) and you struggle to think why Raymond Rouleau cast him as Francis Nurse in Les Sorcières de Salem (1957), an adaptation of Arthur Miller's The Crucible. He was far better suited as the stoical one-legged tramp in Henri Calef's Jéricho (1946) or the friendly tourist guide in Sacha Guitry's Si Versailles m'était conté (1953).

Even in his seventies, Larquey just couldn't kick the habit of working at full tilt. His last film appearance was in Alfred Rode's Dossier 1413 (1962), which he made at the age of 77, a short while before he suffered a fatal heart attack on 17th April 1962. He is now buried in a cemetery, in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines, not far from where he lived. At the end of L'Ange de la nuit (1944), when his country was facing its darkest hour (symbolised by the main character's blindness), it was Le Père Larquey who assured a troubled nation that everything was going to turn out all right. It wasn't only Charles de Gaulle that kept French morale up during WWII. Pierre Larquey more than played his part.

Filmography

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