Gérard Oury

Biography: life and films

Gérard Oury is the name that will forever be associated with some of the most successful film comedies to have been made in France. The man who directed films that would achieve staggering box office returns in the 1960s began his career as an actor before finding his way to the metier for which he was destined. His films would take deadly serious themes and perform the seemingly impossible feat of making them hilariously funny. Today, his comedies - many timeless classics - continue to attract enormous audiences when shown on television in France. President Chirac was not exaggerating when saying, on the day of Oury's passing, that his cinema had become an integral part of the culture and imagination of France.

Oury's real name was Max Gérard Tannenbaum. He was born in Paris, on 29th April 1919, the son of the Jewish violinist Serge Tannenbaum and art critic Marcelle Oury. He studied drama under René Simon and then at the Conservatoire national d'art. In 1939, he entered the Comédie-Française, where he had a role in “Britannicus”. In 1940, he evaded the Nazis with his wife, the actress Jacqueline Roman, by moving to the Free Zone in France, then Monaco, before settling in Switzerland, where he worked as an actor for the Compagnie de Genève. He adopted his mother's maiden name to be his professional name - Gérard Oury.

Oury's first film job as an actor was a small part in Raymond Lebousier's 1942 comedy Les Petits riens, which starred Raimu and Fernandel, two of the top performers of the day. The film was made in France at the time of the Nazi occupation, but in the Free Zone. After the war, Oury returned to France and continued his career as an actor, appearing in minor roles in films such as Jacques Becker's 1947 drama Antoine et Antoinette. In the 1950s, he played a number of notable supporting roles in films made in both France and England - Le Passe-muraille (1951), The Heart of the Matter (1953), Father Brown (1954), Les Héros sont fatigués (1955).

André Cayatte's 1958 film Le Miroir à deux faces marked a key point in Oury's professional and personal life. As well as appearing in the film (in one of his most memorable roles), Oury also contributed to the script, and began a relationship with its star, the woman who would remain his companion for life (although they never married) - Michèle Morgan. Encouraged by the success of the film, Oury decided to embark on a career as a writer-director, beginning with La Main chaude (1960). His first three films, thrillers in the classic French polar mould, were not particularly noteworthy and are now pretty much forgotten.

It was Gérard Oury's fourth film - Le Corniaud (1964) - which was to establish him not just as a director, but as the most successful mainstream filmmaker in France of his day. The film, a riotous comedy starring the two most popular comic actors of the time, Bourvil and Louis de Funès, had an audience of just under 12 million in France alone, yet its success was overtaken by Oury's next film. La Grande vadrouille (1966) - a big budget wartime comedy which reunited Bourvil and Louis de Funès - sold over 17 million seats in France, a record that stood until the blockbuster Titanic was released in 1998. For the next decade, the arrival of a new Gérard Oury comedy would be a national event, eagerly awaited by the public, who were seldom short-changed. His daughter, Danièle Thompson, would work on many of his films as a screenwriter.

1973 saw the release of Oury's most controversial film, Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob. Featuring an extremely caricatured yet sympathetic portrayal of an orthodox Jew by Louis de Funès, the film pokes fun at religion, racism and Arab terrorism. Whilst the film was an enormous success, its coincidence with the Yom Kippur conflict earned its director a considerable amount of hate mail and death threats. Oury teamed up with popular comic actor Pierre Richard for his next two films, La Carapate (1978) and Le Coup du parapluie (1980). Despite Richard's popularity, it was by now evident that Oury was starting to lose his magic touch.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Oury made half a dozen more films in the style of his earlier hits, but without ever achieving the success he previously enjoyed - despite hiring such stars as Coluche, Christian Clavier and Philippe Noiret. His final work was Le Schpountz (1999), a lacklustre remake of Marcel Pagnol's classic 1938 film.

For his contribution to French cinema, Gérard Oury has been rewarded admirably. He was given the Légion d'honneur in 1991, and then the César d'Honneur in 1993. In 1998, he was elected to the prestigious Académie des Beaux-Arts, a great achievement for a mainstream filmmaker. He published his autobiography, “Mémoires d'éléphant” in 1988. On 20 July 2006, Gérard Oury died at his home in Saint-Tropez, France. News of his death was reported across the world, an indication of how much his work was appreciated not just in France, but right across the globe. Doubtless his films will continue to entertain for many, many more generations to come.

Filmography

Click here to view complete list of films...