Programmed May 2022

France’s Everyman: 10 Films Starring Jean Gabin

Exuding a gruff, jaded cynicism, Jean Gabin became the defining face of pre–New Wave French cinema, embodying its downtrodden, working-class heroes with a mix of smoldering charisma and sardonic ennui. His renowned collaborations with leading directors like Jean Renoir ( Grand Illusion , La bête humaine ) and Julien Duvivier ( Pépé le moko ) placed him at the center of the burgeoning poetic-realist movement and, inevitably, attracted the attention of Hollywood—which sought to sell his Gallic earthiness to American audiences in the fascinating, if ill-fated, noir Moontide . Returning to France, Gabin took his rightful place as a living, almost mythic symbol of his country’s national cinema, reuniting with Renoir for the spectacular period musical French Cancan and teaming up with his next-generation successor, Jean-Paul Belmondo, in the alcohol-soaked seriocomedy A Monkey in Winter .