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Little cited in the dramatic roles of the late Michel Blanc, the actor is nonetheless extraordinary in “93, rue Lauriston”. A remarkable TV film broadcast 20 years ago, which retraces the authentic and terrible story of a place of sinister memory.
It is an understatement to say that the premature and brutal death of Michel Blanc, at the age of 72, arouses strong emotion. Not only among his companions in the Splendid gang, but also among spectators and moviegoers, who were lulled by the films of this great actor – director.
An actor that we have, for too long, reduced to the comic register, with his unforgettable role of the flirtatious loser and hypochondriac Jean-Claude Dusse of Les Bronzés. A role that did a lot for his popularity. But which also prevented him from diversifying his acting profession for a long time, like a ball and chain that he couldn’t get rid of.
Great dramatic roles
Since his death, many have cited, and rightly so, the numerous roles in which he shone in the dramatic register, as so many examples of his immense talent. The Witnesses of André Téchiné. Evening outfit from Bertrand Blier, thanks to whom he won an Interpretation Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1986.
Extraordinary and disturbing in Monsieur Hire, by Patrice Leconte. Fabulous and brilliant in Claude Berri’s masterpiece Uranus, where, in a France in the midst of a purge, he plays a communist activist and father burning with a secret passion for his neighbor. Or, to take a much more recent example, his composition in L’Exercice de l’Etat, which earned him the César for Best Supporting Actor.
A great (TV) film passed over in silence
There is a film – a TV film rather – very rarely mentioned, which nevertheless fully deserves its place in the actor’s major roles: 93, rue Lauriston.
Broadcast in 2004 on Canal+ and directed by Denys Granier-Deferre, this brilliant TV film, which would not have been unworthy in theaters, returns precisely to the dark period of the Occupation. The story? Henri Laffont, a small crook suddenly promoted to the rank of godfather, and his deputy, Pierre Bony, a fallen police officer, were arrested on August 30, 1944, then quickly tried and shot less than four months later. During the Occupation, they went well beyond collaboration. Their names and the address of the headquarters of their activities: 93, rue Lauriston, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.
It was at this address, sadly known by the nickname “Carlingue”, that thugs extorted, tortured and killed, on behalf of the Germans, and their own. Michel Blanc brilliantly plays Inspector Blot, who arrested Laffont and Bony, and was responsible for investigating the ramifications of the French Gestapo, with its connections throughout Paris.
His thick investigation report will be compromising for certain public figures who frequented the two collaborationists. But at the end of the Purge, his accusations no longer interested anyone, or almost no one… The time was then for the creation of the myth of resistant and heroic France, which would be shattered by the extraordinary documentary by Marcel Ophüls, The Sorrow and the Pity, in 1969.
Okko Productions
A little-disseminated work
On a solid screenplay written by Jean-Claude Grumberg, who will record his memories of this period, regularly illuminated by flashback sequences, Denys Granier-Deferre summons a formidable cast surrounding Michel Blanc, including Samuel le Bihan, who plays Léon Jabinet, young naive provincial who joins the French Gestapo.
To our knowledge, 93 rue Lauriston has only been broadcast twice on the small screen. It was once available in the Amazon Prime catalog, but unfortunately this is no longer the case. To see this nugget, you have to turn to a DVD edition.
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