MIcheline Presle is 100 years old, it’s hard to believe. With a beating heart, I prepare to visit the last of the “Glorious Three”, a trinity formed with Danielle Darrieux (disappeared in 2017) and Michèle Morgan (in 2016). Micheline is the doyenne of French actresses, and embodies a golden age of the seventh art.
In the RER that takes me to the retirement home where she now lives, the images of her films scroll through my head. The Devil in the Body (1947), in which she imposed Gérard Philipe, Ball of suet, Félicie Nanteuil with Louis Jourdan who was her fiancé in townChristina with Romy Schneider and Alain Delon, or Frills at the origin of the vocation of Jean-Paul Gaultier. More than 100 films in nearly 80 years of career, since in 2014 she was still shooting under the direction of her daughter, Tonie Marshall. How not to be moved by such a beautiful course?
“It makes me really happy that you come to see me. » Micheline Presle immediately suggests that I go downstairs for a coffee. “Too bad it’s raining, we could have gone into the garden. » When I talk about her longevity, she is surprised and asks sincerely surprised: “How old am I? » At the announcement of her 100th birthday, she lets go with a smile that has not changed: “Ah, yes, all the same, it’s starting to do! It’s miraculous that I’m still here! »
Until the end, I will love life, I have always loved it. You tell me I’m 100 years old, I find it hard to believe.
She continues, wants to know the news of film releases and shows great interest in that of Jean Becker Green Shutters with Fanny Ardant and Gérard Depardieu, which will be released on August 24.
“Until the end, I will love life, I have always loved it. You tell me I’m 100 years old, I find it hard to believe. Unfortunately, I can no longer read, which I have enjoyed doing all my life, but I keep myself informed. We are both there, it’s great to talk, to exchange. It’s important to me, you know. »
Before the confinement, she still went almost every day to the publishers, a café close to Luxembourg, her garden since childhood. Sometimes, before joining her there, I observed her from afar, seated facing the street, her gaze fixed on the horizon, an imperceptible smile lighting up her face. What was she thinking? To his life perhaps, but no doubt to others. Dominique Besnehard, who was his agent and remains a faithful friend, speaks of “his modesty which is his strength”. “Micheline never talked a lot about her. When she talks about her memories, it’s always in relation to others, which is rare in an actress. Besides, in her apartment there were no photos of her. And then a remarkable thing, I never heard him speak ill of people. »
songs
Films are the great business of Micheline Presle’s life: “My most beautiful story is cinema”, she confessed in 2004 when she received an honorary Cesar for her entire career. From his near-first screen appearance in I sing (1938) Alongside Charles Trenet, she retains a deep tenderness for the “singing madman” who was her friend. She hums the song from the movie.
“I sing, I sing evening and morning
I sing on my way”
Young Women in Distress (1939) of Georg Wilhelm Pabst definitively launched her career, she kept the name of her character as an actress. She then chained roles with Marcel L’Herbier, Marc Allégret, Claude Autant-Lara, Jacques Becker, Christian-Jaque, Jean Delannoy and, later, Jacques Demy, Jacques Rivette, Alain Resnais or Joseph Losey. The list is long. When I talk to him about Lost paradise (1940), Abel Gance’s masterpiece, there too she begins to sing, in a clear, precise voice, without hesitation:
” Love dream
happiness too short
O paradise lost…”
Often on the bill of dramas, the comic spring is also in the nature of Micheline Presle. In The Baron of the lock, she embodies an irresistibly funny character. “I liked shooting with Jean Gabin. A scenario by Maurice Druon, dialogues by Michel Audiard, do you realize? »
At the theater, she was a remarkable interpreter of Feydeau, and marked a generation of TV children with the cult series The Holy Darlings, happy testimony of the Trente Glorieuses which made it popular throughout France. She had had flair by agreeing to shoot for television, which film actresses did not do in those days.
New universes
From his time in Hollywood, we will remember his partners Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power. She returns to France, too bad if we have forgotten her, Micheline leaves humbly, thinking about other cinematographic adventures with young directors, a point of view that she shares with Catherine Deneuve. For Dominique Besnehard: “Curiosity is what best defines it. She could talk about cinema for hours, and often called me to tell me to go see such and such a film. “For decades, it was not uncommon to come across Micheline Presle, alone in the streets, in the metro, a Pariscope under her arm, going almost every day with a determined step to the 2 p.m. session. She was one of the first to see the films of Robert Guédiguian, Manuel Poirier, François Ozon or Christophe Honoré. “I loved discovering these new worlds. I didn’t go there as an actress, but as a spectator. It was the same with the theatre. She was one of the first to discover Patrice Chéreau in Sartrouville, Bob Wilson or Alfredo Arias.
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If, on stage, certain projects did not succeed because she was engaged elsewhere or because she had not been chosen, she went to meet young directors. Jérôme Savary and his Grand Magic Circus or Jean-Michel Ribes for his first play. “But what a pleasure to play in these innovative shows,” she repeats several times, her face illuminated by an intact memory. We’ve been chatting, drinking coffee and eating madeleines for almost three hours. “I have teeth, I take advantage of them,” she says with humor.
” You’re leaving already ? »
There’s no shortage of subjects, and Micheline wants to know everything about what’s going on outside. The rain has stopped, we go into the garden, the conversation continues, joyful, playful. This woman who will be 100 years old is full of life and tenderness. Her face suddenly darkened when she mentioned in the past, for the first time in conversation, her daughter, Tonie, who died in 2020. “My little one, I miss her, I often think of her. »
When it was time to leave, she said to me: “Are you leaving already? The time passed quickly, I promise to come back, it’s not an empty promise. This crossing of a century deserved that we stop there. A few years ago, Alain Delon, during a Cesar ceremony, had taken her in his arms, whispering in her ear: “Do you remember? »
We too, remember that we have always loved Micheline Presle.
Arte broadcasts until August 30 The murderer, by Elio Petri.