He was one of a group of grown-up children who enjoyed having fun making television a cultural tool accessible to all. The mission was beautiful and crazy. To serve her and not betray her, Marcel Bluwal dared to slam the doors, to pass for a “big mouth”, to say “shit” to certain channel bosses. At his side, the directors Claude Barma, Stellio Lorenzi, Claude Santelli, Claude Loursais played in concert. A bunch of idealists bringing their dreams to the level of reality.
Anxious to interest viewers in these classics which had bored him so much during his years of study, Marcel Bluwal led with infinite care Molière and Marivaux, Beaumarchais, Dostoevsky, Victor Hugo… in homes. He dreamed of being a film director. He became a pioneer of television, to which he gave his intelligence for sixty years. Among other proof that has remained unparalleled: the adaptation of the Dom juan by Molière. Marcel Bluwal died Saturday, October 23 at the age of 96, in Paris, his agent announced to Agence France-Presse.
Only son of Henri and Eda Bluwal, Polish Jews who immigrated to France in 1924, little Marcel was born on May 25, 1925 in the 12e district of Paris. His father was a laborer at Renault then employed in writing in a furniture factory. The family lives modestly. But with the Bluwals, we don’t lack for anything. At home, in the middle of books and around the piano, there is a rather “artistic” atmosphere. The father reads French, Russian, Polish and German.
Poulbot during the day, hanging out with his friends and skimming the cinemas (a revelation), little Marcel is dressed “clean” in the evening to accompany his parents in the restaurants of Montparnasse, “La Coupole” or “Le Dôme”, where they join the painters of the surrealist movement. In 1936, the Popular Front was in power and the young Bluwal discovered the joys of the municipal library. He devours books, is passionate about these “storytellers” who, he later thinks, made him want to become a director.
Educated in communal, secular and republican school, raised in a family for whom France is the country of freedom and Paris ” the most beautiful city in the world “, little Bluwal did not, in his own words, “A very awakened Jewish conscience”. The rise of anti-Semitism, France’s declaration of war on Germany, the German invasion, the Occupation, the wearing of the compulsory yellow star for Jews will take care of this. “From there, Marcel Bluwal would say decades later, we had to understand that we were the excrement of the earth. “ The day before the Vel’d’Hiv roundup, in 1942, a neighbor warns Eda Bluwal. The mother and son then find refuge with their piano teacher where, for two years, they will live hidden in a closed and narrow room.
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