Plural man, creator for cinema and television, lover of music hall and song, Pierre Philippe died on December 20, 2021, at the age of 90.
Fascinated even by all forms of entertainment, Pierre Philippe, as soon as he completed his secondary studies, began painting and decorating theaters at the age of 17 while haunting cinemas. A passion that will fuel his imagination and his creation while devoting him to the production and directing of “heritage” documentaries.
Soon his beginnings in journalism allowed him to satisfy his passion by collaborating from 1956 to the review Movie theater, created two years earlier by Pierre Billard. As the outbreak of the New Wave looms, Pierre Philippe defends the productions of terror and science fiction, often mown, that most of his colleagues neglect or despise. He thus defines a kind of “cinema bis”, a label in itself which allows him to assert a singularity that he illustrates by going on to direct himself. To celebrate the figure of the vampire, incarnation in his eyes unjustly hated vice in what he has most attractive. After a short film The Good Lady (1966), a feature film Midday midnight (1969) under the dazzling sun of the Provençal scrubland, where Pierre Philippe mischievously brews references from fairy tales, genre literature and news items.
Realistic, sumptuous and raw writing
His credo: to cover his tracks and saturate emotions. In “La Cantonade” (1972), a program that has remained unpublished filmed for the ORTF, where he mixes the words of Victorien Sardou, Brecht, Molière Rostand and Claudel, he delivers an exalted tribute to all forms of theater. However, it is on television that he actively works on an imaginative cultural proposal, notably with Hélène Martin (1928-2021), close to the poets he loves – including Jean Genet -, she set to music The doomed man.
He befriended Daisy de Galard (1929-2007), creator of the monthly program “Dim Dam Dom” and he signed his first documentaries on the memory of cinema. 60 years ago … Judex (1977), a celebration of Arthur Bernède’s hero that Louis Feuillade brought to the screen with the help of the novelist, marks the start of his collaboration with Gaumont. Signing in 1986 a documentary for the 90 years of the world pioneer of film companies, Philippe takes great care in promoting the firm’s catalog, in particular the first restoration of Atalante, by Jean Vigo (1934), whose rights would fall into the public domain (1990).
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