• From Fernandel, we often know the character of Don Camillo, the southern faconde, the song Félicie, perhaps less the long filmography.
  • Born on May 8, 1903 in Marseille, the actor, very popular in his time, would have been 120 years old this year.
  • For 20 Minutes, Vincent Fernandel, his grandson, returns on this occasion on his filmography, very rich. And notes that there are no traces of Fernandel left today in Marseille. .

There are laughs that sign an identity. That of Vincent Fernandel, Fernandel's grandson, immediately sounds familiar to the ear when he amuses himself with this formula, linked to the anniversary date of May 8, 1903: "He would have been 120 years old". "As if he had been able to reach them, if he had eaten a little less meat or whatever!" he says over the phone from Paris, where he now lives and works as a storyteller, producer and music publisher. "Commemorations" or "birthday cake tours", very little for him. On the other hand, yes, to find the public at the cinema L'Eden in La Ciotat, as he did Sunday for a screening of L'Auberge rouge, to talk about films, to bear witness to an era, "it's cheerful, it's joyful". And that's how he wants to pass on his grandfather's memory.

How would you talk about Fernandel to an audience that doesn't know him?

I will give you an example. I ran a drama school and most of the young students knew who Fernandel was, but few had seen even two or three of his films. And that's normal, there's nothing infamous about it. I know very well that at some point time passes and that you cannot be and have been, even if your name is Fernandel. Going to screenings that pay tribute to my grandfather allows me to introduce him to an audience that often does not know his career well And mentioning an actor is a good opportunity to also talk about cinema in general.

Let's talk about cinema first! What is for you the best gateway to discover his work, which includes 148 films?

I would say that we have to start with the films he shot with Marcel Pagnol. It was thanks to him that the public realized, and my grandfather the very first, that he was more than a comedian, a great actor. There are also the films of Henri Verneuil. They made eight of them together in the 1950s, in different registers. TheForbidden Fruit is one of the films that marked me the most. My grandfather plays a doctor, an honorable family man, who falls in love with a young woman. It turns his life upside down. In this film, Fernandel is absolutely human. And it was interesting as a career choice. Already with that, a bit of Don Camillo and L'Auberge rouge by Claude Autant-Lara, with whom he has only collaborated once, we have a fairly solid Fernandel essential.

We're not really in the comic register...

I totally understand that people like the comic Fernandel. But it ages less well than in the drama. In the 1950s, my grandfather said it himself: comedy films of the 1930s are much less funny because we changed the way we act, the writing has evolved too. The drama speaks of the interior of the human, which does not change him. That's why I would say today: discover the dramatic Fernandel. Because he's very good at it and the movies are still relevant. Like Don Camillo who replays every time because he has withstood time. It is first and foremost a Franco-Italian co-production, so we are in this vein of Italian social cinema. Don Camillo is a political film, taken in a humorous tone, but which tells a relationship between two characters with very different ideas. Politics against the church is a topic that will always be relevant. That's why these are films that stand the test of time. After, if it makes people laugh, so much the better. I'm not saying you shouldn't watch Butter Cooking, although I think it's a very overrated film.

How did Fernandel become such a popular artist?

He was first of all a Marseillais, a true southerner who was raised in a large family and who started from nothing. His father, Denis, was an accountant by day and went to sing at night in café-concerts. It was there that Fernandel discovered the world of entertainment and fell in love with singers, comic troupiers. He went on stage at a very young age. At the time, you became a star in your city, in your region, and then you went up to Paris. Like Gabin, like Montand, he started with the music hall. Becoming famous, he started riots when he went out, he was the first surprised. "But why don't they let me buy my bread?" he said. He was not a socialite. He loved more than anything the calm and rest at home. And loved to go fishing at 5 am, to be quiet. He was an excellent fisherman.

What remains of Fernandel in Marseille?

There is nothing left at all. The bust in front of his birthplace... I don't know the sculptor and don't want to be hurtful, but he's very close to the plate I think. At the History Museum, there is very little about Fernandel. Absolutely, I don't care if there is nothing concrete left. I don't have a museum spirit. At the death of my father Franck Fernandel, who was a singer, we also found it preferable to sell the family home because, for us, it was a page of life that was turning. But I find it a pity that nothing is done in this city to transmit this memory. I am not defending Fernandel, but of a whole culture that is no longer defended. I am thinking, for example, of Jean-Claude Izzo. Who is talking about him in Marseille today? Alexandre Toursky left his name to a theatre, but who knows him? I am a southerner, I was born in this region, but we have gone from culture to folklore. The city of Marseille has certainly never done anything, but we, the family, have not been proactive on the issue. Because it is not in our DNA, unlike Nicolas Pagnol who does an exceptional work of memory on the work of his grandfather. But the initiatives come from him overall. Having said that, things had to be done 20 or 30 years ago, when there was still money for culture. The city of Marseille has many other priorities today than to concern itself with this memory, and I understand that very well.

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