Francis Blanche
Nacimiento : 1921-07-20, Paris, France
Muerte : 1974-07-06
Historia
François Jean Blanche, known as "Francis Blanche" (20 July 1921 – 6 July 1974) was a French actor, singer, humorist and author. He was a very popular figure on stage, radio and in films, during the 1950s and 1960s. His two daughters, Barbara & Dominique, are artists with their studios in Eze.
Blanche was born in an artistic family, mainly of stage actors—including his father Louis Blanche and his uncle, Emmanuel Blanche, who was a painter—. He completed his secondary schooling at fourteen, the youngest in France to do so at the time.
In the 1940s and 1950s, Blanche was part of Robert Dhéry's theatrical company Les Branquignols, with whom he played in the film Ah! Les belles bacchantes, starring Robert Dhéry, Colette Brosset (Dhéry's then-wife), and Louis de Funès; directed by Jean Loubignac in 1954.
Blanche teamed up with Pierre Dac to form a comic duo best remembered for Le Sâr Rabindranath Duval, a sketch about a phony and nonsensical Indian clairvoyant and guru (1957). They also created a popular and equally nonsensical radiophonic series, loosely based on a highly improbable espionage and conspiration plot, Malheur aux barbus, which was broadcast on Paris Inter in 213 episodes from 1951 to 1952. The same plot and characters were revived on Europe 1 in a series called Signé Furax, enjoying no less than 1,034 daily episodes between 1956 and 1960. Both broadcasts were phenomenal audience successes in the pre-television era. Blanche was also renowned for broadcasting phone pranks, in which he entertained listeners by making the most improbable situations sound plausible.
He wrote poems, and the lyrics of 673 songs. On stage, he acted in Tartuffe and Néron and, in 1955, Chevalier du Ciel, an operetta by Luis Mariano at the Gaîté-Lyrique theatre.
Blanche also enjoyed a successful cinematographic career, both as an actor and scriptwriter. He appeared as a hard-headed German colonel ("Obersturmführer Schulz") opposite Brigitte Bardot in Babette s'en va-t-en guerre (1959). He was one of the favourite actors of French filmmaker Georges Lautner, and played Maître Folace (a shady solicitor counselling a colourful gangster mob) in Les Tontons flingueurs (1963). Blanche also appeared in Boris Vassilief's Les Barbouzes (1964).
He delighted in parodying classical music, adapting famous works such as Schubert's "Die Forelle" (The Trout) into a crazy and slightly risqué piece about a 16-year-old romantic girl obsessed with Schubert's song to the point of giving birth to a live trout while performing it on her piano. Similarly, he turned Beethoven's 5th Symphony into a lengthy and quite repetitive musical glorification of the clothes peg and its fictitious inventor, Jérémie-Victor Opdebec.
Blanche died at the age of 52, from a heart attack with a background of untreated Type 1 diabetes. He is buried in Èze cemetery.
Source: Article "Francis Blanche" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Self (archive footage)
Comedian, actor, author, director and emblematic figure of the French stage and cinema of the 50s and 60s, Francis Blanche liked to change register, moving from radio to writing to television and cinema, living more than "hundred lives".
Self (archive footage)
Writer
The notorious and mysterious criminal Furax steals France's famous monuments, replacing them with replicas.
Francis
Bernardette is feeling bored in a country house. She decides to send weekend invitations to a lot of people.
Darbon, le galeriste
Little did this pretty brunette know when she applied for a babysitting job that her employer was an artist and that everything at his place differed from the outside world. What struck her the most was to find out that her boss had shrunk his wife and kept her in the fridge in order, as he said, to keep her safe from a hostile world!
Victor Hutin, le père de Sophie
Le médecin
Un joven desequilibrado, muy aficionado a las armas, se atrinchera en una casa aislada con sus dos ocupantes como rehenes. Como rescate, pide que le entreguen a la chica más guapa del pueblo...
Norbert
Le vagabond
Tres bandidos secuestran a la prometida de Colinot. Su búsqueda le llevará a conocer a varias chicas agraciadas y dispuestas.
Pietro l'Aretino
Nanna ingresa en un convento y sale sin virginidad y sin fe. Se casa y, cuando averigua que su marido está montando una orgía, le abandona y se hace prostituta. Después, guiará a su hija por el mismo camino...
Screenplay
Polémica película que narra como cuatro personas se reúnen en una casa para suicidarse en una orgía de comida y sexo. Cuatro amigos unidos por el hedonismo y el tedio más absoluto se reúnen en una mansión con la idea de suicidarse comiendo sin tregua. Pronto añaden a la gula otro pecado capital: la lujuria, y así empiezan a llegar las prostitutas. El sexo obsceno se entremezcla con los cerdos, los quesos, los jamones y el caviar... y cuando todos están cebados, comienzan las deserciones.
Mr. de Chatiez
A Parisian named Cartier living in Quebec City and employee of a major English Canadian insurance company is promoted to a job in Vancouver. He brings along his annoying and hyperactive Quebecquer wife and his two young kids. Rolling on a trailer van and with no knowledge of the English language, it becomes a Trans-Canadian wacky journey for the French-speaking family, and might influence Mr.Cartier to reconsider accepting this important position...
Commissioner Pigna
Tres jovencitos algo mitómanos quieren escenificar un crimen, pero cuando se transforma en realidad han de actuar como policías.
padre Scirer
El político Giacomo Puppis vive obsesionado con la política. Es una persona solitaria y con una rigurosa educación. Giacomo es chantajeado por unas fotos comprometedoras acariciando a una importante política. Su represión se manifiesta con arrebatos de agresividad sexual. Por ello y debido al chantaje, su carrera política peligra. Al amparo del Cardenal, se somete a tratamiento en un convento, donde acabará manteniendo con las monjas algo más que una relación enfermera-paciente... (FILMAFFINITY)
Maurice Gombaud
Modeste Miette
Hector Grogenol
Hugon
Una pareja marginal va en busca de su hija menor, que huyó de casa.
Auguste Kougloff / Augustin Colombani
Five friends come to the city Brizul. Here they want to find Mr Auguste Kougloff who owns them money, namely 20 million.
Marco Lombardi
Gabriel Pelletier's life is no bed of roses. Not because of his job: he is a successful sales manager. But on account of the various wrongdoings committed by his kin. First, there is his daughter Nicole, who has just developed an infatuation with a young man who is not only a revolutionary student but the the son of a Sicilian mobster as well. Then he has to cope with Bernard, his brother-in-law, a ladies'man who has been vamped by one of the sexy daughters of the Sicilian. Let's not forget Albert, his own brother, an avant-garde filmmaker also in trouble with Lombardi, the omnipresent gangster. To crown it all, Maryse, his domestic worker, is a Maoist militant!... In the end, poor Gabriel can't take it anymore. He hits the road and calls it quits.
Léo Bertold
le percepteur Dupuis
Veterinary surgeon William Chaminade is having a peaceful holiday in the South of France when he is witness to an event that will change not only his life but the destiny of France! A young woman tries to kill herself by jumping from the upstairs window of the hotel where he is staying. Thanks to the services of a passing athlete, the woman is unharmed, and she reveals that her distress is down to her husband’s apparent lack of interest in her. Immediately, Chaminade has a brainwave. He will open a special centre for people like this unfortunate young woman, who will be able to satisfy their romantic needs, at the tax payers’ expense. All is well until this innovative ’pleasure centre’ draws the attention of an over-zealous tax inspector, Dupuis...
Alphonse Ramier / Al Gregor
Loïc de Kerfuntel
Le polyvalent
Annie is a middle-age wife, still sexy and pampered by her husband, Phillippe, who is the owner and general manager of a dynamic company. Under the deluge of sexy Swedish movies, sexy advertising on the streets, sexy intimate clothing in ladies' shops, and even talks about sex and marital infidelity with her mother and female friends, Annie starts feeling left aside by her husband, and trying to attract in a number of ways - and failing. It's not the all-purpose secretary at the office that is keeping him late, it's a tax expert that, asking the most innocent questions, is finding out how Philippe can manage a company without profits, and still manage a home, may be two... with high quality levels.
Francis Bertolde dit 'Le book'
Maximiliano
spinosa
Monsieur Gentil runs a perfume factory. He is a shy man, bullied by Madame Marthe, the manager, and spurned by Cléo, the young travel agent he is in love with. He 'd rather be a tough guy than a wet blanket and his meeting with Durante, a gangster, will be decisive. Considering him a providential piggy bank, Durante, following the advice of his boss Spinosa, entrusts the" education" of Gentil to two experts, Perrugo and Bersone.
Le docteur Loupioc
Sickened to see his students always sleeping in class, a teacher with a colleague and an anarchist start a war against the television. They climbed on Paris roofs to coat the T.V. antennas with a special product cutting the signal reception.
Captain Hans Vogel
La directora de un restaurante se verá envuelta en aventuras en la Segunda Guerra Mundial en compañía de un inventor despistado y un falso fraile.
La Prudence
Copec
A scientist from the East happens in France where it is supposed to improve one of his inventions. But it is much more interested in the fact to enjoy it and have fun ...
Monsieur Adolphe
Sévérine, una joven casada con un atractivo cirujano, descubre la existencia de la prostitución diurna. Impulsada por la curiosidad, ingresa en la casa de citas de Anaïs y termina acostumbrándose a llevar una doble vida. La aparición de Marcel, un delincuente que se enamora de ella, complicará la situación de la protagonista. En 2006 contó con una secuela, "Belle Toujours", dirigida por Manoel de Oliveira.
Le docteur Grego
Le druide inventeur de la potion d'invisibilité
This film is directly inspired by Asterix, created by René Goscinny and Albert UDERZO, chronicles the adventures of a little boy, Antoine, entered the world of antiquity by studying its history lesson and two Romans, and TICKETBUS PROSPECTUS, who prefer to leave their life of legionnaires and discover the lifestyle of Gaulois.Antoine meeting Asterix cartoon form, which explains certain peculiarities of life in Lutetia.
L'inspecteur Maurice Leloup
Jean-Louis Matouzec works for French National Library as an expert looking after the restoration of old manuscripts.He falsifies marriage certificates as his wife refuses divorce.
Gédéon
While he is trying to escape from a hit man, Carl is setting up a kidnapping in Beirut. He gets lost on his way, falling in love with Salène, a.k.a. "La grande sauterelle"...
Strumberger
Monsieur Achille Eloy
La familia Eloy se va de vacaciones a su casa de campo, pero cuando un diplomático y su mujer les invitan a cenar, toda la familia se pone de los nervios...
Ivanov
Constant
Mario l'enchanteur
Gaston Berrien y su primo, que regentan una sombrerería, parecen personas normales. Un día llega a la tienda un cliente más interesado por conocer las cifras del negocio que por encontrar un sombrero adecuado, lo que pone en guardia a Gastón, pues el negocio es sólo una tapadera. Por las noches se transforma en una salón de juego clandestino.
Louis Dujardin
L'adjudant
Four sketches revolving around the themes of luck and love.
Félix
A confused pair of airport luggage carriers get involved in the disappearance of some suitcases.
Boris Vassiliev
Un célebre traficante de armas ha dejado en herencia a su joven viuda un castillo y una importante colección de patentes que interesan a los servicios secretos de varios países. Así, cuatro "barbouzes" son enviados para conseguir los preciados documentos, pero es el agente francés Lagneaux (Lino Ventura) quien, recibiendo órdenes de seducir a la rubia heredera, acometerá su misión hasta el final. (FILMAFFINITY)
Franqui
Two police inspectors Triquet and Vergus launch their investigations to arrest a dangerous escaped forger named Mickey Le Bénedictin.
Commissaire Lenoir
Nino Papatakis
Julien, soltero experimentado, intenta convencer a su amigo Antoine de renunciar a su idea de casarse. Lo consigue: La noche de bodas, Antoine escapa rumbo a Oriente Próximo.
Francis
Segunda Guerra Mundial (1939-1945). En la Francia ocupada por las tropas alemanas, un matrimonio que colabora con la Resistencia tiene que tomar una terrible decisión: cuál de sus vecinos será ejecutado por los nazis en represalia por la muerte de un oficial alemán. (FILMAFFINITY)
L'Allemand
Film por episodios que reúne a directores tan distintos como los franceses Claude Chabrol y Jean-Luc Godard, el italiano Ugo Gregoretti, el japonés Hiromichi Horikawa y el franco-polaco Roman Polanski. Cada uno de ellos relata una estafa supuestamente célebre y real.
l'importun à la cérémonie des Miss (non crédité)
Gaston Bellus, is the director of a textile house, and the research laboratory makes a sensational discovery: the elastic fabric. This new discovery is used to manufacture new modern stretchable bathing suits. His daughter Clementine, enters the beauty pageant to represent France for the swimsuit launch. But scandal ensues when the public soon discover, the photos of the event in which this new revolutionary material is completely invisible on photographs & live television.
le chauffeur
Absalon
Pommes-Chips acaba de salir de la cárcel y se encuentra con que Jack está saliendo y viviendo con su novia. Pommes-Chips le persigue hasta en el teatro, y mientras el primo de Jack está en plena obra, Jack mata accidentalmente al gángster. Lo que da lugar a una sucesión de enredos, y más aun, cuando se conoce que el cadáver llevaba en su bolsillo un boleto de las carreras de hípica con una importante suma de premio.
Le présentateur
Plantin
En la Francia de 1789, un enmascarado apodado “el tulipán negro”, ataca y saquea a la nobleza en favor de los pobres. El jefe de la policía del Rosellón, convencido de que el terrible bandido no es otro que el conde Guillaume de Saint Preux, le tiende una trampa y consigue herirle una mejilla. Ahora resultará muy fácil reconocerlo. Pero, en una fiesta a la que acude toda la nobleza, el supuesto culpable aparece con el rostro incólume. Mientras tanto, las clases altas siguen siendo despojadas de sus riquezas.
Mr Pédro Andromèze
Maître Folace
Fernand Naudin es un antiguo gángster que vive en una pequeña localidad de provincias reciclado para la vida honesta y alejado de antiguas preocupaciones. Sin embargo recibe una llamada desde París de El Mexicano, su antiguo jefe. Éste, en el umbral de la muerte, le hace prometer que se ocupará de sus negocios y, lo más importante, de su hija Patricia, que desconoce las actividades de su padre. Lo que ignora Fernand es que los cabecillas de la banda no aceptarán tan fácilmente su sucesión y que la hija de El Mexicano es una joven de lo más rebelde. Los tiempos han cambiado y los antiguos métodos ya no sirven como antes. Fernand echa de menos su vida de provincias. (FILMAFFINITY)
Franz
Un grupo de amigos fanáticos del "cinema verité" se dedican a filmar todo cuanto les sale al paso.
Chief Insp. Cucherat
Bad financial conditions compel an aristocratic family to do strange work.
M. de Brétevielle
The story of five girls that lose their virginity.
M. Bricheton (« Le Repas gastronomique »)
A light French comedy of 5 segments.
Arnakos
Édouard
Director
Antoine Tartarin
Edouard
Set during World War II in France, the story begins when a resistance fighter is given shelter in an asylum by a friend who manages the institution. Soon after, the manager is arrested by the Gestapo, which gets the resistance fighter involved. He finds the informer who set his friend up and kills him. But then no one will believe his story about the informer and he becomes desperate enough to start losing his own mental balance. A young doctor and the daughter of one of the inmates help him keep it together, but he knows he cannot continue like this for long.
Morloch
Bartoli
Attorney General
In a moment of madness a respectable pharmacist kills a young woman who is sun-bathing by a lake. When the murdered woman's boyfriend is falsely accused of her murder, the murderer is chosen to serve on the jury. Based on Francis Didelot's novel "Le Septième Juré".
Attorney General
En un momento de locura, Grégoire Duval, un farmacéutico respetable, mata a una joven que está tomando el sol junto a un lago. Incapaz de asimilar lo que ha hecho, Duval huye de la escena del crimen y se comporta como si nada hubiera sucedido. El asesinato es atribuido al amante de la joven, Sautral, que ha sido arrestado y que pronto será juzgado ante un tribunal de justicia. Al enterarse de que ha sido nombrado miembro del jurado en el juicio de Sautral, Duval es impulsado por su conciencia para salvar al hombre inocente. Por desgracia, la ciudad ya ha tomado una decisión acerca de la identidad del asesino y parece que nada podrá hacer Duval para cambiar el veredicto... (FILMAFFINITY)
le douanier belge
"Les petits matins" is a story of eighteen-year old Agathe (Agathe Aëms) with a firm independence of men even if she uses them to get to the côte d'azur.
Along the way she meets a lot of people , mostly men. And the director does not spare the sterotypical image of early 60s middle aged male cliches to lampoon.
But this is all very light stuff, nothing too intellectual.
But it's often charming, and there's a bevy of well-known actors involved.
Jean -Claude Brialy (the pompous, self absorbed male lead of Rohmer's "Claire's Knee"), Claude Rich, Lino Ventura, François Perrier, Pierre Brasseur, and the couple Bernard Blier & Arletty, who team up here for the first time since Marcel Carné's "Hôtel du Nord" (1938).
Fellous
A bunch of shady characters pursue a cache of gold bars.
Mezio
Rómulo, fundador de Roma, organiza unos juegos en honor al dios Neptuno. Acuden representantes de los pueblos vecinos, como los habitantes de la Sabinia, acompañados por sus mujeres.
Commendator Borgioli
A fashion designer rents his villa to a woman before leaving to go abroad. The daughter of the woman is forced to pretend to be handicapped in a dark conspiracy aimed to prevent the man from leaving.
Blanchin
Un nuevo rico vuelve a París después de hacer fortuna en África. Busca esposa y pone un anuncio en el periódico. Eso le convierte en objetivo de unos delincuentes...
Félix
Le prieur
Chappuis
A mild-mannered zookeeper has to contend with his tyrannical boss and a talking lovesick bear.
A low level official and a prostitute both try to commit suicide and fail, afterwards he becomes a pimp and the prostitutes take over the country.
Marceroux ('Le divorce')
The seven stages in the life of the modern Frenchwomen are disclosed by seven directors in a witty way: 1 - Childhood, 2 - Adolescence, 3 - Virginity, 4 - Marriage, 5 - Adultery, 6 - Divorce, 7 - The Single Woman.
von Krussendorf
A farcical account of the happenings in Rome in 1943 when the allied army and the partisans fight the nazis.
Augusto
Los compañeros de un médico casado le gastan una mala pasada haciendo que ingiera una sustancia que le hace propasarse con una paciente. El marido de ésta, como reparación, espera que el médico le deje estar con su esposa.
Félix
William, Foster Valmorin, l'américain
The old Valmorin died 200 years ago. The notary tells the family about the inheritance: the one who is terminally ill will receive the money. They all try their luck with getting ill before the other so one family member pretends to be deaf, another pretends to have a terrible back ache and so on...
Ferdinand Haudouin
Schulz
Segunda Guerra Mundial (1939-1945). Tras la ocupación de Francia por las tropas alemanas (1940), Babette (Bardot), una joven y hermosa francesa, se refugia en Inglaterra y es reclutada para participar en un plan de la inteligencia militar británica que pretende evitar la invasión del país por los alemanes. Babette tendrá que servirse de su belleza y encanto para ganarse la confianza de los oficiales alemanes y obtener así valiosa información. Sin embargo, la ineptitud de la chica está muy por encima de entusiasmo, lo que la convierte a veces en una auténtica amenaza para las fuerzas aliadas.
Camille, le patron du bistrot
Walter, a reporter and photographer, meets Catherine in a train. The young lawyer recently gained an acquittal for a man who killed his alcoholic father to save his mother. Campaigning against alcoholism, she asks Walter to help her unmask a wine merchant engaged in shady practices.
His Excellency Curacagua
Il maggiordomo (uncredited)
El vagabundo Totó vive en su árbol con vista panorámica. Un día, como por arte de magia, una misteriosa gitana le pone de camino a París. Allí se convertirá en el rico barón de Chemantel, cortejado por una hermosa mujer e invitado a los locales más exclusivos. No es un sueño, ni tampoco locura, es el plan criminal del verdadero barón asociado con un fino ladrón.
La Bonbonne
Cinco hombres llevan a cabo un atraco perfecto, y después ingresan en prisión por delitos menores para evitar cualquier tipo de sospechas. Sin embargo, uno a uno comienzan a morir. (
un voisin
Elisabeth is persuaded to have killed her noisy upstairs neighbor, scientist Charles Magne. To save her, Mr. Matheu, Elisabeth's father, accuses himself while Pierrot, Elisabeth's fiancé gets rid of the body in order to save father and daughter. For his part, a gangster also believes he has killed the scientist but he gets shot down by a taxidermist, who runs for life. The girl, her daddy and her boyfriend also run away. But Magne is not dead. A bum is mistaken for him and a police inspector makes everyone believe that he is the one who shot the gangster. At the end of this crazy chain of events all the protagonists are reunited at the station house and everybody dances to express their relief.
Pasquale Marchetti
un voisin
Lyricist
A small-town policeman is informed that "naked women" are dancing in a revue at a local variety theater. Being the guardian of public morals that he is, he decides to stroll on down there and check it out for himself.
Garibaldo Trouchet, le ténor, un musicien
A small-town policeman is informed that "naked women" are dancing in a revue at a local variety theater. Being the guardian of public morals that he is, he decides to stroll on down there and check it out for himself.
Writer
Nicolas
M. Boulay, l'épicier libidineux
Gilles
Rose Chaperon is asked by her confectioner mother Mathilde to bring jewels to her sick grandmother, Madame de Mergrand. But Hugues, the latter's brother, is prepared to do anything to get his hands on the loot. To this end he hires a villainous young man, Jean-Louis nicknamed Loup, to do the job. Will Loup engulf and devour Little "Rose "Riding Hood?
Michel Barbarin
The former "J3" who used to be pupils at the Coutances high school are currently students in Paris. It is now a time for love stories and sentimental crises. For the moment all the boys'hearts beat for Anita, a princess, who is the splitting image of their philosophy teacher at Coutances, Mademoiselle Bravard.
Jean du Bois d'Ombelles
Thanks to a bit of string-pulling by his aunt, Jean du Bois d'Ombelles, a young recruit who has blue blood in his veins, hopes to go through a nice and comfortable military service. Unfortunately he becomes Corporal Bourrache's pet aversion. Nevertheless, against all expectations, Jean ends up taking a liking for military life.
lui-même
April fools in a studio where a radio host pretends to shoot dead all the performers....till a true crime occurs.
Ami de Gilbert
Gilbert, poet and singer, is about to marry Lilette but deep inside himself he is not quite sure that she is the woman he needs. That is the reason why he has made up an imaginary woman, Frédérica" to whom he writes love letters, actual ones this time. When Lilette finds one of these, she sees red. Théodule, one of Gilbert's many friends, sets out the problem with the help of Claudine, his own girlfriend, posing as Frédérica. After Gilbert and "Frédérica" have played a phony breakup scene in front of Lilette, things seem to come right when... another Frédérica appears...