Coluche in “Tchao Pantin”, the other face of the actor in the cinema

Like so many others before him, on screen, Coluche carried his character around in French “jokebusters”. We will have to wait until “Tchao Pantin†for the clown to remove his mask. Time for a film, and a César.

This text was published in 2006 in the special issue Coluche, the aristo of the heart. We are republishing it on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the death of Michel Colucci this June 19.

Let it be said, Coluche never considered himself an actor. Throughout his career in cinema, from “smaller speaking role” of the casting in Le Pistonnéin 1969, in the last (and main) role of war madmanin 1985, he welcomed praise and denigration, honey and venom, while affecting the same impervious casualness. Cunning or modesty, he kept repeating that actors, the real ones, the pros “They do whatever they want. I know how to make Coluche, and that’s it…

More « faire Coluche à l’écran »it is not “doing Coluche” quite simply. In the cinema, he is another: most of the time, a defused, blunt, good-natured double, according to an armful of popular comedies… Put end to end, all these films seem to form a single comic fresco, of which Coluche would be the rotund hero and naive, somewhat overwhelmed by events, but capable, most of the time, of getting out of bad situations thanks to his solid Gallic common sense. In short, Asterix and Obélix in the same man.

Sometimes, of course, he plays the “big idiot”, by his own (satisfied) admission, as in King Dagobertlourde farce en costumes signed Dino Risi. Corn roughly, Coluche « fait Coluche »as in the serial adventures of a comic book hero: Coluche flic (Inspector La Bavure, The rooms were closed from the inside), Coluche globetrotter (Banzaï, The Vengeance of the Feathered Serpent), Coluche through the ages (You will not have Alsace and Lorraine, A quarter to two hours before Jesus Christ…), Coluche teacher (The Schoolmaster), Coluche against junk food (Wing or thigh), Coluche in love (My friend’s wife)…

“Less naughty, but still just as vulgar…

Certainly, he does not have the exclusivity of this type of “jobs” to be repeated: see, at the same time, Pierre Richard, Les Charlots or Louis de Funés… The difference, in the case of Coluche, is the gap between these roles and the public persona, which no one seems to get used to. In the theaters, people come to see the “bastard” playing the good guy. As for criticism, it does not do him any favors, far from it, but above all is tirelessly astonished, throughout columns and years, by this paradox: “A more surly, less rounded and less soft character would perhaps have suited his temperament better†or again: “Less nasty, but still just as vulgarâ€we read almost everywhere.

Vulgar: this adjective, so often inflicted that Coluche proudly wore it all his life on his shoulder, like an elected official his tricolor scarf, serves as a link between the stage and the screen. Vulgar, the sketches; vulgar, films. Still: the first, angry and chiseled, bore witness to a talent that is undisputed today. The second are more questionable, huge pants (Le Roi Dagobert…) or nice family comedies (The Wing or the thigh, Banzaï…), but they allowed their performer to knit this comedy character.

The paradox of the actor according to Coluche

A figure all his own, which he went so far as to direct himself, for a single film, in 1977: You will not have Alsace and Lorraineor the medieval-disastrous adventures (from all points of view) of Gros Pif I, a cowardly monarch and pleasure-seeker. Result of this one and only experiment on the other side of the camera: an oven. “We are surprised that the film control commission did not demand the withdrawal of this… thing, even if it only dishonors its author […] What a waste! » exclaims a critic, in The Cross. Very Coluchian reaction: “Well, as long as you’re playing stupid things, you might as well do it yourself.” N’emêche: it never happened.

Safe distance, saving irony, self-deprecation: Coluche seems to have always had a bizarre relationship with cinema, an intriguing mixture of generosity, instinct and (pseudo?) detachment. He loved to repeat everywhere that he never read the scripts (“There are people who read for me. I ask them for their opinion, I find out and if I like the film, I sign. In fact, I can definitely be abused!”), or even that his screen career was like a big vacation for him after the stage marathons. Should we believe it? Or rely on this extreme sensitivity praised by most of the directors who have worked with him?

Bertrand Blier, for example, who hired him to My friend’s wifein 1983: “My Coluche is tender and funny. I dreamed of working with him since the beginning: he has a touching and dramatic side that is not well known. » Or even Claude Zidi, with whom Coluche toured four times, out of friendship. Loyalty: it is the common thread of his career, sometimes even, one senses, beyond his ranting, something like a reason to tour. This is how we see him, in his beginnings, in the wake of the Café de la Gare gang, in works the polar opposite of his future successful comedies. Sixty-eight “experiences”: L’An 01 (he makes the revolution), Themroc (he breaks down the walls of his apartment and eats – literally – CRS)…

“An immense actor, a character like Michel Simonâ€

But this loyalty is illustrated above all in his friendship and his collaboration with Claude Berri, the filmmaker and the producer, the mentor and the friend… The first to have, from the café-theatre, spotted his singular talent (“But yes, Coluche is a huge actor, time will tell, a character like Michel Simon.”he prophesied). At each decisive stage of Coluche’s career, Berri is there: in Le Pistonnéhe entrusted him with his first role, which was even supposed to be THE first role quite simply (but the reluctance of the financiers made them prefer Guy Bedos, already famous).

The before and after “Tchao Pantinâ€

Berri, who put him under contract, hired him in three of his films, and produced those of the others (A quarter to two hours before Christ, The Vengeance of the Feathered Serpent)… ; Berri who, above all and above all, offered him his most beautiful role, his César for best actor, and recognition. There is a before and an after Tchao Pantin (1983), same si “We have not decided to change its brand image. I took Coluche because I always knew that he was a great dramatic actor. “He fit the role.”

With this role, Coluche is truly another, until now sheltered behind his cheekiness and his reserve. Tchao Pantin : the story of Lambert, a guy at the end of his rope, shipwrecked by life, this famous gas station attendant whose tired suit, heavy eyes and desperate revenge have remained in everyone’s memories… A very dark film. The echo of a distress that Coluche, who was then going through a difficult period in his private life, could not contain this time (“Every night, he gave me a gift of his heart, of his suffering…remembers Claude Berri (1). But Michel, like all truly damaged people, preferred to attack rather than show his true suffering. Except in Tchao Pantinand again, he pretended to play comedy”).

The jokes and the good-natured expressions suddenly seem very far away. Philippe Boggio tells it in his book on Coluche (2): on the set, the actor “Learns his text at the last moment. Grumbles, as usual. He seems to not care, even though those close to him know the importance he attaches to this adventure, which has become a Polaroid of his intimate news.”

As for Richard Anconina, friend and partner, he remembers today that Coluche “Deeply loved Lambert. He knew him, he looked like all these people with whom he had grown up, and whom he was happy, through this character, to find again.”. Obviously, Coluche, who hated the « after-hours service »and even more so any intrusion into his privacy, defended himself throughout interviews: “Well, it’s not complicated to draw tears. They make you grow sideburns, they inject red into your eyes to make you look more tired, older… And smack, you become someone else.”

“Le Dostoïevski des banlieuesâ€

Result, the farce can no longer protect Coluche: he is discovered. No one is willing to let him mess around in peace anymore. We now know what he is capable of. The press, the very one which never ceased to criticize him, was ecstatic: “Du Dostoïevski banlieusard”proclaims Thursday’s Event. Yves Boisset, in the columns of Figarodescribes it as “ brilliant mutant emerging from the depths of our society in crisis”. And in The morningwe can read a very revealing title: “Farewell Coluche, hello Michel Colucci!”

Suddenly, Michel Colucci is no longer vulgar, he is popular in the noblest sense of the term, he is compared to Raimu, he is predicted a future like Gabin… Even Jean-Luc Godard plans to shoot a political film with him called Animals : “I had written three pages. Coluche agreed. Gaumont refused. HAS”

Coluche is not, however, embarking on a new career as an intellectual tragedian: he continues, as if nothing had happened, his recurring career as a clown: Banzaï, with Zidi; The Vengeance of the Feathered Serpent, with Oury… Even if he then confides, half-lucid, half-brave: “You have to admit it. Coluche is still more about form than substance. I made people laugh more by scratching my balls than by telling clever jokes.”

The Madman of Warby Dino Risi, looks like a sort of compromise: a comedy certainly, but hardly – dark, grating, and, although only half successful, it offers Coluche a dense and intriguing role. That of Oscar Pilli, an Italian officer, in Libya, during the Second World War. A lost man and a maniac, an authentic crazy: “Pilli is a glossary of madness, Risi then explained. And Coluche also has his little quirks… He is capable of very rapid mood swings. He also manifests this nastiness which hides a deep gentleness. He’s shy, deep down, but extroverted. With him, everything is the opposite of everything.”

In the cinema, Coluche would therefore be “the opposite” of Coluche: a quiet father and a madman, a clown and an emotional person, an actor in spite of himself… And so many other characters to come, of which his death has deprived us.