The Jean Gabin – Michel Audiard meeting led to one of the most abundant collaborations in French cinema, and that's how it all started.
Jean Gabin and Michel Audiard is a collaboration that extends over 20 films shot in 1955 and 1971. The first of them, entitled Gas-Oil, marked their professional meeting and at the time, Audiard was very impressed by the interpreter of the Quai des Brumes, as he had entrusted to television in 1970:
“Jean has always succeeded in his dialoguers”
“Jean had already made all his important films, I was really a beginner”but he was quickly interrupted by “the old man” (as Alain Delon called him): “You made films with Hunebelle!”
Gaumont
And indeed, before meeting Gabin, Michel Audiard had written several films staged by André Hunebelle: Mission to Tangier (1949), beware of the Blondes (1950), Massacre in lace (1952) and the Three Musketeers (1953), but also Guy Lefranc (The Man of My Life, Elle and Me, A love story) or Henri Verneuil ( n ° 1). End of digression, Audiard resumes:
“It is [Gilles] Grangier who put us in touch, because Grangier was a friend with Jean, he knew him well, they had already made a film together [La Vierge du Rhin, ndlr] And I had worked on other films with Grangier [Poisson d’avril avec Bourvil, ndlr]. He wanted me to make a film with Gabin. (…) The idea had vaguely come to me on its own for a while, but the stars must be tackled, it takes an opportunity to meet them (…). Jean has always succeeded in his dialoguers, and I really made me start. “
“Gabin speaks well”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmdjusgam2W
With Gas-Oil Audiard will revive Gabin's career, widely hampered since the Second World War, and will have a name as a dialogist, then officiating on the cinema of Lautner (the tontons flingueurs, in particular) or that of Belmondo (the incorrigible, among others).
Despite a blurring that will start along the way, the Gabin / Audiard collaboration will be so virtuous that their duo will sometimes be put more forward in the trailers and on the posters of the films than the name of the director, thus promising the public its dose of guailles of cult lines.
In 1976, the year of the death of Gabin, his favorite dialogist will declare to the media Rts ::
“Gabin has their own language in life. He speaks well, he has rich words. (…) And despite myself, I stung words to Gabin (…).” It was a good war.
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