Before there was Bip, there was Pedrolino, a stock character in the commedia dell’arte, the youngest son of the Italian performance family. He who slept in the straw with animals, sharing the dogs’ half-starved lives.
Molière painted Pedrolino white and taught him French. He was reborn as Pierrot. Jean-Gaspard Deburau turned Pierrot into a mute.
Jean-Louis Barrault resurrected Pierrot in Marcel Carné’s film classic, Les Enfants du Paradis, the movie referred to as France’s answer to Gone with the Wind.
Four men vie for the love of a beautiful courtesan Garance, the movie’s proxy for commedia’s Columbina. But the man whose love is purest, the man who suffers most in pursuit, is the white-faced mime. A Pierrot, a Pierrot, here named “Baptiste Deburau.”
Barrault himself appeared in Les Enfants du Paradis. He was the sad-faced clown dressed in white. The trusting fool, butt of pranks. Naïve, moonstruck dreamer. Ultimately, Columbina broke his heart and ran away with Harlequin, friend and rival and, later, Marceau’s first role in a play called Baptiste.
When journalists asked about Bip, the trusting fool, butt of pranks, Marceau dismissed Bip’s European ancestors. He credited the American silent film stars: Chaplin, Keaton, Laurel and Hardy.
At least one person saw through it. Theater critic Edward Thorpe wrote in The London Evening Standard, “I must confess to never having liked Bip anyway. Despite the debt to Chaplin, the character is close to Pierrot and the winsome whimsical commedia dell’arte crew, with his affected walks, limp-wristed manner, silly hats and bizarre costumes that look like a cross between little Lord Fauntleroy and an eighteenth-century sailor.”
(A nod to those who came before him? Marceau named his first child, a son, Baptiste.)