THE FILM star is not just an actor, not even an actor particularly beloved of the public, but a hero of legend or tragedy, embodying a destiny with which scenarists and directors must comply—albeit unwittingly. Otherwise the spell between the actor and his public will be broken. The variety of films in which he appears, and which seem so agreeably surprising in their novelty, should not mislead us. It is the confirmation of a destiny, profound and essential, which we unconsciously seek in the actor’s continually renewed exploits. This is evident in Chaplin, for example, and, interestingly enough, more secretly and subtly illustrated in a star like Jean Gabin.
In nearly all Gabin films—at least from La Bête humaine to Au-delà des grilles—he comes to a violent end that has the appearance, more or less, of suicide. Is it not strange that the commercial law of the happy ending, which forces so many producers to tack on artificial finales like those of the Molière comedies, is not valid for one of the most popular and sympathetic actors—whom everyone should wish to see happily married with lots of children?
But can you see Gabin as a family man? Could anyone imagine that, at the end of Quai des Brumes, he had managed to snatch poor Michèle Morgan from the clutches of Michel Simon and Pierre Brasseur, and sailed with her to a future in America; or that, having come to his senses, he preferred when day broke in Le Jour se lève to turn himself in and hope for a probable acquittal?
No, it is impossible. The public that swallows many affronts would undoubtedly feel that they were being taken for a ride if screenwriters presented them with a happy ending for Jean Gabin.
Proof by a reductio ad absurdum: let someone try to kill off Luis Mariano or Tino Rossi in the same fashion!
How can we explain this paradox, all the more glaring because it contradicts an inviolable law of the cinema? The explanation is that Gabin, in the films referred to, is not just giving an interpretation of one story among many others. It is always the same story—his own, and one which must inevitably end unhappily, like the story of Oedipus or Phaedra. Gabin is the tragic hero of the contemporary cinema. With every new Gabin film the cinema rewinds the infernal machine of his destiny—just as in Le Jour se lève, that night, as on every night, he winds up the alarm clock whose ironic and cruel ringing will sound at daybreak the hour of his death.
It would be a simple matter to show how, under cover of an ingenious diversity, the essential gears of the mechanism remain identically the same. Here is one example. Before the war, it is said, Gabin insisted before signing any film contract that the story include one of those explosive scenes of anger at which he excels. Was this the whim of a star, was it the ham clinging to his little touch of bravura? Perhaps, but he probably felt, through his actor’s vanity, that to deprive himself of it would betray his character. Indeed it is almost always in a moment of rage that Gabin brings misfortune on himself, baiting the fateful trap that will inevitably cause his death. Besides, in the tragedies and epics of ancient times anger was not just a psychological state amenable to treatment by a cold shower or a sedative; it was a special state, a divine possession, an opening for the gods into the world of humanity, through which destiny steals. Thus in a gesture of rage Oedipus on the road to Thebes brought misfortune upon himself by killing a charioteer (his father) whom he did not recognize. The modern gods who reign over suburban Thebes with their Olympus of factories and their steel monsters wait too for Gabin at the crossroads of fate.
What I have said holds good more for the prewar Gabin of La Bête humaine and Le Jour se lève. Gabin has changed since then; he is older, his formerly blond hair is gray, his face has grown fatter. In the cinema, we used to say, destiny does not take on a countenance, it is the countenance that reveals its destiny. Gabin could not remain the same forever; but neither could he escape from a mythology that is so solidly established.
And thus, significantly, Aurenche and Bost in Au-delà des grilles have taken over where Jeanson and Prevért left off. We remember the last shot of Pépé le Moko: the dying Gabin clinging to the iron railings around Algiers harbor, watching the ship that carries all his hopes sail away. René Clément’s film begins where Duvivier’s ended. Its titles might save said, “Suppose Gabin had been given a chance—he could have caught the boat; here he is now, on the other side of the railings.” The film is simply Gabin’s return to his fate, the quasi-voluntary renunciation of love and happiness, the admission that a paroxysm of toothache and the gods, when all is said and done, are the strongest forces in life.
Admittedly in La Marie du Port the force of destiny is softened. Gabin becomes merely an actor again. For the first time, he gets married—but will he be any happier? Marcel Carné has not been able to escape paying his dues to the old myth. Gabin is rich, he is a “success”—nevertheless, throughout the film there is talk of a ship in dry dock, or a trawler that never sets sail, and is there like a witness to the old dream Gabin never achieved (the dream of an escape he could never make, a parting that would set him free). Thus his present dubious happiness, his material rather than moral success, is nothing more than a confession of failure, the paltry reward of an act of renunciation. The gods are merciful to those who no longer seek to be heroes.
It remains for the sociologists and moralists (specifically the Christian moralists—and why not the theologians?) to reflect on the profound meaning of a mythology in which, through the popularity of an actor like Gabin, millions of our contemporaries rediscover themselves. Perhaps a world without God becomes a world of the gods and of the fates they dispense.