Jean Brochard

In addition to appearing in over 100 films, Jean Brochard also had a prolific career on the stage and pursued sidelines as a musician, poet, typographer, metallurgist, docker and café owner. The son of a Nantes blacksmith, Brochard was seriously wounded at the Battle of Chemin des Dames during World War I and only returned to the theatre in the 1920s. He made his screen bow in 1932 and rose above bit parts to play cops in a handful of Maurice de Canonge crime thrillers. But supporting turns in two classic studies of small-town paranoia during the Nazi Occupation, "L'Assassinat du Pére Noël" and "Le Corbeau," forged links with directors Christian-Jaque and Henri-Georges Clouzot. Among his eight films for Christian-Jaque were the crime melodrama "Voyage sans espoir," the atmospheric backstage saga "Un Revenant" and the Mérimée and Maupassant adaptations, "Carmen" and "Boule de suif," while, for Clouzot, he made the masterly murder thriller "Les Diaboliques" and the sinister espionage mystery "Les Espions." Still seen primarily in supporting roles, Brochard also worked regularly in the 1950s with journeyman directors Henri Calef and André Hunebelle. But he also teamed with Julien Duvivier on the Parisian ensemble drama "Sous le ciel de Paris" and the Émile Zola adaptation "Pot-Bouille," and played Franco Fabrizi's father in Federico Fellini's breakthrough rite-of-passage comedy, "I Vitelloni." Illness curtailed Brochard's activities from 1960, and he was awarded the Legion of Honour in 1970.