Too Much Monkey Business
By Michael J Roberts
“Michel Simon is the greatest actor in the world.” ~ Charlie Chaplin
Michel Simon was born in Switzerland in 1895 and worked as a clown and acrobat as a ten before discovering acting while on leave from the army. He started as a stage actor in 1920, his career given a boost by the well-known actor Louis Jouvet, before he started in silent films in 1925. He made a mark in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s immortal The Passion of Joan of Arc in 1928 and established a close working relationship with Jean Renoir, who used Simon in Tire-au-flanc(The Sad Sack), before transitioning from silent to sound films. Renoir soon found his artistic voice in the early 1930s and in league with Simon they produced three successive artistic, if not commercial triumphs in On purge bébé, La Chienne and Boudu Saved From Drowning. Sound was particularly suited for both Renoir and Simon and Simon’s distinctive, gravelly voice proved as singular as his striking, non-movie star looks – In those films Simon had effectively established his screen persona as a misfit, an individual and a man who walks to the beat of a different drum.
This was confirmed in one of his signature roles, that of the earthy bargeman in Jean Vigo’s remarkable L’Atalante in 1934. Simon’s physicality, his vocal expressiveness and his innate humanity created an indelible character in a timeless masterpiece of world cinema. He was a solid fixture in French films for the next few years, working with G.W. Pabst, Marcel L’Herbier, Sacha Guitry, Marc Allégret and Raymond Bernard before Marcel Carné gave him key roles in the comedy Drôle de Drame (Bizarre, Bizarre), with his friend Louis Jouvet, and in one of the finest films of all time, Le Quai des Brumes, with Jean Gabin and Michèle Morgan, where his slimy, lecherous Zabel is repulsive and believable and demonstrated his dramatic range. Simon was now one of the most recognisable actors in French cinema and Julien Duvivier cast him in a love letter/satire to the acting profession in La Fin du Jour, with Jouvet again. Simon acquitted himself brilliantly and stole the film from the veritable A-list of French actors who filled the cast.
Simon had a couple of excellent roles in the French version of The Postman Always Rings Twice (Le Dernier Tournant) – of all the versions he’s still the definitive doomed husband – and romped through Fric Frac, a caper comedy opposite the formidable Arletty and the only other odd-faced actor who might have given him stiff competition in the gurning stakes, the wonderful Fernandel. The war stalled many a career and Simon’s was no different as he marked time mostly in Italy in some modest features there before Julien Duvivier gave him one of his greatest roles in the post war drama, Panique, from the famous Georges Simenon novel, Monsieur Hire, a scathing assessment of wartime behaviour in France by profiteers and collaborators and of antisemitism against the titular character played by Simon.
“When Michel Simon plays a part, we penetrate the core of the human heart.”
~ François Truffaut
Michel Simon worked the same path through the 1950s and 1960s. either starring in character pieces like Full House, as Inspector Maigret, or comedies like The Virtuous Scoundrel for Sacha Guitry, or linking up with old colleagues like Duvivier in ensemble or supporting roles as in The Devil and The Ten Commandments. He had a couple of notable English language sidebars in Albert Lewin’s MGM produced Saadia, in 1953 and for John Frankenheimer’s sturdy WWII drama, The Train, opposite Burt Lancaster in 1964.
Michael Simon spent five decades gracing the screens of world cinema, starting out in silent film, and he received his highest honor, the Berlinale’s Best Actor award in 1967, for his role as an antisemitic peasant who befriends a Jewish boy during the war in Claude Berri’s debut feature, The Two of Us. Simon worked until the year of his death, in 1980, and left one son, François, who became an actor. Michel Simon was a true eccentric who preferred the company of animals to humans and was an ecologist before many people had heard the word.
“I believe in the earth because it's here. And it never lets me down. It works miracles. It makes roses. Where does it get the rose's fragrance? Is there a chemist who could explain that to me? And the rose's structure, and the rose's colors, come from the earth. It's unbelievable, isn't it? I have always had a passion for the land. Forty years ago, I would set off with my bag on my back and pitch my tent, even on glaciers. This is the end of humanity! When there are four, five, six, or ten billion people on this planet, what will have become of us...? The lowest of the low. All in the name of freedom.” ~ Michel Simon.
His large house and estate was surrounded by forest, and a chaotic menagerie of cats, dogs and birds filled his home. He was very close to his pet monkeys, and if we are to believe Jean Renoir’s exhaustive and comprehensive biographer Pascal Merigeau then he was unnaturally close to Zaza, a female chimp who died in 1936 leaving Simon inconsolable. Not only was his home cluttered with this menagerie, but also full of his esoteric collections including a stash of exotic pornography.
Michel Simon was simply one of the most identifiable and beloved characters in all of French cinema in a remarkable career of over 100 feature films. On screen, he had an immediate and undeniable charisma, ideal for playing eccentric types such as Boudu, the role that fit like a glove because Renoir wrote it for Simon, recognising his friends nonconformist character. He was not the last director to make note and use of Simon’s strengths and differences. Michel Simon was as much a misfit as many of the characters he inhabited, but his fearlessness and his commitment to his art and life left an indelible mark on film history. Fair to say we shall never see his like again.