Vale Micheline Presle - Barrie Pattison shares some fond memories of the great French star MICHELINE PRESLE

Micheline Presle, Le Diable au Corps

With the death at 102 of Micheline Presle, we have severed what must be the last link with classic cinema. Who else starred in films by Pabst, Lang and Dieterle, Marcel L’Herbier and Jean Negulesco, Sacha Guitry, Jacques Demy and Sam Fuller, opposite Ramon Novarro, Gérard Philipe, Tyrone Power, John Garfield, Paul Newman and Errol Flynn? Her performances were a dominant element in the best work of several heavyweight film makers – Jean Delannoy’s Les jeux sont faits, Joseph Losey’s Blind Date/ Chance Meeting and particularly Claude Autant-Lara’s imposing Le diable au corps. That trio alone make her a major figure. 

Establishing herself as a lively juvenile in French films before WW2, Presle became de facto the leading female star of their Occupation Era film industry, with Danielle Darieux, Michele Morgan and Simone Simon off in Hollywood for the duration. 

 

A post-war Hollywood stint of her own proved a disappointment, ending with the dreadful Adventures of Captain Fabian directed by her husband William Marshall for Republic from a script by Errol Flynn, and she never really regained her dominant status but that didn’t prevent her ploughing on through whatever came her way. 

 

Micheline Presle, Hardy Kruger, Blind Date/Chance Meeting

She never stopped working.  She even outlived her talented daughter-director Toni Marshall, who had cast her in several of her films. I once had the audacity to try to recruit the star of Le diable au corps for a horror film I planned shooting in Australia and the Movie Divinities were on my side. She’d just seen Food of the Gods where Ida Lupino, who she regarded as a member of her peer group, had taken on a similar role. I explained that I’d seen Presle do just what I wanted, animating the exposition with her Banditi Italiani and The Prize performances. She could see that, was charming, read the script and gave me a letter of intention to appear. It is one of my great regrets that I never had the chance to watch Micheline Presle through the view finder performing in my work, when the project fell by the wayside after I scaled down the ambition on the production we finally shot. 

 

At least we still have her films. I’ve been on Micheline Presle’s case for a lifetime and there’s still a long list of promising titles that I haven’t been able to watch.  It’s always a pleasure when one comes my way, though now that will be shaded with regret.                                                                                                                                  

 

It is unsurprising that no mention of her death has been made in the Australian media I've seen.