On the occasion of the 40e anniversary of the death of Louis de Funès, this “national treasure” to which the Cinémathèque paid tribute in 2020, we are republishing the article dedicated to him by Pierre Ajame (1939-1988), writer and journalist, in “le Nouvel Obs” (which became “l’Obs” in 2014).
Louis de Funès, the actor with 1,000 facial expressions
Article published in “Le Nouvel Observateur” n° 952, Friday February 4, 1983.
De Funès: the greatness of follies
by Pierre Ajame
He was smart, cultured, charming. He was cowardly, obsequious, mean. I knew him a little, enough to testify that he loved Bach and Romanesque churches: during walks in the Ariège countryside, he photographed capitals and hummed the “Goldbergs”; he had an eye and an ear.
One hundred million spectators (the figure has been verified) frequented another Louis de Funès who was to the first what Mr. Hyde was to Doctor Jekyll: a monstrous understudy with a rubbery face, ignorant of articulate language, who bowed before the powerful and slapped everyone else. He had put his keen intelligence into composing an odious character who avenged us on ourselves by exhibiting so many basenesses kept secret, by freeing our little repressed ignominies through laughter. He was the chief catalyst and now that he’s gone, up there in the hangers, we already miss this representative of a species with him extinct, roughly located between Homo sapiens and the horse beetle.
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