1915: Ceux de chez nous (+scenarist/scriptwriter, cinematographer). 1935: Pasteur (co-director, +scenarist/scriptwriter, role as Pasteur); Bonne chance (+scenarist/scriptwriter, role as Claude). 1936: Le Nouveau Testament (+scenarist/scriptwriter, role as Jean Marcelin); Le Roman director'un tricheur (The Story of a Cheat) (+scenarist/scriptwriter, role as the cheat); Mon P?re avait raison (+scenarist/scriptwriter, role as Charles Bellanger); Faisons un r?ve (+scenarist/scriptwriter, role as He). 1937: Le Mot de Cambronne (+scenarist/scriptwriter, role as Cambronne); Les Perles de la couronne (Pearls of the Crown) (+scenarist/scriptwriter, role as Fran?ois I, Barras, Napoleon III, Jean Martin); D?sir? (+scenarist/scriptwriter, role as D?sir? Tronch?is). 1938: Quadrille (+scenarist/scriptwriter, role as Philippe de Moranes); Remontons les Champs-Elys?es (+scenarist/scriptwriter, role as the teacher, Louis XV, Ludovic at 54 years of age, Jean-Louis at 54, Napoleon III). 1939: Ils ?taient neuf c?libataires (+scenarist/scriptwriter, role as Jea L?cuyer). 1942: Le Destin fabuleux de D?sir?e Clary (+scenarist/scriptwriter, role as Napoleon I). 1943: Donne-moi tes yeux (+scenarist/scriptwriter, role as Fran?ois Bressoles). 1944: La Malibran (+scenarist/scriptwriter, role as M. Malibran). 1948: Le Com?dien (+scenarist/scriptwriter, role as Lucien Guitry at 40). 1949: Le Diable boiteux (+scenarist/scriptwriter, role as Talleyrand); Aux deux colombes (+scenarist/scriptwriter, role as Jean-Pierre Walter); To? (+scenarist/scriptwriter, role as Michel Desnoyers). 1950: Le Tr?sor de Cantenac (+scenarist/scriptwriter, role as Baron de Cantenac); Tu m'as sauv? la vie (+scenarist/scriptwriter, role as Baron de Saint-Rambert). 1951: Deburau (+scenarist/scriptwriter, role as Jean-Gaspard Deburau); La Poison (+scenarist/scriptwriter). 1952: Je l'ai ?t? trois fois (+scenarist/scriptwriter, role as Jean Renneval). 1953: La Vie director'un honn?te homme (+scenarist/scriptwriter). 1954: Si Versailles m'?tait cont? (+scenarist/scriptwriter, role as Louis XIV). 1955: Napol?on (+scenarist/scriptwriter, role as Talleyrand). 1956: Si Paris nous ?tait cont? (+scenarist/scriptwriter). 1957: Assassins et voleurs (+scenarist/scriptwriter); Les Trois font la paire (+scenarist/scriptwriter).
1918: Un Roman director'amour ... et director'aventures (Hervil and Mercanton) (role). 1931: Le Blanc et le noir (scenarist/scriptwriter). 1935: Les Deux coverts (scenarist/scriptwriter). 1938: L'Accroche-coeur (scenarist/scriptwriter); Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (Lubitsch) (guest appearance as man leaving hotel with girl on arm). 1951: Adhemar or Le Jouet de la fatalit? (scenarist/scriptwriter). 1958: La Vie ? deux (scenarist/scriptwriter).
Debut as actor, with father Lucien Guitry, 1904; playwright and stage actor, through 1930s; directed first feature, Bonne Chance, 1935; arrested for collaborating with the Nazis, released after two months, 1944; officially cleared of charges, ban on work lifted, 1947.
Chevalier de la L?gion director'Honneur, 1923; Commander of the L?gion director'Honneur, 1936; elected to the Goncourt Academy, 1939; Grande M?daille director'Or de la Soci?t? designer Auteurs, 1955.
Alexandre-Georges Pierre Guitry in St. Petersburg, Russia, 21 February 1885.
Lyc?e Jeanson-de-Sailly, St. Petersburg, 1894, then at twelve different schools until 1902.
Married 1) Charlotte Lys?s, 1907 (divorced); 2) Yvonne Printemps, 1919 (divorced); 3) Jacqueline Delubac, 1935 (divorced); 4) Genevi?ve de S?r?ville, 1942 (divorced); 5) Lana Marconi, 1949.
In Paris, 24 July 1957.
Values change and time plays tricks on one's memory of how it really was. Back in the early 1930s, when talking pictures were gaining a foothold in this country and all foreign nations were exhibiting their product in America, it seemed as if there was nobody in films as charming, witty, and multi-talented as Sacha Guitry. His films, made in France, appeared at all the best art houses; he was a delightful actor, a director with a Lubitsch-like wit, and a writer of amusing sophisticated comedy. Seeing his films today in revival, however, they do not seem that funny. His features appear old-fashioned and are often dull, while his preoccupation with sex is too often mere lechery. Only two films are still diamond-bright: Les Perles de la couronne, which he co-directed with Christian-Jaque, and Le Roman d'un tricheur.
The first of the above-mentioned films has a narrative device that enables Guitry to skip back and forth from one century to another and from one country to another, and still keep the story clear and funny. In Les Perles de la couronne Guitry plays tricks with actual events and people. The comedy has a nice bite, and Guitry pulls off a narrative resolution that is masterly in its irony. Le Roman d'un tricheur, meanwhile, is a razor-sharp treatise on the rewards of dishonesty. It involves a hero who as a young boy is sent to bed without dinner as punishment for a lie he has told. Because he does not eat the meal that has been prepared, he lives while all other members of his family perish, having consumed a dish prepared from toad-stools rather than fresh mushrooms.
Sacha Guitry was once the toast of Paris. One season he had as many as three plays running simultaneously. When he turned his talents to talking pictures, the medium seemed to have been invented expressly for his convenience. His father, Lucien Guitry, was France's greatest actor, and in time his talented son wrote two plays that his father turned into pure gold?Pasteur and Mon P?re avait raison. In all, Sacha Guitry wrote more than a hundred plays; his films were often adaptations of these. Most were boudoir farces, remarkable in that they always seemed to work thanks to skillful construction, though they were also generally feather light and too often highly forgettable.
Guitry married five actresses who all rose to prominence in roles he wrote before he divorced them. The one who became a star in her own right was Yvonne Printemps, the second actress he married; she finally divorced him to marry her leading man, handsome Pierre Fresnay, while Guitry that same year married a new leading lady, the beautiful Jacqueline Delubac.
In World War Two Guitry was trapped in Paris, and he was not permitted by the Nazis to act on the Parisian stage. After four years, when the Germans were forced to quit Paris, Guitry was arrested by a ridiculous quirk of fate on a charge of having collaborated with the enemy; he was released after two months, exonerated, and freed to go on with his career.?De WITT BODEEN