Sacha Guitry

Known for DirectingBorn 1885-02-20Died 1957-07-24Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire [now Russia]

Alexandre-Pierre Georges Guitry (21 February 1885 – 24 July 1957), known as Sacha Guitry, was a French stage actor, film actor, director, screenwriter, and playwright of the boulevard theatre. He was the son of a leading French actor, Lucien Guitry, and followed his father into the theatrical profession. He became known for his stage performances, particularly in boulevardier roles. He was also a prolific playwright, writing 115 plays throughout his career. He was married five times, always to rising actresses whose careers he furthered. Probably his best-known wife was Yvonne Printemps to whom he was married between 1919 and 1932. Guitry's plays range from historical dramas to contemporary light comedies. Some have musical scores, by composers including André Messager and Reynaldo Hahn. When silent films became popular Guitry avoided them, finding the lack of spoken dialogue fatal to dramatic impact. From the 1930s to the end of his life he enthusiastically embraced the cinema, making as many as five films in a single year. The later years of Guitry's career were overshadowed by accusations of collaborating with the occupying Germans after the capitulation of France in the Second World War. The charges were dismissed, but Guitry, a strongly patriotic man, was disillusioned by the vilification he received from some of his compatriots. By the time of his death, his popular esteem had been restored to the extent that 12,000 people filed past his coffin before his burial in Paris. Guitry was born at No 12 Nevsky Prospect, Saint Petersburg, Russia, the third son of the French actors Lucien Guitry and his wife Marie-Louise-Renée née Delmas de Pont-Jest (1858–1902). The couple had eloped, in the face of family disapproval, and were married at St Martin in the Fields, London, in 1882. They then moved to the then Russian capital, where Lucien ran the French theatre company, the Théâtre Michel, from 1882 to 1891. The marriage was brief. Guitry senior was a persistent adulterer, and his wife instituted divorce proceedings in 1888. Two of their sons died in infancy (one in 1883 and the other in 1887); the other surviving son, Jean (1884–1920) became an actor and journalist. The family's Russian nurse habitually shortened Alexandre-Pierre's name to the Russian diminutive "Sacha", by which he was known all his life. The young Sacha made his stage debut in his father's company at the age of five. Lucien Guitry, considered the most distinguished actor in France since Coquelin, was immensely successful, both critically and commercially. When he returned to Paris he lived in a flat in a prestigious spot, overlooking the Place Vendôme and the Rue de la Paix. The young Sacha lived there, and for his schooling he was first sent to the well-known Lycée Janson de Sailly in the fashionable Sixteenth arrondissement. He did not stay long there, and went to a succession of other schools, both secular and religious, before abandoning formal education at the age of sixteen. ... Source: Article "Sacha Guitry" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.Read more

Movies & web series

The Comedian

Ooh La La!

The Lover of Camille

Un roman d’amour et d’aventures

L'Accroche-cœur

Encyclopédie audiovisuelle du cinéma

From Joan of Arc to Philippe Pétain

Sleeping Partners

Mon père avait raison

La Jalousie

Zwei ganze Tage

Faisons un rêve

The Clairvoyant

Le Veilleur de nuit

Mon père avait raison

The Story of a Cheat

Nono

Deburau

La Pèlerine écossaise

Poison

At Theatre Tonight

Two Doves

A Crime in Paradise

A Night at the Opera

The Private Life of an Actor

Bluebeard's 8th Wife

Let's Make a Dream

Royal Affairs in Versailles

My Last Mistress

Désiré

Quadrille

The Devil Who Limped

Quadrille

Those of Our Land

Nine Bachelors

The New Testament

Une folie

Napoleon

The Pearls of the Crown

The Treasure of Cantenac

My Father Was Right

N'écoutez pas mesdames

La Malibran

Good Luck

Life Together

Murderers and Thieves

The Nabob Affair

The Virtuous Scoundrel