Robert Le Vigan
Robert Le Vigan (7 January 1900 – 12 October 1972), born Robert-Charles-Alexandre Coquillaud in Paris, was a French actor.
He appeared in more than 60 films between 1931 and 1943 almost exclusively in small or supporting roles. He was, according to film academic Ginette Vincendeau, a "brilliant, extravagant actor" who "specialised in louche, menacing or diabolical characters".[1]
A collaborator with the Nazis during the occupation, who openly expressed fascist attitudes,[2] he vanished while playing Jéricho in Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis), a film deliberately released in May 1945 shortly after the liberation of Europe; Le Vigan was replaced by Pierre Renoir. He was sentenced to forced labour for 10 years in 1946. Released on parole after three years working in a camp, Le Vigan absconded to Spain, and then Argentina, dying there in poverty on October 12, 1972 in the city of Tandil.[1]
Selected filmography
- Moon Over Morocco (1931)
- The Tunnel (1933)
- The Little King (1933)
- Madame Bovary (1934)
- Street Without a Name (1934)
- Maria Chapdelaine (1934)
- Golgotha (1935) playing Christ; known as Behold the Man in English
- The Lower Depths (1936)
- The Citadel of Silence (1937)
- The Man from Nowhere (1937)
- Harvest (Regain) (1937)
- Le Quai des brumes (1938)
- The West (1938)
- Storm Over Asia (1938)
- The Little Thing (1938)
- Le Dernier Tournant (1939)
- Louise (1939)
- The Fatted Calf (1939)
- Paradise Lost (1940)
- Who Killed Santa Claus? (1941)
- It Happened at the Inn (1943)
- The Orchid (1951)
- The King's Mail (1951)
References
- Ginette Vincendeau (ed) Encyclopedia of European Cinema, London: Casell/BFI, 1995, p.262
- Rémi Fournier Lanzoni French Cinema: From Its Beginnings to the Present, New York and London: Continuum, 2002, p.139. According to Fournier Lanzoni, Le Vigan found exile in Argentina.