Jean Marais, born December 11, 1913 in Cherbourg, and died November 8, 1998 in Cannes (Alpes-Maritimes), is a French actor. Active in theater and cinema, he is also a director, writer, painter, sculptor and potter.
In 1937, he met Jean Cocteau during an audition for the production of his rewrite of Oedipus the King. This meeting marks the real launch of his career: “I lived twenty-four years before being born” because “I was born twice, on December 11, 1913 and this day in 1937 when I met Jean Cocteau”. The filmmaker and playwright fell in love with the young actor. He becomes her lover and her mentor, taking care of her literary and artistic instruction, never making fun of her lack of culture. For his part, Marais never stopped helping Cocteau fight against his opium poisoning. Marais “refused to enter the infernal circle of drugs, thus revealing a constant trait of his character, his total independence with regard to everyone and everything,” writes Carole Weisweillern, author of a biography of the actor . He will never give up trying to overcome his mother’s kleptomania and his creator’s opium addiction.
Jean Cocteau gave him a first role in Oedipus the King: he played a member of the Chorus, a silent role. Jean does not yet control his high-pitched voice well enough, which he deliberately breaks with cigarettes, at the risk of damaging his health. In this piece, he appears dressed in strips, a costume created by Coco Chanel, a friend of Cocteau, and it sets people talking. Almost naked, lying in front of the stage, showing off his ephebe body, looking straight into the eyes of the spectators, he imposes silence on those who whisper or giggle. The photograph of Marais in this scandalous outfit was published in numerous newspapers at that time. In 1938, Cocteau quickly wrote a tailor-made play for him: Les Parents terribles, which was to seal his theatrical destiny by giving him professional recognition. He plays the role of Michel, a modern young man aged twenty-two with extreme feelings, who laughs, cries, screams, rolls on the ground. The play was repeatedly censored for immorality and incitement to debauchery. The censors see it as incest between mother and son. Marais’ interpretation is a success. He has never felt so rich. He earns two hundred and fifty francs a day and gives a hundred to his mother so that she stops stealing from stores. Cocteau praises the “ardor” of his acting, his desire to “overcome yesterday’s habits and impose the clumsiness of a big dog and the excesses of a wild beast.” Despite his successes in the cinema, since the 1960s he has known , major financial difficulties linked to his lifestyle, his generosity and his debts to the tax authorities to whom he owes seventy million franc centimes (more than one hundred thousand euros). “At that time, I had the property of Marnes-la-Coquette and I already had that of Cabrisn 41, which was not completed. I put the two properties up for sale, telling myself: the first one that sells will tell me where I should end my life. “. As the house in Marnes was in good condition, it was the one that sold first.
At the beginning of the 1970s, he retired to the Alpes-Maritimes, to his house in Cabris near Grasse, where his mother died, aged 86, on August 15, 1973.To occupy his leisure time, he decides to make pottery, with a brand new kiln in the workshop of his new home. He only uses books and his beginnings are not very successful. He was advised to take filming lessons. In Vallauris, he came to place an order for two hundred kilos of clay and had a chance meeting, on June 6, 1973, with Nini Pasquali (1927-2018) and her husband Jo, a potter in this town, near Cannes. His life will change. What followed was a very beautiful friendship, an absolute trust which lasted 25 years, until the artist’s death. The couple takes the actor under their wing. Jo helps him better master his art by teaching him how to spin. This is also the origin of a joke: when we asked him why he no longer filmed (at the cinema), he replied: “I have never filmed so much in my life! “.
Hours spent behind his turn, guided by Jo, he discovers new gestures. From pottery he moves to modeling and from modeling to sculpture there is only one step. In 1975 he opened his first gallery in Vallaurisn 45 with the help of Jo and his wife Nini. “I am a craftsman, not an artist. Art attracts me, fascinates me. I like to get close to it, I respect the artist, I love him, I would like to be like him. But I place art too high to believe myself an artist.” he declared to Gilles Durieux, author of a biography of the actor140. To someone who was too admiring of his qualities as a painter, calling him master, he replied: “Master, no. One meter eighty-four, okay”141 because “I never thought of myself as an artist. Just enough for a craftsman and especially for an old child having fun. »142
In 1976, he also opened a second gallery in Paris, where he sold his pottery and paintings, at 91 rue Saint-Honoré, under the name Jean Marais, potter. The boutique is run by her friend, the actress Mila Parély, Belle’s sister in Beauty and the Beast143, n 46. Then, a third gallery opened in 1981 in Megève on the village square and a fourth in Biarritz. The sale of his works is significant, reinforced by the success of his exhibition at the Galerie La Cimaise in Montreal, Canada. These galleries helped him resolve his financial problems, his debt to the tax authorities having risen to 120 million franc centimes.
To get him out of this quagmire and save the castaway for good, Nini watches over his finances by monitoring his too naive philanthropy and his extravagant side. She manages to convince him to sell his house in Cabrisn, which is a financial pit. After living in a 48 mobile home nestled in a small wood near Antibes, he settled in 1981 in the Provençal hinterland, in a small house in the Haut Vallauris, 1196 chemin du Cannet, known as “Le Préau” with a wrought iron gate designed by Cocteau and three pottery, painting and drawing workshops. 49. The Pasquallis built their home adjoining that of the actor.
From 1982, to compensate for unnecessary hotel expenses and restrict his lifestyle, Nini rented him, at the top of the Butte Montmartre, a small apartment at 22 rue Norvins, next to his friend Jean-Pierre Aumont who lives at 4 Allée des Brouillards.
Every year since 1986, he has participated in the Vallauris Pottery Festival, notably creating the poster for the event. This prestigious host allows the town to benefit from his enthusiasm and his talent. 50 Grasse being the city of perfumes, he gives his name to a brand of perfume whose bottle he designs.
In the cinema, he experienced setbacks at this time. Thus, he refused the role of Julius Caesar “a little too crazy” for his taste (he was replaced by Michel Serrault) in Jean Yanne’s film: A quarter to two hours before Jesus Christ and that of the assassin in The Name of the Rose by Jean-Jacques Annaud, while he would have liked to film in The War of Fire. The directors of the New Wave considered him an icon, but did not film him: “With the hindsight of time, I understand why… I had become, in the eyes of spectators and filmmakers, a professional acrobat who had ended up make them forget that he could also be an actor and play comedy. » Paris did not completely forget him and tried to make amends by appointing him president of “Nuit des Césars” in 1980. In 1985, Jean-Luc Godard asked him to play the role of Joseph in his film Je greets you, Marie, but does not follow up. The same year, he sat on the honorary committee of the World Premiere of Gypsy Art which took place at the Conciergerie de Paris. In 1988, Anne Delbée (with the support of Isabelle Adjani) offered him the role of Rodin, but the project was blocked by Claudel’s heirs.
He is buried in the Old Cemetery of Vallauris175, the town of potters where he spent the last years of his life. His grave176 was desecrated on the night of January 7 to 8, 2016.
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