The oldest French film and theater actress Micheline Prel, who lived 101 years, has died

Micheline Prel, the oldest French film and theater actress who lived 101 years, died at the State House of Artists in Nogent-sur-Marne in the Val-de-Marne department.

The beauty with emerald eyes and a radiant smile appeared on screen in 1937 at the age of 15, and a year later she was awarded an award as the most promising young actress in French cinema. She played for classical directors Georg Wilhelm Pabst and Fritz Lang, Marcel L’Herbier and Abel Gance, Jacques Becker and Sacha Guitry, Christian-Jacques and Jean Delannoy.

Claude Autan-Lara in the film “The Devil in the Flesh” gave the actress the tragic role of a girl devoted to her lover, played by a very young Gerard Philip. They became friends even earlier and did not quarrel after working together, which Prel herself initiated; only, unlike her, the actor did not live to see forty. Throughout her life, Prel would become the on-screen partner of Errol Flynn, Louis Jourdan, Paul Newman, Tyrone Power, Marcello Mastroianni, Vittorio Gassman and, of course, Jean Gabin, who highly valued her, the greatest masters of cinema of the 20th century.

The Devil in the Flesh was an international success and brought the actress to Hollywood, where she signed a contract with 20th Century Fox in 1950. There, Micheline married the American actor, director, and singer William Marshall, and gave birth to a daughter, Toni, who later also chose film directing as a profession. She played with Fritz Lang and in a couple of other American films. But, like many other French beauties, her overseas career did not work out, and Prel returned to her homeland. True, and then from time to time she starred in English-language films.

Her track record includes 172 films, among the directors who worked with her are Jacques Rivette and Claude Chabrol, Jacques Demy and Joseph Losey, Alain Resnais and Paul Vecchiali, Claude Lelouch and the daughter of actress Tony Marshall (and she and all these famous men have long been in a better world, except Lelouch).

Young François Truffaut, then a film critic, considered her “the greatest actress in the world.” She starred in her first famous film with Alain Delon (“Christine”) and in her last with Belmondo (“A Man and His Dog”). Once I had the opportunity to briefly chat with Micheline Prel: we were traveling in the same car at a festival in Karlovy Vary. She was then nearly ninety, she looked great and was willing to communicate. Few people recognized her: the time of her former glory had passed.

Prel belonged to the triad of French stars who acquired this status even before the Second World War – along with Danielle Darrieus and Michelle Morgan.

They all had style, breed and, of course, French elegance. Each had its own role and personified some facet of the good old romantic cinema. They competed, but were also friends; this is even more surprising when you consider that Morgan was the previous wife of the playboy Marshall and gave birth to a son with him, so their children were brother and sister. There is even an entire book dedicated to this trinity, published in France under the title “Three Glories.” All three famous women lived from the heart: Morgan is almost 97 years old, Daria is 100, Prel is even more.

After the war, Marshall and Morgan were in London and met Micheline Prele at the hotel.

Morgan introduced her husband to her friend, and she soon became his wife.

It’s OK. Morgan at this time began an affair with another handsome actor, Henri Vidal, whom she later married. Prel’s marriage to Marshall was short-lived and unhappy. In addition to his love of love, he was also a domestic tyrant (his nerves began to fail after a shell shock received in the war). The “toxic guy” character, inspired by her own father, was portrayed by Toni Marshall in the film “Sons of Bitches”: he was played by actor Jean Yann.

Micheline Prel is one of the last actresses and actors who shaped the face of French cinema in its classical period. In 1970, she played the Queen in Jacques Demy’s film Donkey Skin; Jean Marais, the king of romantic cinema, also played in this film. Both of them carried on the tradition of the young Catherine Deneuve, who played the title role. More than half a century has passed since then. After Prel’s departure, Anne Vernon, who played for the same Demi in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, remains the oldest actress in France.

Andrey Plakhov