A tribute to "Contrechamp" (part 1) : O'Brother
Introducing a series of notes aiming to bridge between rugby history and cinema !
This is a tribute to my dearest friend Sandrine, to celebrate her new online initiative Contrechamp-Media.
Sandrine is an avid cinemaphile, smart and demanding, who shares her passion for images and movies. Her website gathers an active community of contributors and fans (I fit in this second category…)… climax being reached some nights proposing a now famous “Forbidden Quiz” (I am desperately poor at that game…)
Just bookmark and enjoy… to the only condition that you can read French ! otherwise “Google” will (try to…) translate it for you... Sandrine please forgive me… your sharp writting is being slaughtered...
Brotherhood today… Here are two French brothers who have both excelled in their respective field… rugby and cinema…
On the right, the rugger, the elder Maurice Leuvielle.
Maurice became a
key player of Stade Bordelais during this glorious decade before WW1
when
Maurice Leuvielle also earned 7
caps with Equipe the France. In my picture, he is captaining the 1914
French side against England in Colombes (Lowe, Poulton… on the English side…). Some pictures and details are here… one of the last international games before the War…
On the left, the movie star, the younger Gabriel Leuvielle, better known as Max Linder .
Max Linder wrote,
directed or acted in about 500 movies between 1905 and 1925 in Paris, Chicago
(with Charles Chaplin at Essanay Studios…) and L.A. (Douglas Fairbank was a
friend of him…).
He created this character of a
charming French dandy, silk hat and butter gloves, who later influenced the
greatest comic actors … Charlie Chaplin, Harold Loyd or… the Marx Brothers. He was both a very inventive filmmaker and a great actor, in a time when most
actors were outrageously “over-acting” like in a vaudeville theather
Max Linder, “the pioneer of all
movie comedians”, was the first real international movie star, travelling all over
Europe and America… in 1912, he was the most paid actor in the world… no less !
The bottom picture (credit to
British Film Institue) shows Chaplin and Linder acting together in the early
1920s. Chaplin once dedicated a movie to Linder with these words “To the unique
Max, the great master – his student Chaplin”.
Nevetheless, Max Linder’s life ended
as a tragedy. During WW1, Linder was seriously wounded by gas attack and
invalided out of service. He never recovered health… and comitted suicide with
his young wife in 1925.
Most of his movies have disappeared,
but his daughter Maud Linder later did a great work to make his legacy
available to the public. Just follow these links to find Max Linder’s short bio
written by Maud Linder (in French / in English in "Les Indépendants du Premier Siècle"), and to find an article in
“American Popular Culture” summerizing Linder’s contribution to cinema.
Enough talking ! there are some videos are on the web…
"Vive la vie de garçon - Troubles of a grasswidower"
That's all, folks...! I am now starting to draft "Tribute to Contrechamp" (part 2) : The Birth of A Nation...
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