Jean Martin
Jean Martin (6 March 1922 - 2 February 2009) was a French actor. Coming from a Berry family, he spent part of his childhood in Biarritz, where his father worked for a furrier. During the Second World War, he hid to escape the Forced Labor Service. Staying in Paris, he appeared in two films by Maurice Tourneur: "The Devil's Hand" (1942) then "Cécile Est Mort" (1943). At the twilight of the forties, he started doing theater.
In 1953, Jean Martin gained notoriety by playing the new play by Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, "Waiting for Godot", under the direction of Roger Blin, becoming the first to take on the role of Lucky. The same Roger Blin produced “End of the Game” (1957), by the same Beckett, a few years later, and entrusted the same Jean Martin with the role of Clov. In 1960, Jean Martin staged his first play, “Letter Dead”, by Robert Pinget. In 1962, he again staged a play, “The Representatives”, by Aglaé and Mona Mitropoulos, adapted by Michel Arnaud. Alongside this theatrical career which would prove to be rich, Jean Martin returned to cinema: “Notre-Dame de Paris” (1956), by Jean Delannoy, “Paris belongs to us” (1958), by Jacques Rivette, “Ballade for a thug " (1962), by Jean-Claude Bonnardot, "La foire aux dunces" (1963), by Louis Daquin and "À toi de fait mignon" (1963), by Bernard Borderie.
In 1960, he was a signatory of the Manifesto of the 121 entitled “Declaration on the right to insubordination in the Algerian war”. In 1965, a role marked his career, that of Colonel Mathieu, in a film retracing the struggle in 1957 for control of the Casbah district of Algiers between FLN militants and French soldiers: "The Battle of Algiers" . Three years after the end of the Algerian War, the subject is still sensitive on each side of the Mediterranean; the film was banned in France upon its release, then censored until 2004. Jean Martin, very convincing in this role of division commander (historically, the commander is General Massu, but the character is inspired by Colonel Bigeard), is the only professional actor in the film. His large stature, his strong personality and his imperious face predispose him to notable roles generally showing authority: chief doctor, police commissioner, high-ranking military officer, ecclesiastical dignitary...; one of the most impressive will undoubtedly be that of a doctor vehemently expelling from his hospital a judge Fayard, Patrick Dewaere, a bit of a cavalier in "Le Juge Fayard Dit Le Shérif" (1976). Claude Zidi mocks these roles in his comedies: principal in “La moutarde monte au nose” (1974), bank director in “La Course À L'Échalote” (1975), chief doctor in “L'aile ou la thigh” (1976), principal inspector in “Bête mais disciplined” (1979) and examiner in “Inspecteur la Bavure” (1980). Alongside Jean-Paul Belmondo, he is… cardinal in “L’Hériter” (1972) and… divisional commissioner in “Peur Sur La ville” (1975)! But also alongside Terence Hill in “My Name is Nobody” (1973) in the role of Sullivan, or “One Genius, Two Associates, One Bell (1975).
After devoting a large part of his career to the theater, appearing in around fifty films, Jean Martin died on February 2, 2009, in Paris.
Known For | Acting |
---|---|
Most Rating | 6.892 |
Birthday | 1922-03-06 |
Place of Birth | Paris, France |
Also Known As |
1975
A Genius, Two Friends, and an Idiot
6.33/153
Expert conman Joe Thanks teams up with half-breed Bill and naive Lucy to steal $300,000 from the Indian-hating Major Cabot. Their elaborate plan is fu...
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A Genius, Two Friends, and an Idiot
1973
The Day of the Jackal
7.5/531
An international assassin known as ‘The Jackal’ is employed by disgruntled French generals to kill President Charles de Gaulle, with a dedicated genda...
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The Day of the Jackal
1976
A Woman at Her Window
5.8/26
Greece, 1936. An aristocratic woman engages in a series of loveless affairs before finding herself falling for a political activist.
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A Woman at Her Window
1980
The King and the Mockingbird
7.752/367
The kingdom of Takicardie quakes under the rule of the tyrannical King Charles V-et-III-font-VIII-et-VIII-font-XVI, whose favourite pastime is shootin...
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The King and the Mockingbird
1975
The Messiah
6.3/15
Rossellini takes numerous liberties with the original source material, rearranging and omitting events at will, presenting everything in a highly undr...
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The Messiah
1973
My Name Is Nobody
7.253/919
Jack Beauregard, an ageing gunman of the Old West, only wants to retire in peace and move to Europe. But a young gunfighter, known as "Nobody", who id...
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My Name Is Nobody
1975
Fear Over the City
7.2/248
A serial-killer frightens Paris by phoning young ladies at night, telling them insults about their lives. Minos, as he calls himself, wants to prevent...
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Fear Over the City
1975
The Wild Goose Chase
6.058/69
The whole intrigue is centered around carte-blanche documents kept in a vault. Whoever fills in the blank becomes the owner of a revue. Big money is i...
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The Wild Goose Chase
1966
The Battle of Algiers
7.883/738
Tracing the struggle of the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale to gain freedom from French colonial rule as seen through the eyes of Ali from his...
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The Battle of Algiers
1978
Dossier 51
6.466/44
French diplomat Dominique Auphal is put under surveillance by an unnamed secret service. They wish to find a weakness in his life in order to control...
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Dossier 51
1974
I'm Losing My Temper
6.045/78
Pierre is a clumsy, overly serious math teacher at an all-girls high school. His life is thrown into chaos after encountering a beautiful British actr...
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I'm Losing My Temper
1997
Lucie Aubrac
6.4/58
A love story or a tale of the resistance, this poignant movie tells both the haunting story of a French resistance cell in Lyon but also the love of L...
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Lucie Aubrac
1973
The Inheritor
6.3/79
After his father is killed in a plane crash, Bart Cordell returns back home to France to claim his inheritance: to lead the industrial empire his fath...
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The Inheritor
2004
Marxist Poetry: The Making of The Battle of Algiers
7.2/4
To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS, we revisited our edit of the film and interviews with director Gillo Pontecorvo and...
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Marxist Poetry: The Making of The Battle of Algiers
1976
The Wing or the Thigh?
7.2/842
Charles Duchemin, a well-known gourmet and publisher of a famous restaurant guide, is waging a war against fast food entrepreneur Tri- catel to save t...
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The Wing or the Thigh?
1971
Troubleshooters
6.3/32
The day he is released from jail, Serge is expected by four killers sent by Count Charles Varèse assigned to make him confess where he has hidden the...
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Troubleshooters
1970
Promise at Dawn
5.2/8
A single mother raises her son in impossible circumstances first in Leningrad, then Krakow, and then France, and is over-ambitious about him but never...
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Promise at Dawn
1966
Soldier Martin
0/0
A troupe of French actors on tour in Normandy become involved in the events of WWII.
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Soldier Martin
1976
The Carpathian Castle
6/1
In 1898, strange things happen in a castle not far from the small village of Werst in the Carpathian mountains of Transylvania. Twenty years earlier,...
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The Carpathian Castle
1979
The Associate
6.5/8
An unemployed investor creates a fictious business partner to attempt to improve business. Eventually, his creation gets out of control as his busines...
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The Associate
1974
Successive Slidings of Pleasure
6.2/49
A young woman is questioned by the police and the judges, suspected of being a modern witch. The girl who shared her apartment has been found dead, an...
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Successive Slidings of Pleasure
1968
Je T'Aime, Je T'Aime
6.5/77
Recovering from an attempted suicide, a man is selected to participate in a time travel experiment that has only been tested on mice. A malfunction in...
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Je T'Aime, Je T'Aime
1970
The Companions of Baal
7/1
Journalist Claude Leroy (Jacques Champreux) reports that a secret society, The Companions of Baal, is behind a hold-up in the small town of Blaingirey...
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The Companions of Baal
1974
The Time of the Beginning
3.5/2
A "symbolic" character traces the path of man in search of salvation in this world within his own ghosts and deformations.
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The Time of the Beginning
1952
Forgotten Stones
0/0
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Forgotten Stones
1967
Les filous
7/1
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Les filous
1966
The Nun
7.2/87
In eighteenth-century France, a girl is forced against her will to take vows as a nun. Three mothers superior treat her in radically different ways, r...
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The Nun
1977
The Cat
6.406/32
Amedeo and Ofelia, middle aged brother and sister, own jointly an old decadent, but still attractive, condominium. They want to sell it, but before th...
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The Cat
1974
An Invitation to the Hunt
0/0
Claude Chabrol film for TV based on the short story An Invitation to the Hunt by Georges Hitchcock. Receiving an unexpected invitation to participate...
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An Invitation to the Hunt
1977
Judge Fayard Called the Sheriff
6.988/40
Jean-Marie Fayard is a young examining magistrate in a large provincial french city. He belongs to that generation of judges who are endeavoring to re...
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Judge Fayard Called the Sheriff
1967
The Invention of Morel
7.4/7
Escaped from jail, Luis finds refuge on a remote island where, it is said, several people have died long ago of a mysterious illness. He discovers a l...
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The Invention of Morel
1974
Cry of the Heart
1/1
Alexandre, a young man from a wealthy family, suffers a serious fall. One leg is finally amputated, leaving the other paralyzed. Desperate, the boy tr...
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Cry of the Heart
1984
Le crime d'Ovide Plouffe
6.3/3
Ovide Plouffe has married Rita. She still tries to attract other men even after their marriage. Unhappy Ovide feels for Marie - a young French woman h...
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Le crime d'Ovide Plouffe
1944
Cecile Is Dead
6/6
Cecile, a young girl who goes to the offices of the Judicial Police several times in a row to complain about nightly visits to the apartment she occup...
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Cecile Is Dead
1971
HPW ou Anatomie d'un faussaire
0/0
Hugo-Paul de Weydroos, forger who manages to mystify the most renowned experts, is an attractive man, not without talent but paranoid and megalomaniac...
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HPW ou Anatomie d'un faussaire
1981
La Puce et le privé
4/2
Val Brosse, a private detective, receives Françoise, who confesses to him that she murdered her husband. The story is false, but Val, intrigued, decid...
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La Puce et le privé
1968
Don't Take God's Children for Wild Geese
5.9/46
Rita is a girl that lives on taking gangsters as lovers. But when the money stops coming, she swears revenge.
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Don't Take God's Children for Wild Geese
1972
The Beguines
5/7
Hélène, a fragile and romantic teenager, discovers that her father, a rich business man, has a mistress. Curious, she decides to go and meet this woma...
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The Beguines
1976
Le Gentleman des Antipodes
0/0
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Le Gentleman des Antipodes
1962
Gustave Moreau
0/0
A brilliant analysis of 19th century French Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau, known for his fantastical and mythological subjects, and who remains to...
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Gustave Moreau
1962
Les Culottes rouges
6.55/10
Antoine Rossi, a recidivist prisoner of war in Germany, manages to escape with the cowardly Fendard. Fendard does everything in his power to help him...
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Les Culottes rouges
1980
Inspector Blunder
6.325/180
A detective, fresh out of the academy (lowest mark in class), gets the assignment to bodyguard a spoiled rich girl reporter. She's been interviewed on...
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Inspector Blunder
1972
La nuit bulgare
6/1
A youngish sales employee of a computer firm is blackmailed into helping a group of mysterious Bulgarian industrialists who have come to his office. A...
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La nuit bulgare
1963
Your Turn, Darling
4.4/5
In this French espionage thriller, Eddie again plays the role that made him a star, Lemmy Caution. Lots of two fisted action.
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Your Turn, Darling
1970
Safety Catch
5.5/6
A doctor disbarred for euthanasia is called in by a man to help his son, who has been depressed since the suicide of his partner. But in the dead woma...
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Safety Catch
1975
Alouqa or the Comedy of the Dead
0/0
Thanks to his gifts of clairvoyance, the son of a former servant of a noble family makes his fortune and buys the mansion where he spent his childhood...
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Alouqa or the Comedy of the Dead
1980
La Femme flic
6.1/25
Young police inspector Corinne Levasseur interrogated a dealer without the judge's consent. Following an indiscretion of her lover, the substitute Ber...
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