Lino ventura jean gabin biography

In contrast to his idol and mentor Jean Gabin, Lino Ventura did not have to complete a trip through European vaudeville and music halls before he stepped in front of a film camera: the Italian actor is said to have been encouraged by Jean Gabin to step in front of a film camera for the first time. Gabin’s and Ventura’s childhoods were not entirely dissimilar: like Gabin, Ventura scraped by with odd jobs, working as a hotel boy, office worker or sales representative.
Lino Ventura got his first film role in Touchez pas au grisbi (1953), in which Jean Gabin played the lead. In the following years, Gabin took Lino Ventura, who was fifteen years younger, under his wing: It is often commented that Ventura played many of his roles in the fifties in Jean Gabin’s shadow; other opinions say that Gabin launched Ventura’s career with precisely these supporting roles. 

Icon of French cinema

Ventura played major roles for the first time in the sixties: In the crime thriller Classe Tous Risques (1960) Ventura shared the leading role with Jean-Paul Belmondo.
Although Lino Ventura came from Italy, he soon became an icon of French cinema: His roots lie in French cinema, where Jean Gabin nurtured the young Ventura. In Marie-Octobre (1959), Lino Ventura played one of his most famous roles:
The French chamber play film directed by Julien Duvivier revolved around the French resistance during World War II.
In 1961, Italian director Vittorio de Sica gave him one of the supporting roles in The Last Judgement [Il giudizio universale]: Now the Italian film also discovered Lino Ventura. 

Wrestling

Before his career as an actor, Lino Ventura pursued an activity that had nothing at all to do with the screen: he discovered wrestling for himself at a young age. Shortly after the Second World War, he had to give up this sport because of an injury, and subsequently organised wrestling compe

Italian-born actor

Angiolino Giuseppe Pasquale Ventura (14 July 1919 – 22 October 1987), known as Lino Ventura, was an Italian-born actor and philanthropist, who lived and worked for most of his life in France. He was considered one of the greatest leading men of French cinema during the 1960s and 1970s, known for his portrayal of tough characters on both sides of the law in crime dramas.

Born in Parma and raised in Paris, Ventura worked as a professional wrestler before an injury ended his career. He made his film debut as a gangster in the 1954 Jacques Becker film Touchez pas au grisbi and rapidly became one of France's favourite film actors, playing opposite many other great stars and working with such leading directors as Louis Malle, Claude Sautet, and Claude Miller. Usually portraying a tough man, either a criminal or a cop, he also featured as a leader of the Resistance in the Jean-Pierre Melville-directed Army of Shadows (1969). He was nominanted for a Cesar Award for his portrayal of Jean Valjean in the 1982 film adaptation of Les Misérables.

After one of his four children, a daughter, was born handicapped, he and his wife founded a charity Perce-Neige (Snowdrop) which aids disabled children and their parents. Though a lifelong resident and pop cultural icon in France, Ventura always considered himself an Italian first and foremost, and never took French citizenship. He was nonetheless voted 23rd in a 2005 poll of the 100 greatest Frenchmen.

Life and career

Early life

Born in Parma, Emilia-Romagna, Italy to Giovanni Ventura and Luisa Borri

Lino Ventura, a former prizefighter who portrayed husky tough guys and rough detectives in dozens of French films, has died at the age of 68.

Ventura, best known for his role as the police investigator in the award-winning 1981 film “Garde a Vue,” died of a heart attack Thursday at his home in the Paris suburbs, officials said.

“Lino Ventura was certainly above all a great popular star of French cinema,” Premier Jacques Chirac said in a statement. “He was also generous and faithful in friendship, and devoted himself to important causes. His sudden death saddens me deeply.”

Ventura, often compared to the late Jean Gabin, was born Lino Borrini in Parma, Italy. He family moved to France when he was 8.

A European wrestling and boxing champion in his youth, Ventura played poker-faced thugs and tough guys in his early film roles in the 1950s. Later, he diversified and starred in comedies as well as dramas.

He films included “Crime et Chatiment” (Crime and Punishment) in 1956, “Modigliani of Montparnasse” in 1958, “The Threepenny Opera” (as Tiger Brown in a German production) in 1963, and “The Medusa Touch” (British) in 1979.

In private he often complained that France’s fascination with the ambiguous relationship between police and the underworld had stereotyped him and that only toward the end of his life was he given something more original than replaying Gabin, who died in 1976. But even then, when Ventura was cast as Jean Valjean in “Les Miserables” in 1952 he was repeating a prewar performance.

One of his four children was mentally retarded and he and his wife, Odette, established a foundation to raise money to help similar children.

A Book Review Essay by Tony Williams.

Usually, I’m hesitant when presented with another biography for review. Despite the dedication and research involved, there often occurs a fundamental similarity in approach and, sometimes, lack of critical and insightful qualities when covering the actor’s films themselves. What makes them distinctive? Is it the historical period or certain nuances common to the actor? Alternatively, a mixture of both? I’ve already read and enjoyed film historian and screenwriter Charles L. Zigman’s earlier two volume study World’s Coolest Movie Star: The Complete 95 films (and Legend) of Jean Gabin, independently published in 2008, in addition to individual articles by critics such as Andre Bazin and Ginette Vincendeau. After ordering the books for our university library in better financial times, I was impressed by the work Zigman undertook, as well as his challenging rating system of the actor’s work. Zigman spared no effort in his quest and visited many European archives to see less accessible Gabin films. Zigman had really done his homework seeing the films, avoiding the usual scholarly bluff resorting to theoretical obfuscation rather than comment objectively on the films themselves, and leaving the field open for further debate.

Joseph Harriss is another welcome addition to those stimulating ranks of independent scholars working outside the system. He is an “American in Paris,” a respected journalist, having already written three books on France, fluent in the culture and language of his adopted homeland. He acknowledges not only Zigman but also other key figures, such as Gabin’s daughter Florence, the curator of the Meriel Jean Gabin Museum, historians such as Claude Gauteur, Gabin Museum Board member Patrick Glatre, Cinemateque Francaise program director Jean-Francois Rauger, as well as gaining informative contributions from Francoise Arn