Sacha Guitry

Sacha Guitry (St Petersburg, 1885 - Paris, 1957) was a French actor, playwright, director and screenwriter who dominated the Parisian stage and much of French cinema for more than half a century. The son of the leading actor Lucien Guitry, he wrote well over a hundred plays, many of which he later adapted for the screen himself. His name is linked to boulevard theatre and to a witty, light style of writing and performance.

He was born in the Russian capital, where his father ran a French theatre company. The nickname "Sacha" came from the family's Russian nurse, who shortened his first name, Alexandre-Pierre. He made his stage debut at a young age in his father's company and soon began writing his own plays, which he often directed and performed in himself. After a failure in 1907 with La Clef, he established himself with Nono, a hit in 1905, and with a run of successes in the following decade, such as Le Veilleur de nuit (1911). His personal and professional life was closely tied to the actresses he worked with. He married five times, always to rising actresses, and he wrote many roles for Yvonne Printemps.

Guitry was slow to take up the cinema, which he initially felt was poorly suited to dialogue. His first film, Ceux de chez nous (1915), was a short patriotic tribute to French figures of the day. From the mid-1930s he threw himself into filmmaking, writing, directing and starring in many films. He is credited with having, in a sense, invented the voice-over by repeating aloud during screenings what the early images showed. Many regard Le Roman d'un tricheur (1936), which has almost no dialogue and is narrated by Guitry himself, as his masterpiece. It combines his love of storytelling with his fondness for conjuring tricks.

During the German occupation he stayed in Paris and continued to work in theatre and film, which later brought accusations of collaboration after the liberation of the city. He was arrested on 23 August 1944 and spent about sixty days in prison without any specific charge being brought against him. In 1947 the case was dismissed. That experience left a mark on his later work, including the film La Poison (1951). His final years were marked by illness, and his last film was Les trois font la paire.

His legacy lies in a theatre of wit and in a cinema that played with its own resources. He was elected to the Académie Goncourt, and his reputation remains a matter of debate because of the postwar controversy. According to contemporary accounts, his standing was largely restored before his death, when thousands of people came to pay their respects.