RIP Jacques Perrin (July 13, 1941-April 21,2022)
Jacques Perrin and 
Pauline Kael
(1977 at Cannes)
Remembered for Cinema Paradiso, French actor Jacques Perrin died
He appeared alongside Claudia Cardinale in the romantic comedy La Ragazza con la valigia and Marcello Mastroianni in Family Diary. He then played several roles in films of Henri-Georges Clouzot (The Truth in 1960) or Mauro Bolognini (Corruption in 1963) and leading roles in four films by Pierre Schoendoerffer : La 317e Section (1965), Le Crabe-tambour (1977), A Captain’s Honor (1982) and Là-haut, un roi au dessus des nuages (2004). He played in two musical movies by Jacques Demy : The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) and Donkey Skin (1970), both with Catherine Deneuve. He also was the adult Salvatore in the international success Cinema Paradiso.
In 1966, he won two Best Actor awards at the Venice Film Festival, for the Italian film Almost a Man and the Spanish film The Search.
At 27, he created a film production company and produced and acted in Z, directed by Costa-Gavras and starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Yves Montand, and Irene Papas. Z received the Best Foreign Film Oscar in 1969.
He produced Costa-Gavras’s films État de Siège (State of Siege) in 1973 and Section spéciale in 1975. Both had political themes, and as a producer, Perrin continued along this path with a documentary on the Algerian uprising (La guerre d’Algérie) and a film on the Chilean presidency of Salvador Allende (La Spirale). In 1973, Perrin produced the first film by Benoît Lamy, Home Sweet Home in which he starred alongside Claude Jade as his love interest. The movie received 14 international awards.
In 1976, he produced another Oscar-winning film : La Victoire en chantant (Black and White in Color) by director Jean-Jacques Annaud. A year later, he embarked on Le Désert des Tartares as a producer and an actor, co-starring Trintignant again, but also Max von Sydow, Vittorio Gassman and Philippe Noiret. The film won the Grand Prix du Cinéma Français.