Gaston Modot


Gaston Modot was a French actor. For more than 50 years he performed for the cinema working with a number of great French directors.

Biography

Modot lived in Montmartre at the beginning of the 20th century where he met Picasso and Modigliani. In 1909 he started his career with Gaumont and for the following 20 years he covered all silent film genres. In 1917 he was the main actor in Abel Gance's Mater dolorosa. He played in Germaine Dulac and Louis Delluc's avant-garde films La fête espagnole and Fièvre. With Max Linder, Modot played in Abel Gance's Au secours!. Towards the end of the 1920s he performed in German-French co-productions.
He is still famous for his role of The Man in Luis Buñuel's L'Âge d'Or.
He had his first role in a sound film with René Clair's Sous les toits de Paris. He and Jean Gabin are main characters in Julien Duvivier's Pépé le Moko. He acted in the Jean Renoir classics La grande illusion and La règle du jeu as well as the three-hour poetic film Les enfants du paradis for Marcel Carné.
In 1962 Modot ended his acting career. He had acted in more than 100 films.

Films

Mater Dolorosa La zone de la mort La fête espagnole Fièvre Mathias Sandorf The Mysteries of Paris Au secours! Heart of an Actress Le Miracle des loups Carmen The Lady of Lebanon The City of a Thousand Delights Secrets of the Orient Mademoiselle's Chauffeur Change of Heart Le navire des hommes perdus The Green Monocle Phantoms of Happiness My Daughter's Tutor The Ship of Lost Souls Saint Joan the Maid L'Âge d'Or Under the Roofs of Paris About an Inquest Under the Leather Helmet Fantômas