Daniel Gélin is worth seeking out for the naturalness of his social comedy and the solid presence of his later fathers and authority figures. His supporting work deserves attention, though it cannot always rescue the film around him.
Fi1m perspective
As Charles Chevalier in Louis Malle’s Murmur of the Heart (1971), Daniel Gélin is the bourgeois father, while Benoît Ferreux and Lea Massari hold our attention more firmly. Malle gives his supporting characters room to be engaging without insisting that they be exemplary. Gélin suits that generosity, and helps make the comedy agreeable. We are less persuaded when the script’s affection prevents it from looking harder at behaviour that needs scrutiny. His contribution is worth noticing, but it does not remove our reservations about the film.
The earlier films give him more room. Jacques Becker’s Rendez-vous de juillet (1949) was his first leading role and helped establish him as a face of post-war youth. He worked with Max Ophüls on La Ronde (1950), then played Édouard Mortier in Becker’s Édouard et Caroline (1951). Becker’s social comedy is a particularly good setting for his natural, modern playing. The sensitive young lead matters here as much as the older character actor familiar from his later work.
His Louis Bernard in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) shows how useful he could be with less time. It is a small but pivotal part, convincingly played, though the film belongs more firmly to James Stewart and Doris Day. We were tense during the concert sequence because Stewart and Day had made the parents’ distress matter. That is enough to earn a recommendation, with a warning about the slow stretches.
His career slowed with the New Wave, then revived in character parts from the mid-1960s. Sensitive young men gave way to cynical or grumpy older ones, and supporting work continued into the 1990s. That change in billing should not be mistaken for evidence that the acting had become less valuable. Nor should affection for a dependable supporting player make us recommend Murmur of the Heart without its substantial caveat. For a fuller introduction, start with Édouard et Caroline, and let him have the leading role.
Biography
Daniel Gélin was a French actor. Born in Angers, Maine-et-Loire, on 19 May 1921, he died in Paris on 29 November 2002.
He trained at the Cours Simon in Paris and the Conservatoire national d'art dramatique, where he met Louis Jouvet. He made his first film appearance in 1940 and went on to appear in more than 150 films.
Gélin is known for roles including Alfred in La Ronde (1950), Jean in Le Plaisir (1952), Louis Bernard in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Charles Chevalier in Murmur of the Heart (1971), and others. He also wrote and directed the 1952 film The Long Teeth.
