Alexandre-Pierre Georges Guitry (February 21, 1885 – July 24, 1957), better known as Sacha Guitry, was a French actor, director, screenwriter and playwright.
The son of leading French stage actor Lucien Guitry, he was born in Saint Petersburg, Tsarist Russia. After a few years of back an forth between France and Russia until 1889 (during which he got to play before Tsar Nicholas II himself at age 4), he followed in his father's footsteps and became known for his stage performances, particularly in boulevard theatre roles. He also became a playwright, writing 115 plays ranging from historical dramas (he loved French history) to contemporary light comedies throughout his career. He was married five times, always to rising actresses whose careers he helped grow. He was something of a master at very witty snark, be it in real life or in the things he wrote.
While he became interested in "moving pictures" as soon as The 20th Century started (it's thanks to him that we have surviving footage of several renowned French artists and writers from before 1914), silent movies didn't appeal to him at all due to not having dialogues. As soon as the Rise of the Talkies in the 1930s, Guitry enthusiastically embraced filmmaking, making as many as five films in a single year, always starring in them and writing them.
Critics of his time generally thought of his films as "just filmed theatre" and sometimes summing them up as "actors just standing there listening to his monologues", but critics of the time of the French New Wave would be much more appreciative later on, finding in him a total auteur who was, to them, on par with the likes of Charlie Chaplin or Alfred Hitchcock.
Selected Filmography:
- The Story of a Cheat (1936). Had a role as the Cheat.
- Mademoiselle Désirée (1942). Narrated as himself.
- Napoléon (1955). Had a role and narrated as Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord.
Works adapted from him:
- Beaumarchais (1996)
- A Crime in Paradise (2001)
Tropes & Trivia in his works:
- Author Appeal: The history of France in general, but he had particular interest in the Napoleonic era and made a dozen works about it (stage plays and films alike).
- Deadpan Snarker: For Guitry, the wittier, the drier the wit and more deadpan the dialogue, the better it was. It was true for both his plays and his films, and for the characters he played. And for himself in Real Life too, though it earned him the reputation of an incurable cynic late in his life.
- Descended Creator: He always played in the films he directed.
- He Also Did: He personally knew quite a few prominent late 19th century French artists, stage actors and writers, and filmed them before World War I, including them in his 1915 documentary Ceux de chez nous and voicing out what they told him. He re-released it in 1952 with commentaries by himself in his office with objects that belonged to them so it wouldn't just be "archive footage". It's thanks to him that footage of them exists. Those included:
- Stage actors Sarah Bernhardt (one of the mistresses of his father), André Antoine, Lucien Guitry (his own father), Henri Desfontaines and Jane Faber (the only non-French in it, she was Belgian).
- Artists Auguste Rodin, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir.
- Writers Edmond Rostand, Anatole France, Octave Mirbeau and Henri-Robert.
- Composer Camille Saint-Saëns.
- Narrator: Anytime he created Historical Fiction, he also narrated much of it, either As Himself or as a character he played.
- Sarcasm Mode: Very often used in his Deadpan Snarker narrations or monologues.
- Written by Cast Member: He wrote all of his films and starred in them.
