Leclerc, Ginette

(1912-1992)

   Actress. Born Geneviève Menut, Ginette Leclerc made her screen debut in 1932. That year, she appeared in Pierre Prévert's short film Le Commissaire est bon enfant (1932), Henri Diamant-Berger's L'Enfant du miracle (1932), and Alexander Korda's La Dame de chez Maxim's (1932), which was the role that really launched her career. The following year she had roles in Claude Autant-Lara's Ciboulette (1933), Anatole Litvak's Cette vieille canaille (1933), and Serge de Poligny's L'Etoile de Valencia (1933), among other films.

   Throughout the rest of the decade, Leclerc appeared in film after film, many of them popular or critical successes. She was, however, typecast, and nearly all of her roles were as fallen women, calculating women, manipulative women, or worse. Among the other films in which she appeared during the decade were Marc Allegret's Zouzou (1934) and L'Hôtel du libre échange (1934), Roger Richebé's Minuit, place Pigalle (1934), René Guissart's Dédé (1934), Pierre Colombier's L'Ecole de cocottes (1935), Jean Kemm's La Pocharde (1936) and La Loupiote (1936), Victor Tourjansky's La Peur (1936), René Pujol's La Peau d'une autre (1936), Bach détective (1936), and Passé à vendre (1936), Pierre Chenal's L'Homme de nulle part (1937), Léonide Moguy's Prison sans barreaux (1938), Autant-Lara's Le Ruisseau (1938), Marcel Pagnol's La Femme du boulanger (1938), Abel Gance's Louise (1939), and Edmond T. Gréville's Menaces (1939). Of these, probably the best performance of the decade is that in Pagnol's film, in which Leclerc plays Aurélie Castanier, the frustrated and unfaithful wife of the title. This film is considered one of Pagnol's best and the performance one of Leclerc's best.

   Leclerc's career slowed in the 1940s. She managed fewer roles, although it was also the decade that offered her arguably the best role she would have in her career, that of Denise Saillens in Henri-Georges Clouzot's Le Corbeau (1943). Instead of a fallen woman in the film, Leclerc plays a character with much more depth, a flawed character certainly, but a warm, human character that is much less flawed than the society which judges her. It is one of the great film roles of all time, and Leclerc plays it beautifully. Her other noteworthy films from the decade include Moguy's L'Empreinte de Dieu (1941), Jacques de Baroncelli's Ce n'est pas moi (1941), Jean de Limur's L'Homme qui joue avec le feu (1942), André Hugon's Le Chant de l'exilé (1942), Tourneur's Le Val d'enfer (1943), and Jacques Daroy's Une belle garce (1947). Leclerc's career was brought to a standstill at Liberation, at which time she was condemned to a year of prison and forbidden from working for having worked with the Nazi-owned Continental Films. Leclerc's decision to work with Continental was not, unfortunately, all that unique. Her sentence, however, was. In any case, like her contemporary, Arletty, who was also punished for collaboration, Leclerc's career did not recover. She managed a steady stream of roles, but they were not, for the most part, of the caliber of those she had earlier on. Some of the better films in which Leclerc appears later in her career include Marcello Pagliero's Un homme marche dans la ville (1950), Max Ophuls's Le Plaisir (1951), Jean Boyer's Le Chômeur de Clochemerle (1957), Gilles Grangier's Gas-oil (1955) and Le Cave se rebiffe (1956), Walerian Borowczyk's Goto, l'île d'amour (1968), and René Richon's La Barricade du Point du Jour (1978), which was her last film.

   Historical Dictionary of French Cinema by Dayna Oscherwitz & Mary Ellen Higgins