Lefèvre, René

(1898-1991)

   Actor and screenwriter. René Lefèvre made his screen debut at the end of the silent era in René Hervil's Knock ou le triomphe de la médécine (1925). This was followed by roles in Julien Duvivier's Le Mariage de Mademoiselle Beulemans (1927) and Le Tourbillon de Paris (1928), Hervil's Le Ruisseau (1928), André Berthomieu's Pas si bête (1928), Ces Dames aux chapeaux verts (1929) and Rapacité (1929), and Roger Lion's Un soir au cocktail's bar (1929).

   In 1931, Lefèvre was cast in the lead in René Clair's Le Million (1931). He went on to appear in Jean Boyer and Max Neufeld's Monsieur, Madame et Bibi (1932), Alexandre Ryder's L'Âne de Buridan (1932), André Hugon's La Paix chez soi (1933), Jean de Limur's Paprika (1933) and Petite peste (1938), Yvan Noé's Mes tantes et moi (1936), Jean Renoir's Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (1936), and Maurice Keroul and Georges Monca's Le Choc en retour (1937). He also had supporting roles in such films as Berthomieu's La Femme idéale (1933), Pierre Billon's La Piste du sud (1938), and Jean Grémillon's Gueule d'amour (1937). Le Million and Le Crime de Monsieur Lange both became classics of French cinema and are regarded as two of Lefèvre's best performances. As in the character he plays in these two films, Lefèvre's roles tended to be quiet, timid men who expressed themselves or their emotions with difficulty.

   Lefèvre continued to act in the 1940s and 1950s, but he made only a handful of films and was again relegated to supporting actor. He appeared in such films as Robert Vernay's La Femme que j'ai la plus aimée (1942), Albert Valentin's A la belle frégate (1943), Yves Allegret and Jean Choux's La Boîte aux rêves (1945), Alexander Esway's Le Bataillon du ciel (1947), Louis Daquin's Le Point du jour (1949) and Bel Ami (1957), Jacqueline Audry's La Garçonne (1957), C'est la faute d'Adam (1958), and Le Secret du Chevalier d'Éon (1959), Jules Dassin's Celui qui doit mourir (1957), and Marc Allegret's Sois belle et tais-toi (1958).

   During the same period, Lefèvre tried his hand at both screenwriting and directing. He wrote the story upon which Georges Lacombe's Les Musiciens du ciel (1940) was based, and he also contributed to the screenplay. He also worked on the screenplays for Marc Allegret's Parade en sept nuits (1941), Opéra-Musette (1942), a film he codirected with Claude Renoir and in which he starred, and Duvivier's Sous le ciel de Paris (1951), and cowrote the screenplay for Denys de la Patellière's Rue des Prairies (1959) with Michel Audiard. Lefèvre retired from cinema and television in the early 1980s.

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