Pierre Fresnay

Pierre Fresnay was a French actor and director born on April 4, 1897, in the 5th arrondissement of Paris and died on January 9, 1975, in Neuilly-sur-Seine. During forty years on film sets, he worked under the direction of some of the greatest directors of the era, from Maurice Tourneur and Abel G... More

Pierre Fresnay was a French actor and director born on April 4, 1897, in the 5th arrondissement of Paris and died on January 9, 1975, in Neuilly-sur-Seine. During forty years on film sets, he worked under the direction of some of the greatest directors of the era, from Maurice Tourneur and Abel Gance to Jeff Musso, Marc Allégret, Alfred Hitchcock (in the first version of The Man Who Knew Too Much in 1934), and Henri-Georges Clouzot. Besides his role as Marius in the Marseille Trilogy (written by Marcel Pagnol), his performances in La Grande Illusion (1937) where he played Boëldieu, a proud and nostalgic aristocrat, in L'assassin habite au 21 (1942) where he played the ironic and subtle commissioner Monsieur Wens, and in Le Corbeau (1943) are still remembered.