Luxeuil-les-Bains
Luxeuil-les-Bains () is a commune in the Haute-Saône department in the region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté west of Mulhouse in eastern France.
History
Luxeuil (sometimes rendered Luxeu in older texts) was the Roman Luxovium and contained many ...
,
Haute-Saône
Haute-Saône (; Frainc-Comtou: ''Hâte-Saône''; English: Upper Saône) is a department in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region of northeastern France. Named after the river Saône, it had a population of 235,313 in 2019.
– 25 December 1996) was a French
film actor
An actor (masculine/gender-neutral), or actress (feminine), is a person who portrays a character in a production. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. ...
. He appeared in 30 films between 1934 and 1957, but is best remembered for playing the lead in ''
Bob le flambeur
''Bob le flambeur'' (English translation": "Bob the Gambler" or "Bob the High Roller") is a 1956 French heist gangster film directed by Jean-Pierre Melville and starring Roger Duchesne as Bob. It is often considered both a film noir and a pr ...
'' (1956). He was the first husband of French film actress Yvette Lebon.
Controversy surrounds Duchesne for activities during the German occupation of France during World War II. An history of French cinema during the war (1985), citing a French film historian, states that Duchesne had been among three film workers who suffered "serious sanctions" for wartime activities on behalf of the German occupiers; he "was suspected of working for the Gestapo." According to a 2019 review of the Kino-released DVD of ''Bob le flambeur,'' a featurette on the disc informs that the actor's "gambling debts caught the attentions of the Nazis during the Occupation, and Duchesne became a collaborator, actively participating in the torture of at least one member of the French Resistance." Not surprisingly, the review notes ''Bob le flambeu''r was Duchesne's first film since the war and he only appeared in one more thereafter.
Unable to work as an actor immediately after the war, Duchesne was reduced to writing trashy adventure novels and later, to actual crime.
Film director Jean-Pierre Melville, ironically himself a Jewish member of the French Resistance during the war, recruited Duchesne for ''Bob le flambeur.'' According to one account, the actor had been prohibited from working by the postwar purge ("epuration") of collaborators. "Duchesne robbed a bank of 800 million francs—the same sum Bob tries to steal n the filmin Deauville-—then cooled his heels in prison writing adventure novels. When Melville tracked him down, he was selling scrap metal in Saint-Ouen."
Fanfare of Love
''Fanfare of Love'' (French: ''Fanfare d'amour'') is a 1935 French comedy film directed by Richard Pottier and starring Fernand Gravey, Betty Stockfeld and Julien Carette.Ginsberg & Mensch p.403 The film's art direction was by Max Heilbronner. ...
Wolves Between Them
''Wolves Between Them'' (French: ''Les loups entre eux'') is a 1936 French spy thriller film directed by Léon Mathot and starring Roger Duchesne, Jules Berry and Renée Saint-Cyr.Crisp p.322 The film's sets were designed by the art director J ...
Taras Bulba
''Taras Bulba'' (; ) is a romanticized historical novella set in the first half of the 17th century, written by Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852). It features elderly Zaporozhian Cossack Taras Bulba and his sons Andriy and Ostap. The sons study at th ...
Gibraltar
Gibraltar ( , ) is a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory and British overseas cities, city located at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, on the Bay of Gibraltar, near the exit of the Mediterranean Sea into the A ...
Bob le flambeur
''Bob le flambeur'' (English translation": "Bob the Gambler" or "Bob the High Roller") is a 1956 French heist gangster film directed by Jean-Pierre Melville and starring Roger Duchesne as Bob. It is often considered both a film noir and a pr ...