Rare photos from filming, posters, the most complete original script of the 50 in existence because it was annotated by Gérard Oury’s script, sketches, traces of the famous fake chewing gum… From October 16 to 21, La Ciotat imposes itself once moreover as a place of memory of the 7th art. In addition to the reservation now possible for the Lumière Brothers salon where the first private and free cinema screening was given, the guided visit to Eden, the oldest cinema in the world and Michel Simon’s villa in the Calanques, this small town on the edge de mer is fortunate to count among its residents, the director Olivier Dahan but also Stephan Guérard, the greatest collector of Louis de Funès souvenirs.
After having largely lent his collection for the major exhibition at the Cinémathèque in Paris in 2020-2021, this forty-something municipal agent is celebrating the release fifty years ago, on October 18, 1973, of The Adventures of Rabbi Jacob by Gérard Oury. “The exhibition lasts just one week but I wanted to mark the occasion. Let us pay homage, as it is due, for this 50th anniversary, to this film which is a fraternal work against racism and anti-Semitism and where of course laughter dominates for our greatest pleasure, says this enthusiast who also exhibits his faithful and magnificent correspondence with this great filmmaker who was Gérard Oury from 1992 until his death in 2006.”
In 2020, Danièle Thompson told us: “Stéphan Guérard is a young man who started writing to my father Gérard Oury thirty years ago. My father was always very kind to him. He received him in Paris and began corresponding with him. It was Stéphan who organized a very successful exhibition dedicated to my father in September 2018. I went there and we took the opportunity to inaugurate a Place Gérard-Oury (in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, editor’s note). Stéphan is an adorable boy, a little naive sometimes but his collection is extraordinary. I am absolutely amazed by how much he has amassed over the years.” The model of the sets and the wand of kappelmeister Stanislas Lefort in La Grande Vadrouille? He has them in his Ali Baba cave. Just like the score of La Marche des gendarmes and Les plumes de paon from L’Avare which open and close.
All his treasures – he has thousands – are kept at his home in La Ciotat. A hairbrush, film posters, 10,000 rare set photos autographed by those with whom the actor worked, 6,000 letters and press clippings… Stéphan Guérard is, by far, the most important collector of souvenirs by Louis de Funès. This passion for Louis de Funès took hold when he was between eight and ten years old, in the 1980s, shortly after the actor’s death. “I don’t know why,” he says today. It made me laugh and I wanted to know more, I was already passionate about cinema. I love Gabin, Fernandel, Annie Girardot… Maybe he gave me the affection I lacked in my youth? » And hastened to add: “there is no identification on my part. »
His family worked, like many others, at the La Ciotat shipyard. She never quite understood this ardor for the interpreter of the chief quartermaster Cruchot. And especially not his parents, distraught in the face of this overwhelming enthusiasm which gripped their only son. He, so shy and so wild, shows extraordinary nerve when it comes to knowing more about his idol. Methodically, he goes through the credits of the films and thanks to the directory of the profession, the famous red Bellefaye guide which contains the personal addresses of each person, he goes to see one by one the people who worked alongside Louis de Funès. The technicians, the decorators, the supporting roles… He writes to them then literally knocks on their door. “That’s how I got in touch with Gérard Oury, Annie Girardot, Pierre Mondy and Michel Galabru”. From each person, he asks for a written testimony of their memories with Louis de Funès.
In La Ciotat, he has long been seen as a nice storyteller. “And then, we realized that this lover of artists had really managed to correspond with many of the big names in the seventh art,” says Michel Cornille, president of Eden. And they gave him a whole bunch of objects out of pure friendship. When they come to Eden to present their films, they always ask to see Stéphan and we are all impressed by their level of complicity.”
From October 16 to 21 at the La Ciotat Tourist Office, boulevard Anatole-France, www.destinationlaciotat.com