“Extravagant and Rabelaisian character”, “national glory” or “monster”? The foreign press has reported in often different terms the controversy surrounding the internationally recognized actor Gérard Depardieu. Icon of French cinema, both in France and abroad, the actor is at the heart of a new controversy after the broadcast of an issue of the program Complément d’investigation in which we see him holding obscene remarks against women as well as a little girl in North Korea in 2019.
After Emmanuel Macron who came to his defense by denouncing “a manhunt”, around fifty personalities from the world of culture in turn defended “the last sacred monster of cinema” against “lynching” in defiance of “ the presumption of innocence”.
Published in our columns, this column would be, for the New York Times, “an additional sign of the complicated reaction to the movement
Also read “Don’t erase Gérard Depardieu”: the appeal of 50 personalities from the world of culture
On the same line, the Spanish daily El País judges that this controversial series reveals above all a “connivance between society and the one who was considered one of its national glories, in the midst of the silence of the immense majority of French cinema “. Less severe, the Catalan daily El Periodico analyzes above all a certain “indulgence” from which the actor benefited for decades, “thanks above all to the extravagant and Rabelaisian character that he had created for himself”.
The column which defends the actor also reveals “the fault line which has shaken the French cultural scene for years around the debate on the separation between certain men and their work”, estimates our Swiss colleagues from the daily Le Temps. “Several cases involving cinema personalities accused of sexual violence had already provoked similar reactions, some coming to their defense in the name of their quality as artists, and others, including the vast majority of new generations of actors and directors, revolting at the visibility and credit which continue to be granted to them,” reports the newspaper.
The Depardieu case “deepens the gulf that separates two visions of sexist and sexual violence in France,” judges Le Soir, and “crystallizes all the ambivalence of a part of French society – from the cultural world to political world – when it comes to violence against women. “This was without taking into account the unexpected and much criticized support of the head of state Emmanuel Macron”, continues the Belgian daily which concludes its article by describing the two camps as “irreconcilable”. “The world of French cinema is increasingly divided,” says the Italian newspaper La Stampa.
The conservative newspaper The Times notes for its part that the “headlines of French newspapers read like obituaries” confronting the actor at the end, for good, of his career. The British daily then analyzes the slow fall of “one of the most prolific but also the most controversial French actors” by factually recalling all the accusations from which the actor suffers, in particular that of rape against the actress Charlotte Arnoult who made complaint, which the actor denied in October in the columns of Le Figaro.
In Russia, of which the actor has been a “citizen” since 2013, the press has also relayed the controversy of recent weeks, but from another angle: that of the actor’s birthday which is celebrated this Wednesday his 75 years. In an article entitled “From the poor thug to the hero of scandals”, the Gazeta looks back at the actor’s filmography and notes that after the accusations of “harassment” of several women that the artist “denies himself”, “ Emmanuel Macron and 50 other French cultural figures called in December for an end to public harassment.
Also read: Gérard Depardieu: “I finally want to tell you my truth”
“Better known for his Russian citizenship obtained 10 years ago”, Gérard Depardieu “almost fell under the steamroller of Cancel Culture”, writes the newspaper Argoumenty i Fakty. The media then contents itself with retracing the actor’s career, evoking the first film broadcast in the USSR, Deux hommes dans la ville, with Alain Delon and Jean Gabin, and praising “the formidable and memorable works” and the great diversity of his roles.
Depardieu, despite “his fantastic rudeness”, knew how to interpret Jean Racine, Alfred de Musset, Albert Camus, underlines Komsomolskaïa Pravda which also discusses the numerous controversies around “wine”, “food” and “women”, referring to the accusations of 13 women last spring and the latest controversy following the broadcast of the issue of Complément d’investigation. “France has long been accustomed to such news, and Depardieu is still for his compatriots a monster who remains sacred.”
