Pierre Batcheff (
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
: Пьер Батчефф; 23 June 1901?
– 13 April 1932) was a French actor of Russian origin. He became a popular film actor from the mid-1920s until the early 1930s, and among his best-known work was the surrealist short film ''
Un chien andalou
''Un Chien Andalou'' (, ''An Andalusian Dog'') is a 1929 French silent short film directed by Luis Buñuel, and written by Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. Buñuel's first film, it was initially released in a limited capacity at Studio des Ursuline ...
'' (1929), made by
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés (; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish-Mexican filmmaker who worked in France, Mexico, and Spain. He has been widely considered by many film critics, historians, and directors to be one of the greatest and ...
in collaboration with
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (; ; ; 11 May 190423 January 1989) was a Spanish surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarre images in ...
. After appearing in about twenty-five films, he died at an early age from a drug overdose.
Life
Pierre Batcheff was born in
Harbin in China and he grew up in
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
. (One source says that his birth name was Benjamin Batcheff and that he adopted the name Pierre later from his father.)
[Phil Powrie & Éric Rebillard, ''Pierre Batcheff and stardom in 1920s French cinema''. Edinburgh University Press, 2009. p. 2.] When war broke out in 1914, his family were on holiday in Switzerland and they decided to remain there, at first in Lausanne and then Geneva. Batcheff's father went bankrupt around 1917, leaving the family in financial difficulty, and Pierre started taking small parts in
Georges Pitoëff
Georges Pitoëff (4 September 1884 – 17 September 1939) was a Russian émigré with an Armenian background who became one of the leading actors and directors in France.
Early life and education
Pitoëff was born on 4 September 1884 in Tiflis, R ...
's theatre company in Geneva. Between 1919 and 1921 he attended the
Collège Calvin
The Collège Calvin, formerly the Collège de Genève, is the oldest public secondary school in Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded in 1559 by John Calvin.
History
On February 24, 1428, the ''Conseil Général'' of Geneva decided to establish ...
. In 1921, Batcheff moved with his family to Paris where he worked at first as a theatre actor.
Batcheff's earliest leading role in the cinema was in 1923 in ''Claudine et le poussin'', in the first of several performances as a young aristocratic lover. In the next few years he made films with
Marcel L'Herbier
Marcel L'Herbier (; 23 April 1888 – 26 November 1979) was a French filmmaker who achieved prominence as an avant-garde theorist and imaginative practitioner with a series of silent films in the 1920s. His career as a director continued unti ...
,
Jean Epstein, and
Abel Gance. By 1927 he was established as a popular young leading man, with interviews and covers photos in film magazines. He was at the same time dissatisfied with the type of roles which he was offered and he cultivated links with avant-garde circles, especially the surrealists. In 1927 he met
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés (; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish-Mexican filmmaker who worked in France, Mexico, and Spain. He has been widely considered by many film critics, historians, and directors to be one of the greatest and ...
and their discussions led to their subsequent collaboration on ''
Un chien andalou
''Un Chien Andalou'' (, ''An Andalusian Dog'') is a 1929 French silent short film directed by Luis Buñuel, and written by Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. Buñuel's first film, it was initially released in a limited capacity at Studio des Ursuline ...
'' in the following year.
In 1926 Batcheff met
Denise Piazza, the daughter of a publisher, and they married in 1930. As Denise Batcheff, and later Denise Tual, she became a film editor and producer.
In the ten years of his film career, Batcheff made around 25 films. At the time of his death, he was engaged in a project with
Jacques Prévert
Jacques Prévert (; 4 February 1900 – 11 April 1977) was a French poet and screenwriter. His poems became and remain popular in the French-speaking world, particularly in schools. His best-regarded films formed part of the poetic realist moveme ...
to write and direct a film which proved to be sufficiently radical to alarm some financial backers. Batcheff's behaviour showed signs of stress and became increasingly erratic, and in April 1932 he died from an overdose of drugs, possibly by suicide.
One of the Parisian newspapers reporting on his death summarised his contemporary appeal as an actor: "As an artist, he brought an extremely personal tone of refinement, of sensitivity and of melancholy, which was not devoid of strength, and this earned him a very wide popularity". It also noted that on the day after his death he had been due to sign a contract with a producer to direct his first film.
[''La Liberté'' (Paris), 16 avril 1932, p. 5, col. 3: "En tant qu'artiste, il apportait une note extrêmement personelle de finesse, de sensibilité et de tristesse, d'où la force n'était pas exclue, ce qui lui valait une très grande popularité".]
Filmography
Bibliography
* Powrie, Phil & Rebillard, Éric. ''Pierre Batcheff and stardom in 1920s French cinema''. Edinburgh University Press, 2009
* Tual, Denise. ''Au cœur du temps''. Paris: Carrère, 1987.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Batcheff, Pierre
1900s births
1932 deaths
Year of birth uncertain
20th-century French male actors
Male actors from Paris
Male actors from Saint Petersburg
French male silent film actors
French male stage actors
Emigrants from the Russian Empire to France
Actors from Geneva
Emigrants from the Russian Empire to Switzerland
Burials at Montparnasse Cemetery
Burials at Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery
Drug-related suicides in France
Barbiturates-related deaths
1932 suicides