During the last city council, the municipality of Clouange decided to change the name of its performance hall. The elected officials wanted to pay tribute to a public figure in connection with the city of Clouange. The choice fell on Henri Colpi.
The French editor, screenwriter and director was notably awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1961 for his film such a long absence.
Born in Switzerland in July 1921, Henri Colpi spent the first ten years of his life in Clouange, where his parents and brothers ran a business. As a teenager, he moved to Sète where he became friends with Georges Brassens (who will perform the soundtrack of another of his films Happy who like Odysseus last feature film by actor Fernandel, in 1970).
Such a long absence is Henri Colpi’s first film. It is based on a screenplay by Marguerite Duras. The film tells the story of a bistro owner (Italian actress Alida Valli) who thinks she recognizes a tramp (played by Georges Wilson, father of actor Lambert Wilson) her husband, deported fifteen years later. early. It is also Henri Colpi who wrote the lyrics to three small musical notes soundtrack of the film.
Where he had discovered silent cinema
In 1963, the one who was also a screenwriter received the screenplay prize, still at Cannes, for the film Codine. In 1990, Henri Colpi returned to Clouange. Welcomed in particular by René Dupont, the mayor at the time, he had rediscovered the abandoned Le Trianon cinema. In our columns in 2016, Roland Santi and Yves Schneider, faithful memories of the town of Clouange, remembered: “When he found Clouange, Henri Colpi had expressed his sadness and his melancholy, noting that the poor Trianon, the cinema where he went as a child, had not even become a garage or a supermarket. He had given her so much joy in the days of silent cinema. This is where the auditorium that will soon bear his name has since been built.
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Henri Colpi died on January 14, 2006 in Menton (Alpes-Maritimes).
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Nail. Do you know which director, who lived in the Orne Valley, won the Palme d’Or at Cannes?