The Ballad of Patrick Dewaere: Part One

The most thrilling actor of his generation, Patrick Dewaere was a blazing comet that streaked across French cinema all too briefly, and a legend in the making when he died, by suicide, at age 35, in 1982. Dewaere instantly ignited the screen in his first major role, Bertrand Blier’s infamous smash and French cultural phenomenon of 1974, Les Valseuses (Going Places), opposite his sometimes friend and rival, Gérard Depardieu, and his future partner Miou-Miou. Unlike Depardieu, Dewaere never became an international superstar or made films in America (much to his disappointment), but would reach depth and pathos unlike any of his contemporaries, and never more so than playing tough and tender, funny and broken, in A Bad Son and Série Noire. Tragically, audiences did not get to grow old with Dewaere, but for eight short years, he was impossible to look away from.