Gérard Philipe

Gérard Philipe surfaced in 1944 and rode the tail end of poetic realism into the late 1940s, a movement already fading when he arrived. He worked fast: Such a Pretty Little Beach in 1949, Beauty and the Devil in 1950, then Fanfan the Tulip in 1953 opposite some of the era's most magnetic women — Moreau, Morgan, Lollobrigida, Félix. Offscreen he let his communist views ring out, which made him both beloved and watched. Meanwhile he kept a second life onstage, joining Jean Vilar's Théâtre national populaire and tackling the French classical repertoire with enough skill to be called one of the gr…