Gaston Modot

Who was Gaston Modot?

Gaston Modot was a French actor. For more than 50 years he performed for the cinema working with a number of French directors.

Modot lived in Montmartre at the beginning of the 20th century where he met Picasso and Modigliani. In 1909 he started his career with Gaumont and for the following 20 years he covered all silent film genres. In 1917 he was the main actor in Abel Gance's Mater dolorosa. He played in Germaine Dulac and Louis Delluc's avant-garde films La fête espagnole and Fièvre. With Max Linder, Modot played in Abel Gance's Au secours!. Towards the end of the 1920s he performed in German-French co-productions.

He is still famous for his role of "Manns" in Luis Buñuel's L'Âge d'Or.

He had his first role in a sound film with Rene Clair's Sous les toits de Paris. He and Jean Gabin are main characters in Julien Duvivier's Pépé le Moko. He acted in Jean Renoir classic films La grande illusion and La règle du jeu as well as the three hour poetic film Les enfants du paradis for Marcel Carné.

In 1962 Gaston Modot ended his acting career. He had acted in more than 100 films.