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Robert Hossein

Robert Hossein

Birthday: 1927-12-30 | Place of Birth: Paris, France

Robert Hossein was a French film actor of Parsi origin, director and writer. He directed the 1982 adaption of Les Misérables, and appeared in Vice and Virtue, Le Casse, Les Uns et les Autres and Venus Beauty Institute. His most recent roles include starring as Michèle Mercier's husband in the Angélique series and as a Catholic priest who falls in love with Claude Jade and becomes a communist in Prêtres interdits (Forbidden Priests) in 1973. Hossein started directing films in 1956 with Les salauds vont en enfer from a story by Frédéric Dard whose novels and plays went on to furnish Hossein with much of his later film material. Right from the start Hossein established his characteristic trademarks: using a seemingly straightforward suspense plot and subverting its conventions (sometimes to the extent of a complete disregard of the traditional demand for a final twist or revelation) in order to concentrate on ritualistic relationships. This is the director's running preoccupation which is always stressed in his films by an extraordinary command of film space and often striking frame compositions where the geometry of human figures and set design is used to accentuate the psychological set-up of the scene. The mechanisms of guilt and the way it destroys relationships is another recurring theme, presumably influenced by Hossein's lifelong interest in the works of Dostoyevski. Although Hossein had some modest international successes with films like Toi, le venin and Le vampire de Dusseldorf, he was much singled out for scorching criticism by the critics and followers of the New Wave for the unashamedly melodramatic frameworks of his films. The fact that he was essentially an auteur director with a consistent set of themes and an extraordinary mastery of original and unusual approaches to staging his stories, was never appreciated. He was not averse to trying his hand at widely different genres and was never defeated, making the strikingly different spaghetti western Une corde, un Colt and the low-budgeted but daringly subversive period drama J'ai tué Raspoutine. However, because of the lack of wider success and continuing adverse criticism, Hossein virtually ended his film directing career in 1970, having concentrated on theatre where his achievements were never questioned, and subsequently returning to film directing only twice. With two or three exceptions, his films remain commercially unavailable and very difficult to see. He is the son of André Hossein a Zoroastrian French composer of Azerbaijani-Tajik descent, and a Jewish comedy actress from Kiev. He was married three times: first to Marina Vlady (he has two sons with her, Pierre and Igor), later to Caroline Eliacheff (with whom he has a son, Nicholas). He is currently married to actress Candice Patou, with whom he has one son, Julien. According to an article written by Emannuel Peze, Hossein experienced a conversion to Catholicism in 1971 during a visit to the Marian apparition at San Damiano in Lombardo Italy. Description above from the Wikipedia article Robert Hossein, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

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Known For

Acting

Year
Title

Role

2022
Love Is Better Than Life

as    Robert Prat

2020
Le Fruit de l'espoir

as    Le grand-père d'Angeli

2007
Trivial

as    Antoine Bérangère

1999
Venus Beauty Institute

as    L'aviateur

1997
The Wax Mask

as    Boris Volkoff

1982
The Big Pardon

as    Manuel Carreras

1982
Bolero: Dance of Life

as    Simon Meyer / Robert Prat

1981
The Professional

as    Commissaire Rosen

1976
Don Juan or If Don Juan Were a Woman

as    Louis Prévost

1973
A Police Officer Without Importance

as    Pierre Fresse

1972
The Burglars

as    Ralph

1971
The Battle of El Alamein

as    Erwin Rommel

1970
Time of the Wolves

as    Dillinger

1969
Desert Assault

as    Capitaine Curd Heinz (Rudi en Français)

1969
Cemetery Without Crosses

as    Manuel

1968
Angelique and the Sultan

as    Joffrey de Peyrac "Le Rescator"

1967
Untamable Angelique

as    Joffrey de Peyrac "Le Rescator"

1966
OSS 117: Panic in Bangkok

as    Dr. Sinn

1966
The Dirty Game

as    Dupont

1966
Angelique and the King

as    Jeoffrey de Peyrac

1964
Angelique

as    Jeoffrey de Peyrac

1963
Of Flesh and Blood

as    Samuel

1962
Love on a Pillow

as    Renaud Sarti

1960
Take Me As I Am

as    Ed Dawson

1959
Double Agents

as    Lui

1959
Blonde in a White Car

as    Pierre Menda

1959
The Road to Shame

as    Pierre Rossi

1955
Rififi

as    Rémi Grutter