With his rugged charisma and formidable screen presence, Jean Gabin was more than one of film history’s most iconic stars; he was French cinema itself. A central figure in the poetic realism movement, Gabin became the face of a generation of working-class, everyman heroes in the 1930s. As a lieutenant from a modest social background in Jean Renoir’s pacifist masterpiece Grand Illusion (1937), Gabin gave a career-defining performance that powerfully articulated the cruel hierarchy of the army and the despair of war. While Gabin was hailed as the ideal of French masculinity, his characters were beloved, not only for their audacious spirits, but also for their vulnerability. In Jean Grémillon’s stormy Remorques (1941), which reunited Gabin with Michèle Morgan, the actor’s rakish charm belies hidden depths of passions, as his sea captain embarks on a torrid, doomed extramarital affair.

Throughout his astonishingly prolific career, Gabin effortlessly transitioned from a romantic leading man to more morally gray characters. In Claude Autant-Lara’s smash hit Four Bags Full (1956), Gabin tried on a riotously disreputable persona, as his role of an anarchic pork smuggler doubled as a damning commentary on the opportunism that was rampant in occupied France. In contrast, Le Plaisir (1952), Max Ophüls’s adaptation of Guy de Maupassant’s short stories, stars Gabin as a jovial, avuncular host to a colorful band of sex workers, highlighting how the actor would soon become a father figure in French films. Gabin the Myth and Gabin the Actor magically collide in Alain Resnais’s My American Uncle (1980), a philosophical and playful portrait of modern alienation. As the thoughts and actions of René, a dissatisfied executive played by Gérard Depardieu, are mirrored with excerpts from Gabin’s movies, the correlation between these images not only denotes a sense of inheritance from one actor to another but also suggests how Gabin’s influence extends far beyond the film frame.For René and many others, Gabin was a symbol of a bygone French masculinity. Featuring some of the actor’s most iconic roles, our series celebrates the people’s hero whose legacy continues to fascinate both on and off screen.