MICHEL SUBOR

18 Jan

(2 February 1935 – 17 January 2022)

The French actor Michel Subor worked mainly in France, and only had occasional parts in American films, so he really wasn't an international star in the way that, say, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Alain Delon, Gérard Depardieu or Yves Montand became. However, Subor, who has died at the age of 86 after being involved in a traffic accident, had a long career of nearly sixty years on film and television.

He was born Mischa Subotzki in Paris to Russian parents who had emigrated to France in the 1930s. His father had been an engineer in Moscow and his mother came from Azerbaijan. In 1955 at the age of twenty he made his first film appearance in Frou-Frou with Dany Robin, Louis de Funès and Gino Cervi, and continued in small roles until his first leading part with Brigitte Bardot in La Bride sur le cou (aka Please, Not Now!) which was directed by Roger Vadim. He had already played a French deserter opposite Anna Karina in Jean-Luc Godard's Le Petit Soldat (1960) but the French government banned the film for three years, owing to the political sensitivity of the Algerian War at the time. It opened in 1963.

Michel Subor made around forty films in his career working with such directors as François Truffaut (he narrated Jules et Jim), Andre Cayatte, Paul Gegauff, Jean-Louis Bertuccelli, Gerard Blain, and many others. He made two films with Claire Denis, Beau Travail, a compelling film about the Foreign Legion, and The Intruder, about a man seeking a heart transplant and a reconciliation with his estranged son.

Films with Michel Subor that had a global release include Clive Donner's comedy What's New Pussycat? (1965) with Peter Sellers, Peter O'Toole and Woody Allen, who also wrote the screenplay, Alfred Hitchcock's Cold War thriller Topaz (1969), and Fred Zinnemann's The Day of the Jackal (1973), in which he played an uncredited terrorist. Otherwise, Subor seems to have been a mainstay of the French film industry during its important years and was always a reliable actor to have around.

MICHAEL DARVELL

Michael Darvell

Michael Darvell trained as a librarian at Watford and in Surrey before joining Ealing Libraries where he became Music Librarian for the borough. He edited Masthead, the magazine of the University of North London School of Librarianship, The Surrealist, the staff magazine of Surrey County Library, and contributed to the Assistant Librarian and London Librarian professional journals. A freelance film reviewer since 1970, he has written for Film, Films Illustrated, Film Review, Movie Maker and Radio Times, as well as editing Montage, the London film societies magazine, for ten years. A change of career saw him joining What’s On in London as Features Editor and he eventually stepped into the shoes of the late F. Maurice Speed (founding father of Film Review annual) as the magazine’s Editor. From 2007 to 2015, he was co-editor of the Film Review annual with Mansel Stimpson. As well as writing about films, Michael has reviewed theatre for The Stage newspaper, and has written about music theatre and cabaret for the Classical Source and Musical Theatre Review websites. He is also a former restaurant critic for the ViewLondon website. Michael has been a member of the London Film Critics’ Circle since 2005.

MICHEL SUBOR

HARDY KRÜGER

YVETTE MIMIEUX