From our files: An interview with Marcel Marceau

In 1974, the Monitor interviewed the preeminent French mime, who died Saturday.

By Nora E. Taylor

posted September 23, 2007 at 12:00 p.m. EST

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From the April 4, 1974 edition of the Monitor.

A torrent of information poured from the small man who was almost lost in the big armchair. It seemed as though Marcel Marceau might be making up, in private, for all those communicatively silent hours onstage, by letting words tumble over themselves proving that he can talk, not only in his native French, but fluently in English too.

"When you are the link with the public who would like to know what I think about life, I have to be outspoken. And I have to do in one hour what I do in a lifetime," he explained.

Marceau is bringing to the US an all new show - "all my shows are new" - but it will feature Bip the Clown, the character Marceau made his alter ego. Why choose a clown figure? "Theatre is a reflection of life ... And life is sometimes bad theater," he pointed out. "In the theater we try to be honest. We make a statement for people – to expand the mysteries of life, they must go to the theater." Then he went on to recall that theater was, first of all, an expansion of religious observances, and it has always remained tied to mankind's inner dreams. "I chose," he returned to the question, "a clown because in a circus they have been a reflection of slapstick. In a clown we see what we do that makes us laugh and cry. I kept the white face, the tradition of the Pierrot. My clown became a romantic and stylized figure. I wanted to be an abstract and concrete figure, a symbol of humanity."

And now a film

In his first American film, "Shanks," to be released before long, Marceau has been widely touted as "talking." But he himself pooh-poohs that. "I say maybe eight words," he remarked with deep scorn. "You don't miss the words. It is a confrontation between life and death. Very exciting. The great problem of humanity is life and death. Every person dreams of becoming invisible one day. The want to be immortal, to survive the struggle is in the film."

As he talked, his arms and legs were never still. It was as if his speech alone could not communicate. He spoke of "the reality and the dream," and his eyes went somber. He said "I brought my poetry to it." and the eyes lit up again. The mime and the dancer was remembering the disciplines demanded by the film, and his body responded although he remained seated. He finished his reference to it by adding in an offhand manner, "For the first time I am seen as an actor."

That might seem to be a questionable statement, since Bip and the other characters and roles Marceau assumes are all acting – acting perhaps in its most refined sense. But here he differentiated between what the regular run of actors do – taking on a personality written for them – and what he does, projecting his own ideas and convictions through the personality he has originated.

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