Robert Hossein

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.

Known For: Acting

Born: Paris, France, 1927-12-30

Died: 2020-12-31

No.	Year	Title	Role	Vote Average
1	1948	The Devil Who Limped	Guest in white (uncredited)	64
2	1948	Sextette		0
3	1948	In the Eyes of Memory	A student from the Simon course	66
4	1949	Maya	Un témoin du meurtre qui n'a rien vu (uncredited)	56
5	1954	Quai des blondes	Chemise Rose	53
6	1955	Série noire	Jo	50
7	1955	Rififi	Rémi Grutter	78
8	1955	The Wicked Go to Hell	Fred	62
9	1956	Forgive Our Trespasses	(uncredited)	50
10	1956	Crime and Punishment	René Brunel	70
11	1957	No Sun in Venice	Sforzi	51
12	1957	Young Girls Beware	Raven	53
13	1958	Provisional Liberty	Jean-Paul Viberty / Jean Rungis	40
14	1959	Blonde in a White Car	Pierre Menda	66
15	1959	The Road to Shame	Pierre Rossi	60
16	1959	Riff Raff Girls	Marcel Point-Bleu	58
17	1959	Stars Meet in Moscow		0
18	1959	Double Agents	Lui	54
19	1959	The Verdict	Georges Lagrange	0
20	1960	Take Me As I Am	Ed Dawson	60
21	1960	The Wretches	Jess Rooland	62
22	1961	The Menace	Savary	55
23	1961	The Taste of Violence	Perez	71
24	1961	The Game of Truth	L'inspecteur de police	59
25	1961	Madame	Le sergent François-Joseph Lefebvre	56
26	1962	Hitch-Hike	Edouard, le fou	55
27	1962	Paris Pick-Up	Robert Herbin	60
28	1962	Love on a Pillow	Renaud Sarti	58
29	1963	Enough Rope	Inspektor Corby	56
30	1963	Vice and Virtue	SS Oberst Erik Schörndorf	54
31	1963	Of Flesh and Blood	Samuel	0
32	1963	Highway Pick-Up	Daniel Boisset	68
33	1964	Death of a Killer	Pierre Massa	58
34	1964	OSS 117: Panic in Bangkok	Dr. Sinn	77
35	1964	Why Paris?		0
36	1964	Marked Eyes	Franz	58
37	1964	Angelique	Jeoffrey de Peyrac	67
38	1965	The Vampire of Dusseldorf	Peter Kuerten	56
39	1965	The Dirty Game	Dupont	58
40	1965	Le commissaire mène l’enquête	The lover (segment "Pour qui sonne le ...")	0
41	1965	Marco the Magnificent	Prince Nayam	53
42	1965	God's Thunder	Marcel	64
43	1966	Mademoiselle de Maupin	Captain Alcibiade	60
44	1966	Angelique and the King	Jeoffrey de Peyrac	65
45	1966	The Other Truth	Pierre Montaud, the Advocate	50
46	1966	Long March	Carnot	0
47	1966	Brigade Anti Gangs	Chief Commissioner Le Goff	66
48	1967	Untamable Angelique	Joffrey de Peyrac, 'Le Rescator'	65
49	1967	La Musica	Him	45
50	1967	I Killed Rasputin	Serge Sukhotin	44
51	1967	The Man Who Betrayed the Mafia	Maître Bianchini	32
52	1967	Lamiel	Roger Valber	48
53	1968	A Little Virtuous	Louis Brady	61
54	1968	Angelique and the Sultan	Joffrey de Peyrac "Le Rescator"	64
55	1968	OSS 117 Murder for Sale	Dr. Saadi	57
56	1968	Tender Moment	Enrico Fontana	58
57	1969	The Battle of El Alamein	Erwin Rommel	53
58	1969	Cemetery Without Crosses	Manuel	64
59	1969	Life Love Death	Man in the movie	54
60	1969	Misdeal	Martin von Klaus	30
61	1969	The Scarlet Lady	Julien	57
62	1969	Crime Thief	Tian	52
63	1969	Desert Assault	Capitaine Curd Heinz (Rudi en Français)	47
64	1969	The Conspirators	Leonida Montanari	76
65	1970	Time of the Wolves	Dillinger	54
66	1970	Versatile Lovers	Serge Belaïeff	30
67	1970	Falling Point	Le Caïd	58
68	1971	Judge Roy Bean	Black Bird	60
69	1971	The Lion's Share	Maurice Ménard	40
70	1971	The Burglars	Ralph	70
71	1972	Hellé	Kleber	46
72	1972	A Murder Is a Murder	Jean Carouse	55
73	1973	Don Juan or If Don Juan Were a Woman	Louis Prévost	44
74	1973	A Police Officer Without Importance	Pierre Fresse	0
75	1973	Prêtres interdits	Jean Rastaud	45
76	1974	Le tour d'écrou	Peter Quint	70
77	1974	The Protector	Arnaud	35
78	1975	The Phoney	Kaminsky	42
79	1979	Démons de midi	Metteur en scène de théâtre	0
80	1981	Bolero	Simon Meyer / Robert Prat	70
81	1981	The Professional	Commissaire Rosen	72
82	1982	The Big Pardon	Manuel Carreras	62
83	1983	Surprise Party	André Auerbach	50
84	1986	Le Caviar rouge	Alex	0
85	1986	A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later	Robert Hossein	58
86	1987	Levy & Goliath	Goliath customer (uncredited)	51
87	1988	La croisade des enfants	Philippe-Auguste	0
88	1989	Children of Chaos	Robert	54
89	1992	Stranger in the House	Narrator (voice)	64
90	1994	L'Affaire	Paul Haslans	30
91	1995	Les Miserables	Le maître de cérémonie	67
92	1997	The Wax Mask	Boris Volkoff	57
93	1999	Venus Beauty Institute	L'aviateur	58
94	1999	Scandalous Crimes	Judge Bocchi	35
95	2003	Antigone	Créon	65
96	2004	San Antonio	Le ministre de l'intérieur / The Minister	35
97	2006	Denn sie kennen kein Erbarmen - Der Italowestern	Self	66
98	2007	Trivial	Antoine Bérangère	42
99	2008	Annie Girardot, ainsi va la vie	Self	80
100	2009	A Man and His Dog	Un homme a la soupe populaire	60
101	2009	Les fleurs maladives de Georges Franju	Self	70
102	2011	Belmondo, itinéraire...	Self	77
103	2011	Une femme nommée Marie	Narrator (voice)	0
104	2011	Belmondo, il était une fois le beau monde	Self	60
105	2014	Marie-France Pisier, une femme sous influence	Self	0
106	2016	Belmondo by Belmondo	Self	78
107	2019	Aznavour by Charles	Self - Actor (archive footage)	69
108	2020	Le Fruit de l'espoir	Le grand-père d'Angeli	0
109	2021	Hossein, Ronet, Trintignant : Confidences de trois acteurs inoubliables	Self (archive footage)	0
110	2022	Love Is Better Than Life	Robert Prat	53
111	2022	Raymond Devos dans tous ses sens	Self	0

No.	Year	Title	Role	Vote Average
1	1954	Reflets de Cannes	Self	20
2	1956	Cinépanorama	Self	80
3	1971	Samedi soir	Self	60
4	1972	Le Grand Échiquier	Self	80
5	1972	Le Grand Échiquier	Self - Main Guest	80
6	1972	Midi trente	Self	60
7	1974	Spécial cinéma	Self	0
8	1975	Apostrophes	Self	85
9	1982	Champs-Elysées	Self	63
10	1987	Nulle part ailleurs	Self	56
11	1987	Sacrée soirée	Self	65
12	1987	Téléthon	Self	50
13	1990	Le Gorille	Joseph Beaucis	70
14	1990	Stars 90	Self	62
15	1998	Vivement dimanche	Self	30
16	2005	Le Juge	Roger Marino	90
17	2006	Petits Meurtres en famille	Simon	79
18	2009	The Little Murders of Agatha Christie	Simon	74

Robert Hossein

Film

Television