Jacqueline Maillan

Exuberant, excessive, bursting with energy, a regular comic whirlwind, Jacqueline Maillan made two generations of French people laugh. Which is paradoxical because when she arrived in Paris at the age of twenty-one and joined René Simon's dramatic school she saw herself as a tragedian. But her rendition of Racine's "Athalie" had an unexpected effect on the other students: instead of wringing their hands under the terror and the pity inherent in tragedy ... they split their sides laughing. Jacqueline Maillan understood the lesson and said farewell to tragedy forever. And she was quite right: she was really wonderful in light comedies such as "Folle Amanda", "La Facture", Madame Sans-Gêne" and many others. She was also part of memorable crazy comic revues like "Ah! les belles bacchantes" and even performed in musical comedies ("Féfé de Broadway"). But she was mainly one of the first women to appear in one-man (or rather woman) shows when the genre was male-dominated. Compared to these triumphs, her film career is a bit disappointing. For all her talent, Jacqueline Maillan was never given a memorable role in a memorable movie. When she WAS in a masterpiece ("Les grandes manoeuvres") her role was tiny while when she starred, for instance in Pierre Mondy's "Appelez-moi Mathilde", the result was appalling. She was irresistible though as the scatterbrained wife of Louis de Funès's in 'Pouic Pouic' and as the patriotic mother in Jean-Marie Poiré's spoof "Papy fait de la résistance". In the last stage of her career she also fitted rather well with Jean-Pierre Mocky's wild and caustic world.