The body generates music, the music of the soul, which is why mime connects deeply with the mythology of the human being and has crossed all cultures”. These are the words of Marcel Marceau in one of the last interviews he gave before retiring. The journalist who interviewed him was Ima Sanchís and the interview was published in La Contra de La Vanguardia on May 30, 2003.
The most international French mime was born in Strasbourg on March 22, 1923, exactly one hundred years ago today, and died on September 22, 2007 in Caors. He had decided to retire four years earlier and did so shortly after performing at the Tívoli theater in Barcelona that month of May 2003. He decided to make his farewell to the stage in Athens, the cradle of Western culture and, for both, of one of the six arts of antiquity, the theater. The stage chosen was the odeon of Herodes Atticus, at the foot of the Acropolis. His last performance took place on July 12 of that same year.
But how did mime get across cultures? Marceau answered: “Being essential through gesture, reaching metamorphosis, developing the gift of being a bird, of being God, of being a plant or of being a planet. You have to be deep.” But he could not explain the secret of the gesture: “First there is the gift and then the work mixed with all the interpretative tradition that has been passed down over the centuries. But above all it is the secret of the human being”.
Just as Charles Chaplin created the character of Charlot, Marcel Marceau created the character of Bip, who was both Chaplin’s and Keaton’s heir. And this is no accident: while the children of his generation laughed at Charlot’s gags, Marceau cried: “I was five years old when I went to see Charlot’s films and, unlike other children , I was crying; he perceived the tragedy in what was comic. Chaplin was my inspiration. But unlike him, Bip is surrounded by invisible people. I make the invisible visible”.
Of Jewish descent, his real name was Marcel Mangel and he changed his surname during the Second World War. His father was killed in the Auschwitz concentration camp and he, around the age of twenty, was part of the French resistance. His training included the study of decorative arts and, in terms of acting, he was a student of Charles Dullin and Étienne Decroux, professionals in dramatic art. From 1946 he was part of the Renaud-Barrault company, but immediately specialized in the world of mime, so that, from then on, he performed with his character of Bip.
“He was the patriarch of classical pantomime and a world reference point whenever it came to talking about the language of gesture. For more than half a century, Marcel Marceau was at the pinnacle of the art of mime, and although since the end of the Second World War he had disciples and imitators in several generations, no one ever disputed the virtuosic perfection achieved in this theatrical genre. Marceau’s art had its roots in the pantomime of silent cinema.”
