Émile Keppens

Biography

On a frost-bright Brussels morning, 12 January 1866, Émile Keppens drew his first breath—and with it an appetite for the spotlight that would carry him from cobblestone back-rooms to the jittery glow of early cinema. He stepped before the camera as both conjurer and chronicler, steering the 1914 serial Les premières aventures de Chéri Bibi through its breakneck escapes, coaxing shadows into story for Murias in 1919, and, two years later, peeling back the triple faces of L’homme aux trois masques. Actor, director, chameleon, he stitched silent frames into living myth until age and southern sun caught up with him; he died in Marseille on 2 October 1926, the Mediterranean tide applauding a final curtain he could no longer take.