Gilbert Dalleu

Biography

Born under the Provençal sun on 5 March 1861 in the hill-ringed village of Pons, Gilbert Dalleu traded the scent of lavender for the smell of greasepaint and stepped before the camera with the easy authority of a man who had already mastered the stage. Audiences first noticed him as Edmond Dantès in the 1918 fifteenth chapter of *Le comte de Monte Cristo*, where his measured triumph over betrayal gave the silent serial its emotional spine. Four years later he prowled through the gaslit alleys of *Les mystères de Paris* and stood defiant amid the collapsing banners of *L'agonie des aigles*, both films sealing his reputation in 1922 as one of French cinema’s most dependable dramatic anchors. On 1 March 1931 the curtain fell for the last time: Dalleu died in Paris, two days short of his seventieth birthday, leaving behind a trio of performances still flickering like guttering candles in the archives of early French film.