Pierre Batcheff Explained

Pierre Batcheff
Birth Place:	Harbin, Qing Dynasty
Birth Date:	23 June 1901?^[1]
Death Place:	Paris, Third French Republic
Other Names:	Benjamin Batcheff Piotr Bachev Пётр Бачев
Spouse:	Denise Piazza
Years Active:	1923–1932
Notable Works:	French: [[Un chien andalou]]

Pierre Batcheff (Russian: Пьер Батчефф; 23 June 1901? – 13 April 1932) was a French actor of Russian origin. He became a popular film actor from the mid-1920s until the early 1930s, and among his best-known work was the surrealist short film French: [[Un chien andalou]] (1929), made by Luis Buñuel in collaboration with Salvador Dalí. After appearing in about twenty-five films, he died at an early age from a drug overdose.

Life

Pierre Batcheff was born in Harbin in China and he grew up in Saint Petersburg. (One source says that his birth name was Benjamin Batcheff and that he adopted the name Pierre later from his father.)^[2] When war broke out in 1914, his family were on holiday in Switzerland and they decided to remain there, at first in Lausanne and then Geneva. Batcheff's father went bankrupt around 1917, leaving the family in financial difficulty, and Pierre started taking small parts in Georges Pitoëff's theatre company in Geneva. Between 1919 and 1921 he attended the Collège Calvin. In 1921, Batcheff moved with his family to Paris where he worked at first as a theatre actor.

Batcheff's earliest leading role in the cinema was in 1923 in Claudine et le poussin, in the first of several performances as a young aristocratic lover. In the next few years he made films with Marcel L'Herbier, Jean Epstein, and Abel Gance. By 1927 he was established as a popular young leading man, with interviews and covers photos in film magazines. He was at the same time dissatisfied with the type of roles which he was offered and he cultivated links with avant-garde circles, especially the surrealists. In 1927 he met Luis Buñuel and their discussions led to their subsequent collaboration on French: [[Un chien andalou]] in the following year.^[3]

In 1926 Batcheff met Denise Piazza, the daughter of a publisher, and they married in 1930. As Denise Batcheff, and later Denise Tual, she became a film editor and producer.

In the ten years of his film career, Batcheff made around 25 films. At the time of his death, he was engaged in a project with Jacques Prévert to write and direct a film which proved to be sufficiently radical to alarm some financial backers. Batcheff's behaviour showed signs of stress and became increasingly erratic, and in April 1932 he died from an overdose of drugs, possibly by suicide.^{[4] [5] [6] [7]}

One of the Parisian newspapers reporting on his death summarised his contemporary appeal as an actor: "As an artist, he brought an extremely personal tone of refinement, of sensitivity and of melancholy, which was not devoid of strength, and this earned him a very wide popularity". It also noted that on the day after his death he had been due to sign a contract with a producer to direct his first film.^[8]

Filmography

Year	Original title	English title	Director	Notes
1923				Lost film.
1924	Claudine et le poussin		Marcel Manchez	Role of Claude de Puygiron
1925	Princesse Lulu	Princess Lulu		Lost film.
1925	Autour d'un berceau		Georges Monca and Maurice Kéroul	Lost film.
1925
1926	Feu Mathias Pascal			Role of Scipion.
1926	Destinée			Lost film.
1926				Lost film.
1927				Role of Prince Serge Oblonoff.
1927	Napoléon			Role of General Hoche.
1927	Éducation de prince	Education of a Prince
1927	En rade
1927		Siren of the Tropics		With Josephine Baker.
1928				Lost film.
1928		Island of Love
1928	Vivre			Lost film.
1928			Jean Milva
1929		Two Timid Souls
1929	French: [[Un chien andalou]]			Short film.
1929	Monte Cristo			Role of Albert de Mortcerf.
1930	Illusions		Lucien Mayrargue
1930				Lost film.
1931	Les Amours de minuit	The Lovers of Midnight		Also in German version Mitternachtsliebe.
1931				Lost film.
1932	Baroud	Baroud		Batcheff appeared in both French and English versions.
1932	Amour... Amour...			Batcheff wrote the script only; filmed and released after his death.

Bibliography

• Powrie, Phil & Rebillard, Éric. Pierre Batcheff and stardom in 1920s French cinema. Edinburgh University Press, 2009
• Tual, Denise. Au cœur du temps. Paris: Carrère, 1987.

Notes and References

1. Various reference sources give his birth year as 1901: e.g. Bibliothèque nationale de France; Dictionnaire du cinéma français; sous la direction de Jean-Loup Passek. (Paris: Larousse, 1987); Ephraim Katz, The International Film Encyclopedia (London: Macmillan, 1980). On the other hand, the most detailed academic study of Batcheff's life and career, by Powrie and Rebillard (see Bibliography), says that Batcheff was born on 22 or 23 June 1907 [p.2] and cites as evidence his marriage and death certificates [p.24]; in this case he would have started his appearances in film at the age of 16, and he would have been only 24 when he died.
2. Phil Powrie & Éric Rebillard, Pierre Batcheff and stardom in 1920s French cinema. Edinburgh University Press, 2009. p. 2.
3. Phil Powrie & Éric Rebillard, Pierre Batcheff and stardom in 1920s French cinema. Edinburgh University Press, 2009. pp. 9–10.
4. Dictionnaire du cinéma français; sous la direction de Jean-Loup Passek. Paris: Larousse, 1987. p.30.
5. Dudley Andrew, Mists of Regret. Princeton University Press, 1995. p.78.
6. Guy Jacob, "Les films de Jacques Prévert", in Premier plan, no.14, novembre 1960 (spéciale Jacques Prévert).
7. Some accounts identify the drug as Veronal. In 1929, Batcheff's co-star in L'Île d'amour, Claude France, committed suicide by gas inhalation. Simone Mareuil, the leading actress in Un chien andalou, would later (1954) kill herself by setting herself on fire.
8. La Liberté (Paris), 16 avril 1932, p. 5, col. 3: "En tant qu'artiste, il apportait une note extrêmement personelle de finesse, de sensibilité et de tristesse, d'où la force n'était pas exclue, ce qui lui valait une très grande popularité".