
Acting
Born December 30, 1927 · Paris, France
Robert Hossein was a French film actor of Parsi origin, director and writer. He directed the 1982 adaption of Les Misérables, and appeared in Vice and Virtue, Le Casse, Les Uns et les Autres and Venus Beauty Institute. His most recent roles include starring as Michèle Mercier's husband in the Angélique series and as a Catholic priest who falls in love with Claude Jade and becomes a communist in Prêtres interdits (Forbidden Priests) in 1973. Hossein started directing films in 1956 with Les salauds vont en enfer from a story by Frédéric Dard whose novels and plays went on to furnish Hossein with much of his later film material. Right from the start Hossein established his characteristic trademarks: using a seemingly straightforward suspense plot and subverting its conventions (sometimes to the extent of a complete disregard of the traditional demand for a final twist or revelation) in order to concentrate on ritualistic relationships. This is the director's running preoccupation which is always stressed in his films by an extraordinary command of film space and often striking frame compositions where the geometry of human figures and set design is used to accentuate the psychological set-up of the scene. The mechanisms of guilt and the way it destroys relationships is another recurring theme, presumably influenced by Hossein's lifelong interest in the works of Dostoyevski. Although Hossein had some modest international successes with films like Toi, le venin and Le vampire de Dusseldorf, he was much singled out for scorching criticism by the critics and followers of the New Wave for the unashamedly melodramatic frameworks of his films. The fact that he was essentially an auteur director with a consistent set of themes and an extraordinary mastery of original and unusual approaches to staging his stories, was never appreciated. He was not averse to trying his hand at widely different genres and was never defeated, making the strikingly different spaghetti western Une corde, un Colt and the low-budgeted but daringly subversive period drama J'ai tué Raspoutine. However, because of the lack of wider success and continuing adverse criticism, Hossein virtually ended his film directing career in 1970, having concentrated on theatre where his achievements were never questioned, and subsequently returning to film directing only twice. With two or three exceptions, his films remain commercially unavailable and very difficult to see. He is the son of André Hossein a Zoroastrian French composer of Azerbaijani-Tajik descent, and a Jewish comedy actress from Kiev. He was married three times: first to Marina Vlady (he has two sons with her, Pierre and Igor), later to Caroline Eliacheff (with whom he has a son, Nicholas). He is currently married to actress Candice Patou, with whom he has one son, Julien. According to an article written by Emannuel Peze, Hossein experienced a conversion to Catholicism in 1971 during a visit to the Marian apparition at San Damiano in Lombardo Italy. Description above from the Wikipedia article Robert Hossein, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Cyrano de Bergerac
1990

Le Caviar rouge
1986

Les Misérables
1982

Falling Point
1970

Cemetery Without Crosses
1969

I Killed Rasputin
1967

The Vampire of Dusseldorf
1965

Marked Eyes
1964

Death of a Killer
1964

The Game of Truth
1961

The Taste of Violence
1961

The Wretches
1960

Double Agents
1959

Blonde in a White Car
1959

Forgive Our Trespasses
1956

The Wicked Go to Hell
1955

Picking Strawberries
2025

Raymond Devos dans tous ses sens
2022

Belmondo: The Incorrigible
2022

Love Is Better Than Life
2022

Hossein, Ronet, Trintignant : Confidences de trois acteurs inoubliables
2021

Noni : Le Fruit de l'espoir
2020

Aznavour by Charles
2019

Belmondo by Belmondo
2016

Marie-France Pisier, une femme sous influence
2014

Belmondo, il était une fois le beau monde
2011

Une femme nommée Marie
2011

Belmondo, itinéraire...
2011

Les fleurs maladives de Georges Franju
2009

A Man and His Dog
2009
Annie Girardot, ainsi va la vie
2008

Trivial
2007

Denn sie kennen kein Erbarmen - Der Italowestern
2006

San Antonio
2004

Antigone
2003

Scandalous Crimes
1999

Venus Beauty Institute
1999

The Wax Mask
1997

Les Miserables
1995

Paradjanov, le dernier collage
1995

L'Affaire
1994

Stranger in the House
1992

Children of Chaos
1989
La croisade des enfants
1988