Marcel Marceau births himself and dies in 8 minutes. No dialogue. All feels.
One in a series of twelve films in which the great French mime Marcel Marceau performs some works from his repertoire. In his introduction Marceau calls mime the essence of life and suggests that it can reach the soul through silence. In this pantomime he expresses life from the womb to the grave in a few minutes and illustrates one of the art's most notable characteristics - its ability to condense time and to create through time the pulse of humanity.
Acting
Marceau's face does what scripts cannot
Direction
Barnes lets the silence breathe, never intrusive
Production
Minimalist perfection—just a man, white paint, existence
Director
John W. Barnes
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This was one of twelve educational films Barnes made with Marceau for classrooms, proving even 1970s students had to suffer through arty content.
Marceau's famous character Bip was partially inspired by Chaplin's Little Tramp and his own childhood trauma hiding from Nazis during occupation—silence as survival, then art.
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