PARIS: COMING Saturday she will be celebrating her 100th birthday. Does that bring to mind a trembling old dame in a wheelchair with a drooling, toothless mouth and unfocussed eyes behind a pair of thick glasses?

Gisèle Casadesus is none of this. One of her favourite pranks when a journalist visits her at her Montmartre apartment, the same where she was born on June 14, 1914, is to ask him to get down a bronze statue placed high on one of her bookshelves.

“But be careful! It’s very heavy!” she warns.

When one goes through the travail of getting steady on the stool while trying to lift prudently the precious object, one discovers it is light as a feather.

Much amused, the silver-haired lady with a smooth-skinned face, straight neck, bright intelligent eyes and no eyeglasses announces in a clear voice bursting in friendly laughter that the statue is actually made of pâpier maché.

“Give it to me just the same, I’ll tell you its story”, she says with good humour, sitting very upright in her sofa and extending a steady arm.

Stories she has more than many to recount, and they start inevitably as the souvenirs of a four-year-old girl growing up during World War I trauma when German cannon fire used to bring dozens of shells every day over Paris in the summer of 1918.

“I became familiar with Grosse Bertha’s booms earlier than I could learn writing,” she recalls.

She says the most memorable year of her life was 1934 when many wonderful things happened to her in a rapid succession. She finished her college studies with honours, got admitted to La Comédie Française, the legendary French theatre institute, got a role as a young actress in her first film and got married to a handsome and promising actor named Lucien Pascal.

“It was as if I was being offered so many gifts by God for my 20th birthday that year,” she concludes mirthfully.

She also remembers the hardest period of her life that was the German occupation of France during World War II. Though the Nazis had imposed no formal restrictions on La Comédie Française which continued staging works by Moliere, Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, Beaumarchais, Dumas, Hugo and so many others, the Fuhrer was obsessed with the idea of destroying all the historical landmarks in Paris once and for all.

“Is Paris burning?” Adolph Hitler would impatiently call on telephone every day Gen Dietrich von Choltitz whom he had appointed the military governor of the French capital.

“Enthusiastic but scared at the same time, not many people came to see our plays and the second most important purpose of our existence, besides acting, had become finding food to eat,” recollects Gisèle Casadesus.

Her passion for the stage has remained unimpaired all these years and she never misses an important theatre performance; she often accepts a movie role if it pleases her.

“I rejected so many film offers in the past as they were irreconcilable with my commitments to the theatre. But one must live with one’s times. Recently I played a part in a movie with Gérard Depardieu. I loved working with him. He reminded me of my teddy bear who was inseparable from me when I was a little girl.”

Talking to Gisèle Casadesus one suddenly feels that she projects this light and frivolous image of herself on purpose. When you think deep down, you come to realise that after being active on stage for more than eight decades she has earned the hard way the distinctions of being a lifetime member of La Comédie Française besides being a Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur as well as that of Ordre des Arts & des Lettres. She was also awarded the Grand Croix of the Ordre National de Mérit and an honorary Moliere Award for her entire career.

She has already worked in some 50 films but that hardly seems to be the end of her passion for movies.

“I have many, many projects for the coming years; you know even a long life passes very quickly.”

Descendent of a formidable line of actors, painters and musicians who had originally migrated to France from Spain in the middle of the 19th century, Gisèle Casadesus is proud of her heritage and all her four children have turned out to be prominent figures of the fine arts.

She is especially fond of her “little boy” Jean Calude Casadesus, the Conductor of the National Opera of Lille for the past 38 years who enjoys an international reputation as a musician and as a composer.

The “little boy” himself will turn 80 next year!

—The writer is a journalist based in Paris.

ZafMasud@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, June 8th, 2014