Cary Grant, the Man He Dreamed of Being

To talk about Cary Grant is to tell the story of more than half a century of cinema, that of an absolute icon, unparalleled, an exceptional actor as no longer exists, the charm, the composure, the ambiguity, and a discretion that still make him the embodiment of elegance as Hollywood knew how to manufacture then. Spanning the 1930s, pre-code, the years of the censorship code, becoming the incarnation of screwball comedies, in which verbal jousting replaced the now taboo sex, then the favorite actor of Alfred Hitchcock, including a stint as a “spy” during World War II, Cary Grant never ceased to reinvent himself and to build a persona outside the standards and masculine codes of the time. Neither war hero or western hero, nor gangster, nor antihero, he embodies elegance, nonchalance, of a virility that he reinvented.

It is a film that questions virility, masculinity, in a Hollywood built on clichés and stereotypes, where each studio for over a century of cinema manufactured icons, sex symbols, both feminine and masculine. How could an actor, especially a British one, find a place that did not confine him to a single type of role? In a model of the American male, à la John Wayne or Gary Cooper? It is the genius of a Cary Grant, like very few other actors of that era, to have been able to play with these codes to create his own genre, surfing on the ambiguities of his character and his roles. A masterstroke.

Director : Sebastian Perez Pezzani
Production : Wichita Films
Producers : Clara Kuperberg & Julia Kuperberg
Co producer : Martine Melloul – Kali Pictures
Network : OCS
Year : 2023
Running Time : 55 minutes
US Distributor : BMG-Global
World Distributor : Prime Entertainment

Casting

Tony Maietta
Film Historian

Jonathan Kuntz
Film Historian