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PERSONNALITÉS Danemark

Le Danois Gabriel Axel, qui a remporté un Oscar pour Le festin de Babette, s’éteint à 95 ans

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- In English: Le réalisateur et acteur franco-danois avait mis 14 ans à adapter pour le grand écran le conte de Karen Blixen sur la cuisinière parisienne

Le Danois Gabriel Axel, qui a remporté un Oscar pour Le festin de Babette, s’éteint à 95 ans

Cet article est disponible en anglais.

“After tonight I have learnt that everything is possible in this beautiful world,” said Danish director Gabriel Axel when, on April 11 1988, his Babette’s Feast won the Oscar for Best Foreign-language Feature – the first Danish film ever to receive the Academy Award. On Sunday (February 9) Axel died, aged 95.

Born in Aarhus, Denmark, he grew up in Paris, where his father had a furniture factory; an educated cabinet maker, he returned to Denmark and was admitted to the drama school at the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen. Between 1946 and 1950, he worked as a freelance actor on the Parisian stages.

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In 1951 he began directing TV drama – he made 48 of them – branching into feature films from 1955; his break was A Woman Is Superfluous, based on Danish author Knud Sønderby’s novel, which he adapted first for television in 1955, then for the big screen. In the 1970s and 1980s he mainly lived in Paris, working on several TV productions.

While shooting comedies in Denmark – or erotic films in Germany – Axel also spent time on more serious projects, including Babette’s Feast, based on Danish author Karen Blixen’s tale about a French female refugee living as a maid-housekeeper-cook for two sisters in an isolated village in northern Norway. In Paris she becomes the owner of an haute cuisine restaurant, and one day she is recognised by one of its visitors.

It took 14 years before the film became a reality thanks to producer Just Betzer, of Panorama Films. “There is not a quarter of an hour’s cinema in this crap,” said a consultant at the Danish Film Institute when it was refused backing. The Norwegian co-producer pulled out, so locations were changed to western Jutland in Denmark. French actress Stéphane Audran, Sweden's Jarl Kulle, Bibi Andersson, and Denmark's Bodil Kjer and Birgitte Federspiel starred in the movie.

Axel most recently finished the script for another Blixen adaptation, The Heroine/Heloïse, one of her Winter Tales about the dilemma of a woman's rebellion – but his last feature was made in France: the 2001 drama Leïla. In 1948 he married Lucie Juliette Mørch, who died in 1996.

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(Traduit de l'anglais)

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