Commanding, durable French star with broad, heavy features who became his country's most important film star and who indeed came to embody French cinema itself. Gabin began his career with the Folies Bergeres in the 1920s and made his screen debut in "Chacun sa chance" (1930). By the end of the decade Gabin was France's leading screen idol, thanks to films like "Maria Chapdelaine" (1934), "Pepe le Moko" (1936), "La Grande Illusion" (1937), "La Bete Humaine" (1938) and "Daybreak" (1939). His troubled but heroic, working-class persona were vital in the development of French poetic realism and
