Alain Cuny Biography

A former medical student, Alain Cuny briefly pursued a painting career, entering the French film industry in the early '30s as a set and costume designer. In 1941 he turned to acting, at first playing leading roles but later specializing in character parts as priests and aesthetes. Most American audiences first caught up with Cuny when he played the villainous cleric Claude Frollo in the Anthony Quinn version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1956). He worked frequently in the films of Federico Fellini, playing the anguished intellectual Steiner in La Dolce Vita (1960) and Lycas in Fellini Satyricon (1970). Alain Cuny's final screen role was as the title character's father in Camille Claudel (1988). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

• 1. Steiner: Sometimes at night the darkness and silence weigh upon me. Peace frightens me; perhaps I fear it most of all. I feel it is only a façade hiding the face of hell. I think, 'What is in store for my children tomorrow?' 'The world will be wonderful', they say. But from whose viewpoint? If one phone call could announce the end of everything? We need to live in a state of suspended animation like a work of art, in a state of enchantment. We have to succeed in loving so greatly that we live outside of time, detached.
  From La Dolce Vita. Submitted by Lacey H (9 months ago)