Maria Casarès Author

Albert Camus (1913-60) grew up in a working-class neighbourhood in Algiers. He studied philosophy at the University of Algiers, and became a journalist. His most important works include The Outsider, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Plague and The Fall. After the occupation of France by the Germans in 1941, Camus became one of the intellectual leaders of the Resistance movement. He was killed in a road accident, and his last unfinished novel, The First Man, appeared posthumously. Maria Casarès (1922–1996) was a Spanish-born French actress celebrated for her commanding presence on stage and screen. In 1942, she played the lead role on stage in Deirdre of the Sorrows by J. M. Synge and soon after launched her film career in Marcel Carné’s cinematic masterpiece Les Enfants du paradis. She went on to star in Robert Bresson’s Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne and gave perhaps her most memorable performance, as Death, in Jean Cocteau’s Orphée (1950).