Feuillade was a Southerner, and the secret of his work must be sought in his childhood, in a village cradled in the vineyards halfway between Montpellier and the shores of the Mediterranean. Louis Jean Feuillade was the fifth child of Marie Avesque and Barthélémy Feuillade, born at Lunel on February 19th, 1873, in a house in the Place de la République (see the house on Google Maps) whose façade still bears the inscription of his father’s profession: Commissionaire en vins (wine merchant). Quite early on he displayed the characteristic features of his countrymen – the singsong accent, the easy-going nature, the passion for bullfighting, the merciless wit, the sudden bursts of noisy, hermless and quickly-appeased anger. In adolescence, his own personality began to emerge over these characteristics in a liking for practical jokes and a taste for poetry, which he declaimed in cafés to applause from his friends. And instinct for the theatrical sent him up on stage during local festivities to reveal an irresistible gift for comedy.

Francis Lacassin