Roger Blin was a French

French people

The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...

 actor and director notable for directing (and starring in) the first production of Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

's Waiting for Godot

Waiting for Godot

Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for someone named Godot to arrive. Godot's absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play, have led to many different interpretations since the play's...

.

Blin was the son of a doctor; however, despite his father's wishes, Blin forged a career in the theatre. Initially part of the left-wing theatre collectives The Company of Five and The October Group, Blin assisted Antonin Artaud

Antonin Artaud

Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, more well-known as Antonin Artaud was a French playwright, poet, actor and theatre director...

 in producing the latter's The Cenci

The Cenci

The Cenci, A Tragedy, in Five Acts is a verse drama in five acts by Percy Bysshe Shelley written in the summer of 1819, and inspired by a real Italian family, the Cencis . Shelley composed the play at Rome and at Villa Valsovano near Livorno, from May to August 5, 1819...

at the Folies-Wagrams theatre in 1935. During the war

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, Blin was a liaison between the Resistance

French Resistance

The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...

 and the French Army.

His extensive career as both director and actor in both film and theatre has been largely defined by his work and relationship with Artaud, Samuel Beckett and Jean Genet

Jean Genet

Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...

. In addition to being a close friend and confident of Artaud during the latter's nine years of internment, he directed the first performances of Beckett's Waiting For Godot, Happy Days

Happy Days (play)

Happy Days is a play in two acts, written in English, by Samuel Beckett. He began the play on 8 October 1960 and it was completed on 14 May 1961. Beckett finished the translation into French by November 1962 but amended the title...

and Endgame

Endgame (play)

Endgame, by Samuel Beckett, is a one-act play with four characters, written in a style associated with the Theatre of the Absurd. It was originally written in French ; as was his custom, Beckett himself translated it into English. The play was first performed in a French-language production at the...

as well as directing the initial performance of Genet's The Blacks

The Blacks (play)

The Blacks: A Clown Show is a play by the French dramatist Jean Genet. Published in 1958, it was first performed in a production directed by Roger Blin at the Théatre de Lutèce in Paris, which opened on 28 October 1959....

and the controversial The Screens

The Screens

The Screens is a play by the French dramatist Jean Genet. Its first few productions all used abridged versions, beginning with its world premiere under Hans Lietzau's direction in Berlin in May 1961...

. Genet's key correspondences to Blin have been published by Editions Gallimard.

The 1986 Faber and Faber publication, "Samuel Beckett: The Complete Dramatic Works" carries only three dedications from Beckett: "Endgame" is dedicated to Blin, while "Come and Go" is for John Calder, and "Catastrophe" is for Vaclav Havel.

Selected filmography

• Orpheus (1950)
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame
  The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1956 film)
  The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1956 French film version of Victor Hugo's novel of the same name, directed by Jean Delannoy and produced by Raymond Hakim and Robert Hakim. The film is the first version of the novel to be made in color.It stars Mexican actor Anthony Quinn as Quasimodo and Gina...
  
  (1956)
• L'important c'est d'aimer
  L'important c'est d'aimer
  L'important c'est d'aimer is a French film directed by Polish filmmaker Andrzej Żuławski. It tells the story of a passionate love relationship between Nadine Chevalier, a B-List actress and Servais Mont, a photographer in the violent and unforgiving French show biz.In 1975, Żuławski coadapted...
  
  (1975)
• The Adolescent (1979)