Catherine Hessling
Acting
Biography
Catherine Hessling, born Andrée Madeleine Heuschling, was a French stage and screen actress and the first wife of film director Jean Renoir. Hessling appeared in 15, mostly silent, films before retiring from the acting profession and withdrawing from public life in the mid-1930s.
Born: June 22, 1900
Place of Birth: Moronvilliers, Marne, France
Known For
The Little Match Girl
An impoverished girl tries to sell matches on NYE. Shivering with cold and unable to sell her wares, she sits in a sheltered nook. Striking a match to keep warm, she sees things in the flame.
Crime and Punishment
Former student Raskolnikov is pushed to murder when struggling to pay the rent on his apartment. When the murder is being investigated by the police, Raskolnikov struggles between trying to hide his guilt and the pressure to confess.
Whirlpool of Fate
Jean Renoir's directional debut and first silent film stars his wife, Catherine Hessling, as a young girl who manages to turn her tragic family life into one of joy and happiness.
The Sad Sack
The tale of a rich, flaky poet and his servant who both join the army and wind up in the same barracks.
Nana
Count Moffat becomes infatuated with Nana, a presumptuous stage actress, vulgar, hypocritical and promiscuous, willing to do anything to succeed.
Backbiters
About the conflict between social classes through the life of the unhappy Catherine Ferrand, an orphan girl, who is a victim of the jealousy of women and the greed of men.
Sea Fever
The ill-fated romance of a brow-beaten seaport slum café waitress and a young man with a possessive mother, who dreams of going out to sea.
Charleston Parade
Shot in three days, this surreal, erotic silent short shows a native white girl teaching a futuristic African airman the Charleston dance.
High and Low
The intersecting lives of neighbors in a courtyard apartment building in Vienna,including a football player related to the concierge,a new blonde maid hired by the wife of a baron,whom both the athlete and a baron flirt with,and a deadbeat tenant who fakes his suicide.
La P’tite Lili
La P’tite Lili is a silent short drama depicting the fate of a young orphaned girl in the working-class districts of Paris. The film follows Lili, a teenage girl marked by innocence and vulnerability, as she is drawn into the city’s underworld after encountering a man who exploits her circumstances. Told through impressionistic visual style rather than dialogue, the film presents a tragic portrait of social marginalization and moral collapse within an urban environment.
Filmography
as Elisabeth
as Mademoiselle Paula
as Catherine
as Le petit chaperon rouge
as L'institutrice
as Karen
as Catherine Ferrand
as Parisian savage
as Nana
as Virginia Rosaert