Stars and Stardom in French Cinema: In-Depth Studies of Brigitte Bardot, Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Alain Delon, Juliette Binoche, and More

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Stars and Stardom in French Cinema

Also available from Continuum Alison Darren, Lesbian Film Guide Sue Harper, Women in British Cinema: Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know Stuart Klawans, Film Follies: The Cinema out of Order Geoffrey Macnab, Searching for Stars: Stardom and Screen Acting in British Cinema Ulrike Sieglohr (ed.), Heroines without Heroes: Reconstructing Female and National Identities in European Cinema 1945-51

Stars and Stardom in French Cinema Ginette Vincendeau

CONTINUUM London and New York

Continuum Wellington House 125 Strand London WC2R OBB

370 Lexington Avenue New York NY 10017-6503

© Ginette Vincendeau 2000 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. First published 2000 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0-8264-4730-9 (hardback) 0-8264-4731-7 (paperback)

Typeset by BookEns Ltd, Royston, Herts Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd, Guildford and King's Lynn

Contents

Acknowledgements Preface Conventions

vi vii xii

Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter

1 42 59

Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter

1 2 3 4

The French Star System Max Linden the world's first film star Jean Gabin: from working-class hero to godfather Brigitte Bardot: the old and the new: what Bardot meant to 1950s France 5 Jeanne Moreau and the Actresses of the New Wave: New Wave, new stars 6 Louis de Funes: le gendarme et les dnephiles 7 Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon: one smiles, the other doesn't 8 Catherine Deneuve: from ice maiden to living divinity 9 Gerard Depardieu: the axiom of contemporary French cinema 10 Juliette Binoche: the face of neo-romanticism

Bibliography Index

82 110 136 158 196 215 241 253 263

v

Acknowledgements

Many friends, family and colleagues have helped me by sharing opinions, passing on tapes, press cuttings and other material related to French stars and French cinema. My gratitude first of all goes to JeanLouis, Odette and Raymond Vincendeau, to Sophie and Guy Delanoue, to Simon Caulkin and to Peter Graham, who all helped generously and above all who love French stars as much as I do. Thanks also to my colleagues at Warwick, and in particular Jose Arroyo, Charlotte Brunsdon, Erica Carter, Richard Dyer, Ed Gallafent, Elaine Lenton, Jim Penn, Richard Perkins, Victor Perkins, and Neill Potts. I am also grateful to Isabelle de Courtivron, Christian Delanoue, Susan Hayward, Laurent Marie, Michel Marie, Giorgio Marini, Alison McMahan, Eliane Meyer, Alastair Phillips and Genevieve Sellier. I also want to thank my students for their enthusiastic and astute response to many of the stars and films discussed in this book. Very special thanks to Valerie Orpen for her accurate and cheerful research skills and to Simon Caulkin for everything.

VI

Preface

In most people's view, 'stars' means 'Hollywood stars'. Fan magazines give them pride of place, as do posters, biographies and illustrated books. A critics' poll published by The Guardian on 10 March 1995 reveals the same bias: only Jeanne Moreau and Anna Magnani out of the top ten women, and Jean Gabin and Gerard Depardieu out of the top ten men, owe their fame to non-English-language films. In academic film studies, Richard Dyer's seminal book Stars (1979a) and his subsequent Heavenly Bodies (1987), Christine Gledhill's collection Stardom: Industry of Desire (1991) and Jackie Stacey's study of stars' reception, Star Gazing (1994), along with many other star studies, are also devoted overwhelmingly to Hollywood, as was earlier, and more surprisingly, Edgar Morin's 1957 French book Les Stars. The supremacy of Hollywood stars is evident, including in France, where it is betrayed by the use of the English word 'star' (which came into use in the 1920s), as in the title of Morin's book. Nevertheless, the marginalization of French stars in popular and academic star studies is odd, given that the French film industry has fostered the most substantial and historically continuous line of stars to achieve world fame in their national films. Max Linder, Jean Gabin, Gerard Philipe, Simone Signoret, Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve, Alain Delon, JeanPaul Belmondo, Jeanne Moreau, Isabelle Huppert, Isabelle Adjani, Gerard Depardieu and Juliette Binoche, among others, are known internationally for their French films, as opposed to other non-American stars who became famous by emigrating to Hollywood - from Greta VII

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Preface

Garbo to Jean-Claude Van Damme - or to British and Australian stars who transcend national boundaries through the English language, such as Mel Gibson, Sean Connery and Daniel Day-Lewis. Although constrained by the poor international distribution of French films and the discrimination against 'foreign-language' films in international awards, the prominence of French stars is commensurate with the strength of the French film industry (by European standards) and the importance of the cinema in French culture. Recognizing that British stars achieve international success 'on the back of the Hollywood exposure and Academy Award success', Angus Finney observes that 'France is the only other European country that has a star system, and it is far less dependent on Hollywood than the UK's' (Finney, 1996, pp. 62—3).

This book is about French film stars, as a general phenomenon (explored in Chapter 1) and as individuals, examined in case studies of major stars. Simply put, by stars I mean celebrated film performers who develop a 'persona' or 'myth', composed of an amalgam of their screen image and private identities, which the audience recognizes and expects from film to film, and which in turn determines the parts they play. The star's persona is a commodity, positioning the performer and his/her work in the market-place and attracting finance: the name in huge letters on the posters and the marquee. The importance of stars is economic, cultural and ideological: those treated in this book have profoundly shaped French cinema, determining narratives and acting as valuable commodities for the industry in the domestic market and abroad. They have also had a great impact on French culture (and sometimes, as in the case of Brigitte Bardot, other cultures), by embodying and 'authenticating' (Dyer 1979a) diverse human types at specific historical moments: Linder's preWorld War I bourgeois dandy; Cabin's tragic working-class hero in the 1930s; Bardot's insolent 'sex kitten' in the 1950s; de Funes's cantankerous gendarme in the 1960s. By major stars I mean those singled out over the years by the magnitude of their box-office success and cultural resonance. Based on the above criteria, I posit an 'A-list' of French stars, many of whom are examined in this book: Max Linder, Jean Gabin, Brigitte Bardot, Jeanne Moreau, Catherine Deneuve, Louis de

Preface

ix

Funes, Alain Delon, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Gerard Depardieu and Juliette Binoche. If my choice of Gabin, Bardot, Moreau, Deneuve, Delon, Belmondo, Depardieu is unsurprising, the inclusion of Under and de Funes requires a little explanation. Before World War I, Linder was the most famous international screen actor. Indeed, I argue that he was the first real star of world cinema. But, while early cinema historians acknowledge his importance, he has dropped out of mainstream film history and certainly out of star studies. Since the study of early French cinema remains a 'specialist' territory, even recent accounts of the origins of stardom ascribe it to Hollywood, ignoring Linder's precedent. Louis de Funes points to a more nationally bound oblivion. He is statistically the most successful French star at the post-war French box-office, and yet is systematically derided or ignored by critics and historians. In both cases, a reassessment is needed. Two other chapters in this book require a brief comment. Chapter 5 approaches the stars of the New Wave as a group. This is because, contrary to the basis of film stardom in 'triumphant individualism' (Dyer, 1979a, p. 102), the New Wave developed a new kind of 'collective' stardom, even if two of the people concerned — Belmondo and Moreau — subsequently developed individual careers. Finally, although Juliette Binoche lacks the longevity of the other names on my A-list, the substantial first fifteen years of her career allow me to trace the legacy of New Wave stardom on contemporary French cinema, and to chart the increased internationalization of French stars in the 1990s.

In choosing a relatively small number of stars to study individually, my aim was to go for depth and detail rather than coverage. I am aware that, like all selections, mine is bound to surprise or even annoy some readers. Simone Signoret, Martine Carol, Michele Morgan, Gerard Philipe, Michel Simon, Jean Marais, Annie Girardot, Fernandel, Bourvil, Raimu, Isabelle Huppert and Isabelle Adjani are contenders for the A-list, as are Micheline Presle, Danielle Darrieux, Maurice Chevalier, Lino Ventura and Yves Montand. Others will point to the wonderful Arletty and to fascinating maverick figures such as Musidora and Josephine Baker, and to art cinema stars like Anouk Aimee and Delphine Seyrig. There is

x

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indeed scope for further study of French stars - including in France, where the lesser impact of cultural studies and the dominance of auteur and aesthetic studies means that stars are not considered a worthy object for serious analysis, so that critical writing on stars is relegated chiefly to biographical, impressionistic and illustrated material. Hearteningly, more analytical work on French stars is beginning to appear in English — in particular, Alastair Phillips (1998) on Carol, Susan Hayward on Signoret and Carrie Tarr on Presle (both in Sieglohr, 2000), and Vicky Callaghan (1999) on Musidora. Typical of French resistance to analytical star studies is Bernard Chardere's preface to Raymond Chirat and Olivier Barrot's book on French character actors Les Excentriques du cinema francais. Chardere erects a false dichotomy between appreciating stars and popular cinema, on the one hand, and academic film studies, on the other hand, to the detriment of the latter. He would, he says, give up the whole of '[Ropars-] Wuilleumier, Bellour and Metz' in exchange for popular films and stars 'close to the popular heart' (Chirat and Barrot, 1983, p. 8). Personally, I can't see why we can't have both. My aim in this book is to provide a 'serious' look at a number of important French stars, but also, I hope, to convey the pleasure I and millions of others have in watching and listening to them. Without exception, the stars in this book make even mediocre films worth watching. In their best films they are brilliant. My work is informed by the methodologies developed in AngloAmerican film studies over the last twenty years, and it broadly falls within a socio-cultural approach to film history. In this, Richard Dyer's work has been seminal. Indeed, he single-handedly created 'star studies' (although Morin's work, in a less theoretical way, was also insightful). Since this field, though mostly restricted to Hollywood stars, is now sufficiently developed, there is no need to rehearse its basic tenets, although, where appropriate, I discuss and modify them. In my analyses of individual stars, I call upon the three broad types of material that make up film stardom: the stars' performance in the films themselves; trade promotion and publicity; and commentaries/criticism (in French and in English) - but the films themselves are always central. I aim to describe and analyse the performance and type of characters played by these key French stars, as well as their importance in the culture. Their private lives are examined only in so far as they form part of their

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xi

'persona'. In other words, I am not trying to discover the 'true' person behind the star, but am interested in how the perceived authentic individual informs the star's image. While I use critical paradigms developed in the UK and the USA, my concern is to show the French specificity of the stars studied. There is a long way to go before the American bias of star studies is redressed. Fortunately, this will give me and others the excuse and the pleasure of studying and celebrating the great stars of French cinema for some time to come. Note

This book is the result of a long-standing interest in French stars. Earlier parts of some chapters have been published previously: on Gabin in Anatomie d'un my the: Jean Gabin (Gauteur and Vincendeau, 1993); on Bardot in Paragraph, Vol. 15, No. 1, 1992; on Moreau in Sight and Sound, December 1998; on Deneuve in Sight and Sound, April 1993; on Depardieu in Screen, Autumn 1993; on Binoche in Sight and Sound, December 1993. All these, however, were substantially updated, expanded and rewritten for this book. Material on the star system, Max Linder, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Alain Delon and Louis de Funes appears for the first time, as does the material on stars of the New Wave.

Conventions Each chapter is followed by a filmography of the star studied and I have tried not to burden the text by too many dates and translations. Englishlanguage release titles are indicated in the filmography. Where necessary, I have translated some film titles within the text. Filmographies The year of release is indicated whenever possible. The name of the director is indicated after the title in parentheses. Example: 1956 Les Comediennes (Andre Hunnebelle) Where appropriate, an English-language release title or English translation is indicated after the original title, separated with a slash. Example: 1983 Le Marginal/The Outsider (Jacques Deray) All films are fiction features unless otherwise indicated in brackets [short; ep. — episode; doc — documentary; TV = television]. Example: 1961 Les Parisiennes [ep. 'Sophie'] (Marc Allegret) The country of production is France unless otherwise indicated. Example: 1964 Repulsion (Roman Polanski, UK) If the film has an alternative title, this is also indicated in brackets after the original title. Example: 1959 A double tour/Web of Passion [A doppia mandata] (Claude Chabrol, France/Italy) Citations The 'Harvard' system of citation has been used, whereby a brief reference to the cited book's author, date and, where appropriate, page numbers is given in parentheses, and the full references are listed alphabetically at the end of the book. Most references to periodicals, on the other hand, are listed in the notes, which are found at the end of each chapter. Translations Quotations from written material or film dialogues in French are all mine, unless an English-language source is credited. xii

CHAPTER 1

The French Star System

'I use stars to make my cinema more effective ... My films are better with stars than without.' Jean-Pierre Melville1

There are many French film stars, but is there a French 'star system'? No, if by this is meant the highly organized management of stars developed by the American studios in the classical period or the Rank stable of British stars and starlets of the 1950s. But yes, in the sense that stars are crucial to the economy of French cinema: most mainstream films feature stars who in turn organize its narrative hierarchy and publicity. Rene Chateau, once Belmondo's publicity manager, said, 'I am for the "star system" and I believe in the impact of Jean-Paul Belmondo's head in close-up (which was my choice for the posters of Flic ou voyou and Le Professionnel).' 2France has a star system by virtue of the number of major film stars in activity, the length of their filmographies and the discursive production that exists around them: press, radio and television coverage, award ceremonies (the Cesars) and festivals, especially Cannes. Yes, also, in terms of the glamour internationally associated with French stars from Max Linder to Juliette Binoche — who frequently function as ambassadors of French cinema and French culture abroad. French stars are talented, driven, charismatic and mostly very handsome individuals, but they need a support system in order to reach and stay at the top of their profession, in the sense given by Francesco Alberoni when he says that the star system 'never creates the star, but it proposes the candidate 1

2


for "election", and helps to retain the favour of the "electors"' (cited in Dyer, 1979a, p. 22). The aim of this chapter is to examine this support system and identify the salient features of French film stardom, especially in terms of how it differs from what remains the ultimate reference, Hollywood. Let us start with a snapshot of Paris during the 1998-9 festive season. Theatre-goers can see Jean-Paul Belmondo on stage as the hero of Frederick ou le boulevard du crime at the Theatre Marigny. He can be seen on television in repeats of flic ou voyou (20 December), Les Maries de I'an II (30 December) and Le Cerveau (3 January 1999). Though none of his films are actually in Parisian cinemas that week, his new film Une chance sur deux, co-starring Alain Delon, had been shown earlier in the year and repertory cinemas screen his classics A bout de souffle, Pierrot le fou and Le Doulos at regular intervals. Both Une chance sur deux and Belmondo's stage appearances generated ample press and television coverage. Meanwhile, bookshops display his face on the cover of two new books: Antoine de Baecque's La Nouvelle Vague (1998), with a black-and-white still from A bout de souffle, and Jean Douchet's Nouvelle vague (1998), where he appears as the hero of Pierrot le fou, his face painted blue. Large video chain stores such as FNAC and Virgin stock regular supplies of his films, like those of other stars in the boxed sets of the 'gueules d'etoiles series. Belmondo's ubiquity typifies the media spread across which successful French stars range in the late 1990s and the beginning of the twenty-first century, and illustrates two other important aspects of French stardom: the co-existence of mainstream and auteur cinema in a single star's image (Le Cerveau and Pierrot le fou), and the imbrication of theatre and film with which I shall start, and where indeed it all started.

Stages and screens

The terminology used to designate French film stars, both before 1920 when the English word entered the French vocabulary and since, is inherited from the stage: etoile ('star') and vedette ('prominent person') indicated status in terms of leading part or the position of the name on theatrical posters and later film posters and credits. While etoile is now used more often for ballet and circus than for the cinema, vedette has


3

endured. In common usage, it is simply a synonym for star, though it can sometimes distinguish between 'real stars' (les stars) and merely famous players (les vedettes). Among the vedettes, the category of the 'eccentrics' needs to be mentioned here. As defined by Raymond Chirat (Chirat and Barrot, 1983), the so-called eccentrics are 'super character actors' who formed, from the 1930s, a dense population of extremely well-known actors delineating a social typology, and who almost invariably came from the stage. Also inherited from the theatre, the monstre sacre (literally 'sacred monster') often, too, designates a star, in the sense of a flamboyant, hyperbolic figure. For Colin Crisp, monstres sacres are exalted types of character actors with well-defined physical types, as opposed to romantic stars (Crisp, 1993, p. 360). But in truth, monstre sacre, like vedette, is interchangeable with star. For instance, when Jean Marais died, the daily Le Parisien gave over its front page on 10 November 1998 to a huge portrait with the title The last monstre sacre. We may note that in French all three words, star, etoile and vedette, are feminine which, since they apply equally to male and female actors, may denote, as Odile Quirot argues, 'their status as fragile objects' (in Namiand, 1985, p. 248). Monstre sacre, on the other hand, is masculine and applies equally to men and women. French cinema, like other national cinemas, from the start drew its actors — and indeed its notion of stardom — from the stage, casting its net widely. It also developed the earliest sound systems to capture their voices. As early as 1900, Clement Maurice was making films with stage stars Sarah Bernhardt, Coquelin and Rejane, using his Phono-CinemaTheatre system. Between 1902 and 1906, Alice Guy filmed cafe-concert star Mayol and opera tenors for short sound scenes, using the Gaumont chronophone system (McMahan, 1997, p. 99). The two brightest musichall stars of all, Mistinguett and Maurice Chevalier, were in demand for numerous 'silent' movies, from 1908 (Chevalier) and 1909 (Mistinguett). Film comics, too, came from the cafe-concert, the cabaret, the theatre or the circus: Andre Deed had worked at the Folies-Bergere; Prince (Rigadin in the cinema) had been a star of the boulevard theatre; Max Linder had appeared on stage in Bordeaux and Paris; and the acrobat Bourbon became the film comic Onesime. From 1907 onwards, the film d'art movement drew stars from the legitimate theatre, such as Rejane, and especially from the Comedie-

4


Plate 1 Michele Morgan: the construction of a star's image.

Francaise: Sarah Bernhardt, Gabrielle Robinne, Louise Lagrange. One of the first stage stars to become a 'film star' in this respect was Charles Le Bargy, lead player in L'Assassinat du Due de Guise (1908). The film was produced by the company Film d'Art, which, with others such as SCAGL (Societe Cinematographique des Auteurs et Gens de Lettres, a Pathe affiliate), aimed to 'redefine the cinema and attract a white-collar and bourgeois audience' (Abel, 1994, p. 40). Writers, directors and actors in these companies spanned the worlds of theatre, opera and film. Threats of warfare between film and stage over copyright were squashed early. In 1907 Edmond Benoit-Levy, a trade press writer, negotiated a 'reconciliation' through the Societe Francaise des Auteurs Dramatiques (ibid.), laying down the legal basis of a fruitful cooperation between the stage and the cinema in France. While this move facilitated the embourgeoisement of the cinema, it also legitimized film acting. In France, as in America, a shift in the film industry's promotional discourse took place around the years 1908 to 1912, from the technicalities of the film apparatus and the films' stories to the actors (Dyer, 1979a; Butler, 1991), thus initiating the emergence of 'stars'. Richard Abel points out that at


5

'About the same time that American producers began to publicize "star" actors, in 1910, Pathe also introduced publicity photos confirming its "star system," beginning with an advertisement expressing best wishes to Linder (after an appendectomy).' Abel also states that in 1909, 'Under began appearing in a regular series of Pathe comedies, with his name soon included in each film's advertisement' (Abel, 1998, pp. 53 and 237). While this illustrates one of the key definitions of stardom, namely the articulation of the professional with the private, the timing of Linder's 'starification' challenges the notion that film stardom originated with the American Florence Lawrence in 1910 (see Chapter 2). Broadly speaking, two strands of stage spectacle - comic, singing and more proletarian on the one hand, and serious and culturally respectable on the other - provided different types of training and repertoires. This dichotomy continued throughout the history of French cinema and shaped film genres as well as performance styles: comics such as Fernandel in the 1930s and de Funes in the 1960s came from the cafeconcert before the war and the cabaret after; from the 1970s they came from the satirical cafe-theatre. French films drew heavily on the boulevard theatre, which offered mostly light-hearted amalgams of vaudeville farce and classical theatre. While boulevard plays and cafe-concert acts were adapted in the silent period, the coming of sound ushered them triumphantly on to the film scene with numerous direct adaptations, and, through the importance of script and dialogue, also attracted writers from the theatre. This led to a whole new cast for French cinema, with actors such as Pierre Fresnay, Michel Simon, Jules Berry, Raimu and Charles Boyer close to the boulevard, and Cabin, Arletty, Carette and Fernandel to the cafe-concert, though an intense two-way traffic developed between the two. In addition, two of the most important film directors of the period, Sacha Guitry and Marcel Pagnol, were playwrights who used the cinema to adapt their plays, often with the same cast, while figures such as Louis Jouvet, Jean-Louis Barrault and Charles Dullin subsidized their avant-garde theatre with their film fees. Pagnol and Guitry transferred to the cinema the notion of a troupe of actors (as later, in different genres, Robert Dhery and the 'Branquignols', Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer and Robert Guediguian have done). In the 1940s and 1950s, the drive towards high production values and respectability led the Tradition of Quality cinema to draw substantially

6


on the legitimate stage again, especially the Theatre National Populaire and the Comedie-Francaise. Gerard Philipe was emblematic of this move. Philipe, like Edwige Feuillere and others such as Pierre Blanchar and Pierre Brasseur, brought to film the cultural legitimacy and refined tones of classic plays. Philipe, for instance, played a much-acclaimed version of Corneille's Le Cid. Another strand of crossover from stage to film included actors such as Yves Montand and Serge Reggiani, whose stage experience derived from the newly developed 'one-man show' genre, and operetta singers, especially Georges Guetary, Luis Mariano and Annie Cordy. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the New Wave's 'clean-slate' policy aimed to challenge traditional practices in French cinema, including performance. As discussed in Chapter 5, New Wave directors went for the appearance of spontaneity, choosing stars who came from the catwalk or the university rather than stage training, although the most successful among them in the long run were Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jeanne Moreau, both theatrically trained (and even those who had gone straight into film, such as Anna Karina, eventually acquired stage experience). Under the impact of dnema-verite, the New Wave signalled a turn to a greater naturalism, reinforced by location shooting and by the post-1968 liberalization of censorship, which brought slang and the vernacular to dialogues. But similar changes affected the theatre, and the 1970s cinema drew performers from the libertarian cafe-theatre and the new experimental theatre (for instance, Ariane Mnouchkine, who also directed films). The return to 'quality', studio-shot films from the 1980s, particularly evident in heritage cinema, correspondingly meant a return to the more traditional theatre in terms of mise-en-scene and source material — see, for instance, Cyrano de Bergerac (1990) — and of stars' career paths (Belmondo here being a key example). The theatre section in the weekly listing magazine Pariscope includes a 'Where are they playing?' column which shows clearly the intermingling of stage and cinema. For example, during the week of 25 November to 1 December 1998, it was possible to see on stage, among others: Pierre Arditi, JeanPaul Belmondo, Danielle Darrieux, Alain Delon, Sami Frey, Daniel Gelin, Annie Girardot, Gerard Jugnot, Bulle Ogier and Genevieve Page, as well as the younger Florence Darel and Christian Vadim — all of whom have prominent film careers. A year later (22—28 December 1999), the list


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included Daniel Auteuil, Claude Brasseur, Jean-Claude Brialy, Francois Cluzet, Darry Cowl, Suzanne Flon, Catherine Frot, Michel Galabru, Jacques Gamblin, Bernadette Lafont, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Philippe Torreton (while Belmondo was touring his Frederick ou le boulevard du crime in Brussels). This brief survey shows, as far as actors are concerned, the extraordinary closeness of cinema and stage in France. This is remarkable given that the main critical debates within French film, dating back to the 1920s, have aimed to isolate the specificity of film as a medium and, after the coming of sound, to distance it especially from the theatre. It is noteworthy also in its difference from Hollywood. There are several reasons for this closeness, starting with geography. Actors can move easily between stage and cinema, because the power centres, venues and audiences are concentrated in Paris (even if there are active theatrical centres in Nancy and Strasbourg while, before the war especially, Marseilles boasted its own theatrical and cinematic culture). This is markedly different from the USA, where Broadway is separated from Hollywood by a continent (the French situation is closer to the British, though there are differences, too). Second, whether they are aiming at a film or stage career, actors train in theatrical schools,3 which today include state-sponsored schools such as the Conservatoire and ENSATT (or 'rue Blanche' school), and a myriad of private courses (Bantcheva, 1999, p. 10). Accordingly, agents still go to the theatre to spot new talent. The third reason is economic. Most actors only work intermittently and need the theatre as well as television and dubbing work to make ends meet. Major film stars such as the ones in this book tend to move away from the stage in their period of peak stardom and return to it when their film careers decline, clothed in their added film star aura. Thus, Belmondo's film box-office waned while he triumphed in Kean and Cyrano de Bergerac on stage. This phenomenon is more marked for women, whose careers on film tend to be shorter: for example, both Edwige Feuillere and Danielle Darrieux continued their stage career well into their eighties. The crossover from film to theatre has markedly increased in the 1980s and 1990s. What effect has the closeness of theatre and film at institutional and personnel levels had on performance? French theatrical acting was historically based on a rigid hierarchy of emplois (types) linked to

8


codified performance styles and gestures - jeune premier (romantic male lead), ingenue, comic second roles, etc. (de Jomaron, 1992, pp. 132-9) which transferred to the cinema, with stars normally occupying the romantic lead or, more rarely, the comic lead. Challenges to this typology were made throughout the twentieth century, with a parallel attack on texts and mise-en-scene by several modernizers: Antoine and his naturalist theatre, Jacques Copeau, the 'Cartel' (Louis Jouvet, Charles Dullin, Georges Pitoeff, Gaston Baty) and Antonin Artaud (ibid., pp. 228—302), all figures who were involved in film as both directors and actors. In the 1960s, under the impact of American and Scandinavian theatre, and of the 'new theatre' in France (lonesco, Beckett), theatrical training greatly changed, replacing emphasis on the teaching of masters and great texts, and hence of the traditional emplois, with body and voice training, and encouraging improvisation, paralleling what was happening in the cinema (Nores in Namiand, 1985, pp. 40-1). A general trend, in the theatre, towards greater naturalism is therefore clear. However, as de Jomaron (1992, passim) shows, this 'grand narrative' contains many different parallel tracks, setbacks and opposing factions. For instance, naturalistic performance has been defined at times as an absence of technique and at other times as consummate technique, a point illustrated by the stars in this book. While Bardot's naturalness came from her lack of training, Depardieu and Moreau, both with extensive (and very different) trainings on stage, are capable of similar effects. Thus, the closeness of French film to the theatre does not mean a uniform, 'theatrical' type of performance understood in the sense of an emphatic or histrionic style. There are three main reasons for this. First, because of the wide spectrum of theatrical traditions drawn upon, as mentioned above, which was reflected in the co-existence of different performance registers at any given time. For instance, Jean Renoir's La Grande illusion (1938) contrasts Cabin's minimalism, Fresnay's mannered precision and Carette's broad comedy to signify layers of class differences. Some actors, like Cabin, evolved in the space of a few years from the comedy and song routines of the music-hall to a minimalist, interiorized performance style (see Chapter 3) eminently suited to dramatic film roles. Some were capable of shifting back and forth between registers: notably Raimu and Michel Simon, who alternated between boulevard comedies and melodramatic roles


9

throughout the 1930s. Second, there were broad changes across time, as in the theatre, especially from the 1960s onwards. As Jean-Pierre Miquel, director of the Conservatoire put it, 'performance became more interiorized, more truthful, more sincere, and the word "theatrical" lost its pejorative connotation' (in Sallee, 1987, p. 8). This interiority was different from the Actors' Studio (even though the latter was much admired in France). Belmondo observed that The performance of actors from the Actors' Studio is very studied, selfconscious, worked over, while mine stems from my impulsions, my character and my spontaneity.'4 The influence of the Actors' Studio, especially the emphasis on an expressionist use of the body, is perhaps more visible in the work of stars such as Depardieu and Binoche — though, again, Depardieu can switch from this style, suited to auteur cinema, to a comic performance which is both naturalistic and emphatic (see Chapter 9). Third, there are cinematic parameters governing film performance. Historians of early cinema acting have identified a move from a 'melodramatic' and 'pictorial' style (emphatic, based on particular poses) to a more 'realistic' or naturalistic style, aiming at verisimilitude (Pearson, 1992; Brewster and Jacobs, 1997). Brewster and Jacobs further argue for a French and European specificity, relating editing styles to performance, and comparing the slower European editing to American rapid cutting: 'Given their lengthy takes and tendency to employ deep staging in long shot, European films [of the 1910s] necessarily relied more upon the actor and the acting ensemble to provide dramatic emphasis' (Brewster and Jacobs, 1997, p. Ill); and in Europe, 'filmmakers were more likely to retain the long-shot framings in which actors were shown full figure' (p. 120). The use of longer takes and staging in depth, compared with American cutting (both temporal and within the frame), certainly distinguishes French cinema until the 1960s at least (Salt, 1983; Crisp, 1993). During the classical period (1930—60), Crisp convincingly argues that in French cinema more attention is given to decor and atmosphere than to foregrounding stars. The latter was considered a typically American practice designed for 'selling female flesh' (Crisp, 1993, p. 384). With the advent of sound, we can add the greater importance placed on dialogue, entailing larger shots and longer takes to display actors interacting with each other, and allowing the spectator to see the

10


entirety of their bodies and gestures. Thus, the 'slower' rhythm of French cinema, at least during the classical period, stages an interplay between actors which is both visual (gestures) and aural (dialogue), and tends to place stars among an ensemble of actors rather than isolate them with close-ups: see, for instance, Gabin and de Funes. The Tradition of Quality costume dramas of the 1950s, which all feature major stars (for example, in 1955 Les Grandes manoeuvres, with Gerard Philipe and Michele Morgan, and French Cancan with Jean Gabin and Maria Felix), make remarkably little use of close-ups of the stars' faces. Compared to Monroe's, Bardot's films also use fewer close-ups. Although, in the long run, French cinema followed the trend towards shorter takes and more close-ups (the latter especially under the influence of television), longer takes and the tendency to incorporate the star in a group are still more marked in French films of the 1970s and 1980s. This is evident when French films are compared with their American remakes (Vincendeau, 1993). French stardom is thus altogether less defined by close-ups, both of the stars and of reactions to them, than in American cinema, and a more global' approach has been taken to depicting the actors' bodies in the frame. The above has indicated trends in the relationship between film and the theatre throughout the history of French cinema. The stars studied in this book cover the spectrum of these different links: some came from the music-hall (Gabin, de Funes), others had solid training in the theatre (Linder, Belmondo, Moreau, Depardieu, Binoche), some came from related arts such as dance (Bardot), and others again, like Deneuve and Delon, had little to do with the stage, at least initially. But whichever tradition they came from, they became stars because of the way they reacted to the camera; they were film stars whose careers were regulated by the French film industry (and to some extent vice versa) and the place of cinema in French culture.

Stars and the industry Stars and film production

French stars, as in Hollywood, are valuable commodities for the film industry, determining the projects that get made, dominating their


11

identity, and often their making, and playing a key role in promotion and exhibition. But there are also differences. The first significant French 'difference' pertains to production, in particular the artisanal structure of the industry. As Colin Crisp puts it, The relative absence of a star system in France is due primarily to the distinctive nature of its production system and to the less developed form of capitalism of which that in turn was a symptom' (Crisp, 1993, p. 225). Large organized studios have been rare in French cinema, and so too the notion of stars contractually tied to such studios. Historically, there are exceptions to this rule. Early cinema comics were affiliated to studios, in particular Pathe and Gaumont, while the Film d'Art company signed ComedieFrancaise stars. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Pathe-Natan tried to build up a stable of stars - Mon film of 28 August 1931 announced 'the exclusive signing of Marcelle Chantal by Pathe-Natan'. In the same issue, the whole of page 8 was devoted to showcasing 'Pathe-Natan's directors and artistes'. However, since the collapse of that studio and of Gaumont-Franco-Film-Aubert in 1933-4, French cinema essentially has functioned as a 'cottage industry'. Small production companies became, and remained, the norm, many being set up for just one or two films. In the post-war period, even large companies such as the re-formed Gaumont did not include the property of stars. The pattern, which had been set in the 1930s, was of deals involving a small number of films between a star and a producer. The models for the relationship between stars and the industry mimicked the small-scale and varied nature of film production: theatrical troupes (Marcel Pagnol, Sacha Guitry, Robert Guediguian); couples (Henri Decoin and Danielle Darrieux in the 1950s, Yves Allegret and Simone Signoret in the 1940s, Gerard Oury and Michele Morgan in the 1950s), as well as those of the New Wave (see Chapter 5); and friendships (Gabin and Julien Duvivier in the 1930s, Delon and Jacques Deray in the 1970s, Depardieu and Claude Berri in the 1980s and 1990s). In the 1950s, there were attempts at Hollywood-style operations, with a more systematic promotion of stars, the creation of fan clubs and the linking of casting to beauty pageants. These, however, did not become really significant. This was partly because, as Crisp points out:

12

Stars and Stardom in French Cinema The production companies had no vested interest in the merchandising of actors and actresses as stars, as did their Hollywood counterparts; the star was not their property, so his or her value would not reflect directly on the company's profits; any increase in the exchange value of an actor would benefit other companies. (Crisp, 1993, p. 225)

To this economic argument I would add a cultural one, namely the greater value placed on independence and artistry by the stars themselves, by their audience and by the profession as a whole, precluding the most overt aspects of the treatment of stars as 'merchandise'. Notwithstanding a less regimented relationship, the importance of stars to the film industry is undeniable, if difficult to quantify. With very few exceptions - for example, Man oncle (1958),5 Le Grand bleu (1988), L'Ours (1988) and Les Randonneurs (1997) - all the top French box-office successes have featured one or more major stars. In the 1930s, Renoir's most popular films were the ones starring Gabin (Les Bas-fonds, La Grande illusion and La Bete humaine); in the 1950s box-office hits were comedies starring Fernandel (La Vache et le prisonnier], thrillers like Les Diaboliques (with Simone Signoret) and La Verite (Bardot), and costume dramas with stars like Philipe, Gabin, Morgan and Darrieux; in the early 1980s, Belmondo's box-office was considered 'the barometer of the good health of cinema in France'.6 In the heyday of Belmondo's mainstream career, each of his (and Delon's) films ensured the livelihood of about five hundred people and guaranteed substantial tax revenue for the state.7 It is extremely difficult to establish how much stars are 'worth' financially, as the evidence is patchy and unreliable. For example, there has been much talk of inflation in star salaries in the film trade press.8 Yet the proportion of actors' salaries relative to film costs has not significantly altered since the 1930s, and if anything seems to have gone down, possibly because other costs such as sets and equipment have gone up. Actors' salaries made up 20 per cent of film budgets in 19349 and again in the 1950s (Morin, 1972, p. 4), but by the early 1990s, the figure was 12.5 per cent.10 Of course, these average figures hide considerably higher salaries for major stars. By the mid-1980s, 'more than 30 French actors were able to demand salaries of over FFlm per film',11 including, for instance, Depardieu and Montand with salaries of FF3 to 4m (Quirot in Namiand, 1985, p. 248).


13

The consensus in the French film industry is that the early 1980s, with de Funes's death and the declining box-office pull of Belmondo and Delon, signalled the end of the 'classical' star system, the end of a reliable 'star-value' and the rise of a 'film-value'.12 Lower attendances, the loss of the homogeneous family audience and the huge rise in television and video ownership meant that even the biggest star was no longer sufficient to guarantee success in the cinema. The value of the star was now linked, on a one-to-one basis, to the film 'package', which included other aspects of the film such as topic and scenery. Crucial examples are Jean de Florette and Manon des sources (1986), which, apart from major established stars (Depardieu and Montand) and new vedettes Emmanuelle Beart and Daniel Auteuil, equally showcased the Pagnol text and the Provencal landscape. As in Hollywood, most stars have become more vulnerable, on a 'you're only as good as your last movie' basis. For example, Montand's salary of FF4.5m (plus royalties) in Jean de Florette went down to FFl.Sm in 1992 for IPS, because of box-office failures in between, including Jacques Demy's Trois places pour le 26 (1988).13 In fact, since the late 1960s and 1970s, the growing instability of the film industry has prompted stars to adopt various strategies to secure their financial footing: becoming a producer (and in some cases venturing into other business - see Chapters 7 and 9); taking part of their salaries as a percentage of profits; appearing in advertising. Many stars have become co-producers. There were precedents during the crisis which affected French cinema in the immediate post-World War I period, when important stars like Rene Navarre, Rene Carl and Musidora 'all broke away from Gaumont to head short-lived production units' (Abel, 1984, p. 11). But, as Abel says, these attempts were transitory. More solid were those of the post-World War II period. Pioneers in this respect were Cabin and Fernandel, who founded a joint company, GAFER, in 1964, and Delon with his company Delbeau (later Adel). Now many more, from Belmondo (his company, Cerito Films, was founded in 1971) and Isabelle Adjani (Lilith Film), to Victoria Abril and Depardieu (DD Productions), have founded their own production companies. Some stars use their firms to push young directors (for instance, Belmondo produced Claire Denis's first feature Chocolat in 1988), but, more important, their function is to generate new scripts and projects. Stars are also increasingly paid a percentage of profits rather than a fee to take

14


advantage of television and video sales.14 The importance of casting directors (such as Dominique Besnehard and Margot Cappelier) and of agents (especially the powerful Artmedia, created in 1970) has grown in proportion to this insecurity, and the role of the latter is primarily to get their stars 'a good financial deal'.15 Their commission, however, is fixed by law at 10 per cent (Rousseau in Namiand, 1985, pp. 242-5). Paradoxically, as a result of these shifting relationships, the importance of stars has actually increased in the production system, although they are no longer the main source of box-office revenue. But they are more significant than ever in raising funds, guaranteeing television and video sales and generating essential media coverage. Shining through France: glamour and immediacy

David Shipman wrote in 1964 that Trench stars still have Hollywood style star quality; the press surrounds them with an aura which recalls those palmy days.'16 Although many things have changed since the 1960s, Shipman's view is still true: glamour is a key aspect of French film stardom, compounded by the distance given by more stringent privacy laws. Yet, at the same time, French stars have an immediacy in French culture which is quite distinctive. In France as in the USA or the UK, stars have been central to discourses on film, except in cinephile journals such as L'Ecran francais in the 1940s, and Positif and Cahiers du cinema from the 1950s (as mentioned in the Preface, 'star studies' are virtually unknown in France). From the 1920s and especially the 1930s, the press became increasingly important. The first popular film magazine, Cinemagazine, was launched in 1921, followed by rivals Mon-cine and Cine-miroir (Abel, 1984, pp. 245—51) and later Cinemonde (1927) and its rival Pour vous (1928). There were also weeklies like Le Film complet (launched in 1925) and Mon film (1923). The new popular film magazines, and in particular Pour vous, which was lavishly illustrated with black-and-white photographs, were part of an emergent image culture. The 1930s was the era of photographically illustrated magazines, typified in France by the prestigious L'Illustration and by Match, later Paris Match, as well as glossy women's magazines such as Marie-Claire (launched in 1937) and Elk (1945). This new type of publication was particularly well suited to


15

the cinema, offering, as press historians have noted, 'another vision of the world, a much more romantic one; despite the apparent objectivity of photography, they appealed to the imagination more than to reflection' (Bellanger et al, 1972, p. 597). So, though they have been dismissed as operating 'under the double sign of conformism and optimism' (Jeanne and Ford, 1961, p. 60), they are an important source of information on stars and how they were perceived. From the 1930s to the 1960s, these magazines, to which were added Cinemonde and Paris Match and early illustrated gossip magazines such as Point de Vue Images and Jours de France, projected images of French stars, like their Hollywood models, as simultaneously extraordinary and ordinary, mixing the allure of a glamorous life with intimate details of domesticity. Thus in Pour vous of 30 March 1933, a visit to Marie Bell is written like a scene in a luxury boulevard theatre movie: A liveried concierge takes me to the lift which delivers me to the top of the building. ... As I admired the view of Paris framed by huge windows, I heard a voice both grave and nuanced, and I saw appear, in a dark velvet gown with a ravishing decollete, a young woman whose words and gestures seemed to obey an inner rhythm.

But equally typical are spreads such as the one in Pour vous of 14 March 1935, in which we see the stars 'at home': Danielle Darrieux hoovering, Paulette Dubost at the sewing machine, Raimu making a fish stew. Many other examples could be cited (Michel Simon and his animals, Cabin's memoirs — see Chapter 3), and such spreads are continued into the 1950s and 1960s, when Cinemonde is the dominant popular film magazine. Generally, information is evenly divided between French and Hollywood stars (much less frequently stars from other countries, except Italy in the 1950s and early 1960s), as separate items and whenever possible showing them together. A 1932 Pour vous series on hairstyles combines Arletty and Gaby Basset with Norma Shearer and Greta Garbo, Gary Cooper, Jaque Catelain, Fredric March, Ramon Novarro and Rene Lefevre, showing not only the importance of Hollywood cinema in France but also the promotion of French stars on an equal footing with Hollywood. Spot checks at different times reveal the same balance: Premiere of July 1991 devotes roughly the same overall textual and visual space to Matt Dillon, Clint Eastwood, Martin Sheen, Sean Penn

16


and Jack Nicholson on the one hand, and Mireille Perrier, Irene Jacob, Emmanuelle Beart and Gerard Jugnot on the other. Studio Magazine, in July/August 1998, is balanced between Leonardo DiCaprio, Drew Barrymore and Robert Carlyle (a rare non-French, non-Hollywood example) on the one hand, and Emmanuelle Beart, Sandrine Bonnaire, Olivier Martinez and Jean-Marc Barr on the other. French popular film magazines do not significantly differ from American or British versions, in that their main appeal until the 1960s was to women, confirmed by editorial and advertising references to fashion, shopping and grooming (including slimming pills), and sections entitled Tour vous Mesdames'. One specific angle, stereotypically enough, is an emphasis on food, with recurrent scenes of stars cooking and accounts of their favourite dishes: Cinemonde of 25 December 1936 featured (French) 'gastronome stars', including recipes such as 'chicken a la Bach'. This is echoed in actors' cookery books, such as Charles Blavette's Ma Provence en cuisine (1961) and Macha Meril's Haricots ci, haricots la (1999). Cook Henriette Marello's La Cantiniere du cinema (1994) is devoted to culinary anecdotes relating to stars such as Belmondo and Delon. As well as the ritual arrival at the station and later airport, and climbing the steps to the Palais du Festival, photographs of Cannes in the 1950s and 1960s depict stars (French and American) at noted local restaurants. It is noticeable that several comedies starring Louis de Funes contain references to food or eating in their titles: Le Grand restaurant (1966), L'Aik ou la cuisse (1976), La Soupe aux choux (1981). Paul Chutkow's biography of Depardieu (1994) opens with a photograph of the star cooking with famous chef Jean Bardet and an account of Depardieu's search for the right chicory and chicken for a favourite dish while filming Germinal in northern France (Depardieu's association with food is reinforced by his commercials for Barilla pasta; he is also a wine grower: see Chapter 9). The relentless upbeat tone of the public, largely promotional, discourse on stars noted by Jeanne and Ford in 1961 reigned throughout the classical period. The 'official' portraits of stars put out by the powerful Studio Harcourt aimed, as Roland Barthes noted, to create an off-screen space more unreal than the on-screen space the stars inhabited: 'their faces smoothed by virtue, aerated by the soft light of the Harcourt studio' (Barthes, 1973, p. 27). The photographs are smooth, airbrushed


17

black-and-white glamour shots, usually close-ups of faces or busts. Harcourt portraits from the 1950s of Simone Signoret or Martine Carol seem today as dated as photographs of Sarah Bernhardt at the turn of the century. But the post-war period saw some ripples on the previously calm surface. Cine-revue (4 July 1952) warned, 'Success and money often bring discord to star couples'. The 1970s and 1980s saw the end of an era (Cinemonde stopped publishing in 1971), and the rise of a new breed of popular film magazines with Premiere in 1976 and Studio Magazine in 1987 (and Le Nouveau Cinema in 1999). The new monthlies continue the combination of industry news, interviews and gossip (and only mildly critical reviews), and the promotion of French and American stars, but adapted to a younger, predominantly male readership of film buffs, reflecting the fragmentation of film spectatorship. Meanwhile, gossip has shifted to the 'people' magazines such as OK' (like Hello!, very upbeat) and the decidedly scandal-mongering Void, but both with a predominantly feminine address, though the amount of publishable information is limited by privacy laws (see below). But beyond the changes in the specialized press, the measure of the continued importance of cinema in French culture is the unusually extensive coverage of film, and therefore of stars, in the national and local press, whether popular (Le Parisien) or 'quality' (Le Monde, Liberation). The deaths of major stars and directors often command the front page and several inside pages in all newspapers: for instance, Yves Montand and Jean Marais. As Angus Finney put it, 'While the majority of French financing comes via television, cinema is absolutely central to the nation's cultural life.'17 In addition to the press, two other important annual events contribute to the prominent image construction of stars in French culture: the Cesars awards ceremony and the Cannes festival. The Cesars, created in 1976 on the model of the Oscars (and building on older awards such as the 'Victoires du cinema francais'), are the most important, commanding huge media space, including live television. Other prizes for actors include the Prix Romy-Schneider for a young female actress and the Prix Jean-Cabin for a young actor, the Prix Beauregard and the various acting awards at Cannes. The Cannes festival was launched in 1939 but only began in 1946 after the war. Initially more of a tourist opportunity advertising Cannes as 'the radiant city, where stars shine their brightest'

18


Plate 2 Martine Carol: the Studio Harcourt look. (£) Harcourt.

(Billard, 1997, p. 18) - Cannes soon became a film market and a launching pad for stars and starlets. Unlike the more cinephile Berlin and Venice, and low-key London, Cannes has always been a glitzy event with high-profile guests, ceremonies and prizes, fusing Hollywood-style glamour with French cultural policy. As Pierre Billard says, 'Cannes is in France. The festival showcases cinema in a country where the cinema has become the object of national policy and debate' (ibid., p. 79). Cannes's formidable press apparatus, comprising more than 3,000 accredited journalists in the late 1990s, including 350 photographers and 1,300 television and radio journalists, twice-daily press conferences, a specially installed photo-opportunity space where photographers may shoot stars


19

for ten minutes each, every morning (ibid., p. 71), as well as rituals such as starlets on the beach and stars in evening dress climbing the stairs to the Palais du Festival, all multiply stars' visual and oral exposure on the French media scene - with, for instance, special bulletins on television news and lengthy daily reports in newspapers.18 Television is one important way in which French film stars access popular culture on an 'intimate' basis. This was not always so. Belmondo is typical in having refused to appear on television for a long time. He wrote in 1964 that television 'killed the mystery' of the film star and that 'a film actor must not make any television films' (in Strazzulla and Leduc, 1996, p. 100). By 1985 he agreed to appear on a television chat show and has done so since. Now star guest appearances on the main lunchtime and evening news are regular occurrences, partly because films cannot be advertised on TV. A recent development has been for film stars to make high-profile television series: for example, Sandrine Bonnaire in line femme en blanc and Gerard Depardieu in Le Comte de Monte-Cristo and Balzac (see Chapter 9). Like television soap stars or sports stars in the UK, French film stars are thus embedded in the quotidian routine of the national life of the daily press and television. But other factors intervene to bond French film stars to their audience. French film stars, who are often called by nicknames - 'B.B.' for Bardot, Tufu' for de Funes, 'Bebel' for Belmondo, 'Gege' for Depardieu are perceived to be closer than American stars, in the sense of being less obviously characterized by conspicuous consumption. Depardieu reports that executives in Hollywood were surprised 'to see how I work, without chauffeur or bodyguard'.19 They tend to live closer to their audience, at least in Paris — rarely do they have remote Beverley Hillsstyle suburban villas. When they do, these tend to be farmhouses, which the media present as a 'return to nature': thus, Bardot in Saint-Tropez, Gabin in Normandy, de Funes in Brittany and Depardieu in Anjou. Foreign interviewers, such as the American journalist Martha Frankel, are often surprised to find a star like Juliette Binoche living in an 'ordinary' house and cooking her own food: This is a room people actually live in — a concept so different from the done-to-the-max Hollywood homes I usually see.'20 Only in France, perhaps, would an international film star and the President of the Republic meet accidentally in a bookshop. As Binoche recounts:

20


'I had gone in to look at books on painting.... I heard the door open and the bookshop owner say "Good morning, Mr President!" I thought "Pfff!", who would have themselves called Mr President! I imagined the president of a bank, or of the Post Office or whatever. I looked up and saw Mitterrand facing me ... Then another time he came to say hello in a restaurant.'21

Two final points need to be mentioned. One is the involvement of film stars in public life. This often takes the form of film industry politics, especially the defence of French cinema against the 'invasion' of American films: for example, Signoret, Montand and Marais demonstrating in the streets of Paris on 4 January 1948 against the BlumByrnes agreements; Pierre Fresnay signing a petition during the shooting of // est minuit Doctor Schweitzer in 1952 to protest against the number of American films shown in France; Depardieu speaking in favour of 1'exception francaise' during the GATT talks in 1993. French stars have also intervened in politics in various ways: demonstrating in favour of the Popular Front in 1936; Coluche running for president in 1981; Montand's pro-communist positions in the 1940s and 1950s, then anti-communist positions in the 1980s; Delon buying the document of de Gaulle's appeal to the French people in June 1940. In late 1961, at the height of the Algerian war, Bardot received a letter from the OAS threatening to target her with a bomb if she failed to pay out FF50,000. She published a public response in L'Express on 30 November 1961 refusing to give in to terrorism, 'because she did not want to live in a nazi country'. As a result, the premiere of Vie privee on 31 January 1962 had to be conducted in secret. There was no retaliation, but Bardot was widely praised for her courage. On 5 April 1971, a manifesto in Le Nouvel Observateur signed by 343 high-profile French women stating that they had had an illegal abortion included Deneuve, Bardot and Moreau. In 1997, filmmakers and actors took part in the sans papier affair, defending the right of illegal immigrants to live in France. In this respect, French stars are following the French habit of personalities taking public positions. I am not arguing that these are necessarily courageous or politically advanced, but they are another way of connecting them to the nation, in the tradition of the role adopted by the intellectual in French culture since Zola and the Dreyfus affair. The second point is the close link between cinema and song. Several well-known French film stars, such as Gabin, Bardot and Moreau, are


21

also singers with substantial recording careers. This is different from singers who are also film stars (Prejean, Montand, Brel, Reggiani). It is worth remarking on the fact that many stars who are not singers (i.e. who do not sing particularly well) have also recorded songs: Deneuve, Adjani, Birkin,22 Delon, Depardieu; Binoche also 'sings' in her television commercial for the Lancome perfume Toeme'. This is a tribute to the vitality of song, especially chanson (in which lyrics are more important than music) in France, but it is also another way in which the stars reach their audience. Masters of their own image

Writing about Delon, Joel Magny argues that 'In a French film industry where the rational organization of mass production ... is the exception, [Delon] is, interestingly, a self-made my ill (Cinematheque Francaise, 1996, p. 23) — a notion which we can extend to all French stars who are, to a large extent, masters of their own image compared with their American counterparts (even in post-classical Hollywood, the American film industry still has a more heavy-duty, organized 'machinery'). In France major stars, like directors, are invested with more power than in the USA. Neither director nor producer nor agent can dictate their behaviour. Casting agents confirm the French stars' power of decision: Serge Rousseau, who works for the most important agent, Artmedia, says: The final power of decision always belongs to the star, this is very clear' (Namiand, 1985, p. 244), something confirmed by Dominique Besnehard, also at Artmedia, in 1998.23 This decision-making power affects other areas of the star image-making: self-presentation, the management of private life and the promotion of films, with varied consequences. From the early days of stardom, as Morin said, 'adorable faces' ruled (Morin, 1972, p. 9). Most stars are stunningly beautiful (Bardot, Deneuve, Beart, Adjani, Karina, Philipe, Delon, Perez). However, French cinema has also produced major stars who are 'unconventional' looking, yet are romantic leads. This is especially true for men: see, for example, Gabin, Belmondo and Depardieu. But female stars such as Moreau and Isabelle Huppert (whose face was infamously described as resembling a 'potato' by the American producers of Heavens Gate) also fit into this category. Interviews in the American press often stress French stars'

22


reluctance to diet, work out and have their teeth done and, perhaps most visibly, they are very often seen smoking, even in the 1990s, both on and off screen. French stars are no strangers to plastic surgery, especially as they get older, but on the whole teeth and noses are less regular (Paradis, Auteuil, Depardieu) and hair is less impeccably groomed than in Hollywood. This difference comes across vividly when comparing a French star's work in French cinema with their Hollywood films: for instance, Gabin in his Hollywood film Moontide (1942), in which he plays a character called 'Frenchie' who wears 'casual' clothes (a check shirt, a neck scarf) that are so neat that he appears to be in disguise, and whose hair is both visibly blonder and rigidly curled. Like those of all stars, the private lives of French stars become 'public'. It is assumed that audiences are fascinated by every detail of their marriages, affairs, children and homes. As mentioned earlier, a whole discursive production exists to relay these details to the audience. The French paradox is that stars' lives (like the lives of other public persons) are less bound by political correctness and morality than they would be in Anglo-American countries, yet at the same time are also stringently protected by privacy laws. Thus, Belmondo, in Premiere magazine, admits to frequent visits to a brothel white shooting Docteur Popaul.24 Depardieu mentions 'witnessing' a rape in Lui magazine without any domestic consequences, while the same story creates a scandal in the USA (see Chapter 9). While the Markovic affair in the late 1960s cast Delon in a corrupt and dissolute light (see Chapter 7) and Cine-revue said, The Delon affair reveals the hidden depths of the dolce vita',25 a survey in February 1969 ranked him among 'the ten most admired living French men'. The rise of the scandal/gossip press — Void, OK!, joining older titles such as Fmnce-dimanche and Point de Vue Images — has been countered by tight privacy laws. Some stars — Deneuve and Adjani, for instance - refuse to allow the appearance of any material on their lives and frequently, and successfully, sue magazines such as Void when they transgress. In an extreme example, in October 1998 Delon successfully banned the publication of an 'unauthorized' biography before it was even written.26 In 1996 an English newspaper noted, 'Such is Binoche's concern for privacy that she is prepared to go to court to protect it. The French society magazine Void is now being pursued by her lawyers.'27 This in turn explains why French star biographies are basically


23

hagiographies. The only ones with any degree of frankness are autobiographies, such as Bardot's open and entertaining revelations (1996 and 1999). On the other hand, it also means that French interviews with stars concentrate on their professional activities (even if the tendency towards abstraction sometimes gets in the way of information). A lengthy interview with Depardieu in Le Monde (24 March 1999) begins with the warning, 'We won't talk about his private life ... we'll leave that to him'; Delon's interviewers in Cahiers du cinema (April 1996) distance themselves from 'the corridor gossip, the false mythologies, the mean cliches'.28 French stars' greater freedom to control their image affects the way they participate - or not - in the promotion of their films. They are notoriously reluctant to play the game of interviews and promotional tours and sometimes even speak out against their own films. Delon trashed Le Retour de Casanova in 1992 — director Bertrand Tavernier asked plaintively, 'Would an American producer have let Delon ... thus demolish the film?'29 In 1995 Juliette Binoche told Premiere, 'I did not support [Wuthering Heights] because I was in total disagreement with the film and I refused to do the post-synchronization and promotion of the film in France.'30 Sophie Marceau gave interviews to the French press on the release of Marquise in 1997, indicting director Vera Belmont as 'incompetent'31 (although she later turned out to support the film). She also changed the speech written for her by ceremony organizer Canal + at the May 1999 Cannes festival in order to speak about a charity she supports, only to be booed off the stage. French stars' freedom to control their image includes their ability to range widely across different types of films. Up to the 1940s, actors automatically straddled mainstream and auteur film, because the films themselves did. For instance, directors such as Jean Renoir and Rene Clair, the greatest names of the 1930s, made films that followed their own agendas but also appealed to large audiences (for example, Clair's Quatorze juillet and Renoir's La Grande illusion}. Not coincidentally, these films featured major stars (respectively, Annabella and Gabin). In the late 1940s and in the 1950s, during the heyday of French mainstream cinema (when audiences peaked at 400 million annual spectators in 1957), stardom was more closely linked to genre and big-budget vehicles. So Michele Morgan, Danielle Darrieux and Gerard Philipe were costume-

24


drama stars, Cabin and Ventura were thriller stars. This implicit 'system' continued until the 1970s: Cabin and Lino Ventura were linked to the thriller in the 1950s and 1960s; Fernandel, de Funes and Galabru to comedies in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s; Delon and Belmondo to the action thriller in the 1960s and 1970s and up to the mid-1980s. The New Wave for a time forced a polarization between 'mainstream stars' and 'auteur stars', but with few exceptions (notably Louis de Funes), major French stars are distinguished by dual-track stardom in both mainstream and auteur film. Why is that? First, because the generic structure is itself fluid. Second, because of economic necessity: given the size of the French market since the 1970s, it is not possible for a French star to sustain a career in only one genre. Most 'auteur' stars (e.g. Binoche, Moreau) appear in mainstream films and most mainstream stars wish to make auteur films: 'Rightly or wrongly, actors think that for their career, for their prestige, it is good to make a film with Godard ... while being perfectly aware that films of this kind will not do well at the box-office' (in Namiand, 1985, p. 244). Godard is indeed fascinated by mainstream stars and has made films with Bardot (Le Mepris, 1963), Eddie Constantine (Alphavilk, 1965), Delon (Nouvelk vague, 1990) and Depardieu (Helas pour moi, 1993). On the stars' part, the search for prestige is also a wise career move. Since the 1960s, auteur cinema has been the main way for stars to win awards at Cannes and the Cesar ceremonies and attention from the cinephile press (see Delon in Chapter 7). But vis-a-vis their audience, stars play a crucial bridging function between the two kinds of cinema which have otherwise grown apart since the New Wave.

Who is a star in France? Box-office vs cinephilia I noted earlier the uncertain terminology used to designate 'stars', in particular the differences between 'star', 'vedette' and 'monstre sacre. There has also been, as Serge Daney pointed out, 'a ridiculous inflation of the word "star" (or rather "staaar")' (Daney, 1988, p. 132). Daney is right, and in some cases the distinction between stars and vedettes is subjective. But another reason for this uncertainty is that different criteria are used to determine who is a star, which follow a rough division between the box-office on the one hand and cinephilia on the other. It seems that this


25

distinction is particularly important for French (and European) cinema. Before World War II, only disparate and moderately reliable sources of information exist about the relative popularity of stars. Nevertheless, coverage in fan and trade magazines and the press, contemporary reviews, newsreels, posters and the layout of film credits give valuable clues. As already mentioned, early French cinema's stars were on the one hand comics, pre-eminently Max Linder and Prince-Rigadin (see Chapter 2), and on the other hand stage stars such as Sarah Bernhardt and the stars of the film d'art. Both had international resonance during the heyday of French cinema before World War I. As Bernhardt put it, This is my one chance of immortality' (in Knight, 1957, p. 31). During the war, through Feuillade's Les Vampires, rose the figure of Musidora, the first French femme fatale. Emerging at exactly the same time as Theda Bara in American cinema, Musidora (who was also a writer and a film director) was a more active and less morally bound representation (though she dies at the end of the series). Interestingly, although Les Vampires was an eminently popular serial, Musidora was a figure of fascination for the Surrealists and as such has come to us through art cinema historiography. By contrast, the other stars of the serials or of the popular post-World War I French cinema (Gina Manes, Huguette Duflos, Simone Genevoix) have not survived in French film historiography or most viewers' memory, since the films are rarely shown on film or video. French cinema had lost its pre-World War I world hegemony due to the competition from American films. Large international productions used foreign stars like Gloria Swanson, Brigitte Helm and Ivan Mosjoukine (the latter was part of an important group of Russian emigres), and the French names that have survived are those of the avant-garde cinema like Gaston Modot and Eve Francis. The 1920s, however, saw the appearance of a number of boulevard stage stars who would emerge with more prominence in the 1930s (Michel Simon, Gaby Morlay, Albert Prejean). In the early 1930s, the success of filmed operettas and of Rene Glair's films made stars of Henri Garat, Albert Prejean and Annabella. They were rivalled by comics Georges Milton, Bach and Fernandel, although the mid-193Os saw a shift towards the greater impact of dramatic stars, especially with the rise of Gabin, detailed in Chapter 3. In 1936 the trade magazine La Cinematographie franpaise began to publish annual polls of stars' appeal based on exhibitors' information, with the following results:

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Top French actors 1936-1938

Men: Gabin, Fernandel, Raimu, Charles Boyer, Harry Baur, Victor Francen, Tino Rossi Women: Annabella, Danielle Darrieux, Elvire Popesco, Gaby Morlay, Francoise Rosay (Michele Morgan and Viviane Romance appear for the first time in 1938) Source: La Cinematographie francaise, 19 March 1937, 25 March 1938, 31 March 1939

Plate 3 Annabella: a top box-office actress in the 1930s.

These results point to an interesting contradiction between mainstream film history and box-office popularity. Gabin, Boyer, Darrieux, Morgan and Rosay are internationally known; Raimu, Fernandel and Annabella less so. Few readers of this book will be able to put a face to Francen, Garat, Milton, Bach and Morlay, all huge stars in their time. Morlay, Rossi and Popesco are household names in France, but are virtually unknown outside. It may also be noted that Arletty, who for many


27

epitomizes the French female star of that era, does not appear in these polls. The recently re-released 1938 Marcel Carne film Hotel du Nord, starring Annabella and Arletty, illustrates this point. While attention today is focused on Arletty, the project in 1938 was built around Annabella, who, in contrast to Arletty, is treated by the camera as a 'star'. She features in more close-ups, her clothes change more frequently, the lighting surrounds her face and hair with a luminous halo (this, of course, does not prevent the brilliant Arletty from stealing the show, especially as she is given the best lines). Reliable film statistics began after the war with the creation of the Centre National de la Cinematographe (CNC) in 1946, making possible the calculation of films' and stars' box-office performance based on the number of cinema tickets sold. Cumulative figures are available for the period 1956-93. Top box-office French stars 1956-90 1. Louis de Funes; 2. Bourvil; 3. Jean-Paul Belmondo; 4. Jean Gabin; 5. Fernandel; 6. Alain Delon; 7. Lino Ventura; 8. Gerard Depardieu; 9. Jean Marais; 10. Bernard Blier Source: Le Film francais, No. 2418, 4 September 1992. Top box-office French stars 1973-93 1. Gerard Depardieu; 2. Philippe Noiret; 3. Jean-Paul Belmondo; 4. Claude Brasseur; 5. Michel Serrault; 6. Jean-Louis Trintignant; 7. Pierre Richard; 8. Michel Piccoli; 9. Alain Delon; 10. Yves Montand Source: Le Film francais, No. 2478, 29 October 1993. Among the top box-office French films of the post-1993 period are: I . Les Visiteurs (1993); 2. Le Diner de cons (1998); 3. Asterix et Obelix contre Cesar (1999); 4. Les Couloirs du temps (1998); 5. Un indien dans la ville (1994); 6. Les Trois freres (1995); 7. Taxi (1998); 8. Germinal (1993); 9. Gazon maudit (1995) As Gerard Depardieu stars in Asterix, Les Couloirs du temps and Germinal, as well as other hits of the decade such as Les Anges gardiens (1995), he consolidates his place at the top, together with Christian Clavier, Jean Reno, Thierry Lhermitte and Jacques Villeret. Source: Studio Magazine, Hors serie, 'Les Annees 90', December 1999.

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These cumulative figures are excellent for highlighting general trends, but when broken down further also reveal interesting local variations, notably in relation to gender ('stars' refers to both male and female). Apart from sexism (women also receive lower salaries),32 the absence of women from the top ten needs further explanation. While women are more prominent in low box-office auteur films (see Chapter 5), comedy dominates the French box-office. Since women are rarely comedy stars (one exception in the 1990s is Josiane Balasko, star and director of Gazon maudit}, they therefore don't make it to the top ten. Second, their careers as top box-office stars (e.g. Bardot) are generally shorter, and as such do not impact on cumulative figures. Thus, some female stars have had notable box-office successes in individual films - Jeanne Moreau in Les Amants; Brigitte Bardot in La Verite; Sylvia Kristel in Emmanuelk; Sophie Marceau in La Boom; Isabelle Adjani in L'Ete meurtrier and Camille Claudel; Beatrice Dalle in 37-2 le matin; Catherine Deneuve in Les Parapluies de Cherbourg and Indochine — but overall this performance, again, does not register in cumulative figures. If, on the contrary, one looks at the figures for shorter periods (for instance, 1956-8), there are often startling variations. Top box-office French stars 1956—8 1. Dairy Cowl; 2. Bernard Blier; 3. Jean Cabin; 4. Jeanne Moreau; 5. Henri Vidal; 6. Dany Carrel; 7. Brigitte Bardot; 8. Annie Girardot; 9. Daniel Gelin; 10. Danielle Darrieux Source: Le Film fmnfais, No. 765—6, Special Issue, January 1959

If one turns to the cinephile-dominated historiography, one indeed finds that women have a much greater presence. For instance, David Shipman's33 The Great Movie Stars: The International Years (1972) includes the same number of male and female French stars (eleven each). In the volume of the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers (Thomas, 1992) devoted to actors, there are twenty-three French female stars and thirty-three male stars. In both of these works, there are entries on Stephane Audran, Anna Karina and Delphine Seyrig, actresses with minimal box-office power but a strong auteur filmography, but neither carries an entry on major box-office stars such as de Funes, Bourvil and Pierre Richard, or indeed Sylvia Kristel, who, thanks to her success in the


29

erotic Emmanuelk series, turns out to be the highest ranking female star at the French box-office.34 French sources are unsurprisingly more comprehensive. For instance, Andre Bailee's Les Acteurs francais (1988) covers forty women against eighty-four men, and de Funes, Bourvil and Fernandel are all recognized. However, like the Dictionnaire du cinema (Passek, 1991), Sallee gives Seyrig as much space as de Funes, and both leave Kristel out completely. Similarly, a star's work in auteur cinema receives far more treatment than his or her work with mainstream directors (whereas it could be argued that in many cases auteur movies are less representative of a star's work than mainstream films, where he or she is given freer rein). This is the case for entries on Gabin, Depardieu and Bardot; in the case of the latter, for instance, writers give disproportionate amounts of space to Le Mepris (an extreme case being David Thomson's entry on Bardot in A Biographical Dictionary of Film (1994), which is almost entirely devoted to Godard's film). In terms of books published, Bardot and Moreau are 'greater' stars than de Funes or Belmondo. Judged by the availability of postcards and film stills, and of the retail value of original film posters, Bardot is greater than all other French stars. In number of magazine images in the 1990s, Deneuve, Binoche, Beart and Carole Bouquet are the most prominent because of their advertising work. A glance at the number of web-sites devoted to the stars in this book also inflects the box-office order and gender balance. In November 1998, Binoche scored 8,744 'hits', as opposed to 6,864 for Depardieu; Deneuve 4,090 compared with 2,163 for Delon, 1,611 for Belmondo and 1,149 for Gabin; Moreau scored 2,583 entries compared with 347 for de Funes and 350 for Linder. One simple explanation is topicality: during that time, Binoche and Deneuve's film careers were active. Yet, Bardot, who stopped making films in 1973, scored 4,994 hits. This speaks of her continuously high cultural currency, bolstered by the widespread availability of her films on video, including many with English subtitles, and her high-profile non-cinematic activities. Finally, there is a more intangible side to popularity in the 'measurements' of opinion polls of variable value and accuracy. Here female stars tend to score as well, if not better, than male stars. Deneuve, Huppert, Marceau and Bonnaire rank high in these polls, even though their films do not make the top ten. For instance, a poll taken at Cannes

30


in 1997 placed Deneuve as most popular star (33 per cent) against Depardieu at 31 per cent.35 In this respect, the impact of a star's private life is also crucial. Thus, on 24 December 1999 the readers of Le Parisien astonishingly (especially from outside France) voted Romy Schneider 'Actress of the century' ahead of Deneuve, Monroe, Morgan and Bardot. Schneider's Austrian Sissi series has a cult French following, and during her second career from the late 1960s to the late 1970s, she starred in several highly popular films such as La Piscine, Cesar et Rosalie, La Banquiere, Le Vieux fusil, La Passante du 'Sans-Souci'. But there is no doubt that her beauty, combined with a tumultuous affair with Delon, serious illness, the tragic death of her teenage son and her death in 1982 from heart failure (or suicide) contributed in large part to her high ranking. In the last two decades of the twentieth century, other developments have challenged the relevance of box-office figures. In that period film exhibition (and finance) in France, as elsewhere, has diversified into television and video. As a result, the box-office power of stars has become a more complex — and even more difficult to quantify — phenomenon. For example, while the attraction of Delon and Belmondo at the French cinema box-office greatly declined from the mid-1980s, both retained a large television audience.36 Stars of domestic comedy such as Gerard Jugnot have a huge following not reflected in box-office statistics. As Jugnot says, The advantage of the films I make is that even if they bomb at the box-office, they have an excellent career on television.'37 On the other hand, in the celebrity culture of the 1990s, the pre-eminence of film stars is challenged by singers, sportsmen, top models and politicians, all of whom compete with actors for media attention. But the prestige of cinema endures. As Christine Gledhill puts it, 'While other entertainment industries may manufacture stars, cinema still provides the ultimate confirmation of stardom' (Gledhill, 1991, p. xiii). Television stars are still drawn to the big screen, wishing to make a 'proper' film. This is the case for Les Inconnus, who made the hit film Les Trois freres (1995).38 Conversely, Depardieu's high-profile, megabudget television series, Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (tx September 1998), was only possible — as was its sale to American network television — because of his film-star status. Film stars are still the paramount category, and their film box-office a relevant measure.


31

French stars and national identity All stars have national associations, but while American stars tend towards the universal by virtue of the world exposure and designs of Hollywood, French stars are de facto more 'national', because they operate within a smaller domestic market. Correspondingly, outside France they carry the 'burden' of national identity, being constantly defined by their Frenchness: the 'Gallic exuberance' of Gerard Depardieu'; the 'wonderfully French Julie Delpy'; the 'beautifully French' Sophie Marceau; the 'enchantingly Gallic 33-year-old Binoche'; 'Deneuve's Gallic charm', and so on.39 These are journalistic cliches, but they are significant in so far as the same journalists rarely refer to the 'Americanness' of Hollywood stars. As we have seen, stars are part of everyday life in France in a number of ways. They are also connected to events and objects which support the 'imagined community' (Anderson, 1991) of the nation, appearing on stamps and telephone cards, as part of national celebrations, in addition to the collectable paraphernalia of stills, posters, fabrics and ornaments. French stars function as 'ambassadors' of France in an exchange of commodities officially enshrined after World War II with the Blum-Byrnes agreements, which accepted a large number of American films on the French market in exchange for the export of French goods in which tourism, fashion, food and drink, cosmetics and perfumes figured largely — all commodities easily associated with films and film stars. A Unifmnce film document of 24 April 1953 illustrates this clustering of signs of Frenchness around stars. Entitled 'French stars introduce you to Paris', it proposes a journey through Paris, 'the capital of elegance and spirit', guided by the stars: 'So as to present to you here some of its aspects, we thought it necessary to call upon both our stars and our writers — eminent chroniclers, inventors of words and stories — thus doubly outlining views of a city but two thousand years young ...' Thus, Michele Morgan guides the reader through the Champs-Elysees, Gerard Philipe takes a tour through the Latin Quarter, Jean Marais explores the Palais-Royal, etc. French stars also function literally as ambassadors, accompanying film industry and government officials at French Embassies and cultural services official functions around the world, and at French film festivals. In the late 1950s, Bardot allegedly brought in more foreign revenue than the Renault car company. In the

32


Plate 4 From telephone cards to stamps: the celebration of stars in everyday life.


33

34


Plate 5 The young Brigitte Bardot and Alain Delon grace the 1998 official French Post Office calendar.


35

1960s and 1970s, Delon very successfully exported his films to Japan and China. Since the 1980s, the stars' ambassadorial role has become more symbolic, but given the worsening rate of export of non-Englishspeaking film, this role is crucial in disseminating French cinema, if only as a media presence. Embodying the nation: different for men and women40

The star's 'myth' helps reconcile contradictions that exist in the social roles expected of men and women at key historical moments, and 'naturalizes', thereby validating, historical constructions (see Chapter 3). My analyses of individual stars in this book in particular delve into their mythic role in relation to national identity, but I will mention here briefly two other examples. From the late 1940s through to the 1960s, the much-loved comic star Bourvil popularized the character of an idiotic country simpleton who, though always coupled with smarter and/or more virile male stars, was never made ridiculous. Through his acting talent and the pathos of his characters, Bourvil, using his Normandy roots to the full, reconciled acceptance of modern social roles with loss of rooted values (this was the era of intense exode rural, from farming to urban communities). He also managed at once to dramatize and conceal the threat to virility that this move entailed for his class of men. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the bold screen presence and sexual aura of Simone Signoret expressed the contradictory pull on women, inexorably moving towards greater emancipation, yet held back by a 'backlash' misogynist culture after the greater freedom of the war and Liberation. Stars who embodied such a complex image or 'myth' as Bourvil and Signoret powerfully express the ironies and contradictions of social change. A similar interpretation can be made of the link between Depardieu and Binoche and the shifting definitions of gender in the 1980s and 1990s: the high premium placed on Vulnerability' in both their star personas shows how this value functions in the late twentieth century, at a time of theoretical (but not actual) equality between men and women. For Binoche, it is a key aspect of her persona, channelled in one respect through narratives of artistic sensitivity, while Depardieu can also mobilize it in some contexts, such as in his 'wounded macho' roles, and discard it in others, such as comedy.

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As becomes clear when comparing, for instance, Gabin and Depardieu on the one hand with Bardot and Deneuve on the other, the identification of stars with national identity follows a familiar gendered pattern. Male stars elicit an identification with public figures and actual historical events. They occupy a very special place in the French national psyche and in the construction of French national identity in and through the cinema. In the 1930s, the President of the Republic, Albert Lebrun, was compared to the star Raimu, while the head of the Communist Party, Maurice Thorez, claimed he would have liked to be incarnated by Gabin. An early 1960s poll claimed that 42 per cent of 15- to 25-year-olds would have liked to have Gabin as one of their ancestors, against 29 per cent for Albert Camus and IS per cent General de Gaulle (Gauteur and Bernard, 1976, p. 49). Following the older Gabin and Belmondo, the middle-aged Depardieu is plundering French history and French historical literature (Danton, Cyrano de Bergemc, Germinal, Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, Balzac, Vatel). By contrast, female stars, though they appear in historical drama, symbolize the nation in ways which refer not to historical figures but to allegory on the one hand and the body on the other. The latter point can be illustrated in relation to World War II. The cover of a book on the life of artists during the war (Ragache and Ragache, 1988) contrasts, along with the fascist writer Celine, two stars: Gabin and Arletty. In his uniform, Gabin stands for resistance; Arletty, detached from specific associations, stands for sexual collaboration horizontak because of her liaison with a German officer (see also Chapter 3). As discussed in Chapters 4 and 8, both Bardot (1969) and Deneuve (1985) posed for Marianne, combining the body and the allegorical function. Bardot was the first known actress to do so since the inception of Marianne as symbol of the Republic in 1782. For historian Maurice Agulhon, this is a sign of Marianne's loss of symbolic power, compared with her cult in the immediate post-war period after representations of Marianne were banned during the Vichy regime (Agulhon and Bonte, 1992, pp. 92-5). Marianne thereby left the field of political history to enter that of popular national mythology. What this shows us is the place of film stars in this mythology. The Bardot bust, initially sculpted by Alain Asian for the men's magazine Lui, shows her breasts in a clearly sexual way, differing from traditional busts or paintings, which usually cover one breast or both. The Bardot model's subsequent spread


37

through town halls indicates her acceptability as national symbol, both because of and despite her sexual aura: initially controversial, the model remained the most popular of the following thirty years. Deneuve's bust, sculpted by a woman (Marielle Polska), unlike Bardot's does not retain the traditional hat; instead, it features Deneuve's abundant but smooth hair and stops just below the neck. It is a cool, elegant representation which corresponds to the star's persona. Both Bardot in the late 1960s and Deneuve in the mid-1980s were past their period of high stardom; they were, in a sense, already 'institutions' with well-established images: vitality and sexuality for Bardot, elegance for Deneuve. Following Deneuve, the 1994 model for Marianne was fashion model Ines de la Fressance. In 1999, the association of French mayors chose 'super-model' Laetitia Casta as the new Marianne, signalling the further 'mediatization' of Marianne criticized by Agulhon, but also, perhaps, the diminishing importance of film stars. French film stars' involvement in advertising cosmetics also signals a change in their place in popular culture. In the 1970s Catherine Deneuve's advertisements for Chanel No. 5 were exceptional; they were analysed by Judith Williamson in terms of Deneuve's cinema glamour reflecting on the product (Williamson, 1978, pp. 24-9). In the 1980s and 1990s increasing numbers of French stars have taken to modelling for perfume and make-up: Emmanuelle Beart (Dior), Isabelle Adjani (Dior), Carole Bouquet (Chanel No. 5), Vanessa Paradis (Chanel 'Coco'), Catherine Deneuve (Yves Saint-Laurent), Juliette Binoche (Lancome Toeme'), Sophie Marceau (Guerlain 'Champs-Elysees'). Actresses from other nationalities have also done so, for instance Isabella Rossellini, but the choice of French models is overdetermined by the Frenchness of the industry. Williamson's analysis still applies, in the sense that stars are used to distinguish between products: young and kinky for Chanel 'Coco' (Paradis), mature and classic for Chanel No. 5 (Bouquet), romantic for Toeme' (Binoche). And in the case of Deneuve, Adjani and Binoche, as Williamson says, 'If she were not a film star and famous for her chic type of French beauty, if she did not mean something to us, the link made between her face and the perfume world would be meaningless.' True, but equally and especially in the case of Bouquet and Paradis, the process of advertising cosmetics has become as important in the formation of the image of the star as the films themselves. It might be

38


argued, in fact, that the process works more in reverse, the glamour from Saint-Laurent and Dior reflecting back on the filmic image, because the products are far more widely available throughout the world (as images in magazines and as commodities) than the films. French stars and Hollywood

Given the vitality of the French film industry, the export record of French stars in Hollywood has been remarkably limited. Whether as cause or effect, attitudes to the American industry are decidedly ambivalent. While Hollywood is seen by some as the Holy Grail, others are very critical of it both as a concept and a reality. Those who have emigrated have been perceived both as traitors (there was talk of an 'exodus' as many French actors and actresses left for Hollywood from the 1920s) and as glorious ambassadors. Cinemonde commented on Charles Boyer's success as 'having conquered America'.41 On the news of Annabella's wedding to Tyrone Power, Pour vous wrote: 'A little French girl is about to marry America's Prince Charming.'42 In the 1940s and 1950s stars like Michele Morgan, Simone Simon and Micheline Presle made films in Hollywood. But only the men were really successful: Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan and Charles Boyer became Hollywood's image of French masculinity, both hyper-sexual and romantic. Their success was partly due to the popularity of the genres in which they specialized: the musical, in the case of Chevalier, and melodrama for Jourdan and Boyer. The ascendancy of action genres has not helped French stars in this respect. In the 1990s, Depardieu and Binoche have broken into international film productions (as opposed to Hollywood). In the 1990s too, a wave of young 'French babes' has broken into Hollywood, but in stereotypical marginal parts: Emmanuelle Beart in Mission Impossible; Sophie Marceau in The World Is not Enough (following in the footsteps of other French 'Bond women', Claudine Auger and Carole Bouquet). Why this chequered record? There are objective difficulties, most obviously language. Tony Crawley argues that 'few French stars make the effort to master English well enough to transcend their nationality';43 this is confirmed by Belmondo, who explains, 'I did not want to go because I couldn't be bothered to learn English'.44 The linguistic difficulty is connected to a


39

wider ideological one. The 'resistance' to the English language can be seen as related to the battle to maintain French cinema at the French box-office and abroad. Like the French language, French cinema is not yet a 'minority' like Dutch or Finnish: as many examples show, a French actor can be an international star speaking French in French films. A wider reason is that the French are self-confident enough not to want to go to Hollywood where they would be confronted by a culture clash in sensitivities and working practices. Hollywood studios are always perceived as 'too organized'. In the 1930s, director and producer Henri Diamant-Berger emphasized the lack of freedom in Hollywood from a legal point of view, comparing a Hollywood contract to slavery: 'which no French tribunal would accept as valid ... but that does not stop thousands of people to desire the slavery it represents. The chains are golden, one has to admit.'45 The problem is a combination of French cinema's 'minority status', which automatically associates it with art cinema, and paradoxically of its strong image. As Belmondo perceived: 'People wanted me to go to Hollywood. I had the cover of Life. I was "the French Lover!" However, I bet my reputation went no further than Greenwich Village ... I think I would have ended up as an Italian or a Frenchman, but not in Steve McQueen parts. They did not need me! Furthermore, I think I am typically French. If they had dressed me as a cowboy, it would have been comic.'46

More pithily, Delon said, 'America means choosing a different life, not just a career. I need my local cafe and baguette.'47 In France, as in Hollywood, and despite the changes that have taken place historically, stars are absolutely central to the film industry in determining and influencing projects and in attracting spectators to the cinema (as well as the video shop). They are equally central to the identity of the films for the audience. Like Hollywood too, the French film industry has a 'star system', because, at a very fundamental level, its volume of production is sufficient to create a large base of actors who graduate from being 'young hopes' and 'starlets' to the rank of vedettes and, in a few cases, stars. A look at the filmographies in this book will show how this also works at the level of each individual star. All, except Bardot and Binoche, have made an enormous number of films, a

40


necessary base for the gems to emerge. At the same time as stars function in French cinema as stars do everywhere, we have seen how they are different, in the way they are embedded both in the industry and in the cultural history of the nation. They are also, fundamentally, different from each other - they are special. As Istvan Szabo put it, 'real' stars must have the ability to 'represent an idea and stay in the memory'.48 This, I believe, is the case for all those discussed in this book, to whom it is now time to turn. Notes 1. Jean-Pierre Melville, interviewed in the documentary Portrait en muf poses, directed by Andre S. Labarthe (1966). 2. Rene Chateau, quoted in Le Film franfais, No. 2026, 1 March 1985, p. 59. 3. The film schools, such as the FEMIS, on the other hand, do not prepare students for acting. 4. Cinema fmnpais, No. 26, 1979, p. 16. 5. I consider that Tati was not a 'star' in the traditional sense. 6. Cine-revue, 20 October 1983, pp. 18-19. 7. Jean-Paul Belmondo, in Cine-revue, 23 July 1981, p. 5. 8. Le Film franfais, 4 September 1992. 9. La Cinematographic franpaise, 22-29 December 1934, p. 78. 10. Studio Magazine, November 1992. 11. Premiere, January 1986, p. 60. 12. Ibid. 13. Le Film franfais, 4 September 1992. 14. Isabel Desesquels, 'Production: le poids des acteurs', ibid., pp. 15—20. 15. Ibid. 16. David Shipman, Films and Filming, September 1964, p. 8. 17. Angus Finney, 'Falling stars', Sight and Sound, May 1994, p. 23. 18. Cannes's traditional role in promoting stars was highlighted, a contrario, in May 1999, by the scandal provoked by the award of the top two acting prizes to non-professional actors, the stars of Rosetta and L'Humanite, seen as 'a slap in the face of stars' (Marianne, 31 May—6 June 1999, pp. 70—1). 19. Gerard Depardieu, Studio Magazine, No. 104, November 1995, p. 79. 20. Martha Frankel, interview with Juliette Binoche, Movieline, August 1997, p. 42. 21. Juliette Binoche, interview, in Telerama, No. 2547, 4 November 1998, p. 33. 22. There is a CD called Advices which gathers songs sung by Adjani, Birkin, Deneuve, Bardot and Charlotte Gainsbourg, most of them written by Serge Gainsbourg.


41

23. Interview with Dominique Besnehard, 'Les secrets d'un agent', Studio Magazine, No. 136, July/August 1998, p. 128. 24. Jean-Paul Belmondo, 'interview fleuve par les Freres Kruger', Premiere, April 1995, pp. 65-75. 25. Cine-revue, 24 October 1968. 26. Marianne, 17-23 August 1998. 27. The European magazine, 18—24 January 1996, p. 5. 28. Thierry Jousse and Serge Toubiana, 'Mystere Delon' (interview with Alain Delon), Cahiers du cinema, No. 501, April 1996, p. 19. 29. Le Film francais, No. 2453-4, 7-14 May 1993, p. 126. 30. Premiere, September 1995, p. 86. 31. See 'Sophie Marceau, le caprice d'une star', VSD, No. 1042, 14-20 August 1997, pp. 19-23. 32. 'Comediennes francaises', Premiere, January 1986, pp. 64-6. 33. Shipman, in another context, makes clear his nostalgia for the New Wave: see Films and Filming, No. 10/12, September 1964, pp. 7—11. 34. Le Film francais, 22 August 1984. 35. Studio Magazine, Special Issue Cannes, May 1997, p. 135. 36. Le Film francais, No. 2418, 4 September 1992, p. 16. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid. 39. 'Gerard and the Almighty', Evening Standard, Friday 23 October 1992, p. 26; 'Julie Delpy: une babe francaise', Empire, No. 61, July 1994, p. 57; 'Sophie Marceau, with chill', Empire, No. 74, August 1995, p. 51; on Binoche: The sunshine girls', Empire, No. 94, April 1997, p. 61; The darkness beneath Deneuve's Gallic charm', Independent, 27 March 1998, p. 12. 40. The nation' here means the white nation. French cinema has been slow to acknowledge the ethnic diversity of the population. Josephine Baker in the 1930s and young actors such as Pascal Legitimus and Roschdy Zem in the 1990s have begun to challenge this uniformity but the fact remains that at the level of major stardom whiteness prevails. 41. Cinemonde, 15 January 1937. 42. Pour vous, 12 April 1939. 43. Tony Crawley, 'Lost in translation', Paris Passion, May 1990, p. 40. 44. Belmondo, quoted in 'interview fleuve par les Freres Kruger', p. 72. 45. Henri Diamant-Berger, Pour vous, 6 September 1939. 46. Belmondo, quoted in 'interview fleuve par les Freres Kruger', p. 72. 47. Alain Delon, in Cahiers du cinema, April 1996, p. 31. 48. Istvan Szabo, paper given at conference on The actor's value: does Europe need a star system?', London, 15 November 1996.

CHAPTER

2

Max Under The world's first film star

To the one and only Max, The Professor. From his disciple Charlie Chaplin

Max Linder was the first international film star. In his heyday between 1909 and 1914, he became the world's highest paid actor, thanks to the success of his 'Max' series, which took him round the world, earning him the nickname 'Roi du cinematographic' ('King of cinema'). As both comic and director, he is cited as a key influence on Mack Sennett and Charlie Chaplin, as well as the Marx Brothers, and in France, on Rene Clair, Jacques Tati and Pierre Etaix. Early cinema scholars (see Abel, 1984 and 1994; Ford, 1966; Mitry, 1964; Robinson, 1987 and 1996; and Sadoul, 1947, together with articles by Spears, 1965, and Krai, 1986) have conclusively established Linder's pre-eminence in pre-World War I cinema, and this chapter is indebted to their work, especially Abel, who provides much needed precise references. Yet, outside studies of early French cinema, Linder is either totally unknown or overshadowed by Chaplin.2 Only a portion of his vast output remains, although some of it is easily available on film and video thanks to Linder's daughter, Maud, who compiled two programmes, L'Homme an chapeau de sole and En compagnie de Max Linder. A few other films are scattered in compilations of early cinema and in film archives.3 By including Linder in this book, my aim was to encourage a wider awareness of him as a French film star, 42

Max Linder

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Plate 6 Max Linder in his signature outfit.

on a par with the others in this collection. In the process, I came across the difficulties inherent in early film studies (especially problems of availability and identification - precise dates and titles are often elusive) but also experienced the excitement of discovery. I was curious to address the questions of why, firstly, Linder is not more widely recognized as the world's first film star, and secondly, what image of French masculinity he projected, why it had such resonance at the time and so little later.

The Max Linder legend Max Linder was born Gabriel Maximilien Leuvielle in 1883 at SaintLoubes near Bordeaux. He came from a well-to-do wine-growing family. His professional debuts took place in the theatre in Bordeaux in 1904

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(where he adopted the name Max Under),4 and then Paris. In 1905 he was signed on by Pathe. For a couple of years he had parts in comic films while appearing on stage in the evening; he even posed for sentimental postcards. From 1909 and especially 1910, with his 'Max' series (many of which he directed), he rose to huge fame. As the dapper Max, in his signature dandy outfit of tailcoat, waistcoat, top hat, cane and spats, Linder became a world-wide phenomenon, touring European capitals, where he was received with the pomp normally reserved for royalty, and where he continued to make films. He joined the war early, but was wounded on two occasions. His physical and mental health never truly recovered; he would always suffer from recurrent depression and chest problems. Invited by Essanay to its Chicago studios, he made a first trip to the USA in 1917, but without great success.5 Back in France, he starred at the end of the war in Le Petit cafe (1919), an adaptation of a play by Tristan Bernard, directed by his son Raymond Bernard. He also opened a luxury cinema, the Cine Max-Linder.6 But France was by now in the grip of a craze for American film comedy, and in particular for Chaplin. Linder undertook a second, more successful, visit to the USA, this time to California, where he made three longer (three-reel) films: Seven Years' Bad Luck (1921), Be My Wife (1921) and The Three MustGet-Theres (1922), considered by some his masterpieces. Linder's expensive house in Los Angeles was next to Chaplin's (they became friends) and he behaved like a 'Hollywood star', entertaining lavishly and being driven around in a limousine. A combination of ill-health and the lukewarm reception of his films sent him back to France. Although Linder was putting a brave face on things (on 12 July 1918 he wrote to the producer Henri Diamant-Berger, 'I have just received a huge amount of letters from America. I am sending you some of them so that you can see for yourself that, whatever people say, a French artist can be successful in America'),7 the tide had definitely turned. French cinema no longer ruled, and Linder had been dethroned as the 'King of Cinema'. He made two more films, Au secours! (1923, with Abel Gance, his one dramatic role), and Le Roi du cirque (1924). In 1923, at the age of forty he married the eighteen-yearold Helene Peters. Two years later in 1925 they both died in a mysterious double-suicide pact in a Parisian hotel. It is a cliche to say that the boisterous comic is a depressive at heart, but

Max Linder

45

Linder offers a particularly poignant contrast between the infectiously jaunty and seductive screen image and the haunting sadness behind it, and in the dramatic swings between the ups and downs: the world fame, the war traumas, the disappointing Hollywood career, the lost struggle against American supremacy, the double suicide.8 Yet, on screen Linder had it all: he was a rare example of a comic who was also very good-looking. That combination was both at the heart of his contemporary success and one of the reasons for his dramatic fall from grace.

The world's first film star The period of Linder's greatest success, between 1907 and 1914, coincides with the final years of French dominance of world cinema. Working for Pathe, which was, with Gaumont, the leading French film company, Linder benefited from its equipment, its production facilities and its vast distribution network, which took his films literally to the corners of the globe. Linder chose to work in the most popular genre of the time, comedy, which represented about 40 per cent of Pathe's as well as Gaumont's output. Comic series were all the rage, and Linder initially had several rivals. Among others at Pathe, there were Boireau (Andre Deed) and Prince-Rigadin (Charles Petit-Demange), while Gaumont's stable included Romeo (Bosetti), Calino (Clement Mige) and Bebe (Rene Dary). Indeed, the departure of two of them — Rene Grehan (a comic with a similar dandy image who left for the rival company Eclair), and Boireau, who began a second successful career in Italy in 1908 as 'Cretinetti' — gave Linder's career a helpful boost. Although there is a strong comic tradition in French literature and performance dating back to Rabelais, it is not entirely clear why comedy should have been so much more dominant in French cinema than in other countries. Some point to early cinema's emergence as a fairground attraction and the origins of actors in the circus and music-hall. Laurent Le Forestier (1997) interestingly sees a convergence between early screen comedy and the work of the philosopher Henri Bergson, who published his essay on laughter, Le Rire, essai sur la signification du comique, in 1900. Among other features, Le Forestier focuses on the aesthetics of distance and the

46


mechanical trickery that characterize early French cinema and which also happened to correspond to some of Bergson's categories of the comic. Although this intriguing convergence may be a coincidence (according to Le Forestier, there is no evidence that Bergson was interested in the cinema) and Le Forestier does not discuss Linder, the notion of 'distance' is one I will return to as relevant to his comic style. Linder's early comic performance was in the burlesque mode. For instance, in Les Debuts d'un patineur (1907), Linder experiments with iceskating with predictable results; L'Apprenti jongleur (1908) is likewise a series of gags around Max's frustrated attempts at manual dexterity. His work then evolved into more sophisticated narratives and film techniques with extended jokes and moments of 'surreal' humour. In Max prend son bain (1910), he struggles to carry an incongruous bathtub in the street, and (anticipating Keaton) attempts to fill it with ridiculously tiny containers, before moving it to the landing where there is a tap and having a bath in full view of his neighbours. Forced out by the police, he walks on all fours with the bathtub on his back, like some outlandish insect. Max pedicure (1914) includes a brilliant scene in which he shaves the foot of a 'client' (the husband of the woman he is trying to seduce), the camera cutting to a medium close-up half-way through the scene the better to show us Max's expressions and actions. In Max toreador,9 Max brings a cow and its calf to his apartment; he then proceeds to taunt the placid animal, using a tea towel as a cape and a baguette, carving knife and fork as other bullfighting accessories. Les Debuts de Max Linder au cinematographe (1910) is a cleverly self-reflexive story which, as Abel says, affords fascinating views of filmmaking behind the scenes, such as Charles Pathe in his office. Linder's American features obviously offer longer stories and extended gags, including the celebrated mirror joke in Seven Years' Bad Luck. In this stunning scene, to disguise the fact that he has broken the mirror, his manservant mounts an elaborate deception involving the cook pretending to be Linder's reflection while the latter is shaving. This leads to several hilarious variations until the mirror is hastily replaced, only for Linder to break it by hurling his shoe at it. The Three Must-Get-Theres is a delightful parody of both Dumas's The Three Musketeers and Douglas Fairbanks's film of 1921. Linder naturally plays d'Artagnan, alternating swashbuckling and romantic moments, and sometimes combining both at the same time: for instance, he fights an

Max Linder

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opponent with his sword with one hand while courting a woman on the balcony above. There are also clever anachronistic jokes involving telephones and motorbikes. Linder's work spans a key transitional period in early film history, which saw the move from the 'cinema of attractions' to the 'cinema of narrative integration' (Gunning, 1990). Linder's early films belong to the cinema of attractions in their use of long-shot static tableaux, trickery and simple slapstick. The 'attraction' is the spectacle of Linder grappling with the physical and human obstacles around him, as, for example, in Les Debuts d'un patineur, Max aviateur, L'Apprenti jongleur. But overall, as Krai among others observes, 'His comic style, in fact, is more comedy than burlesque' (Krai, 1986, p. 73). In contrast with those working-class comics who originated in, and built on, the circus and the music-hall, such as Boireau and Onesime, Linder's comedy was theatrical and middle class. This pertained to his own origins and training and was visually signalled by the milieu in which his stories take place, their locations and decors and Linder's bourgeois attire. Linder can thus be located at the intersection of two different histories: that of the (international) film industry's growing embourgeoisement (its move out of the fairground and bid for middle-class respectability and audiences) and a specific French theatrical tradition. The boulevard and vaudeville10 comedy tradition Linder came from was inherited from two convergent earlier genres: vaudeville farce and the comedy of manners. Its heyday was in the second half of the nineteenth century, with the extraordinary success of Labiche and Feydeau's plays. The genre is fast-paced and light-hearted, focusing on the 'sex war' (adultery being a key plot), mistaken identities and the logical pursuit of initially nonsensical or fortuitous situations. A 'satire of the philistine bourgeoisie for a bourgeois audience' (Lindenberg in de Jomaron, 1988, p. 180), it was a cerebral, refined and distanced kind of comedy. Vaudeville and boulevard comedy would continue on stage throughout the twentieth century and lay the foundations of an important strand of French popular cinema. Linder's characters are transpositions of vaudeville heroes: dashing bourgeois figures devoted to the pursuit of women, money and pleasure, who get into implausible yet unavoidable situations. Although vaudeville flourished especially with sound cinema, some plays were adapted in the 1920s. In this respect, Linder is an important bridge between nineteenthcentury theatre and the cinema of the likes of Rene Clair and Sacha Guitry.

48


One of Clair's great silent films was an adaptation of Labiche's Un chapeau de paille d'ltalie (1928). The mechanics of vaudeville plays — for instance, the extensive use of exits and entrances, and the asides to the audience — are at the basis of Linder's comic style. At the time of Linder's rise to fame, the cinema also moved from a collective, institutional phase (where it was associated with manufacturing companies such as Pathe and Gaumont) towards a new stage in which the focus was on the individual: the director, the actor. Stardom arose during this phase. Comic series, organized around a male comic, provided an intense focus on the individual. Yet, they have been overlooked in accounts of early stardom in favour of female stars. Linder's total centrality to his films — the signature clothes, the ostentatious repetition of his name in the films' titles (a name signifying character, actor and author,11) the correspondence between his 'real' name and the name of the character - were all ways of highlighting his individuality both in advertising and on screen. Abel notes that 'In late summer, 1909, under Gasnier's direction, Linder began appearing in a regular series of Pathe comedies, with his name soon included in each film's advertisement' (Abel, 1994, p. 237). He also notes that 'Linder was first referred to by name as one of the best film comedians for his role in the 1909 The Servant's Good Joke (ibid., p. 513).12 A fundamental attribute of stardom is the articulation of the private with the public. The connection between Max the character on screen and Max Linder the person was quickly established. Anecdotes about his private life were used in advertising, such as news of his appendectomy in 1910 (ibid., p. 53). They also began, as in Les Debuts de Max Linder au cinematographe, to be recycled into his films. Max en convalescence (1911) featured his recovery at home in Saint-Loubes, with views of his arrival at the railway station, and scenes with his parents and family pets. A similar process informs Max entre deux feux (1915), in which Max convalesces (again) by a Swiss lake and is spotted by two young women, who call out, 'Ah! Ah! Ah! Max Linder!' and immediately start laughing. Max Goes to America is based on his first trip in 1917. These self-reflective features were signalled to spectators in the films' publicity.13 Linder's fame quickly spread beyond France. Yuri Tsivian notes of Linder's visit to Moscow: 'As to Max Linder, his stardom in Russia dated back to 1910. ... In 1913, stimulated by Linder's visit to Saint Petersburg

Max Under

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(in late November) and Moscow (early December), the craze grew into madness' (Tsivian, 1996, p. 199). In keeping with this status, Linder became pre-war cinema's highest paid star. When he renewed his contract with Pathe in 1912, a contemporary article commented: 'Max Linder has remained faithful to the company whose formidable outlets made him a celebrity ... It appears that the gold chain which binds Max Linder [to Pathe] is worth FFlm after three years of triumphant servitude!'14 Appointed President of the Societe des Auteurs de Films, he also played a prominent part in the battle for the defence of French cinema in the face of Hollywood's domination (the first in a long series of such struggles). Linder, then, possessed all the key attributes of stardom: immense fame, clout in the industry, wealth and, crucially, a recognizable and recognized identity, as well as the articulation of the public and private persons in his screen persona. Yet, as Jeremy Butler notes, 'Conventional wisdom maintains that the first promotional campaign mounted for a star was in 1910, for Florence Lawrence, "the Biograph girl", by Carl Laemmle' (in Hill and Church-Gibson, 1998, p. 344). Why does Linder not figure in the myth of the origins of stardom? One basic reason, noted in the introduction to this book, is the American bias of film historiography. Another answer has to do with the decline of French cinema after World War I and the rise of Hollywood, mirrored by the eclipse of Linder and the triumph of Chaplin. In the absence (then) of film archives, television and videos, there were no means of prolonging the exposure of a star after his films were withdrawn from exhibition. Max's oblivion was rapid. There is also the question of identification. In a discussion of early French comedy, Laurent Le Forestier argues that between 1907 and 1910 comic films took as 'heroes' characters from the same bourgeois class as the spectators and moved towards a boulevard-style comedy inherited from the vaudeville, while playing, thanks to a more elaborate decoupage and a more varied tone, the identification card. It is therefore at that time, in the alternation between identification and no identification, that is to say between emotion and lack of emotion, that the dichotomy between burlesque and comedy took place. (Le Forestier, 1997, p. 25—6) As we have seen, Linder's comic style followed this trajectory. However, his screen persona's ability to evoke emotions was still limited. Even in the longer features, and despite the 'cut-in emblematic medium shot'

50


(Abel, 1994, p. 219) which allows us to see his facial expressions, Max invites a distanced gaze at his performance rather than emotional empathy. His sophistication is technical (e.g. changes in framing, changes of pace) and intellectual, but not emotional. His performance is vivid but his characters are 'flat'. By contrast, Chaplin's greater recourse to emotion draws spectatorial identification, as did female stars, who tended to feature more prominently in dramatic genres. Thus, if Linder was a fully-fledged star from the point of view of the film industry, the genre he worked in problematized spectatorial identification. Nevertheless, he represented a very distinct social and gender type.

The man in the silk top hat In the vaudeville theatre tradition, Linder derides the bourgeoisie from inside that class. His habitat is the plush salon with potted plants and heavy drapes, the elegant cafe and restaurant, the park, the lakeside resort, the grand hotel. His clothes, the nonchalance of his body language exude class confidence. He rarely works and instead channels his energy into being a bon vivant in pursuit of women (for sex and money) and bodily gratification: food, drink, strength-giving potions, grooming. It is noticeable that many of his jokes relate to the body: having a bath in Max prend son bain; shaving in Max pedicure; the mirror joke in Seven Years' Bad Luck; getting cured for feebleness in Vidime du quinquina; eating, cooking and looking for his clothes in Max reprend sa liberte (1908).15 One extraordinary scene16 shows him using crockery to 'have a shower': sitting under an upturned bottle, he dips his feet in two plates, and his hands in two glasses, wriggling with delight. Linder's bourgeois attire - the elegant coats and waistcoats, the top hats, the spats, the gloves - is the most noticeable thing about his screen image. According to Yuri Tsivian, 'Linder's fame in Russia was based on the way he dressed. There Linder passed for a model dandy' (Tsivian, 1996, p. 200). It is, on the one hand, a mark of distinction from the crumpled appearance of other comics, and on the other hand a sign of bourgeois propriety, albeit exploited comically. Linder's dazzling white teeth and the whites of his eyes contrast with his dark skin, black hair and moustache. Similarly, his snow-white shirts set off his black coat,

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trousers, shoes and hat. Linder presents to the world a sharp, contrasted image, eminently suited for black-and-white film as well as drawings and photographs. Lines are well defined, surfaces are hard and shiny. At the beginning of Max et la doctoresse he checks his looks by using his hat as a mirror — a fine representation of the narcissism implicit in his image. Linder's elegant black-and-white ensemble speaks of the belle epoque, recalling contemporaries such as the music-hall singer Mayol and the novelist and socialite Marcel Proust. Their elegance is historically determined. Fashion historians have noted an epochal shift in male clothing in the nineteenth century, from extravagant aristocratic costume to the drab but functional dark suit. This change, termed the 'great masculine renunciation' (Flugel, 1930), aligns male clothing with the rise of bourgeois capitalism. Linder's ensemble, however, is a flamboyant, eroticized version of bourgeois male clothing which draws attention to the idleness of his class (like Proust's), to the narcissism of his role as an entertainer (like Mayol's) and also to his eroticism. Unlike most comics, Linder is very good-looking, not only elegant but sexually attractive. His dark looks suggest the Latin lover, and under the urbane charmer there is a sexual predator (in L'Homme au chapeau de sole, Maud Linder makes a discreet reference to his amorous career before his marriage). Accordingly, many of his films focus on love, and their humour does not come from the ineptitude or ridiculous pretention of his sexual pursuits but from the obstacles put in the way of his desire. He frequently 'gets the girl'. Hence Max et la doctoresse depicts a classic vaudeville situation in which sex is repeatedly frustrated (in this case by his wife, the doctoresse, being called on duty), but others, such as Une nuit agitee (1912) take sexual fulfilment for granted. This sexual focus, familiar to the French from vaudeville, shocked Americans, for whom early French films acquired a reputation of being salacious, with what was perceived as their unseemly emphasis on adultery, sex and even scatological jokes. French cinema exported 'high art' to the USA (films starring stage stars such as Sarah Bernhardt) but also, as Richard Abel puts it, 'another conception of French culture as risque or even deviant and decidedly different from American culture — especially in its display of sexuality, violence and distasteful comic business'.17 Linder was not above crude jokes, as in The Servant's Good Joke, whose gags revolve around a laxative, but also as in Max a Monaco (1915), where he points a cannon

52


towards a sailor's bottom on which he has painted a target and fires it, or, as in Max devrait porter des bretelles ('Max should wear braces', 1915), where his trousers drop down accidentally in front of a woman.18 But on the whole, Linder's 'risque' humour is more subtle, as in the wonderful film19 in which his shoes and those of a woman he meets in a seaside hotel have 'a life of their own'. The shoes graphically express their unconscious desire for each other, independently leaving the characters' feet, touching, 'embracing', eventually dragging Max and the woman together and making them kiss (as many writers have noted, shoe fetishism figures largely in Linder's films). All comics exploit their own physique, and Linder's small stature is used as a source of gags: Max veut grandir (1912) shows him trying to get taller. His playing with a pony in Max en convalescence is a pointed joke. He is often infantilized. Abel notes how in several films Max cries 'like a baby': for instance, at the end of Les Debuts d'un patineur and in La Petite rosse (1909). Max pouts, sulks, throws tantrums: his eyes bulge, his hair flops across his forehead, emphasizing his boyish haircut. He is, as in vaudeville comedy, endlessly the henpecked husband, grappling with 'strong women' and domineering mothers-in-law: for instance, in La Timidite vaincue and in Max reprend sa liberte. In the latter, both wife and mother-in-law are large women who wear bulky clothes and huge hats, making him appear even smaller (in some films, comic female figures are played by men in drag). There is a melancholy side to Linder's 'small man'. There are recurrent images of convalescence and weakness (Max en convalescence, Max entre deux feux), calling to mind notions of castration anxiety. In her discussion of the fetishism attached to hats in gangster films, Stella Bruzzi quotes Freud's remark that 'A hat is a symbol of a man (or of male genitals)' (Bruzzi, 1997, p. 76). This seems particularly apt for the importance Linder attaches to his top hat. Brilliantly used as a comic accessory, the hat is also a clear 'phallic' extension of his body. Several films make the point that he must never be without it. In Les Debuts d'un patineur, he takes his overcoat off to skate, but not his hat. In another film,20 he saves a man from drowning and takes most of his clothes off, but again keeps his top hat on. In Max toreador, he puts his hat on as he comes inside the flat with the cow and calf. Le Chapeau de Max is built on the importance, and repeated frustration, of being able to find the right kind of top hat in

Max Under

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order to ask a woman's hand in marriage. In line nuit agitee he puts it on to go and squash a fly in a paperbag (depositing it on the rail before an approaching train!). One of the anachronistic jokes of The Three MustGet-Theres consists of trying on a top hat before finding the appropriate d'Artagnan feathered hat. We should not, however, overestimate this as a sign of 'castration anxiety'. The comic genre allows Under to play on the fear of castration, but his good looks and urbane confidence reassert his bourgeois male status with panache. His visual centrality and the sharpness of his image impose him forcefully as a dominant figure. Throughout his films, Under physically expresses sexual energy and exhilaration. He saunters and, despite tripping over on occasions, is extraordinarily graceful and agile, leaping over benches in a park, dancing wildly and playing the piano to a fast beat (for instance, in Seven Years' Bad Luck). Drawings and caricatures are revealing in this respect. A typical example by Henri Debain21 emphasizes Linder's small size by putting him on tiptoe, but equally shows him with his body taut, his chest puffed (possibly an ironic reference to the Pathe cockerel), a bundle of energy, legs apart, as if about to spring into action. We have seen how Linder's focus on 'risque' subjects such as sexuality and adultery were perceived as Trench' in the USA and how they were predicated on an older theatrical tradition. Part of Linder's Trenchness' also came from his inhabiting the realm of women and romance. As in the sentimental postcards he used to pose for, he spends an inordinate amount of time courting women. He is at ease in the domestic space: he cooks (albeit disastrously), eats many meals, spends a lot of time convalescing and being 'pampered'. Even if his presence in 'feminine' spaces is used comically — for instance, in Max reprend sa liberte, buying vegetables at the greengrocer in elegant coat and top hat and cooking (inevitably again in top hat), or tipping out the entire contents of his wardrobes in search of a tie — he belongs to that world rather than the traditional male topography of outdoor spaces. His swashbuckling film The Three-Must-Get-Theres typically belongs to nostalgic nineteenthcentury historical fiction and its pre-'great masculine renunciation' costumes emphasize display and narcissism. Linder's films express fears of 'new women' (Max el la dodoresse) and mock 'domineering' women, but they equally mock male pretence and the 'cult of masculinity' (Jones, 1994, p. 239) which gripped the early Third Republic in the wake of the

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1871 defeat, evidenced, for instance, in the vogue for duels (see Max a un duel, 1911) and in the popularity of such swaggering yet romantic heroes as d'Artagnan and Cyrano de Bergerac. In some instances, such as in Max entre deux feux, a female gaze at Max is explicitly represented. Obsessed with courting and seducing women, Linder is evidence of the erotic 'feminization' of the Frenchman, as pointed out by Michele Sarde: 'It is as if the Frenchman, connoisseur of women, ended up by being contaminated by femininity' (Sarde, 1983, p. 24), a 'feminization' which in different registers resurfaces in stars like Jean Cabin and Gerard Depardieu (see Chapters 3 and 9). Max Linder's trajectory followed that of the history of French cinema, from world domination to near-oblivion in the face of American competition. He also suffered the classic problem of the pioneer - as Jean Mitry pointed out, 'Chaplin develops what Linder only sketched out' (in Beylie and Pinturault, 1990, p. 38). Linder exuded an ironic distance inherited from the vaudeville theatre, confidence and sophistication. The flip-side was a blatantly self-centred masculinity in pursuit of the good life, a figure typical of the materialism of the belle epoque, a version of the Baudelairian Parisian flaneur, the new figure of urban modernity. His good looks and constant amorous pursuits gave him an erotic aura. This persona, which also corresponded to international views of Frenchness, clearly found an echo in the immediate pre-World War I period. To Linder's hard contours Chaplin would substitute the softer lines of the 'tramp'; to his cynical light-heartedness, a more sentimental figure. His pathos and compassion were more in tune with the post-war era and his democratic little man a more appealing 'universal' figure. Where Linder was charming, Chaplin was lovable. But shifts in moral and cultural values should not obliterate the comic genius and extraordinary achievements of the world's first film star.

Biofilmography Born Gabriel Maximilien Leuvielle, Saint-Loubes, 16 December 1883. Married Helene Peters (1925), with whom one daughter, Maud (born 1924). Died 31 October 1925.

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Select filmography (N.B. The following is a selection, based on published sources, including Abel [1984 and 1994], Ford [1966], printed programmes and the films I have been able to see, as well as the BFI's Film Index International. Every effort has been made to cross-check information, but as the same film frequently appears under different titles and different dates in different sources, accuracy seems impossible; I have, however, where possible followed Abel's details, as he indicates precise provenance of his sources.) 1905

Premiere sortie

1907

Les Debuts d'un patineur Les Debuts d'un aeronaute/His First Air Trip La Legende de Polichinelle/The Legend of Polichinelle L'Apprenti jongleur/The Would-be Juggler Line veine de bossu La Petite rosse

1908 1909 1910

1911

1912

The Servant's Good Joke Tout est bien qui finit bien LTngenieux attentat/Poor Pa Pays Again Max a peur des chiens/Affectionate Pets Max hypnotise/Max Hypnotized La Timidite vaincue/The Cure of Cowardice Max prend son bain Les Debuts de Max Linder au cinematographe/Max Linder's Debut as a Cinematograph Artist Qui est I'assassin? Max en convalescence Victime du quinquina Max et sa belle-mere/Max and His Mother-in-law Max a un duel Max et son dne/Max and the Donkey Max Linder contre Nick Winter/Max Linder v. Nick Winter Max reprend sa liberte/ Troubles of a Grass Widower Max veut grandir Peintre par amour/A Painter in Love

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1913

1914

1915

1917

1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924


line nuit agitee Max fiance Un pari original Les Debuts d'un yachtman Max fait de la photographie/Max Goes in for Photography Max toreador/Max as a Toreador line ruse de Max/Max's Ruse Le Chapeau de Max Max part en vacances Max et la doctoresse/Max and the Lady Doctor Mari jaloux/Jealous Husband Max pedicure/Max Chiropodist Max entre deux feux Max devrait porter des bretelles Max a Monaco Max Goes to America (USA) Max and His Taxi (USA) Max Wants a Divorce (USA) Le Petit Cafe Be My Wife (USA) Seven Years' Bad Luck (USA) The Three Must-Get-Theres (USA) Au secours!/A Haunted House Le Roi du cirque (Austria)

Video compilations

1981L'Homme au chapeau de soie (Maud Linder) 1981En compagnie de Max Linder (Maud Linder) Notes

1. Signed and dedicated photograph of Chaplin, dated 12 May 1917. 2. A browse through standard film history books and works on stars and directors shows on average four to five times more space devoted to Chaplin compared with Linder. For instance: John Wyver's The Moving Image: An International History of Film Television and Video (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1989) devotes one page to Linder against four to Chaplin;

Max Under

3.

4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14.

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Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell's Film History: An Introduction (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1994) sets aside four pages to Linder and twenty-one to Chaplin, and so on. An exception is Geoffrey Nowell-Smith's A History of World Cinema (Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 1996), in which Richard Abel includes Linder in his text on early French cinema and David Robinson writes a separate item on Linder. My viewing has encompassed the Maud Linder video collection, L'Homme au chapeau de sole and En compagnie de Max Linder (in the series 'Les Films de ma vie', 1981, which is extremely useful, although many films are truncated and not always clearly identified); films scattered through video collections of early cinema; and film in the National Film Archive, London, and at the Brussels Cinematheque. Maud Linder claims in L'Homme au chapeau de sole that only 82 films out of 500 remain, but some (including Claude Beylie) contest the figure of 500 as grossly inflated. Several sources claim Linder took a stage name in deference to his parents' disapproval of his career. The name itself is probably connected to the Anglophilia current at the time in the entertainment milieu. According to several historians, Essanay orchestrated a publicity campaign which made Linder appear to denigrate Chaplin, and which backfired badly. Spears (1965, p. 284) claims this was situated near the Champs-Elysees and that Linder had also opened another smaller cinema on boulevard Poissonniere before the war. The latter has been closed for periods but in the late 1990s is still in operation as the Max Linder Panorama. Letter to Henri Diamant-Berger, 12 July 1918, BIFI archive. Golden (1993) reports that American archives show evidence of earlier suicide attempts. This scene is included in Maud Linder's L'Homme au chapeau de soie but is not identified; I am assuming it is from Max toreador from the evidence of various printed sources. This is vaudeville in the specific French sense of a theatrical genre, as discussed, and not vaudeville in the sense of American or British musichall. Maud Linder argues that the indication on the credits of films such as Max et la doctoresse that this is a 'Scene de Max Linder jouee par 1'auteur' ('a scene by Max Linder played by the author') is the first mention of an auteur in the history of cinema. The source is Abel (1994); I have not been able to find a French title for this film. A Pathe programme for Max entre deux feux begins with Tired of the perpetual celebrations of which he is the object ...' (in BIFI archive). From Le Cinema et I'echo du cinema reunis, No. 21, 19 July 1912, p. 4 (quoted in 1895, September 1986).

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15. The title Troubles of a Grass Widower and the date 1908 are indicated on the compilation, The Movies Begin, Vol. V (Kino International, 1994), which I have been able to view, but the film corresponds, though in an incomplete version, to printed descriptions of Max reprend sa Hberte. 16. Unidentified film from L'Homme au chapeau de soie. 17. Richard Abel, The perils of ignoring Pathe', Society for Cinema Studies conference paper, 1993, p. 9. 18. Description in Pathe Journal, No. 74, 1917, 9e annee. 19. Unidentified film from L'Homme au chapeau de soie. 20. Ibid. 21. No date, document in BIFI archive, Paris.

CHAPTER 3

Jean Gabin From worlc/ng-c/ass hero fo godfaffier

Of all actors, he is the only one whose career is inseparable from a glorious period of our cinema. Remove Cabin's career and a whole chapter of French cinema disappears. Georges Baume

When I first became interested in the cinema, in the 1970s, Jean Gabin represented everything I hated — the antithesis of the modern, 'intellectual' cinema of the time. I was baffled by the popularity of this ageing actor and of his films, which I despised. When I discovered the French cinema of the 1930s, and then of the 1940s and 1950s, I began to understand his extraordinary importance. I became a fan. If, like many people, I prefer Le Jour se leve and Touchez pas au grisbi to Le Tatoue and L'Annee sainte, I eventually came to appreciate all Cabin's performances. Even though I have to concede that he starred in a few bad films - not a bad record for someone who made ninety-five — I would maintain that there are no bad Gabin performances. Cabin's career was long and productive. Starting with the coming of sound, his work spanned the era of 1930s classic auteurs (such as Julien Duvivier, Marcel Carne and Jean Renoir), exile in Hollywood, the Tradition of Quality of the 1940s and 1950s and popular comedies and thrillers, until his death in 1976. As top male star at the box-office in the late 1930s and again in the 1950s and 1960s, Cabin's towering position 59

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Plate 7 Le Jour se leve (Marcel Carne, 1939): Jules Berry (left), Jean Gabin (centre), Arletty (right).

in French cinema gave him an iconic, hallowed status in French culture. Like all stars, he generated a massive amount of press linking his private and public lives - his wives and three children, his earlier liaisons with actresses, in particular Michele Morgan, his co-star in Le Quai des brumes, and Marlene Dietrich in Hollywood during the war. His tastes in food and wine, his behaviour and notably his outbursts of temper, his various homes - all were the object of speculation and comment. He is explicitly commemorated in an annual Jean Gabin prize for promising young male actors. But his influence goes deeper. The most important male stars of the post-war period, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Alain Delon and Gerard Depardieu, have all repeatedly claimed him as a model. Politicians, including communist leaders Maurice Thorez and Georges Marchais, have fantasized about being embodied by him (should they be the subject of a film). Gabin has his own museum, and there are streets and schools named after him. French television endlessly reruns his films. His face adorns the covers of several books on French cinema (books, that is, not devoted to him). He appears on postage stamps and on memorabilia,

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including plaster busts, decorated plates and even shirts. On 24 December 1999, readers of the daily Le Parisien voted Gabin 'actor of the century'. For critics and historians, he is a star who does not just have an 'image' or a 'persona', but a 'myth' (a term I explore below). Not just a screen icon of French manhood, he took on and still retains remarkable resonance: in the celebrations of the two-hundredth anniversary of the French revolution on 14 July 1989, a Gabin look-alike drove a replica of his locomotive in La Bete humaine (1938). In 1976, the impact of his death was huge. As one commentator put it: The front page of France-Soir featured a huge headline, even bigger than for the first man on the moon: ADIEU GABIN! Pages and pages of homages followed. The impact of Cabin's death in the press, radio and television had only one precedent: that of de Gaulle. The reason is that he - too represented a certain idea of France.2

Jean Gabin (1904—76) was born in Paris into a family of cafe-concert artists. He was brought up by his grandparents in a small village north of Paris, Meriel, where there is now a Gabin museum. Reluctantly at first, he followed his father's wishes and began a career on the music-hall stage, as a comic singer. The cinema snapped him up in 1930, like many other stage performers. Cabin's first feature, Chacun sa chance (1930), is typical of the early 1930s French 'filmed theatre'; in it, as in several other films of that decade, Gabin sings as well as speaks. Many other films followed, including comedies, in which his bodily posture and movements, his facial expressions, clothes and accents from the outset signalled his proletarian character. But increasingly, he acted in what was to become his typical 1930s habitat: pessimistic melodramas in workingclass and/or underworld settings: films like Paris-Beguin, Du haut en bas, Coeur de lilas, Le Tunnel and Zouzou. Julien Duvivier's La Bander a turned him into a star and between 1935 and 1940 he appeared in what has become the classic Gabin canon: La Belle equipe, Les Bas-fonds, Pepe le Moko, La Grande illusion, Gueule d'amour, Le Quai des brumes, La Bete humaine, Le Jour se leve and Remorques. By then he was also the most popular French male star and although 1930s French cinema is rich in wonderful vedettes (see Chapter 1), Gabin is in my view the only 'real' French star of the time. In a typically perceptive article entitled The

62


destiny of Jean Gabin', Andre Bazin compared Cabin's persona in these films to that of 'Oedipus in a cloth cap', encapsulating, in this oxymoron, one of the paradoxes of the Gabin 'myth' (Bazin, 1983, pp. 123—4). He was at once an ordinary bloke-next-door and a tragic hero whose path fatally crossed with crime and death. He was a romantic figure, an homme fatal, though mostly fatal to himself. In practically all his classic 1930s films, he came to a bad end: his characters were destroyed by death or exile, by patriarchal forces in various manifestations. He was the 'anti-hero' struggling against 'society'. At the outbreak of World War II he escaped to Hollywood, where he made two films — Moontide and The Impostor — and had a high-profile affair with Marlene Dietrich, before joining the Free French army. The immediate aftermath of the war was a fallow period for Gabin. He made a number of films without much success, including Martin Roumagnac (1946), his single film with Dietrich. Large-scale popularity returned in 1954 with Jacques Becker's great Touchez pas an grisbi, a film which decisively influenced the development of the policier genre. From La Bandera onwards, in fact, Gabin can be considered the 'auteur' of his films, from an aesthetic and ideological point of view, as his directors and scriptwriters worked to achieve a close fit between his star persona and his characters. From the mid-1950s onwards, Gabin also achieved authorship of his films in an industrial sense. As his biographer Andre Brunelin (1987) details, he created tight and long-lasting partnerships, cutting deals with producers such Jacques Bar (with links to MGM) and founding his production company GAFER, with Fernandel, discussing stories with scriptwriters Michel Audiard, Alphonse Boudard and Pascal Jardin and directors such as Denys de la Patelliere and Henri Verneuil. He also retained key technicians from film to film, including director of photography Louis Page and a select group of make-up, wardrobe and sound personnel. Where many, after Bazin, have praised the 1930s Gabin, his prolific post-war career is conventionally viewed as something of an embarrassment. For although he played in a few respected auteur films — Max Ophuls's Le Plaisir (1951), Jacques Becker's Touchez pas au grisbi (1954), Jean Renoir's French Cancan (1955) — the bulk of Cabin's post-war films were comedies such as La Traversee de Paris and, 'worse', Un singe en hiver and Le Tatoue, and routine policiers like Le Cave se rebiffe and Le

jean Gabin

63

Tueur. In complete contrast to his pre-war films, the post-war examples featured him as patriarch: the head of a bourgeois family or the police, the godfather of underworld gangs. In other words, he incarnated precisely the forces which he had opposed in his 1930s roles. Instead of the 'good' Gabin, the glamorous, 'progressive' working-class hero, the post-war period featured a 'bad' Gabin: ageing, stiff, embourgeoise, reactionary. Pierre Marcabru's review of Rue des Prairies (1959) is typical: This vaguely populist melodrama is only a pretext to allow Jean Gabin to do his usual virtuoso number. ... It is shameless and bad: a caricature of Gabin, the caricature of an actor who embodied, at the time of Le Jour se leve, a character, but today is only a puppet' (in Gauteur and Vincendeau, 1993, p. 82). But his popular audience continued to love him, partly because of his masterful screen presence and partly because they still saw in him the proletarian hero of the 1930s. My study of the actor's output as a whole has led me to re-examine and challenge the received critical dichotomy between the pre-war and the post-war Gabin, and to argue that the 'myth' of the pre-war period continued to work for his popular audience in the post-war period, although obviously in a modified way.3 Indeed, it is this continuity, just as much as the changes in his persona, which makes Gabin a unique figure in French cinema. The literature on Gabin is fond of describing his star persona in terms of a myth, using it as a yardstick against which his various roles and performances are measured (see in particular, Gauteur and Bernard, 1976; Siclier and Missiaen, 1977). Even though they use it loosely, these writers' recourse to the idea of myth alerts us to important aspects of Cabin's stardom. The word myth conveys Cabin's elevated status and extraordinary aura. That much is true of all stars. It is also an expression of the sense of magic that Edgar Morin sees as pertaining to stars (Morin, 1972, p. 39). In a more specific sense, we can take our cue from Bazin and look at Cabin's myth in terms of the affinity between his 'ordinary' working-class characters and the heroes of tragedy — Oedipus in a cloth cap. The trajectory of many Gabin characters positioned him as victim: of the past, of events, of bad luck, occasionally of women hence the development of the idea of his characters as victims of 'fate'. But Bazin's Oedipus also takes us to theoretical explorations of myth, in particular by those of anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss and

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semiologist Roland Barthes. In his analysis of the Oedipus myth, LeviStrauss argues that 'mythical thought always progresses from the awareness of oppositions toward their resolution' (Levi-Strauss, 1972, p. 224). As already hinted, and as will be explored below, the Cabin persona in the mid- and late 1930s was made up, to an unusual degree, of sets of opposed values resolved into a character who was, and is, perceived as coherent, natural, authentic. This particular function is typical of myth as analysed by Barthes, who showed in his book Mythologies, and especially the essay 'Myth today', that the point of myth is to make the historical appear natural. Myth, he says, is 'an essentially cultural phenomenon ... it cannot possibly evolve from the "nature" of things' (Barthes, 1973, p. 109). The Cabin myth at a precise historical conjuncture (the mid- to late 1930s) - that is to say, the time of the Popular Front government, the rise of fascism and the menace of World War II, along with deep shifts in society - worked to make certain constructions of the working class and of masculinity appear 'natural' despite their roots in cultural artefacts such as literature, song and photography, and despite their deeply divided nature. This is the structure of the Cabin myth. We can now explore its origins, its contents and the uses to which it was put. I start with a detailed exploration of La Bandera, the film which 'made' Cabin into a star, before moving on to more general considerations. La Bandera: a star is born In the first four years of his career, Cabin made eighteen films, rising quickly from secondary or ensemble parts, in such films as Chacun sa chance, Paris-Beguin, Coeur de lilas and Les Gaietes de I'escadron, to coleading roles in Zouzou, Le Tunnel and a few others. These films are now marketed as 'Cabin films' and it is difficult not to see them as such. This is partly the retroactive effect of stardom, but also because of his truly mesmerizing performance. His singing of 'La Chance me fuit' in his very first film Chacun sa chance and of 'La mome caoutchouc' in Coeur de lilas display extraordinary confidence as well as intensity in front of the camera. This was noticed. Marcel Carne wrote in Cinemagazine that in the now forgotten Gloria (1932), The great revelation of the film is

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again Jean Gabin, who displays stupefying naturalness and authenticity.'4 The parts he played divided between cheerful workers (mechanic, electrician, ordinary soldier, shop assistant) and, less frequently, louche but sexy hoodlums, latter-day figurations of the lower-depths apache for example, in Coeur de lilas and Paris-Beguin. We see there the emergence of different strands which would 'gel' in Cabin's myth: the proletarian identity, lower-depth criminality tendencies and the notion of authenticity backed by minimalist, pared-down performance. These would come together in the mid-193 Os in the figure of the tragic working-class hero, whose criminal nature was socially motivated, and thus did not detract from an overwhelmingly positive image - so much so that Gabin has ever since been regarded as the emblematic hero of the Popular Front years and the expression of the 'nobility' of the French working class. However, history tells us that it is in La Bandera, Julien Duvivier's reactionary and racialist colonial tale, that this myth forcefully emerged. Between 1934 and 1935, Gabin made three films with Duvivier, Maria Chapdelaine, Golgotha and La Bandera. Around that time, he appears to have become aware of the potential of more dramatic parts and consciously selected these: 'With Maria Chapdelaine [in which he is Francois Paradis, a young Canadian trapper, who dies at the end of the film] I started to be very careful about the parts that were offered to me.'5 La Bandera was the most successful of the three. Gabin plays Gilieth, a Parisian worker who commits a murder and joins the Foreign Legion in Morocco to avoid arrest. In the Sahara, he submits to the harsh routine of the Legion, but is harassed by the ambiguous Lucas (Robert Le Vigan), a bounty hunter aware of his crime. Gilieth finds him out with the help of Aicha the 'Arab' woman he loves (Annabella in dark makeup). During a 'pacifying' mission in the desert, their fort is besieged by Arab fighters. The two men are reconciled and redeemed through heroism, and all except Lucas are killed. At the end of the film, Gilieth's name is honoured, like that of his comrades. He has become a national hero. La Bandera, dedicated to General Franco, who authorized the shooting in the then Spanish part of Morocco, was a major production. Duvivier had just been awarded the Grand Prix du Cinema Francais for Maria Chapdelaine, and the cast was impressive: apart from Gabin, there was the respected stage actor Pierre Renoir (Jean Renoir's brother),

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familiar character actors like Aimos and Robert Le Vigan and Annabella, the number one female French star. Pierre Mac Orlan, the author of the novel, brought literary prestige, and the accent put on the location shooting and the actors' strenuous training added a seal of authenticity. On 11 July 1935, Mac Orlan wrote an article in Pour vous about the shooting, and about the relationship between the film and his novel. His piece uncannily emphasizes themes which later would become crucial to the Gabin myth: male bonding, violent and doomed passions and authenticity. In such a film,' he wrote, 'it was necessary to apply a large dose of truth, in order to create an atmosphere of desperate and sentimental violence'. Although Gabin plays the main character, Mac Orlan's article does not single him out but, on the contrary, praises the team effort and especially Duvivier, who made the film 'just as I would have shot it myself. Two months later (on 26 September 1935), Gabin 'claims the paternity of La Bandera' in the same magazine, Pour vous. Released to huge acclaim, La Bandera turned Gabin into a star.6 Shortly after, running from 9 September to 10 October 1935, Pour vous published a series autobiographical articles entitled 'Quand je revois ma vie' ('When I look back at my life'). These articles are exemplary of the retrospective construction of a star's persona. From week to week we see Cabin's life unfold as a story in which every event in his past acquires a significance in relation to the 'present' (1935). The major themes structuring the character of Gilieth and, subsequently, the image of Gabin the star, are found retroactively in Gabin the child: a rebellious personality (he played truant at school and ran away from home), a strong nature ('I wasn't given bread and chocolate by my mother, like other children, but meat and red wine' [12 September]), violence (he fought with school friends, because 'I needed brutality. I liked it' [19 September]). Tough masculinity and virile friendship are projected on to the character and the actor, connecting Gilieth the character and Gabin the man. But these themes could only have such a resonance with the audience because they corresponded to discourses on the social and cultural terrain. In 1935, the frequent representation, in different media, of events such as street riots and other violent conflicts, constructed a constellation of values about the army, soldiers and virility, often anchored in the exotic sites of the French colonies. The colonial

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exhibition of 1931 further promoted this form of exoticism (Ageron, 1984), an exoticism already well established in other media. Even before 'Mon legionnaire' (a triumph in 1936, as sung by Edith Piaf and Marie Dubas), singers like Georgius, Georges Milton, Frehel and others included colonial songs in their repertoire. In the cinema, films such as Le Grand jeu (1933), Sidonie Panache (1934), Itto (1934), Tartarin de Tarascon (1934), La Route imperiak (1935), Bounasque (1935), Princesse Tam-Tam (1936) and many others, beyond their aesthetic and ideological differences, all created popular fantasies of Africa and (less frequently) Asia. The colonial motif was also widespread in painting, literature, interior decoration and fashion. La Bandera thus condenses three motifs resonant in popular culture at the time: the military institution, the Foreign Legion and the colonies. If colonial exoticism was so widespread at the time, why did Gabin have such impact in La Banderal The answer to this question must take into consideration the masculine dimension of both character and star. Duvivier's penchant for 'men's stories'7 suited Cabin's physique and performance style. The Foreign Legion and the military institution in La Bandera are much more than the simple decor they are, for example, in Le Grand jeu, where the true subject is the romantic conflict between the hero, embodied by Pierre Richard-Willm, and the (double) heroine played by Marie Bell, or in Morocco (1930), where the narrative and visual interests are focused on the Marlene Dietrich-Gary Cooper couple. In La Bandera, on the other hand, the central conflict takes places between soldiers and addresses, through the military institution, a construction of masculinity defined by the relationships between men and not by relationships between men and women. In La Bandera, the woman (Annabella) is, as it were, part of the decor. The film clearly addresses spectators constructed as masculine (whether they are men or women), whereas Le Grand jeu, by its choice of actors and its romantic story, is a 'woman's film'. The anchorage of La Bandera in a genre for and about men is aptly illustrated by the fact that the Mac Orlan text mentioned above is set, in the same issue of Pour vous, opposite an article by right-wing journalist Jean Fayard entitled, 'We want a virile cinema'; this piece deplores the 'excessive delicacy and refinement' of the French cultural climate of the time, and especially the '[film] melodramas based on excessive sensibility'. La Bandera clearly answered Fayard's wish,

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since shortly after, on 26 September 1935, he wrote in Candide, La Bandera is a long shot from the ordinary tearful melodrama. Here are men, Legionnaires, who lead a harsh life under a harsh climate.' Even though women's genres do not come to an end at that point (as indicated, for instance, by the continued popularity of the Russian melodrama in the 1930s and the costume film of the 1940s and 1950s), the birth of the Gabin myth marks the ascendancy of male-oriented populist films and, especially after the war, of the policier. It is thus not surprising that Gabin found his second wave of popularity with Touchez pas au grisbi, a 'men's story' par excellence, in which the ordinary meaning of the word homme is reinforced by its underworld slang signification as 'tough guy'. At the same time, the masculine dimension of the Gabin persona from the very beginning is complicated by a vulnerability and sensitivity which marks him out from the other tough guys (I will turn to this in the last section of this chapter). Suffice it to say, the power of Cabin's 'myth' was to make this male world acceptable and appear simply 'human' and thus universal. La Bandera is an imperialist film which reveals, in its overt prejudice (the Moroccans are simply called 'bastards'), a structure found usually less explicitly in many other Gabin films: his French identity is affirmed against racial or ethnic 'others' — Josephine Baker in Zouzou, the inhabitants of the Casbah in Pepe le Moko or of the city of Genoa in Au-dela des grilles, and all the Angelos and Pepitos of the 1950s poliders. La Bandera combines colonial adventure with the Foreign Legion, an institution designed as a manufacturer of new identities. Through the colonialist and racialist ideology of the film emerges a more abstract fantasy, that of an ideal and consensual national identity. Gilieth is a Parisian worker who commits a murder in emblematic Montmartre, a figure of the apache, an amalgam of the 'labouring and dangerous classes' (Chevalier, 1958) central to French bourgeois representations of the people, a representation which is erotically charged. The point of La Bandera is to restore the heroism, but also the virility, of the Gabin character, who goes from skulking man-on-the-run to proud military hero in the process of restoring his identity as a good Frenchman, ready to give up his life for the patrie. These qualities emerge through the film alongside, and in spite of, his character's criminal past, and are in fact strengthened by it. The recognition of his worth comes with the

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approval of the aristocratic and Catholic Captain Weiler (Renoir) and death. With Gilieth, Gabin here embodies for the first time with such clarity the honest/criminal duality of his myth. Duvivier and Gabin reworked a very similar story in The Impostor (1943), made in Hollywood during the German occupation of France. In the film, set in Africa during the war, Gabin plays a murderer and deserter who usurps the identity of a dead soldier to escape punishment, but eventually becomes a hero who dies for France. From La Bandera to The Impostor, the Gabin myth thus functioned as a heroic figure of redemption, a blank page on which the fantasy of an idealized Frenchman could be projected. The Impostor was not successful (its distribution in France, as an American film, was barred by the war). Nevertheless, Cabin's off-screen conduct in the Free French army reinforced the notion of national heroism in his image. The cover of a book on the life of artists under the German occupation (Ragache and Ragache, 1988) puts Gabin at the centre of a design shaped like the tricolore French flag, between Celine and Arletty. In contrast to Celine and Arletty - who represent, respectively, intellectual and sexual collaboration — and by his central placement, Gabin, clad in his Free French uniform, stands out as representing 'core' Frenchness (see also Chapter 1). But if Cabin's personal conduct during the war was irreproachable, it is not just the man who is celebrated on the cover of such a book; it is the star. The myth of Gabin the star reconciles antagonistic values into a coherent, ideal identity, whose impossibility, however, is signalled by the repeatedly tragic or pessimistic ending of his films up to that point. The post-war films, as we will see, use the same structure but propose a more reassuring reading. The Gabin image put in place in La Bandera was immediately taken up in such films as La Belle equipe, Les Bas-fonds and Pepe le Moko, and perpetuated in La Grande illusion, Gueule d'amour, Le Quai des brumes, La Bete humaine, Le Jour se leve and Remorques. All these films offer variations on the theme of the good, honest worker who is also a criminal, or of the criminal who is deep down a good honest worker, a French version of the 'good-bad boy' which Cabin's talent, looks and performance style united into a powerful myth of 'charismatic ordinariness'.

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Charismatic ordinariness One aspect of the Gabin myth which makes him 'paradigmatic'8 and influential on subsequent male actors is his performance of 'charismatic ordinariness'. His parts and extra-cinematic image repeatedly emphasized 'ordinary' working-class values (often in defiance of biography), especially through associations with popular leisure, work and the land. On the other hand, his performance also exuded power and charisma. Throughout his career, Gabin was associated both on and off screen with popular sports. There was boxing (Martin Roumagnac, L'Air de Paris), football (Du haut en has, La Marie du port), card games (especially the popular game of belote) and cycling, a sport coded as particularly French. In a history book on France in the 1930s (Rioux, 1983, pp. 42— 56), there is a photograph which shows Gabin and actress Madeleine Renaud at a banquet held during the 'Six jours' cycling race of 1935. The picture illustrates the value of Cabin's association with sport in the construction of his image. The image alone (Gabin and Renaud are surrounded by other Tout-Paris personalities at a banquet) signifies luxury: glamorously dressed film stars, bottles of champagne, glittering decorations. The caption, however, which specifies that the dinner took place at the Vel' d'Hiv' adds a popular dimension. Gabin emerges as the conflation of high life and proletarian leisure as he had done two years earlier in Le Tunnel. References to cycling can be found in, among others, Le Jour se leve, Rue des Prairies and Le Rouge est mis. In this last film, a thriller, Gabin and his gang are preparing a coup in the country, when a group of young cyclists stops by. The scene has no function but to 'quote' this element of the Gabin star image: This reminds you of your youth', says one of his mates. Cycling authenticates Cabin's roots in 'the people', even when as in this case his narrative role places him out of that class. Here again it is the reconciliatory structure of the Gabin myth, effortlessly straddling two worlds, which explains why he plays such a metaphoric role in Popular Front representations. Thus, we find him on the cover of Genevieve Guillaume-Grimaud's (1986) book on the cinema of the Popular Front, in his cloth cap from La Belle equipe — even though his image served equally in more reactionary films, as we saw with La Bandera. For Dyer (1979a, pp. 42-4),9 the accent placed on star leisure is a way

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of denying that stars do a job, a way to exalt their 'magic' dimension and hide, in the process, the fundamental unfairness of their luxurious existence. But some stars with an 'ordinary' image, including in Hollywood, drew on discourses which, on the contrary, put the accent on work. James Cagney, a Hollywood contemporary of Cabin's, presented his acting not as an art but as a 'job to do' (McGilligan, 1975, p. 207). Gabin, too, put the accent on 'le turbin ('hard grind'): 'I am an artisan. ... I work as a proletarian' (cited in Canaille, 1954, p. 259). Cabin's image of an artisan who only 'does his job', explicit in interviews, is also at the core of his screen parts: for instance, the criminals he plays in Les Bas-fonds and Pepe le Moko are, respectively, a locksmith and a cabinet-maker; in Gueule d'amour, he is a typesetter; La Bete humaine exhalts his professionalism as a train driver; Le Jour se leve shows him sand-blasting in a factory. In the post-war films, when he incarnated industry barons and godfather-type heads of criminal families, the dialogues always insisted on this workmanlike aspect (for example, in Touchez pas au grisbi and many others). This foregrounding of the work ethos is ideologically fuzzy (the films are not 'about' work), but it also meant that Cabin's charisma and glamour could be preserved without alienating his popular audience. Even though this audience knew very well, in the 1930s, that 'Gueule d'amour lived in a bourgeois mansion, two blocks away from the Bois de Boulogne' (in Gauteur and Vincendeau, 1993, p. 27) or, in the 1950s, that the lorry driver of Gas-oil had a large estate in Normandy, Cabin's image as a 'proletarian' could be credibly retained, as illustrated by the 'cumulard' story (see below). Cabin's childhood in the country, and later his emotional investment in his Normandy farm, are always seen as the basis of his identity. And yet, his screen persona, right from the start, was located in the Parisian register. The strength of Cabin's 'rural' identity resides in the fact that it is an abstract construction which does not have to be confirmed in practice by his characters (Maria Chapdelaine, Le Plaisir, La Horse and LAffaire Dominici are rare examples of films where Gabin plays a rural character). This rural identity functions as a free-floating signified which, as attached to the signifier of his urban heroes, endows them with a 'France profonde' dimension, while avoiding the old-fashioned or ridiculous characterizations generally given to peasants in French cinema. Like Gerard Depardieu today, who describes himself as a

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'wine-grower' in his passport (see Chapter 9), Cabin's association with the land is nostalgic and readable against the inexorable shift in post-war France from a rural to an urban society. It is also a way of reconciling the privileges of the star — the financial means of acquiring a chateau in Anjou (Depardieu) or horse-breeding stables in Normandy (Cabin) — with the myth of the 'ordinary' Frenchman whose roots are in his ancestors' terroir. Thus, through associations with popular sport, work and the land, a set of meanings were put in place which suggested ordinariness, rootedness. They acquired particular force because of Cabin's looks and his 'authentic' performance style. From very early on, Cabin was perceived as illustrating a perfect homology between actor, person and character, the key to stardom. 'Cabin is not an actor, but a force of nature' (Jean Piverd); 'Jean Cabin is transparency incarnate, the very evidence of a human being' (Jacques Prevert); 'He can only do one thing: exist on screen as he is in real life' (Benjamin Fainsilber, who also says Cabin asked Charles Spaak to write 'scenes as in real life' for him) (in Gauteur and Vincendeau, 1993, pp. 18-30). Cabin's performance was characterized by poise and understatement. This he achieved by 'unlearning' the exaggeration of the comic musichall he came from, allowing him to undercut the theatrical gestures of many of his co-actors. For instance, watch him in Pepe le Moko,w where he is surrounded by a group of theatrical actors — Charpin and Saturnin Fabre in particular. In contrast with their mannered elocution, his speech is naturalistic; against their histrionic gestures, his are restrained and precise. Where the 'eccentrics' (see Chapter 1) act for the spectator in the back row, Cabin acts for the camera. As Jean Renoir said: This immense actor obtained the greatest effects with the smallest of means. ... Cabin, with a slight shiver on his impassive face could express the most violent feelings. Another actor would have had to scream to obtain the same result. [He] overwhelmed his audience with a mere wink. (Renoir, 1974, p. 118)

The young Cabin's face embodies the duality of his characters. It is a rugged face, with sharp lines, thin lips, a strong nose and thick and relatively dark hair (Cabin, according to Brunelin [1987, pp. 210-11], liked to play down his blondness for fear of appearing 'feminized'). His

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smile is also connoted as 'proletarian', tinged with irony with a slightly raised upper lip and often with a dangling cigarette. His voice and inflections have definite working-class connotations. By contrast, his clear blue eyes, particularly highlighted from Pepe le Moko onwards, suggest romantic love and 'otherness'. Cabin's stocky body, which became thick-set in middle-age, is solidly planted, his walk has a rolling gait. This 'class body' (Bourdieu, 1979, p. 215) 'speaks' confident virility through its everyday imperturbability. To Cagney's nervous energy (they played the same part in the French and American versions of Howard Hawks's La Foule hurle/The Crowd Roars in 1932), Gabin contrasts a still presence. One cannot imagine him running or leaping. In this sense, he prefigures the Clint Eastwood and Delon of the 1960s and 1970s. The naturalism of his acting is enhanced by an 'invisible' performance of quotidian gestures. All this is, paradoxically, reinforced by its opposite - Cabin's famous 'explosion of violence'. These outbursts became a legendary part of his performance style; they were moments of mini-spectacle in their own right, expected by the audience (although not, as is often repeated, written into his contracts). They indicate a loss of control which, in our culture, also signifies the authentic: since he can't help it, it really is 'him'.11 Cabin's working-class persona was completed, in the 1930s, by his appearance — the cloth cap and the soft jackets he wore — and the decors in which he moved. French proletarian culture distinguishes itself from bourgeois culture by its absence of 'manners', in the sense of 'putting on airs', by its desire to get at the substance of things rather than concentrate on appearances (Bourdieu, 1979); Gabin was its perfect star. True, the post-war Gabin moved from modest backgrounds into bourgeois milieux (criminal or not). But traces of his early persona remained, in particular on the level of language and gestures, legitimizing his later 'godfather' parts in his second career after the war.

The godfather of French cinema World War II marked a huge break in Cabin's life and career. He came back from Hollywood with grey hair and a thicker figure. Between Martin Roumagnac (1946) and Touchez pas au grisbi (1954) he made

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thirteen films with mixed success, although several of them (Au-dela des grilles, La Marie du port, La Verite sur Bebe Donge, La Minute de verite) are very good. It seemed that Cabin's 'myth' did not gel any more. But his stardom and box-office potency returned with a vengeance with Touchez pas au grisbi, Jacques Becker's thriller about an ageing gangster, Max-lementeur (Cabin), whose last heist is ruined by his bumbling friend Riton (Rene Dary). Becker revived both Cabin's career and the thriller genre. In the years that followed, Cabin played variations on Max in Razzia sur la chnouf, Le Rouge est mis, Maigret tend un piege, Le Cave se rebiffe, Melodic en sous-sol, Maigret voit rouge, Du Rififi a Paname and Le Clan des Siciliens (whether he played a criminal or member of the police in these films did not make much difference). Cabin's posi-Grisbi persona is associated with materialism and gangtype criminals, as opposed to the often redemptive and more socially coded crime of his previous roles. In this, he echoed wider changes in French culture and society. Where the pre-war Cabin was embedded in, and the epitome of, the working-class community — for instance, in La Belle equipe, La Bete humaine, Pepe le Moko and Le Jour se leve (Vincendeau, 1985) — now the heroes were individualistic career criminals who inhabited luxury nightclubs and elegant flats, drank champagne and drove American cars (see also Maillot, 1996). But the shadow of Cabin's pre-war identity was never far away. If, in the late 1930s, Cabin played extraordinary human beings who had the outward appearance of ordinary workers, after the war, on the contrary, he embodied people who deep down were 'ordinary' (that is to say, of popular descent) despite their seeming extraordinariness: rich gangsters, heads of bourgeois families, the President himself (Le President, 1963). The very structure of his star myth made it possible for him to reconcile these extremes. While the 'contents' of the Cabin myth undeniably changed from pre- to post-war, its structure and function remained the same, allowing multiple identifications through his star persona. Thus, although Max lives in luxury and survives the death of Riton and the loss of his grisbi (money), he contains the memory of the doomed Pepe le Moko and of other 1930s heroes. Similarly, it is possible to see his character of Noel Schoudler in Les Grandes families as a ruthless and arrogant grand-bourgeois, but equally as the triumph of a man of popular origins who has reached the top of the social ladder through hard work

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Plate 8 La Traversee de Paris (Claude Autant-Lara, 1956): Bourvil (left), Louis de Funes (centre), Jean Gabin (right).

and, crucially, who demonstrates his superiority over the 'real' aristocrats around him. Cabin's ability to retain the kernel of his working-class persona even off screen is well illustrated by the 'cumulard' story in the early 1960s, which pitted him against local farmers who were protesting against his 'accumulation' of land around his horse-breeding farm in Normandy. Yet, as Serge Mallet noted, public opinion and even the leftwing press sided with landowner Gabin against the demonstrating farmers, choosing 'the landowner who looks like an anarchist against the farmers' (in Gauteur and Vincendeau, 1993, p. 67). Cabin's performance style had by then matured into a solid (and for some critics excessive) mastery of filmic space. So familiar was his presence that films would often show him from the back. They contrasted his solid presence with actors who were of slighter build or given to nervous gesticulation: for instance, Bourvil (and de Funes briefly) in La Traversee de Paris. Roland Barthes, who does not name him, surely had Gabin in mind when he described Touchez pas au grisbi as 'the universe of understatement' (Barthes, 1973, p. 72). Indeed, Gabin goes

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through his thrillers of the 1950s and 1960s hardly moving a finger, except to deliver magisterial slaps across the face of his opponents, his preferred form of Violence'. These infantalizing slaps draw our attention to another key aspect of Cabin's later star persona. From the 1950s to the 1970s, he occupied the choice place for French middle-aged male stars: that of the father figure. This follows on from a long French tradition (Vincendeau, 1989 and 1992; Burch and Sellier, 1996) in which the patriarchal figure dominates narratives, usually in a dyad with a young woman (a symbolic or actual daughter). Like Raimu and Harry Baur in the 1930s, Gabin from the late 1940s played nurturing and/or seducing father to young actresses. He is a 'seducing father' in La Marie du port, La Vierge du Rhin, Des gens sans importance, French Cancan, Void le temps des assassins, Razzia sur la chnouf and En cas de malheur (with Bardot). He was a 'nurturing father' in, among others, Rue des Prairies and Le Cas du docteur Laurent. In all these films, he shelters 'stray' young women and, in some cases, young men: Chiens perdus sans collier, Rue des Prairies, Deux hommes dans la ville (with Delon). In L'Air de Paris, the relationship has, unusually for the time, a clear homoerotic component (Dyer, 2000). The father figure incarnated by Gabin eliminates mature women, and as a result his character incorporates the 'feminine'. Gabin becomes, as it were, both father and mother. He is the one seen suffering, for instance in La Verite sur Bebe Donge and Rue des Prairies. This dimension tempers his autocratic patriarchs who are sometimes shown as broken, humiliated figures, especially in later films such La Horse and Le Chat. This configuration allows Cabin's star persona to attain the ideal of a complete human being: masculine and feminine, man and woman, father and mother. Gabin thus offered his audience the fantasy of a sensitive yet virile male figure — an ideal hero who valorizes both masculine and feminine values (but not women!). In the pre-war period the Frenchness of this figure was linked to the historical moment: he was the rebellious worker of the Popular Front. After the war, when he also embodied historical heroes (Les Miserables, Le President), he matured into a conservative national figure, a reassuring point of identification in a time of great change and modernization. His middle-class critics saw a proletarian hero who was a

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class traitor. His popular audience, on the contrary, saw the vindication of working-class heroes who had 'made it' but who at the same time remained 'one of them'. Cabin's continued popularity with working-class audiences also flew in the teeth of the New Wave who loathed him (see the opening quote in Chapter 5) as the embodiment of the 'cinema de papa (the contempt was reciprocal). Precisely. In the mature Gabin French audiences applauded - and still applaud - the unifying figure of a truly popular cinema.

Biofilmography Born jean Alexis Moncorge, Paris, 11 May 1904. Married Gaby Basset (1928-31), Doriane (Jeanne Suzanne Mauchin) (1932-42) and Dominique Fournier (from 1949), with whom three children: Florence (born 1949), Valerie (born 1952) and Mathias (born 1955). Died Paris, 15 November 1976. The Gabin museum opened in Meriel, near Auvers-sur-Oise (north of Paris), in 1992. Main acting awards

Venice, Best Actor, La Nuit est man royaume, 1951 Venice, Best Actor, L'Air de Paris, 1954 Venice, Best Actor, Touchez pas au grisbi, 1954 Berlin, Silver Bear, Archimede le dochard, 1959 Berlin, Silver Bear, Le Chat, 1971 Films as actor

1930 1931

1932

Chacun sa chance (Hans Steinhoff and Rene Pujol) Mephisto (Henri Debain, Nick Winter and Rene Navarre) Paris-Beguin (Augusto Genina) Tout ca ne vaut pas I'amour (Jacques Tourneur) Coeur de lilas (Anatole Litvak) Pour un soir (Jean Godard) Coeurs joyeux (Hans Schwartz) Gloria (Hans Behrendt and Yvan Noel)

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Les Gaietes de I'escadron (Maurice Tourneur) La Belle mariniere (Harry Lachmann) La Fouk hurk/The Crowd Roars (Jean Daumery and Howard Hawks) 1933 L'Etoile de Valencia (Serge de Poligny) Adieu ks beaux jours (Johannes Meyer) Le Tunnel (Kurt Bernhardt, France/Germany) Du haut en bas (Georg-Wilhelm Pabst) 1934 Zouzou (Marc Allegret) Maria Chapdelaine (Julien Duvivier, France/Canada) 1935 Golgotha (Julien Duvivier) La Bandera (Julien Duvivier) Varietes (Nicolas Farkas) 1936 La Belle equipe (Julien Duvivier) Les Bas-fonds/Underworld (Jean Renoir) 1937 Pepe k Moko (Julien Duvivier) La Grande illusion (Jean Renoir) Le Messager (Raymond Rouleau) Gueule d'amour (Jean Gremillon, France/Germany) 1938 Le Quai des brumes/Quay of Shadows (Marcel Carne) La Bete humaine/Judas Was a Woman (Jean Renoir) 1939 Le Recif de corail (Maurice Gleize) Le Jour se levelDaybreak (Marcel Carne) 1940 Remorques/Stormy Waters (Jean Gremillon) 1942 Moontide [La Peniche de I'amour] (Archie Mayo, USA) 1943 The Impostor/LTmposteur (Julien Duvivier, USA) 1946 Martin Roumagnac/Room Upstairs (Georges Lacombe) 1947 Miroir (Raymond Lamy) 1949 Au-dela des grilles [Le mura di malapaga] (Rene Clement, France/Italy) La Marie du port (Marcel Carne) 1950 Pour I'amour du del/12 Hours to Live [E piu facile che un cammello] (Luigi Zampa, France/Italy) 1951 Victor (Claude Heymann) La Nuit est man royaume/Night Is My Kingdom (Georges Lacombe) Le Plaisir [ep. 'La Maison Tellier'l (Max Ophuls) 1952 La Verite sur Bebe Donge/The Truth about Our Marriage (Henri Decoin)

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La Minute de verite/The Moment of Truth (Jean Delannoy, France/ Italy) Fille dangereuse [Bufere] (Guide Brignone, Italy/France) 1953 Leur derniere nuit (Georges Lacombe) La Vierge du Rhin/Rhine Virgin (Gilles Grangier) 1954 Touchez pas au grisbi/Honour Among Thieves (Jacques Becker, France/Italy) L'Air de Paris [Aria di Parigi] (Marcel Carne, France/Italy) 1955 Le Port du desir/Harbour of Desire (Edmond T. Greville) French Cancan (Jean Renoir, France/Italy) Napoleon (Sacha Guitry) Razzia sur la chnouf/Chnouf — To Take It Is Deadly (Henri Decoin) Chiens perdus sans collier (Jean Delannoy) Gas-oil (Gilles Grangier) 1956 Void le temps des assassins/Murder a la Carte (Julien Duvivier) Des gens sans importance (Henri Verneuil) Le Sang a la tete (Gilles Grangier) La Traversee de Paris/Four Bags Full (Claude Autant-Lara, France/Italy) Crime et chdtiment/Crime and Punishment (Georges Lampin) 1957 Le Cas du docteur Laurent/The Case of Dr Laurent (Jean-Paul Le Chanois) Le Rouge est mis/Speaking of Murder (Gilles Grangier) 1958 Les Miserables (Jean-Paul Le Chanois, France/Italy) Maigret tend un piege [II commissario Maigret] (Jean Delannoy) Le Desordre et la nuit/Night Affair (Gilles Grangier) En cas de malheur/Love Is My Profession [La ragazza del peccato] (Claude Autant-Lara, France/Italy) Les Grandes families (Denys de la Patelliere) 1959 Archimede le clochard/The Tramp (Gilles Grangier, France/Italy) Maigret et I'affaire Saint-Fiacre [Maigret e il caso Saint-Fiacre] (Jean Delannoy, France/Italy) Rue des Prairies/'Mio Figlio (Denys de la Patelliere, France/Italy) 1960 Le Baron de I'ecluse [II barone] (Jean Delannoy, France/Italy) Les Vieux de la vieille/The Old Guard (Gilles Grangier) 1961 Le President (Henri Verneuil and Michel Audiard, France/Italy) Le Cave se rebiffe/The Counterfeiters of Paris (Gilles Grangier, France/Italy)

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1962 Un singe en hiver/A Monkey in Winter (Henri Verneuil) Le Gentleman d'Epsom [Les Grands seigneurs] (Gilles Grangier, France/Italy) 1963 Melodie en sous-sol/Any Number Can Win (Henri Verneuil, France/ Italy) Maigret voit rouge (Gilles Grangier, France/Italy) 1964 Monsieur (Jean-Paul Le Chanois, France/Italy) L'Age ingrat (Gilles Grangier) 1965 Le Tonnerre de Dieu/God's Thunder (Denys de la Patelliere, France/ Italy) 1966 Du Rififi a Paname/Rififi in Paris (Denys de la Patelliere, France/ Italy) Le Jardinier d'Argenteuil/The Gardener of Argenteuil (Jean-Paul Le Chanois) 1967 Le Soleil des voyous/The Action Man (Jean Delannoy, France/Italy) Le Pacha/Showdown (Georges Lautner, France/Italy) 1968 Le Tatoue (Denys de la Patelliere, France/Italy) 1969 Sous le signe du taureau (Gilles Grangier) Le Clan des Siciliens/The Sicilian Clan (Henri Verneuil) 1970 La Horse/The Violent People (Pierre Granier-Deferre, France/Italy) 1971 Le Chat/The Cat (Pierre Granier-Deferre, France/Italy) Le Drapeau noir flotte sur la marmite/The Black Flag Waves over the Scow (Michel Audiard) 1972 Le Tueur (Denys de la Patelliere, France/Italy) L'Affaire Dominici (Claude Bernard-Aubert) 1973 Deux hommes dans la ville/Two Men in Town (Jose Giovanni, France/Italy) 1974 Verdict/The Big Four (Andre Cayatte, France/Italy) 1976 L'Annee sainte (Jean Girault, France/Italy) Notes

1. Georges Baume, 'Jean Gabin, I'irremplacable', Cinemonde, No. 1031, 7 May 1995. 2. Francis Mayor, Telerama, 27 November 1976. 3. This chapter contains highlights of my longer study in Gauteur and Vincendeau (1993). 4. Carne, quoted in Siclier and Missiaen (1977), p. 66.

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5. Le Film vecu, No. 8, 9 March 1950. 6. See also Peter Mostyn, interview with Gabin, Daily Telegraph, 14 September 1973. 7. 'I can say that the subjects which interest me are men's stories', Julien Duvivier, interviewed in Cinemonde, 15 September 1959. 8. I have developed this point in 'From proletarian hero to godfather: Jean Gabin and "paradigmatic" French masculinity', in Kirkham and Thumim (1995), pp. 249-62. 9. See also the introduction to Dyer's Heavenly Bodies (1987). 10. On Pepe le Moko, see my longer development in Vincendeau (1998). 11. Dyer discusses this aspect of Judy Garland's performance style in 'A star is bom and the construction of authenticity', in Gledhill (1991), pp. 138-9.

CHAPTER 4

Brigitte Bordot Tfie old and the new: what Bordot meant to 1950s France

When the magazine Esquire was re-launched in the UK in March 1991, it chose to put Brigitte Bardot on its cover, using the still which had advertised Godard's Le Mepris in 1963. That is to say, Bardot in one of her most stereotypical sex-goddess images: long bleached blonde hair, heavy eye make-up, pink lipstick on parted luscious lips echoing the pink towel in which she is wrapped, not hiding much of her breasts. But if in the highly self-reflexive Le Mepris Bardot represented 'Bardot' and the phenomenon of stardom, her place on the cover of Esquire was, at first, more baffling, since there was nothing on her inside the issue. We are then thrown back to the cover and its caption: 'From the Bomb to Bardot, Greaves to Gazza, JFK to John Major - OUR TIMES, A Picture History of Men: 1946—1991'. So, this magazine for men invoked Bardot as historical symbol of the new in old terms indeed: Woman, as the subheading of Esquire put it, is 'Man at his best'. What is, after all, only a clever piece of magazine design attracted my attention because it is indicative of the structure of the Bardot 'myth'. From the release of Roger Vadim's Et Dieu ... crea la femme in 1956, Bardot became a media sensation as an icon of rebellious youth, sexiness and of French womanhood, both in and out of France. In that film, she plays Juliette, an orphan who sets the small resort of Saint-Tropez 82

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ablaze. All men desire her, including wealthy playboy Carradine (Curt Jurgens). She herself is in love with Antoine (Christian Marquand), though in the end she marries his brother Michel (Jean-Louis Trintignant). Juliette — a name redolent with romantic love (Shakespeare) and sex (de Sade) — and Bardot were immediately conflated: her beauty, her carefree lifestyle on the beach, her insolence towards her elders and betters. Subsequent films replayed and accommodated this persona. Bardot was voted 'typical woman' of 1961 by the fan magazine Cinemonde, an accurate enough assessment, since her dress, hairstyle and demeanour were widely copied, both by other film stars — Mylene Demongeot, Annette Stroyberg, Jane Fonda, Catherine Deneuve, to name the most obvious clones — as well as by ordinary women, and she inspired, among other cartoonists, Jean-Claude Forest, who modelled Barbarella on her. Bardot was famous enough to be known by her initials, B.B. In 1969, she modelled for the bust of Marianne, the representation of the French Republic, the first known woman to fulfil this role (Agulhon and Bonte, 1992). Countless books and magazines have featured Bardot in their pages and on their covers, including coffeetable celebrations and biographies — for instance, Tony Crawley's Bebe: The Films of Brigitte Bardot (1975), Peter Haining's The Legend of Brigitte Bardot (1982), Glenys Roberts' Bardot: A Personal Biography (1984), Sean French's Bardot (1994) and Jeffrey Robinson's Bardot: Two Lives (1994) but more surprisingly perhaps, works by feminists. These include Francoise Aude's Cine-modeles, cinema d'elles (1979), Michele Sarde's sociological survey, Regard sur les franpaises (1983), Catherine Rihoit's biography, Brigitte Bardot: un mi/the franpais (1986), Mandy Merck's Perversions (1994) and Camille Paglia in a Channel 4 television documentary series, Without Walls, broadcast in 1994. Most famous of all, though, is Simone de Beauvoir's early essay 'Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita syndrome' (1960), first written in English for the American Esquire. However different their intentions or backgrounds, all writers stress the newness of Bardot, especially her revolutionary, 'free' sexuality. The invention of the Bardot phenomenon was claimed, with characteristic exaggeration, by Roger Vadim, who said, in an introduction to the video of his 1960 film Les Liaisons dangereuses (starring Jeanne Moreau): 'We are all beginning to encounter this new species of liberated young girl who

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has abandoned the restraint usually imposed on her sex. ... This particular phenomenon I've tried to bring to life through the personality of Brigitte Bardot.' Vadim, a journalist for Paris Match and aspiring filmmaker, indeed saw Bardot's potential when she was a teenage model, married her in 1952 and engineered the beginning of her film career. By the time of Et Dieu ... crea la femme, she had made sixteen films, was splitting up with Vadim and beginning to attract serious media attention. Bardot undoubtedly ushered in a new femininity in 1950s France. Her spectacular youthful looks, her insolent wit, her blatant promiscuous lifestyle and her outspokenness were unlike any other star of the time, in France or elsewhere. Yet, at the same time her appeal depended on 'old' values: on traditional myths of femininity and on the display of her body, though a body repackaged for the times: nude, more 'natural', on location, in colour and Cinemascope. Bardot's stardom rested on the combination and reconciliation of these opposed sets of values. My analysis in this chapter concentrates on Bardot's period of high stardom, which was surprisingly short - from the release of Et Dieu ... crea la femme in 1956 to La Verite in 1960, her highest grossing film in France1 — though I will refer to earlier and later films, in particular her two New Wave films, Vie privee (1961) and Le Mepris (1963). As discussed in Chapter 1, in box-office terms alone, Bardot's ranking is relatively low. Yet, she outstrips all the stars in this book in fame. Both during her film career and since it ended in 1973, Bardot has been extraordinarily visible through press, television shows, documentaries, postcards, books, internet sites, etc. Original posters of her films are among the most expensive, and outside France they are among the few French posters available. Bardot also had an important career as a singer in France, where there is a collector's market for her records,2 and several CDs of her songs are available. In the late 1950s and through most of the 1960s, as she vividly recounts in her memoirs (Bardot, 1996), she was hounded by paparazzi, on film shoots (the subject of Willy Rozier's 1963 documentary Paparazzi) and even as she was giving birth in her apartment. She was mobbed by crowds on every outing, and the object of ceaseless press speculation. Bardot was the first French mass-media star. Since the end of her film career, her involvement in animal rights and her controversial political stance have kept her in the public eye, as

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has the publication of her memoirs, Initiates BB (1996) and Le Carre de Pluton (1999). But even though many of her activities in the 1980s and 1990s, including her marriage to National Front supporter Bernard d'Ormale, have aroused hostility in France and abroad, the cult for the young Bardot shows no sign of halting. To understand the extraordinary appeal of the Bardot 'myth', we must therefore return to the late 1950s when she emerged with such impact on the world cultural scene.

Youth Already a model and ballet dancer, Bardot started acting in film at the age of 18, in Le Trou normand. In this comedy designed around the comic star Bourvil, Bardot plays the small though not insignificant part of Javotte, a silly but ambitious (and devastatingly pretty) teenager, plotting with her mother to bring her cousin (Bourvil) down in order to steal his legacy. Bardot's role in Le Trou normand is prototypical: delightfully garbed in a tartan dress or gingham, she is out of place in the small provincial town; she pouts and is always ready with insolent repartee. If the main joke in the film is that the adult Bourvil has to go back to school, Bardot incarnates real youth. Most of the films in the early part of her career likewise cash in on her youth: she plays daughters or is clearly cast as a younger version of the main heroine: for example, in Les Grandes manoeuvres, where she is contrasted to Michele Morgan. Et Dieu ... crea la femme not only represents her as 'young' but also makes her the emblem of the young generation. In its mode of production principally, Et Dieu ... crea la femme was part and precursor of the New Wave. The location shooting, the use of a relatively small crew, the eschewing of studio and established film stars (except for Curt Jurgens, whose presence in the film was essential to the project — see Vadim, 1976), all emphasized modernity and spontaneity. Et Dieu .,. crea la femme became one of the emblems of modern French cinema. A contemporary review by Francois Truffaut in Arts put it explicitly: 'It is a film typical of our generation ... despite the vast audience that Et Dieu ,.. crea la femme will certainly find, only young spectators will be on Vadim's side, because he shares their vision.'3 In another issue of Arts, Truffaut defended Bardot against a 'cabal' of

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'misogynist critics' who said she couldn't act.4 This rhetoric of the new would soon become a major feature of the cultural, social and political new broom ushered in by General de Gaulle's Fifth Republic in 1958, and of the New Wave. But Vadim's age (twenty-eight) at the time of making Et Dieu ... crea la femme is, in retrospect, the strongest common denominator between him and the New Wave directors. For, in aesthetic terms, apart from the real location, Et Dieu ... crea la femme is a classic narrative film that mixes comedy and melodrama and has more in common with the mainstream French cinema of the time than with the modernist experiments of Godard or Resnais. Indeed, the Christmas 1956 issue of Cinemonde described Et Dieu ... crea la femme as 'the prototype of sexy comedy'. This point is borne out by Vadim's subsequent career. What made Et Dieu ... crea la femme 'young' was Bardot. Bardot as leading actress made a dramatic contrast to the dominant female stars of the time: Michele Morgan, Danielle Darrieux, Micheline Presle, Edwige Feuillere and especially Martine Carol, the then French sex goddess, seen in such films as Caroline cherie (Richard Pettier, 1950) and Nana (Christian-Jaque, 1954).5 These women, on the whole, had long film careers and/or stage experience. Bardot, by contrast, trained as a dancer and came from modelling, perceived as modern at the time. She had appeared several times on the cover of Elle, the magazine for the new 1950s woman. The 1950s did see the emergence of a younger generation of popular actresses, such as Daniele Delorme, Nicole Courcel, Dany Robin, Dany Carrel, Jeanne Moreau, Francoise Arnoul and Pascale Petit, who typically appeared as the daughter figure to an established male star such as Jean Gabin (see Chapter 3). By the time Bardot played with Gabin in En cas de malheur, she was the only one to rival him in stature, and conversely he was the only male star with a presence to rival hers — her fame was such that major male stars were unwilling to appear with her, a phenomenon paralleled in her private life (Bardot, 1996). Athough the 1950s saw an increase in female film stars, Bardot became a rare instance in French cinema of a young female star who was bankable and on her name alone a series of films was made. Apart from her looks, what distinguished Bardot from other actresses was her performance. Her style was blatantly non-actressy, giving the impression of spontaneity and 'naturalness'. Many of those performance

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signs will be examined later: her walk, postures, her facial expressions. Here, I shall mention one aspect which defined her most against Feuillere, Carol, Arnoul, etc. - her voice and intonation. Whether trained on stage or not, French actresses of the period relied on a careful and modulated elocution designed to showcase dialogue. By contrast, Bardot's monotone delivery and 'babyish' intonation enraged her detractors and was the main reason for the accusations that she couldn't act. But association with a new cinematic trend and a different type of performance are not enough to explain the extent of Bardot's success. Her emerging persona coincided with the rise of youth consumer power and the social and cultural changes this brought about. This is the case, most visibly, in terms of fashion. The prevailing model of desirable femininity purveyed by the fashion of the time was middle-aged and bourgeois - discreet, untouchable, chic. French fashion of the 1950s was constricting and conformist: tailored jackets pinched at the waist, bosomemphasizing but concealing tops (implying rigid bras and girdles), full skirts, stiletto heels, epitomized by Christian Dior's New Look ensembles of 1947. A strong theme was that of the coordinated ensemble, the 'total look', in which underwear, clothes, perfume, and accessories matched perfectly. Each occasion and time of the day had its own outfit: afternoon ensembles, cocktail dresses, evening gowns. Such styles can be seen in the mainstream French cinema of the 1950s. Quite a number of films were explicitly about the fashion world: Mademoiselle de Paris (Walter Kapps, 1955); Le Couturier de ces dames (Jean Boyer, 1956); Mannequins de Paris (Andre Hunnebelle, 1956); Nathalie (Christian-Jaque, 1957) and Nathalie, agent secret (Henri Decoin, 1959), both starring Martine Carol. Bardot herself starred as a model in Pierre Gaspard-Huit's La Mariee est trap belle in 1956, in a narrative which combines her own youth with youth fashion: like Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face (1956), Bardot is picked by a women's magazine editor (Micheline Presle) to become the fashion face of youth. In other genres, too, actresses displayed the work of famous couturiers, whose names were prominent on the credits. In the thriller Bonnes a tuer (Henri Decoin, 1954), the hero's (Michel Auclair) reunion of his ex-mistresses (including Danielle Darrieux) is the narrative excuse for a fabulous display of Balmain evening gowns, while Adorables creatures (Christian-Jaque, 1952, couture

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by Jacques Heim and Balmain), a three-episode comedy starring, respectively, Danielle Darrieux, Martine Carol and Edwige Feuillere, begins with Darrieux returning (appropriately) from a shopping trip and then carefully removing her coordinated accessories — gloves, hat, jacket - before climbing into bed with her lover (Daniel Gelin). A key feature of the Bardot persona in Et Dieu ... crea la femme was her challenge to this tradition, turning her into a figurehead of youth rebellion against prevailing middle-aged fashion.6 In Et Dieu ... crea la femme, En cas de malheur and La Verite, Bardot plays a girl of modest origins who wears cheap clothes. To one of Curt Jurgens's rich friends who stares at her dress on his yacht in Et Dieu ... crea la femme, she retorts, 'I bought it at the market'. In contrast to the elaborate outfits of other leading female actresses, her clothes are few or skimpy, likewise her underwear (no girdle, sometimes no bra). Though her clothes emphasize her figure, they connote freedom, because they are made of soft cotton rather than the rigid tweeds, satins and silks of couture. Bardot adopted and helped popularize designers such as Real, who specialized in soft fabrics in pastel colours, and neo-hippy designer Jean Bouquin. In her films, her clothes are casual, often crumpled, the buttons undone, and she eschews accessories: little jewellery, often no shoes, usually no handbag, hat or gloves. Her hairstyle is also significant, its length and look of wild abundance contrasting with the neat and shorter coiffures, of other contemporary stars. Her image is of carefree spontaneity. Catherine Rihoit (1986) shows how Bardot came from a fashion-conscious household (her mother and her mother's friends wore couture), and she herself was a model. Her style was just as planned as others, but the modest cost and easy availability of its basic ingredients meant that it could be widely copied. Her following by young women was, in this respect, similar to that of Madonna in the 1980s. Like Madonna, too, Bardot wore clothes from different contexts — such as sailors' jerseys and overalls - and diverted their original meaning. The grey dress she wears in Et Dieu ... crea la femme is a work overall, but she makes it sexy by rolling up the sleeves and undoing some of the buttons. Throughout her films she is seen dressed in sheets, men's shirts, pyjama tops, etc. She put a mac over an evening dress at a Cannes festival soiree (Rihoit, 1986, p. 123) and married her second husband, Jacques Charrier, in 1959 in a pink-and-white gingham dress,

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one of her most imitated outfits. Bardot, as well as ostentatiously chewing gum (see the beginning of En cas de malheur), also wore jeans, the emblem of modern American youth popularized by James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, and other clothes connoting bohemian beat fashion and designed to highlight the contrast with the older generation, which is the main theme of two of her most important dramatic films: En cas de malheur and La Verite. In En cas de malheur, Yvette (Bardot) is a young criminal rescued by a rich older solicitor (Gabin), who falls in love with her, leaves his wife and sets up home with her. At the end, she is killed by her jealous young lover. In La Verite, Dominique (Bardot) is accused of killing her lover Gilbert (Sami Frey), and the film takes place in court where she is accused, defended and judged by middle-aged people, with flashbacks showing us the circumstances of her life leading to the murder. In both films she sports youth fashion which contrast with the formal suits and elegant or dowdy dresses of the older generation. In La Verite, she hangs out in the cafes and hotels of the Latin Quarter, clad in tight black trousers and sweater, flat shoes and a duffle-coat, as well as her signature scarf over her hair. In En cas de malheur she wears the 'waif's uniform' of shiny black mac, and Gabin buys her a ski outfit (a sign of modernity in 1950s France), contrasting with the elegant town dresses of Edwige Feuillere, who plays Cabin's wife. Bardot's slim silhouette was lithe, tomboyish, compared to the ripeness of her erotic rivals Carol and Monroe, and thus well suited to youth clothes like jeans, tight sweaters and ski pants. Her second film, Manina, la fille sans voiles (which means roughly the 'unveiled girl'), was marketed in English as The Girl in the Bikini, which clearly displayed her body. Bardot's championing of new fashion coincided with important changes in the clothing industry. The 1950s saw the decline in the hold of couture over the fashion business, and the beginning of a real democratization, which the industry was quick to seize on for its own purposes. Pierre Cardin, first expelled from the fashion chamber of commerce for his introduction of pret-a-porter, soon became one of its stars for precisely that reason. The fashion industry was also waking up to the power of the young consumer. Women's magazines launched special columns for young women (Delbourg-Delphis, 1981, pp. 205—6). The emphasis on fashion in Bardot's films, new and iconoclastic as it appeared, was also part of the export effort of the French fashion

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business, just as the more traditional films were. Fashion was linked to the cinema in the influence it exerted over the audience and fashion historian Marylene Delbourg-Delphis has argued that since the 1930s the cinema had become the main arbiter of public taste (1981, pp. 16170). Thus the cover of the April 1959 issue of Marie-France shows Bardot and Jacques Charrier under the heading 'style jeune ('young style'). Cinema was also linked to fashion in a more strictly commercial sense, by the Franco-American Blum-Byrnes treaty of 1946—48 which traded French luxury goods, such as wine, fashion and perfumes, against entry to the French market for American films. This was necessary at a time when French fashion was fast losing its world hegemony. Bardot was thus bankable in France and eminently exportable, because she combined both French and youth fashion, at a time when the latter was becoming more international. I will come back to Bardot's clothes later, in terms of their erotic function. Bardot's films also associate her with another emblem of youth: jazz and pop music. The appeal of Et Dieu ... crea la femme may be ascribed in part to its careful mixing of foreign sounds with French ones: as Vadim said, the film 'was somewhat traditional musically, but we did insert jazz and African rhythms into it'.7 The rise of rock 'n' roll and pop music in the 1950s and their association with youth have been well documented (see, for instance, Dick Hebdige's Towards a cartography of taste 1935— 1962' in Hebdige, 1988). Bardot's rebellious stance against the older generation is anchored in music: for example, listening to the juke-box or teaching her girlfriend the mambo rather than staying at home, dancing wildly to the music of a jazz band in defiance of her husband in Et Dieu ... crea la femme, annoying Gabin in En cas de malheur as a boyfriend plays the jazz trumpet. La Verite contrasts Bardot with her sister Annie (Marie-Jose Nat), a classical violin player, and Annie's and her boyfriend Gilbert, a student conductor. At one point, Annie, outraged at Bardot's lounging in bed while she, Annie, is doing the shopping, violently wrenches a cha-cha record off the gramophone. Later on, Bardot looks utterly bored and asks for the popular film fan magazine Cinemonde while Gilbert is trying to get her interested in Bach. Classical music in La Verite meets with the approval of the older generation, against whose hostility Bardot is always pitted in the narratives of her films: foster parents (Et Dieu ... crea la femme) and

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Plate 9 La Mariee est trop belle (Pierre Gaspard-Huit, 1956): Brigitte Bardot and Louis Jourdan. authority figures of all kinds such as magistrates (La Verite, En cas de malheur). This is not particularly remarkable, since French films often put young actresses in actual or symbolic daughter positions. But Bardot's films accentuate this feature. First of all, the staidness and hostility of the older generation is exaggerated; second, the most overt confrontations always take place between her and older women. Her films all contain scenes where an older, straightlaced woman expresses shock, hostility or disapproval: Cabin's secretary in En cas de malheur, her mother in La Verite, etc. (see also Plate 9). Older men, on the other hand, like Gabin in En cas de malheur, desire her as well as express paternal feelings (see Chapter 3). The opening of Et Dieu ... crea la femme condenses this configuration: the middle-aged playboy Carradine visits Juliette, and his gift to her of a toy sports car merges the two sides of his feelings for her. Soon Juliette's foster mother shouts at her for displaying herself in the nude (to which Juliette replies with insolence), while her foster father — in

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a wheelchair - is caught peeping at her through a small window. Thus, her youth connotes, in the context of 1950s France, both the 'new' — rebellion — and the 'old' — lustful spectacle.

Sexuality It seems a truism to say that Bardot is a sex goddess, but the contradictions contained in the expression are worth exploring, not least those of a star who embodies sexuality in a superlative manner, but depends on censorship and repression for her appeal. Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Pamdiso (1988) graphically makes this point and shows the implication of the sex goddess at its crudest: a row of young men masturbate in the cinema as they watch the opening of Et Dieu ... crea la femme. Yet, Bardot lost her appeal in the permissive age. This shows how much of a transitional figure she was, the image of permissiveness and a slap in the face of bourgeois morality, but also a classic object of male desire. The concept of the sex goddess equates women with sex, but, as a male concept, represses women's own sexuality.8 Bardot, however, was new and different in this respect. In and out of the films, she was not only an object of desire but also possessed an active sexuality of her own. A contemporary review of Et Dieu ... crea la femme put it thus: 'She doesn't follow the desire of her heart, but the impulse of her body.' Et Dieu ... crea la femme was a succes de scandals, and some scenes were cut for release in the French provinces, in America and Great Britain. This meant, as Truffaut predicted, good box-office. Here again, the Bardot persona — as embodied in Et Dieu ... crea la femme - contains several contradictory aspects. On the international film scene, the mid- to late 1950s saw both the break-up of the Hollywood studio system and, concurrently, the rise of European art cinema: the films of Fellini, Antonioni, Resnais, Bergman, etc. As part of its drive to compete with Hollywood, European art cinema proposed a new kind of social and psychological realism which included a bid for explicit sexuality, made possible because of less stringent censorship codes. The different censorship laws and the more realistic genres of European films of the 1950s combined to produce a more 'natural' type of sexuality than Hollywood, best epitomized by

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Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren and Silvana Mangano in Italian cinema. Women in peasant dresses, with bare feet paddling in rice fields, contrasted with the high glamour of Monroe and Lana Turner. Bardot was closer to the Italian model, and Et Dieu ... crea la femme frequently features scenes of bathing, sea and beaches. European eroticism was bankable. Vadim said: Of course, some of [Et Dieu ... crea la femme s] success came from its sexual frankness, and that's why so many of the first New Wave films, like Malle's Les Amants and Godard's A Bout de souffle, are equally casual about nudity. It's what distributors, especially American ones, were asking for.9

The strategy worked for Bardot and, according to Marjorie Rosen, '[Et Dieu ... crea la femme] grossed $4m in its initial run [in the USA], and many considered Bardot's "sex kitten" the best thing to come out of France since foie gras' (Rosen, 1973, p. 297). The 1950s offered contradictory ideas of feminine beauty. On the one hand, the fashion for blondeness, started in the 1930s, continued in the likes of stars such as Monroe — a fashion which, as Richard Dyer (1979b) has shown, combines the values of childhood, sex and a celebration of the white race. Stars like Monroe, Diana Dors, Jayne Mansfield and Anita Ekberg exhibited blonde hair and exaggerated female curves, especially breasts, features distinctly modified by Bardot. In addition, the 'dumb blonde', whose archetype was Monroe, combined sexual spectacle with comedy, again a Bardot feature: for instance, in Une Parisienne and Babette sen va-t-en guerre. Bardot, who started her career as a brunette, bleached her hair for Et Dieu ... crea la femme and remained a blonde from then on. At the same time, the 1950s and early 1960s saw the rising appeal of young adolescent-type stars, through the success of the Lolita figure, as seen in Baby Doll (1956) and Lolita (1962) on the one hand, and that of the gamine, epitomized by Leslie Caron (Gigi, 1958) and Audrey Hepburn (Funny Face) on the other. Bardot, dubbed the sex kitten, fitted in with the gamines, and the fact that her initials were pronounced be-be, 'baby' in French, fed this feature of her persona: in En cas de malheur, Gabin buys her clothes, blows her nose twice and spoonfeeds her. In Bardot, the mature sexual woman and the gamine merged: a cross between Monroe and Hepburn, as it were, between the sexual knowhow of the sex goddess and the charm of the adolescent. The potential

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'threat' of her spirited sexuality is thus undercut by the innocence and impertinence of her childishness. In the French context, it is as if Martine Carol had been crossed with Zazie, the pert heroine of Raymond Queneau's contemporary Zazie dans le metro (1959). The twin values of the sex goddess and the gamine are also enshrined in Bardot's looks and performance. As Edgar Morin noted, her hairstyle mixed the long, tumbling locks, traditionally connoting sexuality, with the girlish fringe (Morin, 1972, p. 29). Her films play with these contrasts: her hair is up and then down, and while the fringe renders the mane innocent, her girlish pony-tails and plaits are 'sexed-up' with a womanly beehive. The same could be said of Bardot's facial features, in particular her mouth, which combines a sensual fullness with the girlish sulking pout. This again defuses the potential 'castrating threat' of a grown woman's sensuality, with the suggestion of petulant dissatisfaction, an invitation to the male viewer to satisfy or tame her. Finally, her body, which as de Beauvoir observed combines tomboy slenderness around the hips with full breasts, continues the same theme. How does this split persona function in the films? The Bardot characters are the ultimate objects of male desire: Vadim famously called her 'the impossible dream of married men' (quoted in Rihoit, 1986, p. 113), yet the stories appear to revolve around her own desire, though this is invariably reduced to the sexual. She initiates sex, an aspect praised by de Beauvoir, for whom Bardot's innovation resided in the fact that she is 'as much a hunter as she is a prey' (de Beauvoir, 1960, p. 30). In de Beauvoir's terms, Bardot's expression of female sexuality was progressive, a welcome change from what she saw as the passivity of the femme fatale. But within the context of 1950s France, matters are more complex. There is, first of all, a tension between the Bardot character as subject (agent) of the narrative, initiating action and expressing her own desire without guilt, and as object, both of male desire and of the camera. All her films involve moments of pure spectacle that stop the flow of the narrative. She is typically frozen in postures which allow the spectator to admire her body and face. In Mio figlio Nerone (a 1956 peplum comedy about Nero), where she is marginal to the main action, Bardot is often decoratively positioned on the side of the frame, while the stars, Alberto Sordi and Gloria Swanson, occupy centre stage. Simone de Beauvoir noticed the episodic nature of her

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films, a remark we can recast in terms of the fact that in Bardot's films the need to provide a series of spectacles takes precedence over the narrative. Clothes play an important part in this process. Et Dieu ... crea la femme, despite the differences of her clothes from traditional haute couture discussed above, still functions as a fashion display. This is emphasized by her walk (that of a model and a dancer) and, paradoxically, the absence of accessories: the fact that she has no handbag, and often walks barefoot and barehanded, highlights the fact that her walking is primarily designed to display herself and her clothes. Kaja Silverman has discussed how, since the late eighteenth century, dress display has shifted from men and women to women only, and from a class to an erotic role, fashion contributing to the construction of woman as spectacle and 'the cinema [giving] complex expression to the male fascination with female dress' (Silverman in Modleski, 1986, p. 142). In Mio figlio Nerone, En effeuillant la marguerite, La Mariee est trap belle, Et Dieu ... crea la femme, En cas de malheur and La Verite, Bardot is constantly dressing, undressing, unbuttoning, emphasizing both her clothes and her body, the camera shifting the eroticization of her body: neck and bosom, waist, hips and legs (this point is reprised ironically by Godard in Le Mepris, as the film's opening sees Bardot systematically naming parts of her body to Michel Piccoli: 'Do you like my thighs? Do you think my bottom is beautiful?' and so on). Bardot's display does not, however, amount to making her into a passive spectacle. Other spectacular moments emphasize a strong sense of movement. This is typically expressed through dancing, which recurs in many of her films, most famously in the final mambo sequence in Et Dieu ... crea la femme. Bardot's dance in films links her film parts with her own training as a ballet dancer and epitomizes her vitality; it is also an expression of her charisma, which arguably 'resists' her objectification, to use Richard Dyer's (1978) concept. In France, Bardot was well known for singing and dancing appearances on television, including a famous New Year's Eve programme in 1961, and song recordings of such hits as 'Harley Davidson'. Bardot's spectacular displays are also expressions of her agency in another, more complicated, way, as exhibitionism and narcissism are explicitly built into her characters. The Bardot characteristic which shocked most at the time was her evident pleasure in her own body, her desire to make love, frequently reiterated in her

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films' dialogue: 'I like it', she says after her wedding-'night' in Et Dieu ... crea la femme; 'I want it', she tells her boyfriend in En cas de malheur when he seems reluctant. She frequently looks at herself in mirrors and caresses her own body.10 Bardot here, too, is an ambivalent figure, for if there is no doubt that her 'to-be-looked-at-ness' (Mulvey, 1975, p. 11) is predominantly aimed at male spectatorial pleasure, relayed in the films by male onlookers, her own desire and pleasure are not in doubt either. The intense interest Bardot has provoked in women writers, including feminists, confirms that women spectators also take active pleasure in watching her 'spectacle'. Bardot's well-documented promiscuous life was a strong intertext to the expression of her sexual desire on screen, and in this respect Bardot the star is always superimposed on Bardot's characters: Noel Burch and Genevieve Sellier (1996) are right to point out the inconsistency in Et Dieu .,. crea la femme of the impudent Juliette supposedly being a virgin and discovering sexual pleasure on her wedding night from the shy and awkward Michel. But Bardot's performance, exuding sexual confidence throughout the film is what the spectator reads rather than Juliette's (at best superficial) characterization. The Bardot paradox takes another form. In Et Dieu ... crea la femme, La Verite and En cas de malheur, the narrative is sympathetic to her, while the mise-en-scene distances and objectifies her, especially through repeated focus on parts of her body; in La Verite, the flashbacks through which her story unfolds to the courtroom are told from her standpoint; we thus share her 'innocence' which the court does not believe. But the camera repeatedly isolates parts of her body, particularly her legs and bottom. At the beginning of En cas de malheur, while she and her girlfriend are hurrying away from their robbery, the camera cuts to shots of her legs and high-heeled ankle-strapped shoes, shifting from a level of subjectivity (we share her panic) to one of objectification (we admire her legs). Given the complex spectatorial address of her films, it is hardly surprising that Bardot's public reception was contradictory. Although she became for a time the biggest female film star in France and a sure box-office draw, and although her looks, clothes and hair were widely admired and imitated, she was not a 'popular' star in the sense of being liked. She was, supposedly, desired by millions (of men), but was also the object of extraordinary hostility. As de Beauvoir put it, 'Brigitte Bardot

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was disliked in her own country' (de Beauvoir, 1960, p. 5). She was, for instance, attacked with a fork by a woman, and mobbed in a lift, an episode reproduced in Louis Malle's Vie privee (1961). Traditional explanations for such hostility have recourse to the 'newness' of Bardot's sexuality: she was ahead of her times; any opposition to her was reactionary, the sign of puritan attitudes on the part of men, and sexual repression and jealousy on the part of women. Francoise Arnoul is quoted as saying: 'women insulted her, because they were very worried about their husbands' (Murat, 1988, p. 46). Simone de Beauvoir's argument was a libertarian one: Bardot was too free, too disturbing for her repressive times. Undoubtedly, there was some truth in this. Bardot's combination of sexual casualness, insolence and guiltlessness showed up the hypocrisy of social conventions. A good example of this is the immediate consummation of her wedding in Et Dieu ... crea la femme, which she initiates while the rest of the family sits down to the wedding meal, and flaunts to them later on when she comes down from the bedroom to get some food, clad in a sheet. But any notion that Bardot proposed, or could be, a model of liberated' womanhood is contradicted in two respects: first of all by the actual social context in which her spectators were placed, and second by the narrative resolution of some of her films. Bardot crystallized values of sexual freedom at a transitional period in France in terms of sexual mores and the legislation regulating sexuality, particularly women's. Her slap in the face to bourgeois morality was defined in male terms and propounded at a time when the very notion of 'liberated sex' could have no reality for French women, unless they were (like Bardot in real life) from a privileged bourgeois background. In the light of the fact that there was no freely available contraception until 1964 and that abortion was illegal until the late 1970s, feminist historians have rightly pointed out French women's 'unhappy sexuality' in the 1950s. Patriarchal power was inscribed in law and the double standard which gave male sexuality a free reign, while containing female sexuality (Laubier, 1990), a deeply oppressive situation analysed by de Beauvoir in The Second Sex (1974). Seen against this social and cultural background, women's hostility to Bardot can be recast, not in terms of sexual repression, but of the gap between the proposed image and its lived experience. If women were jealous, it was not of their men but of

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an image of largely unattainable freedom. Bardot's free sexuality was available to bohemian-bourgeois milieux in Paris, out of which most film personnel came, but not to women in the provinces, or working-class women anywhere (Laubier, 1990). As Michelle Perrot put it,11 Bardot represented not so much a new woman as the male desire for that new woman. By caricaturing the forces hostile to her, Bardot's films ensured that her rebellion appeared greater than it was. In La Verite, Bardot's lifestyle — idleness and sexual promiscuity — is linked to Simone de Beauvoir's, as Dominique is accused of having been corrupted by de Beauvoir's 1954 novel Les Mandarins. This very pairing of Bardot with de Beauvoir points to the limits of the Bardot persona. If one of the popular myths about de Beauvoir was her sexual promiscuity and her rejection of marriage (and Anne, the heroine of Les Mandarins, included autobiographical elements), her most radical aspect as role model was her intellectual status and her advocacy of work as a key to women's independence. In La Verite, as in all her other films, Bardot's rebellion amounts to sexual promiscuity and never ventures into the sphere of the social. Revealing in this respect is the contradictory narrative fate of Bardot's characters, consonant with the sex goddess generally: she is defined as powerful and fascinating but is punished, like the femme fatale. In Et Dieu ... crea la femme, En cas de malheur and La Verite, accordingly, she expresses her own desire (the hunter rather than the prey), but she rarely gets the man she wants (for instance, she has to settle for his brother in Et Dieu ... crea la femme) and she often dies: she is murdered by her young lover in En cas de malheur and commits suicide in La Verite. Her two New Wave films, Vie privee and Le Mepris, also kill her off at the end. Of course, the contradictions in the Bardot persona, as in all sex goddesses, are such that they are not always contained by the narrative ending. For example, in view of her characterization throughout Et Dieu ... crea la femme, her going home hand in hand with her husband (who has, just in time, asserted his manhood by slapping her) defies verisimilitude. And exceptions to this rule are found in comedies such as Line Parisienne and Babettesen va-t-enguerre. Nevertheless, it is significant that a star who incarnated vibrant sexuality and energy should be so violently punished in most of her key films, especially when this did not correspond to her off-screen image. For although Bardot seriously

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Plate 10 Et Dieu ... crea la femme (Roger Vadim, 1956): studio still. Photograph by Willy Rizzo. attempted suicide on two occasions, these were the result of the pressure she was under — especially media harassment — rather than an indication of a deeper vulnerability, like Marilyn Monroe and Martine Carol. Her positive outlook and appetite for life triumphed, as her post-1973 biography shows. The natural What made the gap between the Bardot image and the lived experience of her audience, particularly women, all the more powerful and problematic, was that her image was presented as natural. For a start, her films, with exceptions such as Helen of Troy, Mio figlio Nerone, Les Grandes manoeuvres and Viva Maria!, were contemporary. This contrasted with the costume films with which her rivals - Michele Morgan, Danielle Darrieux, Micheline Presle and Martine Carol - were associated and whose historical distanciation allowed a safer audacity. The natural, the third ingredient of the Bardot myth, is inscribed in the codes of the films, in her performance and endlessly reiterated in interviews and profiles: 'She doesn't act, she exists' (Vadim); 'In front of

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the camera, I am myself (Bardot) (both quoted in de Beauvoir, 1960, p. 18); 'What did B.B. bring to the 1950s? The natural, very simply, the natural they needed so much' (Murat, 1988, p. 50). Authenticity as perceived correlation between the performer and the person, is inherent in stardom, and, as Roland Barthes has shown, the work of myth is always to turn culture into nature. But this process is especially reinforced in the case of Bardot, whose naturalness was thematized in her films. Here again, Et Dieu ... crea la femme is emblematic: Bardot is portrayed as natural in three ways: through her sexuality, her clothes and her association with images of nature and landscape, reinforced by the knowledge of her off-screen association with the director of the film and the location. Many are those who, like Antoine de Baecque, see the film as 'a kind of document' on Bardot (de Baecque, 1998, p. 20). Yet, a closer examination reveals how this naturalness is constructed through cultural codes which corresponded with social and cultural change, but also traditional cultural conventions regarding women. Curt Jurgens's racist description of Bardot as 'a blonde negress' (Rihoit, 1986, p. 178) at the time of the making of Et Dieu ... crea la femme is revealing in linking Bardot with the primitive, but also in its acknowledgement of the constructed aspect of her image (the bleached hair). This is encapsulated in the mambo scene at the end of the film, when Bardot goes into a frenzy of dancing to the black band's music, propelled by an insistent beat. Bardot is a whirl of bare feet, wild hair, syncopated movements, as if possessed by the music. The mise-en-scene, however, reveals this 'natural' body in very controlled ways: her skirt splits open strategically, the camera isolates her crotch, legs and feet. The primitiveness attributed to her is extended to notions of her as a child or an animal (Lolita, the sex kitten), the creature with an irrepressible sexuality, acceptable because it is 'natural', but which ultimately needs to be tamed. This is her narrative fate, as we saw earlier. As de Beauvoir points out in her essay, this is hardly a new notion of womanhood, since it derives from reactionary myths of femininity, 'the eternal feminine'. In order to justify this myth, then, the films go out of their way to show Bardot as relating to animals and children better than to adults. The fact that Bardot really likes animals is not the point, but rather the way this love of animals metonymically signifies a reified femininity. Bardot's clothes were carefully designed to connote naturalness.

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Gingham fabric is no more natural than silk, but has acquired connotations of simplicity through its use as kitchen curtains and table cloths for country restaurants. Bardot's clothes in her films were often rather impractical (e.g. the tight skirt she wears to ride a bicycle in Et Dieu ... crea la femme), as too was her rejection of accessories such as shoes and handbags — for instance, driving barefoot in Une Parisienne. Similarly, the mise-en-scem of her body reveals a high level of constructedness that contradicts the natural image in its use of two central motifs — the striptease and the pin-up — which belong to wellestablished traditions of visual representation. Bardot as a character does striptease; concealing parts of her body while revealing others: her sexual invitation to her husband Michel, clad in a sheet, in Et Dieu ... crea la femme; the raising of her skirt in En cas de malheur (to pay for Cabin's services as a solicitor); her dancing naked under the sheets in bed in La Verite. In En effeuillant la marguerite, her stage striptease is part of the story. The design of her clothes itself partakes in this aesthetics: drop-shoulder T-shirts, slit skirts, bare midriffs. The camera also takes on that function, concealing and revealing, as in the opening of Et Dieu ... crea la femme: Bardot's feet stick out from behind a sheet hung up to dry, her head bobs up above it. Though Bardot's performance is characterized by mobility and energy — she walks, runs and dances — her films also freeze her in positions which reproduce the conventions of pin-up photography. Shots show her in three-quarter profile (face and body), thus displaying the outline of her breasts and behind. An often reproduced still from Et Dieu ... crea la femme (Bardot on her bike, propped against a wall, talking to Jean-Louis Trintignant) encapsulates this. The motif of lifted arms framing the face and lifting the breasts at the same time is also familiar from pin-up photographs (as on the cover of this book). When Bardot throws herself 'spontaneously' onto a couch in Curt Jurgens's yacht in Et Dieu ... crea la femme, the next shot frames her perfectly in a breast-and-buttocks revealing position in a mirror. Later on, Christian Marquand pulls her roughly on to the sand, and the reverse shot has her perfectly positioned, her parted legs opening up her half-unbuttoned skirt. In all cases, not only is Bardot's body very carefully displayed to the camera's and spectator's gaze, but it also appears in poses which belong to established traditions of displaying and fetishizing the female body.

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The location shooting of Et Dieu ... crea la femme was a new departure in French cinema and in this prefigured the New Wave. The location itself was an emblem of the 'new natural'. The choice of Saint-Tropez was overdetermined. The eastern part of the Cote d'Azur (Nice, Cannes) had been a fashionable winter resort for the rich for decades, trading on luxury hotels and exoticism with casinos and palm trees. But SaintTropez and other resorts between Cannes and Marseilles, with their pretty little fishing harbours and simple Provencal houses, were sought for their folk value. In the context of the post-war rural exodus and the rise in mass tourism, Provence was about to be turned into a heritage playground for well-off Parisians and foreigners. Saint-Tropez itself was already patronized by celebrities such as Francoise Sagan, who had become an overnight celebrity with her novel Bonjour Tristesse, published in 1954. Although Vadim describes his, and various friends', lifestyle in Saint-Tropez in the late 1950s as just 'the carefree uproarious abandon of children who refused to grow up despite being successful and almost thirty' (Vadim, 1976, p. 117), such a bohemian lifestyle was available only to an elite. The view of nature expressed by the filming of SaintTropez village and beaches in Et Dieu ... crea la femme was a middleclass, glamorous one, that of the rich shipowner (Jurgens) and his yacht. Bardot's myth thus combined authentic Provence and playboy-land. She embodied a carefree lifestyle of sunbathing, swimming, making love and playing the guitar, celebrated in her song 'La Madrague' (the name of her house in Saint-Tropez). A lifestyle which had as much to do with social and economic changes in post-war France as with nature. The urban middle classes were feeling the need for 'a return to nature' and Bardot embodied both the desire for the commodified nature of holidays and 'nature' itself through her earthy sexuality and her casual performance.

Between generations, between mainstream and the New Wave I have emphasized the contrast between the old and the new in Bardot — in terms of youth, sexuality and naturalness — not in order to fix her in one camp or the other, but to show that she encompassed both. I want to end by highlighting two other ways in which she was a pivotal figure:

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Plate 11 Le Mepris (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963): Brigitte Bardot and Jack Palance. Photograph by Ghislain Dussard and Associated Press. in her representation of a generation and in her oscillation between mainstream cinema and the New Wave. There is a scene in La Verite where the judge presiding over the tribunal indicts her for being 'tempted by the easy life, attracted by all that is fake, ostentatious money, the glitter of boutiques'. Accompanied by his voice-over, we see her window-shopping on the Champs-Elysees, then going into a Latin Quarter cafe, where she picks 'the wrong crowd' and gives in to 'moral abandon', smoking, drinking and playing the jukebox instead of going to training school. This moment encapsulates the film's, and more generally, France's ambivalence towards Bardot. She is young and seductive. An object of desire for all around her, she embodies both the rising young generation of avid consumers of recordplayers, Vespas, popular music and movies, and a freer sexuality, and those glittering commodities themselves - popular culture being typically characterized as feminine (Huyssen, 1986). But the new culture poses a threat: to the established order, to the older generation, to the family. La Verite caricatures both sides: Bardot and her young friends as well as the cynical magistrates and lawyers (who simply move on to the

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next case when they hear she has committed suicide), the duplicitous witnesses and the prurient audience. Such dark cynicism is typical of Clouzot and of the Tradition of Quality, but it also shows starkly that the ambivalence towards Bardot is a larger social ambivalence towards the process of modernization sweeping France. The new lifestyle, promoted by the economic boom, is equally desired and feared. The clash is also one between two Frances: the conservative, Catholic provinces and the modern, libertarian, urban (essentially Parisian) elites, embodied by the likes of de Beauvoir, Sagan and Bardot. As this list of names suggests, women were taking an active role in the new culture, and this is part of Bardot's French specificity. Where the archetypes of American teenage rebel were James Dean and Jack Kerouac, France offered a more feminized version of youth rebellion. Bardot's pivotal quality also characterizes her relation to French cinema at the turn of the 1960s. She was a star of the mainstream French cinema: her career was based on films by Autant-Lara, Christian-Jaque, Clouzot, Allegret, pillars of the Tradition of Quality, and Vadim, who quickly evolved towards mainstream cinema. That cinema was, in the late 1950s, still addressing a wide, family audience. The titillating, 'scandalous' element in Bardot's performance was addressed to the older generation, as the films make clear, while her new fashions, her humour and insolence, her pleasure in her own body and eroticism addressed the younger generation. Her newness was acceptable despite her scandalous aspect, because of this dual appeal, ten years before feminism. Yet, in other ways, Bardot was too big for her films in a national cinema which had no tradition of accommodating such a powerful female star. The magnitude of her fame was also, as it turned out, a problem for the emergent New Wave. Despite Truffaut's defence of Bardot in Et Dieu ... crea la femme,12 by the time he, Godard and other New Wave directors made films in 1959, she was, as the biggest mainstream female star, the epitome of the system they opposed as well as out of reach economically (see Chapter 5). The apparently odd casting of Bardot in Malle's Vie privee in 1961 and Godard's Le Mepris in 1963 is, however, understandable. Both her box-office draw and the novelty of the New Wave were beginning to wane, while American production companies needed to utilize frozen capital in Europe (Vie privee was financed by MGM, Le Mepris part-

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funded by the American Joe Levine) and European art cinema needed international exposure. Both films are more or less explicitly about Bardot as a star. In Vie privee, Jill (Bardot) is a ballet dancer who becomes a film star, and is in love with a theatre director (Marcello Mastroianni). She dies, falling from a rooftop in Spoleto during an open-air theatrical performance, blinded by paparazzi. The film was part-based by Malle on events in Bardot's life. Le Mepris, based on Alberto Moravia's novel // disprezzo, is about the relationship between a secretary, Camille (Bardot), and a scriptwriter, Paul (Michel Piccoli), during the shooting of a version of The Odyssey by Fritz Lang (playing himself) in Capri. Camille has an affair with American producer Prokosh (Jack Palance) and dies in a car crash with him. Vie privee and Le Mepris are very different films and there is no space here to analyse them in detail (for a fuller discussion of the two films, see Sellier and Vincendeau, 1998, p. 115-30). Yet, there are interesting parallels which are worth evoking here, as they cast light on Bardot's position in French film culture. Both films are about artistic production and both stage a conflict between elite culture, figured by the directors' alter-egos — Mastroianni in Vie privee, Michel Piccoli and Fritz Lang in Le Mepris — and popular culture represented by Bardot. In both films, Bardot is the centre of attention, thematically and visually, while the narratives about (male) artistic creation - staging Kleist in Vie privee, filming The Odyssey in Le Mepris — exclude or marginalize her. Although Le Mepris shows a higher awareness of the process of image construction, in characteristic Godardian fashion, both films reduce her character to female sexuality and, as such, to the opposite of creativity. As Claude Gauteur put it, Vie privee 'is a film made less with, than against Brigitte Bardot' (Gauteur, 1962, p. 23). Both films kill her at the end. Both thus explicitly uphold high culture (which includes the cinema for Godard, but the cinema of Fritz Lang, not that of Prokosh and Bardot) against the popular in its most threatening incarnations: a French popular star, hysterical crowds, paparazzi, an American producer. Bardot's marginalization in the films was uncannily echoed in life: in her memoirs, she tells of how isolated she was during the shooting of both films, especially Vie privee (Bardot, 1996, pp. 300 and 328). Vie privee and Le Mepris try to tame Bardot's power and charisma, while at the same time exhibiting her, just like the New Wave tried to conquer French

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mainstream cinema. In neither case did they succeed, although neither Bardot nor French cinema would be the same afterwards. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Bardot offered a contradictory yet real image of female emancipation, at a transitional moment in the histories of both French cinema and French women, between the post-war backlash which produced the 'evil bitch' (Burch and Sellier, 1996) and the sea-changes of the post-1968 period. Bardot's myth as a star both negotiated and concealed the tensions engendered by her 'old and new' femininity. Her unique combination of stunning looks, traditional femininity and iconoclastic power is the subject of her films, and the reason of her unending fascination. This explains why, since Simone de Beauvoir in 1960, she has continued to fascinate and divide feminists, whether they claim her as a role model and force of nature (Aude, 1979; Paglia, Without Walls, 1994) or as a more conservative figure (Burch and Sellier, 1996, pp. 274—7). Bardot as a person was (and is) no feminist. Yet her memoirs show her capacity to break taboos still in 1996 (for instance, admitting to having rejected her child) and her lucidity about the difficulties posed by her explosive combination of gender and power, not least in her chaotic love life. In a country where 'unauthorized' biographies are barred by stringent privacy laws (see Chapter 1), Bardot single-handedly broke that taboo, too, in writing about herself in terms which are at times unpalatable (some of her political views) but which also reveal how she survived being a sex goddess. Her memoirs are those of a survivor.

Biofilmography Born Paris, 28 September 1934. Married Roger Vadim (1952), Jacques Charrier (1959, with whom she had one son, Nicolas, born 1960), Gunther Sachs (1966) and Bernard d'Omale (1992). Main acting awards

Etoile de Cristal de 1'Academic du Cinema, Best Actress, Viva Maria!, 1966

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Films as actor

1952 Le Trou normand (Jean Boyer) Les Denis longues [cameo] (Daniel Gelin) 1953 Manina, la fills sans voiles/The Girl in the Bikini/Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter (Willy Rozier) 1954 Si Versailles m'etait conte/Versailles (Sacha Guitry) Le Portrait de son pere (Andre Berthomieu) Un acte d'amour/Act of Love (Anatole Litvak, France/USA) Tradita (Mario Bonnard, Italy/France) Le Fils de Caroline Cherie (Jean Devaivre) 1955 Helen of Troy (Robert Wise, USA) futures vedettes/Sweet Sixteen (Marc Allegret) Doctor at Sea (Ralph Thomas, UK) Les Grandes manoeuvres/Summer Manoeuvres (Rene Clair, France/ Italy) 1956 Mio figlio Nerone/Nero's Mistress (Steno, Italy/France) La Lumiere d'en face/ The Light across the Street (Georges Lacombe) Cette sacree gamine/Mademoiselle Pigalle (Michel Boisrond) En effeuillant la marguerite/Mam'selle Striptease (Marc Allegret) Et Dieu ... crea la femme/And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim) La Mariee est trap belle/The Bride Is Too Beautiful (Pierre GaspardHuit) 1957 Une Parisienne/Una Parigiana (Michel Boisrond, France/Italy) Voulez-vous danser avec moil/Come Dance with Me (Michel Boisrond, France/Italy) 1958 En cas de malheur/Love Is My Profession [La ragazza del peccato] (Claude Autant-Lara, France/Italy) Les Bijoutiers du clair de lune/Heaven Fell That Night (Roger Vadim, France/Italy) 1959 La Femme et le pantin/A Woman Like Satan (Julien Duvivier, France/Italy) Babette sen va-t-en-guerre/Babette Goes to War (Christian-Jaque) Tentazioni proibite [doc] (Oswaldo Civirani) 1960 L'Affaire d'une nuit (Henri Verneuil) [cameo] La Verite/The Truth (Henri-Georges Clouzot, France/Italy) 1961 La Bride sur le cou (Roger Vadim)

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Les Amours celebres [ep. 'Agnes Bernauer'] (Michel Boisrond, France/Italy) Vie privee/A Very Private Affair (Louis Malle, France/Italy) 1962 Le Repos du guerrier/Love on a Pillow (Roger Vadim, France/Italy) 1963 Le Mepris/Il disprezzo (Jean-Luc Godard, France/Italy) Paparazzi [doc] (Jacques Rozier) 1964 Une ravissante idiote/A Ravishing Idiot (Edouard Molinaro, France/ Italy) Marie Soleil (Antoine Bourseiller) [cameo] 1965 Dear Brigitte (Henry Koster, USA) Viva Maria! (Louis Malle, France/Italy) 1966 Masculin-Feminin (Jean-Luc Godard) [cameo] 1967 A coeur joie/Two Weeks in September (Serge Bourguignon, France/ UK) Histoires extraordinaires [ep. 'William Wilson'] (Louis Malle, France/Italy) 1968 Shalako (Edward Dmytryk, UK) 1969 Les Femmes (Jean Aurel) L'Ours et la poupee (Michel Deville) 1970 Les Novices/The Novices (Guy Casaril, France/Italy) 1971 Boulevard du rhum/Winner Takes All (Robert Enrico) Les Petroleuses/The Legend of Frenchie King (Christian-Jaque, France/ Italy/Spain/UK) 1973 Don Juan 73 ou si Don Juan e'tait une femme/Don Juan or If Don Juan Were a Woman ... (Roger Vadim, France/Italy) L'Histoire tres bonne et ires joyeuse de Colinot Trousse-Chemise/The Edifying and Joyous Story of Colinot, the Skirt Puller-upper (Nina Companeez) Notes

1. See 'Box office de Brigitte Bardot 1958-1961', Le Film francais, 10 November 1961, p. 5. 2. Record Collector, No. 188, April 1995, pp. 44-7. 3. Arts, 5 December 1956. 4. Ibid., 12 December 1956. 5. On Martine Carol, see Phillips (1998). 6. Rihoit (1986) provides interesting biographical information on Bardot's

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7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

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relationship to her mother and her mother's friends, all wealthy and elegant Parisiennes in couture clothes. Quoted in Marc Mancini, 'So who created Vadim?', Film Comment, Vol. 24, No. 2, March/April 1988. See my entry, The sex goddess', in Annette Kuhn and Susannah Radstone (eds), The Women's Companion to International Film (London, Virago, 1990). Quoted in Mancini, 'So who created Vadim?' On the narcissistic, childish woman, see Sarah Kofman, The narcissistic woman: Freud and Girard', in Toril Moi (ed.), French Feminist Thought, a Reader (Oxford, Blackwell, 1987). Michelle Perrot, interviewed on Arte documentary on 'Bardot', tx June 1996. Arts, 12 December 1956.

CHAPTER 5

Jeanne Moreau and the Actresses of the New Wave New Wave, new sfars

Personally, I will systematically refuse to make films with five stars: Fernandel, Michele Morgan, Jean Gabin, Gerard Philipe and Pierre Fresnay. These artists are too dangerous; they impose a script or change it if they don't like it. They do not hesitate to dictate the cast or refuse to work with certain actors. They influence mise-en-scene and demand closeups; they sacrifice the best interest of a film to their status and they are, in my opinion, to blame for many failures. Francois Truffaut 1

Truffaut kept his word and never used any of the stars named in this typically bombastic statement. Aside from the fact that they were too expensive, mainstream stars were inadequate to his needs and those of other filmmakers of the New Wave (nouvelle vague). Many New Wave films, which were made on small budgets, instead used unknown and non-professional actors. Yet the New Wave produced its own stars. As David Shipman said: It did look at first as though the nouvelle vague might destroy the conception of the star and his image, especially as a whole crop of new actors, some of them of shining versatility, rode in on it to stardom, but as success came to both them and the directors, the lines blurred and compromises were made. ... The new stars found their 'image'.2

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Truffaut himself later used major stars such as Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu. But at the turn of the 1960s, the New Wave employed new actors with a fresh look and performance style who crystallized its ideological and cinematic project. A new generation emerged: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean-Pierre Leaud, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Jean-Claude Brialy, Gerard Blain, Sami Frey; Jeanne Moreau, Anna Karina, Anouk Aimee, Bernadette Lafont, Stephane Audran, MarieFrance Pisier, Emmanuelle Riva, Jean Seberg. Since the New Wave, many of these actors have had substantial careers in art and mainstream cinema (Trintignant, Frey, Aimee). Others have remained associated purely with the New Wave (Leaud, Karina). Only two became 'real stars', Belmondo and Moreau. In this chapter I will concentrate on Moreau and the female stars, because I think there is a special link between the New Wave and female stardom, while Belmondo is discussed in Chapter 7.

The New Wave is the best-known French film movement of the postwar period and a critical standard against which French cinema has been judged ever since (among the abundant literature, see Graham, 1968; Monaco, 1976; Daney, 1988; de Baecque, 1998; Marie, 1998; Douchet, 1998). The 'hard core' New Wave refers to 162 first or second films made between 1958 and 1962,3 though a wider definition includes later films. Its most successful directors divide into two groups: the 'right bank', clustered around Cahiers du cinema and whose project was predominantly aesthetic — Claude Chabrol (Le Beau Serge, Les Cousins, Les Bonnes femmes), Francois Truffaut (Les Quatre cents coups, Tirez sur le pianiste, Jules et Jim), Jean-Luc Godard (A bout de souffle, Le Petit soldat, line femme est une femme, Vivre sa vie, Pierrot le fou), Eric Rohmer (Le Signe du lion), Jacques Rivette (Paris nous appartient) — and the 'left bank', with more socially aware films by directors with experience in documentary: Agnes Varda (Cleo de 5 a 7), Alain Resnais (Hiroshima mon amour, L'Annee derniere a Marienbad, Muriel, La Guerre est finie) and Chris Marker (La Jetee, Le Joli mai). Other important figures include Louis Malle (Ascenseur pour I'echafaud, Les Amants), Alexandre Astruc (Le Rideau cramoisi, Les Mauvaises rencontres), Jacques Demy (Lola, La Bale des anges), Jacques Doniol-Valcroze (L'Eau a la bouche), Pierre Kast (Le Bel age) and Jacques Rozier (Adieu Philippine).

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Plate 12 Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard, the emblematic couple of the New Wave.

In her innovative study of characters and gender in the New Wave, Genevieve Sellier argues that New Wave films with a female character are a minority and that the typical New Wave hero is a Vulnerable young man' who echoes the young male director, positioned as a romantic/modernist artist. The central project of the New Wave, in this light, is to 'construct the point of view of a wounded masculine subjectivity' (Sellier, 1997). Sellier isolates two trends — one in which women function as fascinating objects of desire or dangerous femmes fatales who lead the hero to his downfall, even as they are in love with him: Ascenseur pour I'echafaud, A bout de souffle, Les Cousins, Tirez sur le pianiste, Lola, Jules et Jim. The other trend is one in which women are the main characters but where the filmmaker-^wtf-'sociologist' scrutinizes them with more or less contempt or pity: Les Mauvaises rencontres, line vie, Les Amants, Vivre sa vie, Une femme mariee, Les Bonnes femmes. She

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Plate 13 A bout de souffle (Jean-Luc Godard, I960): Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg. concludes, 'Only Agnes Varda [with Cleo de 5 a 7] and Alain Resnais [with Hiroshima mon amour], for different reasons, succeed in constructing female protagonists who are endowed with agency'. Sellier's analysis is insightful and especially welcome, as the literature on the New Wave virtually ignores gender. Stardom, however, modifies her conclusions. Whether they are phantasmic male projections or under the glare of the camera-as-microscope, women come to the fore visually in New Wave cinema, as they do in European art cinema of the 1950s and 1960s (Bergman, Antonioni) in films with strong cinephile appeal. This is why, as we saw in Chapter 1, actresses such as Moreau, Karina and Aimee have a star status in excess of their box-office attraction. Even though the characters they embody frequently are fundamentally misogynist projections, the stars of the New Wave define a new femininity in tune with the films: fresh, alluring, different. It is, in fact, this dichotomy between retrograde concepts of femininity and seductively 'modern' images which is at the heart of their appeal.

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Stars and auteurs The mainstream star was antithetical to the New Wave. She/he opposed the New Wave rhetoric of cinema as personal expression and its aim to move cinema out of the realm of popular entertainment into that of 'art'. Echoing Astruc's arguments in his pioneering article The birth of a new style: the camera-stylo' (in Graham, 1968), Truffaut expressed this programme very clearly: Tomorrow's film appears to me as even more personal than a novel, as individual and autobiographical as a confession or a diary. Young filmmakers will express themselves in the first person. ... Tomorrow's film will not be made by bureaucrats of the camera but by artists for whom the shooting of a film constitutes a wonderful and exalting adventure. Tomorrow's film will look like the person who made it and the number of spectators will be proportionate to the number of friends he has.4

With the New Wave, the director-auteur took centre stage. There was no room for another star under the limelight, except for one willing to be his alter-ego or mouthpiece. Max Ophuls, an important model for the New Wave, had already demonstrated the antinomy between auteur cinema and stars in one of his most celebrated films, Lola Mantes (1955). This lavish portrayal of a courtisane played by Martine Carol, the French sex goddess of the time, was a resounding commercial flop but a critical hit. The film's reception is classically interpreted as audiences' failure to understand Ophuls's 'extending and exploring the artistic resources of the cinema' (Williams, 1992, p. 1). But Lola Montes is also a brutal deconstruction of its star. As Alastair Phillips puts it, lines by the master of ceremony (Peter Ustinov) such as '"I am not interested in talent, only in vitality and effects" are not pronounced at random' (Phillips, 1998, p. 111). Ophuls had successfully integrated stars such as Gerard Philipe, Jean Gabin and Danielle Darrieux into his aesthetic universe in La Ronde (1950) and Le Plaisir (1952). Here, he bluntly marked his 'Brechtian' distance from a popular star who is denigrated, as were, by extension, her fans. As Truffaut interpreted, 'for Ophuls Carol was no more Lola Montes than himself the Pope, and he decided to make her into a plaster statue who had the ability to suffer' (in Douchet, 1998, p. 140). Carol's career never recovered, though this was also because her dominance as sex goddess

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was challenged by Bardot. With Et Dieu ... crea la femme in 1956, Bardot brought in a revolutionary femininity and type of performance which foregrounded sex but in a youthful, modern and 'natural' way (see Chapter 4). After Ophuls, she too made Carol appear outdated and 'constructed', just like the Tradition of Quality hated by Truffaut - hence his defence of Bardot for her ability to 'do in front of the camera everyday gestures, anodyne ones such as playing with her sandal, and less anodyne ones such as making love during the day'.5 Bardot, however, became an expensive mainstream star with a persona too strong and too 'popular' to fit with the New Wave project. New Wave historians credit Bardot as an important precursor (see de Baecque, 1998; Marie, 1998), but Truffaut and others ignored her when they became filmmakers. Bardot's two New Wave films — Louis Malle's Vie privee (1961) and Godard's Le Mepris (1963) - came later and like Lola Montes they deconstruct and (especially in Vie privee) denigrate her stardom (Sellier and Vincendeau, 1998). The New Wave auteurs, bent on expressing themselves 'in the first person', needed new stars who would be both valorizing and pliable — male doubles or female muses. Contrary to the distance between auteur and star emblematized by Ophuls and Carol in Lola Montes, Malle and Bardot in Vie privee, the New Wave promoted closer and less hierarchical ties. Filmmakers and actors even looked alike: the young Belmondo looked like the young Godard, Leaud grew to resemble Truffaut. Photographs of the early 1960s (see the extensive iconography in Douchet, 1998) show us actors who look remarkably like each other and the directors: good-looking young men of slight built with short dark hair, wearing neat Italian-style suits and ties, cigarettes in the corner of their mouths - Belmondo, Brialy, Frey, Blain, Charrier and Leaud from L'Amour a vingt ans onwards. With women, the connection was more distanced visually, but otherwise closer. Several New Wave actresses had well-known relationships with the filmmaker: Godard and Karina were the emblematic couple, but there were also Chabrol and Audran, Malle and then Truffaut with Moreau. This was not just a fact of biography but another way in which filmmakers and actors proclaimed their difference from the 'bureaucrats' of the film industry. They claimed a continuity with prestigious cinematic partnerships: D.W. Griffith and Lillian Gish, Joseph von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich, Ingmar Bergman and several of his

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actresses. This enhanced, through the Pygmalion myth, the stature of the director-auteur and recalled the male artists and female models of art history. Godard, as usual, made this process explicit: in section XII of Vivre sa vie, pages from Edgar Allan Poe's The Oval Portrait are read to Nana (Karina) by the male character who is in love with her, dubbed with Godard's voice. The Oval Portrait (the story of a painter so in love with the portrait of his lover that he neglects the real woman, who dies) provides the 'poetic' justification for Nana's death where the film's motivation is weak and arbitrary, highlighting the fact that we are watching a story between director and actress rather than between two characters. Other New Wave films, especially Godard's with Karina, are a more indirect elaboration of this theme (line femme est une femme, Pierrot le fou). New Wave actors and actresses also stand in for the director's cinephilia. From the moment he stole film stills in Les Quatre cents coups, Jean-Pierre Leaud fulfilled this function for Truffaut. Emmanuelle Riva in Hiroshima mon amour is an actress making a film on Hiroshima. Women in Godard's films often go to the cinema, such as Macha Meril in Une femme mariee, who goes to see Resnais's Nuit et brouillard. In Vivre sa vie, Nana, supposedly a prostitute, goes to see Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc. Huge close-ups of her face parallel those of Falconetti, Dreyer's heroine (this is reprised by Leos Carax in Mauvais sang, as discussed in Chapter 10). While this role embeds Karina further as Godard's relay, it also detaches her from the character she is playing — it is nearly impossible to believe in Karina as a prostitute. In A bout de souffle, Jean Seberg goes to the cinema and is juxtaposed with a Renoir painting; the New Wave star is associated with auteur cinema and high art, with auteur cinema as high art. At the other extreme, Bardot is equated with the 'wrong' kind of cinema: her own in Vie privee and that of the crass American producer played by Jack Palance with whom she elopes in Le Mepris. The 'silly' women of Les Bonnes femmes (a title which means 'the broads' not 'the girls', as it is usually translated) come roaring with laughter out of a big Champs-Elysees cinema bound to show a mainstream film. The close relationship between actresses and filmmakers in the New Wave meant that while they played the traditional role of female object of desire, they, and not just the male alter-egos, also functioned as

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relayers of the filmmaker's worldview. Bernadette Lafont revealingly talks of being a 'puppet' of the New Wave, adding, 'I had no training. I was malleable terrain.'6

New Wave, new women

Like Lafont, who met Truffaut while she was Blain's wife, and Karina, who was a model for Cardin, several New Wave actresses came directly into film without training. Many, however, like Moreau, Audran, Riva and Seyrig, had done some theatre and film work. But, as we will see with Moreau, their earlier professional backgrounds were erased, their looks were changed, they were 'reborn' with the New Wave. Two main types of women emerged with the New Wave. On the one hand were young (late teens) gamines: Karina, Seberg, Lafont, Pisier. Theirs was a visual embodiment of the youthful values of the New Wave. On the other hand were the slightly older Moreau, Riva, Aimee, Audran and Seyrig, who were in their late twenties or early thirties when they started in the New Wave and whose role was to reflect the sophisticated, intellectual mood of the films. But all echoed the ideology of the New Wave: authenticity, modernity and sensuality. The New Wave concentrated on behaviour, looks and gestures rather than psychology. Its authenticity was grounded in a discourse of antiprofessionalism. It was important that actors and actresses were seen not to act, especially in contrast to the Tradition of Quality cinema, which foregrounded polished performances, careful lighting and framing, experienced mastery of space (see Jean Gabin in Chapter 3), well-modulated delivery of dialogue. New Wave films foregrounded improvisation through filming on location, using available light and vernacular language. Performances matched this. Casual elocution and underplaying made performances appear 'modern' and blurred the distinction between fiction and document (references to New Wave films as 'documentaries' on the actors are frequent). Lines are fluffed and movements are charmingly gauche. Claudine Bouche, the editor of Jules et Jim, recounts that Truffaut deliberately kept the take of Moreau singing 'Le Tourbillon de la vie' in which she gestures to indicate she made a mistake, because it gave the scene 'more charm' (de Baecque and Toubiana, 1996, p. 262).

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As in this example, the performance of authenticity contains its own reverse, which is to draw attention to itself. The gaucheness of gestures — especially visible in Karma and Leaud — and deliberate inclusion of mistakes, the foreign accents of Karina and Seberg (and Lazlo Szabo), the instances of actors (though rarely actresses) addressing the camera directly, all introduce what several critics have isolated as typical of New Wave acting, a kind of 'displacement' (Douchet, 1998, pp. 149-54) or decalage (Marie, 1998, p. 99). This means an ironic slippage, a gap between performance and character. What seems to me most characteristic of New Wave acting is the combination of authenticity and decalage, which parallels the filmmakers' paradoxical drive to realism and personal expression. Many examples could be drawn (everyone of Jean-Pierre Leaud's performances, for example), but two will suffice. In Chabrol's A double tour (1959), idiosyncratic performances by Belmondo and Lafont, especially their insolent speech and delivery, introduce an almost surreal gap between themselves and the classical acting of Madeleine Robinson7 and Jacques Dacqmine (who play the older married couple) on the one hand, and the thriller plot of the film on the other. The mise-en-scene heightens this decalage by shooting a noir murder plot in blazing Provence sunshine. The second example is the scene in Vivre sa vie where Karina dances around a billiard table, clumsily though charmingly, like a little girl. Like her dancing, the camera movements both appear spontaneous and draw attention to themselves, as if the camera was moving of its own accord. The difference from Bardot's mambo in Et Dieu ... crea la femme, despite Truffaut's praise of B.B.'s naturalness, could not be greater. Bardot's dance is choreographed: she stops strategically to show off her figure in front of mirrors and against windows, the camera carefully isolates parts of her body. Bardot's dancing is professional and sexy where Karina's is playfully maladroit. In the Bardot film, the camera is fully at the service of the star; in Vivre sa vie, the camera is as important as the star — at one point it even precedes her. The different relationship between camera and actress establishes a different hierarchy, as the star is not dominant in the mise-en-scene but just one element of it. It also establishes a different regime of the look, a different eroticism — less directly sexual, yet in thrall to a romantic vision of femininity.

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New Wave actresses were young, good-looking and sexy, but not too overtly glamorous. Bardot was so extraordinary that her beauty, conceptualized as an effect of surface, became the theme of her films. In the New Wave films, committed to authenticity and depth, beauty appeared more 'realistic', coming 'from within'. Contrary to Carol and Bardot's died blonde hair, New Wave actresses had darker hair, cut shorter and straighter. When they did not wear couture clothes (Moreau, Seyrig), actresses tended to downplay their figures with 'girlish' outfits (often their own clothes): blouses with lace, twin-sets, full skirts and petticoats, jeans and T-shirts, flat shoes, men's shirts or sailors' tops. (Bernadette Lafont, with a fuller figure, plays more blatant sex objects. Another interesting exception is Corinne Marchand, the heroine of Varda's Cleo de 5 a 7, who has a more womanly figure.) New Wave actresses such as Karina embodied the 'young fashion' that was becoming a major commercial force, relayed by women's magazines (see Chapter 4). But where Bardot 'sexed-up' youth fashion, Karina prefigured the 1960s skinny adolescent look a la Twiggy (in his episode for Paris vu par, 1965, Godard used another slim model, Johanna Shimkus). This was a youthful, unthreatening femininity which fitted the romantic ethos of the New Wave by lessening women's sexuality, sublimating it as romance. This served the New Wave's aim to distinguish itself from the mainstream. While French popular cinema, from the late 1950s, increasingly exploited female nudity, the New Wave evolved a different, more 'subtle', eroticism. Visually, this was achieved by shifting the focus from the women's body to their faces (as we shall see later). New Wave women's looks also fitted the surface modernity of the new Fifth Republic, in love with the consumer goods of Americanidentified modernity such as cars (see Ross, 1995; Marie, 1998). New Wave filmmakers attacked the cynical 'bourgeois' characters of the Tradition of Quality, and replaced them with an affluent, cultivated, anticonformist urban bourgeoisie. A specific trope associates New Wave actresses with this version of French modernity, that of the woman in the streets and cafes of Paris. The women in Les Bonnes femmes are accosted by men in the street; Patricia/Seberg in A bout de souffle is first seen walking up and down the Champs-Elysees; Nana/Karina in Vivre sa vie and Cleo in Cleo de 5 a 7 make encounters in streets and cafes. In this,

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the New Wave films challenge and update the topography of mainstream French cinema, where women were confined to the salon or the kitchen. Even in a superficial way, they reflect women entering public space, albeit that of a bohemian elite following in the footsteps of Francoise Sagan, Simone de Beauvoir and Juliette Greco, women who were both agents and beneficiaries of the liberating possibilities offered by Paris (see Wilson, 1991). Karina, Aimee, Riva, Seyrig and Moreau's femininity was visually and orally anti-conformist, romantic and cerebral. It proved a hugely attractive and exportable image which contributed to the popularity of the New Wave movement as a whole (which was, from the start, endorsed by international success, especially in the USA). The new topography of modernity is, however, dangerously gendered. The modernist fldneuse, unlike her male counterpart, is quickly trapped by brutal sexual encounters (Les Bonnes femmes) or prostitution (Vivre sa vie), and is relentlessly brought back to her sexuality. This is the fundamental paradox of New Wave women. Under the surface modernity and allure of women 'free' to roam Paris, brought to life by the actresses' vivid performances and attractive looks, the characters scripted and filmed by men are often the product of misogyny. Jacques Doniol-Valcroze unwittingly signals this when he says that 'Emmanuelle Riva [in Hiroshima mon amour] is a modern adult woman because she is not an adult woman. Quite the contrary, she is very childish, motivated solely by her impulses and not by her ideas' (in Hillier, 1985, pp. 62—3). As it happens, Riva's character, scripted by Marguerite Duras, is one of the few who is endowed with agency, but Doniol-Valcroze tellingly praises her for being steeped in emotions rather than ideas. Indeed, most New Wave women's identity is coterminous with the realm of emotions. Their life 'projects', such as they are, are bound by the horizon of love. There are many variations on this rather 'old' stereotype: the playful little girl who is also a dangerous femme fatale (Seberg in A bout de souffle, Karina in Le Petit soldat and Pierrot le fou); the ethereal fantasy creature (Aimee in Lola, Seyrig in Baisers voles); the tragic woman (Corinne Marchand in Cleo de 5 a 7); the attractive slut (Lafont in Le Beau Serge and Les Bonnes femmes). But the New Wave actress who concentrates the most complex portrayal of femininity is undoubtedly Jeanne Moreau.

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The archetypal New Wave star: Jeanne Moreau Celebrated in the 1990s as the grande dame of cinema in France, Moreau also embodies a seductive idea of French femininity especially powerful outside France, where it functions almost as a cliche - from the 1960s, when Oriana Fallaci (1967) talked of her as a femme fatale, to the late 1990s, when Molly Haskell (1997) called her 'Belle Dame sans Merd'. The 1992 BBC television film The Clothes in the Wardrobe encapsulated her 'foreign' allure, casting her as the symbol of creative and sexual liberation for the film's young heroine, against Joan Plowright and Julie Walters's sensible Britishness. Among French stars who emerged in the 1950s, Moreau's distinct place was carved out of associations with sexuality and cool, and intellect, depth, maturity. Unlike Carol and Bardot, essentially mainstream stars, and unlike Deneuve and Simone Signoret, who straddled art and popular cinema, Moreau has been primarily the star of auteur films, claiming she 'never worried about boxoffice'.8 In this, she is also different from Jean-Paul Belmondo, who started in the New Wave but moved on to a firmly mainstream career. Moreau has worked for French directors like Malle and Truffaut, and international figures such as Luis Bunuel, Michelangelo Antonioni, Joseph Losey, Orson Welles and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Moreau's cosmopolitan career was no doubt helped by her fluent English, a legacy of her British-French parentage. It is also linked to her prominent role in the French film industry. She has made over a hundred movies between 1949 and 1999. She has been involved with many festivals, including Cannes, whose jury she led in 1975, has headed the influential Commission d'Avances sur Recettes in 1993, and is, in the late 1990s, devoted to Equinoxe, an organization which helps new scriptwriters. She has recorded many songs and directed two features — Lumiere (1976) and L'Adolescente (1978) — a documentary, Lillian Gish (1984), and a music video for singer Khadja Nin (1998). All this demonstrates the energy and commitment of Jeanne Moreau the woman and actress, whose talent and professionalism are widely acclaimed. She has been the recipient of numerous prizes for best actress, including at Cannes in 1960. In 1992, she received a Cesar in France and a Golden Lion in Venice, in recognition of her whole career in film. She holds an honorary doctorate from the University of

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Lancaster. In 1998 the American Academy of Motion Pictures awarded her a life tribute. Moreau, however, fascinates primarily as an image of femininity, still casting a sexual aura at the age of seventy. This appeal is grounded in her late 1950s and 1960s New Wave films, but it has endured, despite the fact that — even then — she was considered 'unphotogenic', competing with 'perfect' beauties like Bardot and Deneuve. It has also endured in an industry renowned for its unforgiving attitudes towards women as they grow older.

From consummate comedienne to New Wave star Moreau was trained for the stage at the Paris Conservatoire, and graduated to the Comedie-Francaise and the Theatre National Populaire, where she starred notably opposite Gerard Philipe. This training gave her considerable talent a professional framework, the ability to range across the whole spectrum of parts and the seal of high art. At a time when the new breed of actresses was coming from dance or modelling (Bardot, Karina), Moreau was a 'real' actress, familiar with the classical repertoire. In her pre-New Wave period, she was already set to become a high-ranking theatre star. Before her breakthrough in Malle's Ascenseur pour I'echafaud (1957) and Les Amants (1958), Moreau had appeared in twenty-odd films. They are usually dismissed, including by herself, as undistinguished hack work (some are, and some are not, but she is consistently excellent). The shock of seeing these films with hindsight comes from the mismatch between the 'authenticity' of her subsequent star image and these early coded visions of femininity. For example, in Jean Dreville's La Reine Margot (a costume drama) and Jacques Becker's thriller, Touchez pas au grisbi (both 1954), Moreau's roles look cliched. As Margot, she is garishly colourful like the rest of the film; her tight bodices and make-up delineate a strained sexiness. The much-publicized use of a body double for a nude scene could have been a way of distancing herself, literally, from this kind of film, since later she claimed the right to nudity in such films as Les Amants. Touchez pas au grisbi gives her a small but memorable part as a coke-snorting, insolent gangster moll with high-gloss lipstick.

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However, in Gilles Grangier's Gas-oil (1955), her scenes with Jean Gabin sparkle, despite their improbable couple — he as lorry driver, she as schoolteacher. Cabin's rant against women who 'in the past stayed at home, ironing' but now 'have the vote and read the serie noire' foreshadows Moreau's future appeal as Modern Woman. Another continuity between her pre- and post-New Wave career is that in these early films she frequently played scheming women, as in Les Intrigantes (1954), prefiguring the Juliette Valmont of Les Liaisons dangereuses (1960). But her populist films also allowed her to display her gift for naturalistic performance, a style she retained throughout her career and which was already in evidence in her performances on stage. In Marguerite Duras's Nathalie Granger (1972), Moreau and Lucia Bose spend time in minimal domestic activities, illustrating the director's notion of 'women's time'. Bose looks stiff but Moreau is natural. Duras's quip that she wanted Moreau 'because she knew how to clear a table'9 is acute. In that film, as in others, Moreau's gestures are both accurate and graceful, her performance consummate yet invisible. Back in the late 1950s, her gift for apparent 'non-acting' was perfect for the emerging new cinema. The New Wave cinema, of which Ascenseur pour I'echafaud and Les Amants were forerunners, required a new type of stardom to differentiate itself from the mainstream, as discussed above. Moreau epitomized this 'anti-stardom'. She and Malle downplayed her previous career and put the emphasis on her 'rebirth'. She was keen to work on a more informal basis than in the traditional industry and took a career risk in doing so, by leaving her powerful agent in order to work with Malle (Gray, 1994, p. 34). The film crew became a 'family', suited to the new, more artisanal methods. As she told Cahiers du cinema in 1965, 'Making films is no longer a way of acting, it is a way of life'.10 Her liaison with Malle, and later Truffaut, epitomized the New Wave star-filmmaker working relationships, in which the actress totally identified with the auteur's project: 'After the fulfilment I had known with Louis Malle, I was a bit of an orphan from a filmic point of view. Sharing such a wonderful new experience [Jules et Jim] with Francois reconciled me with myself (in de Baecque and Toubiana, 1996, pp. 256-7). Throughout her career, Moreau would maintain close friendships with her favourite directors, such as Truffaut, Duras and Welles. Moreau brought to the screen a new, more 'authentic', physical type,

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Plate 14 Jules et Jim (Francois Truffaut, 1961): Jeanne Moreau. Photograph by Raymond Cauchetier. less overtly sexy than Bardot, Carol or Monroe and yet glamorous. She was darker than these blonde goddesses, and when she appeared with platinum hair in Demy's La Baie des anges (1963), it was a deliberate statement. In Ascenseur pour I'echafaud, her 'ur' star-text, she wanders the streets of Paris, dimly lit with available light from pavement cafes and street lighting, her face without make-up, her clothes understated, her hair flattened by the rain. As Malle put it: 'Cameramen would have forced her to wear a lot of make-up and they would put a lot of light on her because, supposedly, her face was not photogenic. ... They were horrified. But when Ascenseur pour I'echafaud was released, suddenly something of Jeanne Moreau's essential qualities came out.' (in French, 1993, p. 12) Les Amants duplicates the rebirth process by making her shed her expensive bourgeois attire to follow her lover with no make-up on, her hair in a scarf. In Jules et Jim (1962), nominally a costume film, her clothes and hairstyle are plain. Yet at the same time, Moreau exuded bourgeois chic. She sported classic fashion, a feature reinforced by her association

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with Pierre Cardin. In her films, her clothes are unflashy but beautifully cut, with tight skirts and tailored tops and coats. Her make-up is discreet and her hair neat, sometimes in a Trench bun'. She wears formal jewellery and high heels. But, if bourgeois chic distinguished her from the sex bombs, she was also diametrically opposed to the conformist middle-class women of mainstream cinema, embodied by Danielle Darrieux and Michele Morgan. Moreau's new look carried new values: hers was a mature, 'existential' sexuality, different from the old-fashioned romance of her predecessors, but also from Bardot's sex kittens and Karina's gamines. She was sensual, yet serious and cerebral. She was, in short, the ideal woman of the modern intellectual bourgeoisie, from whose ranks many New Wave spectators were drawn, in the same way as in Jules et Jim, Les Amants and La notte (1960), she appeared as the natural companion of artists, writers and publishers. Moreau's women were alluring because they were cultured. From Ascenseur pour I'echafaud onwards, Moreau was also at the centre of the shift in the representation of female eroticism from the body to the face. This feature resonates in the post-war art cinema of Ingmar Bergman, Antonioni and Godard and more recent directors such as Leos Carax (see Chapter 10). Moreau's films of the late 1950s and of the 1960s and their emphasis on her face were key to the representation of a sublimated sexuality, in contradistinction to the rise of nudity in mainstream cinema. On film, her sexuality is rarely evoked through her body, even in the 'scandalous' (but actually discreet) sex scenes in Les Amants. Even though she did unveil herself in a number of 1960s films, causing Cinemonde to call her 'No. 1 international sex symbol' in 1969,11 she is not defined by her body. In Malle's Viva Maria! (1965), the rather chaste Bardot/Moreau striptease is initiated by Bardot. In Luis Bunuel's Le Journal d'une femme de chambre (1964), eroticism is not shown but suggested: through her wicked gaze, a flash of suspender belts and the celebrated shoe sequences. In Losey's Eva (1962), her half-naked body is glimpsed, fleetingly, in long takes. From her huge close-up which opens Ascenseur pour I'echafaud, Moreau's face connotes interiority and soulfulness. The discreet make-up, the bags under the eyes, proclaim authenticity, literally and metaphorically. The close-ups also highlight Moreau's full sensual mouth, its down-turned corners 'speaking' a bruised, tragic or sullen,12 sexuality, as opposed to the playful Bardot

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pout. Her melancholy look is only occasionally relieved by a radiant smile. Moreau's mouth, close to the telephone, also draws attention to her voice, a mixture of weariness and sensuality, solemnity and fun, marinaded in the smoke of endless Gitanes. The scene, featured on one of France Telecom's telephone cards (see Plate 4, p. 32), has had a cult impact. Former Culture Minister, Jack Lang, recently told Moreau through Le Film francais: 'The short telephone scene has remained imprinted on my memory: the images, of course, but especially your voice, which resonates.'13

Moreau's femme fafa/e: modernity or eternal femininity? From Ascenseur pour I'echafaud and Les Amants to Eva, via Les Liaisons dangereuses, La notte and La Baie des anges, Moreau was perceived as 'Modern Woman'. Smoking and drinking, she strolled the fashionable European locations of the time: Paris, the Cote d'Azur, Venice, Rome, often to a soundtrack of cool jazz. Her characters' existential boredom, sometimes to the point of anomie, echoed those of contemporary literature. They evoked a latter-day Madame Bovary, especially in the way motherhood (for instance, in Les Amants, Moderate* Cantabile and Jules ^i Jim) problematized her sexuality. Her characters were modern because they inhabited the public sphere, leaving behind the domestic topography of earlier screen women. Yet, if these characters appropriated the position of the Baudelairian flaneur, prowling the streets, bars and casinos of the city, they were ultimately constrained by their femininity. Moreau, like other New Wave fldneuses, often doubles up as streetwalker or courtesan (or is mistaken for one), as happens in Ascenseur pour I'echafaud, Les Liaisons dangereuses and Eva. Jules et Jim's Catherine, a key Moreau role, shows how the character's sexual freedom is also deadly. The best-known images from Jules ei Jim show her as radiant. She runs along a bridge, dressed in boy's clothes, with cloth cap and painted moustache, exhilarated, an image of androgynous youth and fun. Another has her with head thrown back, flashing her devastating smile, the picture of charm. Another shows her with cigarette defiantly stuck in her mouth, provocative and sexy. In yet another, she triumphantly opens shutters to a beautiful day. In most

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commentaries on Jules et Jim, these sunny images of a modern menage a trois dominate; Francoise Aude even says, 'Who remembers Catherine as a femme fatale? ... Catherine is first and foremost a marvellously vital and tonic woman' (Aude, 1995, p. 37). This is to ignore the whole second half of the film, which details Catherine's neurosis (grounded in biology, namely her failure to conceive Jim's child) and her lethal effect on all around her. As she deliberately drives her car into the lake, she kills herself and Jim (Henri Serre), making Jules (Oskar Werner) a widower and her daughter an orphan. Deadly female sexuality is an important streak of Moreau's work, from Ascenseur pour I'echafaud (where Julien kills 'for her'), casting a different light on the charming song in Jules et Jim, 'Le Tourbillon de la vie'. Moreau's voice sings a man's words about a 'femme fatale who was fatal to me'. As Molly Haskell said, The femme fatale is almost invariably a male invention, the projection - and prisoner - of a director's or writer's fears and fantasies, and probably a means of satisfying his own self-destructive urges' (Haskell, 1997, p. 67). We then remember that Jules and Jim fall in love literally with a projection (a slide of a statue) before they even meet Catherine. Before Truffaut's La Mariee etait en noir (1968), in which she kills a string of husbands, the fatal theme is brought to an apogee in Eva. Moreau herself initiated the project, based on a novel by James Hadley Chase, and brought personal features to the film, such as the Billie Holiday records Eva obsessively plays. Malevolent and inscrutable, Eva is the classic femme fatale of film noir, who lures men, especially the Stanley Baker character, to ruin, and provokes the death of the innocent Francesca (Virna Lisi). Moreau's seductive performance, the gorgeous locations and Losey's beautifully mobile camerawork overlay a bitter, misogynist tale, about a woman whose name evokes the whole of femininity. Eva's power is purely negative. The camera repeatedly shows her luxury apartment in Rome on the edge of shanty huts, pointing to the decayed flip side of her glamour. The only scene which gives her subjectivity, as she is alone in her flat towards the end of the film, shows her drunk, lonely and tormented, undermining her triumph at the end of the film when she moves on to another rich man. Press coverage of Moreau's own liaisons at the time undoubtedly bolstered her screen image as seductress. In a May 1995 interview in Positif, she claims Eva as 'the most amoral character imaginable', and defends her heroines as

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unclassifiable: They are not feminists, they don't belong to a group, they are not militant. They are loners.' True, but the issue remains of the high cultural currency of seductive images of female power reduced to sexual manipulation - illustrated by the fact that La Mariee etait en noir was apparently conceived 'as a tribute to Jeanne Moreau, Truffaut's gift to the woman he loved and who had become a close friend' (de Baecque and Toubiana, 1996, p. 325). The sexual dimension of Moreau's image thus entertains a paradoxical relationship to its modernity. Her liberated' and anti-conformist heroines are always brought down to an essential, and therefore unchanging, femininity. In an introduction to the television broadcast of Les Liaisons dangereuses, Vadim declares that her character is a truly liberated woman, yet he horribly disfigures her at the end, hitting at the source of the femme fatale's power, her beauty. The face and body of the seductress thus contain her downfall, pointing to her ultimate fragility. It is telling in this respect that Bunuel cited Moreau's wobbly walk as her attraction in Le Journal d'une femme de chambre: 'When she walks, her foot trembles just a bit on its high heel, suggesting a certain tension and instability' (Bunuel, 1983, p. 241). As with Jules et Jim though, we retain from Bunuel's film the power of her performance, her unflinching gaze and dazzling smile. Her great heroines of the 1960s are testimony to our patriarchal culture's love of beautiful but deadly or damaged women.

Then and now If in the 1960s Moreau was the epitome of the elegant mature woman, from the early 1970s, when she was in her forties, she claimed like Signoret a screen presence as 'older woman' (at an age when male actors, and nowadays many female actresses, would be considered 'young'). Unlike Signoret's though, her older characters retain a sexual dimension, albeit a 'tragic' one.14 Les Valseuses (1973) epitomizes this trend. Moreau plays a criminal coming out of jail who is picked up by petty crooks Gerard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere. After passionate sex with both of them, she kills herself. Though widely celebrated, her part in this film leaves a sour taste: in a gratuitously unpleasant twist typical of director Bertrand Blier,

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she shoots herself in the vagina. Subsequently, among a varied filmography, Querelle (1982) and La Vieilk qui marchait dans la mer (1991) are the most interesting films, in which she pursues her characterization as a woman growing old disgracefully. Querelle is Fassbinder's version of Genet's classic gay novel, while La Vieille is Laurent Heynemann's adaptation of a book by the popular comic pulp writer Frederic Dard, whose language is brilliantly inventive and totally obscene. In Querelle, Moreau plays the camp, overdressed, madame of the brothel, part of the film's excessive colour and sexual scheme, singing a haunting version of Oscar Wilde's 'Each man kills the thing he loves'. La Vieille uses to perfection Moreau's gritty voice, as she and Michel Serrault swap Dard's untranslatable dialogue (which explains why the film was a flop everywhere except France, where Moreau won a Cesar for it). Despite the very different pleasures these two films offer, there is a continuity in the way that older sexual women have to be caricatural, even if Moreau, again, carries them with great aplomb. The moment that best connects Moreau's later and earlier careers is her cameo in Luc Besson's Nikita (1990). Moreau plays godmother to young killer Nikita (Anne Parillaud) by giving her lessons in femininity, translated as seduction. By contrast, Anne Bancroft in the remake, The Assassin, teaches Bridget Fonda table manners and computer skills. Faithful to her image in Les Amants, Jules et Jim, Eva and Le Journal d'une femme de chambre, Moreau instructs young Nikita that there are only two important things in life: 'femininity and the ways to abuse it'. Less politically correct than the American version, but so much sexier. Conclusion: what is a 'New Wave star'? In the quote at the beginning of this chapter, David Shipman talked in 1964 of New Wave stars having found 'their image'. Many years later, I argue that Jeanne Moreau is the New Wave star. What is, then, the 'image' of the New Wave star? Moreau's star persona, as we have seen, encompasses highly contradictory values. Her femme fatale parts are profoundly morbid, yet the performance transforms them into a luminous' presence. Take also Les Amants. For Sellier:

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The second part [of the film], from her meeting with Jean-Marc Bory, is implicitly constructed with reference to the point of view of this marginal intellectual who profusely humiliates Jeanne Moreau before taking her to seventh heaven to the sound of a Brahms sextet.15

Meanwhile, Francoise Aude is not alone in seeing Moreau in the same film as a woman 'who transforms herself by yielding to the truth of her own desire' (Aude, 1995, p. 31). Sellier's analysis is absolutely right in terms of narrative: Moreau plays a 'Bovaryesque' bourgeoise who needs a man to 'reveal' pleasure to her and provoke her instantly to abdicate her entire world, including her child, to follow him. But who remembers Jean-Louis Bory? It surely was not thanks to him that Les Amants was one of the biggest commercial successes of the 1950s. In the sixty-five best-sellers at the French box-office from 1950 to 1961, it ranked No. 21 preceded mostly by French comedies and costume dramas and Hollywood superproductions, except for Les Liaisons dangereuses (No. 4), La Verite (No. 11) and Les Diaboliques (No. 19), all three films starring femmes fatales embodied respectively by Moreau, Bardot and Signoret.16 When she came to work with Truffaut on Jules et Jim, the film which best defines her internationally, she was already an important box-office star. True, she then opted for auteur cinema and its bond between filmmaker and actress: 'It is an extraordinarily intimate exchange, which can lead to love, and sometimes to a more complex and subtle relationship, difficult to imagine and which partakes of creativity' (in de Baecque and Toubiana, 1996, p. 260). Being able to express the values of the New Wave through a professionally understated performance style, Moreau became the New Wave star (the other major New Wave star, Belmondo, also had solid theatrical training, while those purely trained in the New Wave, such as Karma and Leaud, could not transcend it in their subsequent careers). Concentrating the values of romantic love, sensuality, sensitivity and modernity, Moreau brought a feminized surface to the New Wave which superimposed itself on its male and misogynist foundations.

Biofilmography Born Paris, 23 January 1928. Married Jean-Louis Richard (1949; separated 1951, with whom one son, born 1949) and William Friedkin (1977; divorced 1980).

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Main acting awards Cannes, Best Actress, Moderate Cantabile, 1960 Etoile de Cristal de I'Academie du Cinema, Best Actress, Jules et Jim, 1962 Cesar, Best Actress, La Vieille qui marchait dans la mer, 1992 Venice, Golden Lion for whole career, 1992 American Academy of Motion Pictures, life tribute 1998 Films as actor

1949 Dernier amour (Jean Stelli) 1950 Meurtres/The Three Sinners (Richard Pettier) Pigalle-Saint-Germain-des-Pres (Andre Berthomieu) 1952 L'Homme de ma vie/The Man in My Life (Guy Lefranc, France/Italy) // est minuit, Docteur Schweitzer/The Story of Doctor Schweitzer (Andre Haguet) 1953 Dortoir des grandes/Girls' Dormitory (Henri Decoin) Julietta (Marc Allegret) 1954 Touchez pas au grisbi/Honour among Thieves (Jacques Becker, France/Italy) Secrets d'alcove/The Bed [ep. 'Le Billet de logement'] (Henri Decoin, France/Italy) Les Intrigantes/The Plotters (Henri Decoin) La Reine Margot/A Woman of Evil (Jean Dreville, France/Italy) 1955 Les Hommes en blanc/Men in White (Ralph Habib) M'sieur la caille/The Parasites (Andre Pergament) Gas-oil (Gilles Grangier) 1956 Le Salaire du peche (Denys de la Patelliere) 1957 Jusqu'au dernier (Pierre Billon) Les Louves/The She-wolves (Luis Saslavsky) L'Etrange Monsieur Steve [Plus mort que vif\ (Raymond Bailly) Ascenseur pour I'echafaud/Lift to the Scaffold (Louis Malle) 1958 Trois jours a vivre (Gilles Grangier) Echec au porteur (Gilles Grangier) Le Dos au mur/Back to the Wall (Edouard Molinaro) Les Amants/The Lovers (Louis Malle) 1959 Les Quatre cents coups/The Four Hundred Blows (Francois Truffaut)

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1960

1961

1962 1963

1964

1965

1966 1967

1968 1969

1970


Les Liaisons dangereuses (Roger Vadim) Jovanka e le altre/Five Branded Women (Martin Ritt, Italy/USA) Le Dialogue des Carmelites/The Carmelites (R.P. Bruckberger and Philippe Agostini, France/Italy) Moderate Cantabile/Seven Days ... Seven Nights (Peter Brook) La notte/The Night (Michelangelo Antonioni, Italy/France) line femme est une femme/A Woman Is a Woman (Jean-Luc Godard) Jules et Jim (Francois Truffaut) Eva [Eve] (Joseph Losey, France/Italy) Le Proces/The Trial (Orson Welles, France/Germany/Italy) La Bale des anges/Bay of Angels (Jacques Demy) Peau de banane (Marcel Ophuls, France/Italy) Le Feu follet/WiU O' the Wisp (Louis Malle, France/Italy) The Victors (Carl Foreman, UK) Le Journal d'une femme de chambre/Diary of a Chambermaid (Luis Bufiuel, France/Italy) The Train (John Frankenheimer, USA/France/Italy) Mata Hari, agent H-21 (Jean-Louis Richard, France/Italy) The Yellow Rolls-Royce (Anthony Asquith, UK) Viva Maria! (Louis Malle, France/Italy) Chimes at Midnight [Falstaff] (Orson Welles, Spain) Mademoiselle (Tony Richardson, UK/France) The Sailor from Gibraltar (Tony Richardson, UK) The Deep [Direction towards Death, Dead Reckoning] (Orson Welles) [unfinished] Le Plus vieux metier du monde/The Oldest Profession [ep. 'Mademoiselle Mimi'] (Philippe de Broca, France/Italy) La Mariee etait en noir/The Bride Wore Black (Francois Truffaut, France/Italy) The Great Catherine (Gordon Flemyng, UK) Le Corps de Diane [Telo Diany] (Jean-Louis Richard, France/ Czechoslovakia) Le Petit Theatre de Jean Renoir/The Little Theatre of Jean Renoir (Jean Renoir, France/Italy) Monte Walsh (William Fraker, USA) Alex in Wonderland (Paul Mazursky, USA)

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1971

1972

1973

1974 1975

1976 1977 1979 1981 1982

1984 1985 1986

1987 1988 1989 1990

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Comptes a rebours/Countdown (Roger Pigaut, France/Italy) L'Humeur vagabonde (Edouard Luntz) The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles) [unfinished] Chere Louise/Louise (Philippe de Broca, France/Italy) line histoire immortelle/The Immortal Story (Orson Welles) Nathalie Granger (Marguerite Duras) Absences repetees (Guy Gilles) Joanna Francesca/Joan the Frenchwoman [Jeanne la Franpaise] (Carlos Diegues) Les Valseuses/Going Places (Bertrand Blier) Je t'aime (Pierre Duceppe, Canada) La Race des seigneurs/Jet Set (Pierre Granier-Deferre) Le Jardin qui bascule/The Tilting Garden (Guy Gilles) Hu-man (Jerome Laperrousaz) Souvenirs d'en France (Andre Techine) Lumiere (Jeanne Moreau) Mr Klein (Joseph Losey, France/Italy) The Last Tycoon (Elia Kazan, USA) L'Adolescente/The Adolescent Girl (Jeanne Moreau) Plein Sud [Huida al sur] (Luc Beraud, France/Spain) "Your Ticket Is No Longer Valid (George Kaczender) Mille miliards de dollars/A Thousand Billion Dollars (Henri Verneuil) La Truite/The Trout (Joseph Losey) Querelle (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Germany/France) L'Arbre [TV] (Jacques Doillon) Vicious Circle [Huis clos] [TV] (Kenneth Ives, UK) The Last Seance [TV] (June Wyndham-Davies, UK) Le Tiroir secret [TV] (Nadine Trintignant) Sauve-toi, Lola/Run for Your Life, Lola (Michel Drach, France/ Canada) Le Paltoquet/The Nonentity (Michel Deville) Le Miracule/The Miracle Healing (Jean-Pierre Mocky) Ennemonde (Claude Santelli) Jour apres jour (Alain Attal) Hotel Terminus [voice-over] (Marcel Ophuls) Nikita/La Femme Nikita (Luc Besson)

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Alberto Express (Arthur Joffe) La Femme fardee (Jose Pinheiro) 1991 Anna Karamazov (Roustam Khamdamov, Sweden/France) Until the End of the World [Bis Ans ende der Welt] (Wim Wenders, Germany/France) To meteoro vima ton pelargou/The Suspended Stride of the Stork [Le Pas suspendu de la cigogne] (Theodores Angelopoulos, France/ Greece/Italy/Switzerland) La Vieille qui marchait dans la mer/The Old Lady Who Wades in the Sea (Laurent Heynemann) L'Architecture du chaos [voice-over] (Peter Cohan) 1992 La Nuit de I'ocean (Antoine Perset) Map of the Human Heart (Vincent Ward, UK/Australia) L'Amant/The Lover [voice-over] (Jean-Jacques Annaud, France/ UK) A demain/See You Tomorrow (Didier Martiny) The Clothes in the Wardrobe [TV] (Waris Hussein) Die Abwesenheit [UAbsence] (Peter Handke, Germany/France) 1993 A Foreign Field [TV] (Charles Sturridge, UK) Je m'appelle Victor/My Name Is Victor (Guy Jacques, France/ Belgium) 1994 Le Temps et la chambre (Chereau) 1995 Les Cent et une nuits de Simon Cinema (Agnes Varda, France/UK) Par-deld les nuages/'Beyond the Clouds (Michelangelo Antonioni, France/Italy) The Proprietor [La Proprietaire] (Ismail Merchant, France/UK/USA) 1997 Un amour de sorciere/Witch Way Love (Rene Manzor) Amour et confusions (Patrick Braoude) 1999 Balzac [TV] (Josee Dayan) Notes

Francois Truffaut, Arts, No. 720, quoted in Gauteur (1962), p. 20. David Shipman, Filming and Filming, 10:12, September 1964, p. 8. According to a survey published in Cahiers du cinema, No. 138, 1962. Francois Truffaut, Arts, 15 May 1957, quoted in de Baecque and Toubiana (1996), p. 163. 5. Francois Truffaut, Arts, 12 December 1956.

1. 2. 3. 4.

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6. Bernadette Lafont, quoted in Monique Neubourg, 'Bernadette Lafont: la fiancee du cinema', 14e Festival International de Films de Femmes, catalogue, 1992, p. 61. 7. Deservedly, Robinson won the Volpi acting prize for female performance at the 1959 Venice festival; deservedly, in part, because she animates with brilliance one of the most crudely misogynist parts. 8. Jeanne Moreau, quoted in an interview by Francoise Aude, Michel Ciment and Michel Sineux, Positif, May 1995, p. 6. 9. Marguerite Duras, quoted in an interview by Dominique Noguez, 'La Classe de la violence: Nathalie Granger', a documentary directed by Jerome Beaujour and Jean Mascolo, Bureau d'Animation Culturelle du Ministere des Relations Exterieures (1984). 10. Jeanne Moreau quoted in 'Jeanne la sage', an interview by Michel Delahaye, Cahiers du cinema, No. 161—2, January 1965, p. 85. 11. In Le Nouveau Cinemonde, No. 1802, 23 September 1969. 12. Because of her mouth, Moreau was frequently compared to Bette Davis. Truffaut claimed to have deliberately made her smile in Jules et Jim to counter the 'Betty Davis look' she had in La notte (in de Baecque and Toubiana, 1996, p. 256). 13. Jack Lang, quoted in 'Jeanne dans le tourbillon de la vie', Le Film francais, No. 2740, September 1998, p. 29. 14. It may be noted that Moreau's screen image of anti-conformist but 'tragic' or 'damaged' femininity contrasts with her more political stance in life — for instance, like Deneuve, she signed the manifesto against French abortion laws published by Le Nouvel Observateur on 5 April 1971. 15. Genevieve Sellier, in a forthcoming book on the New Wave. 16. Le Film francais, No. 921-2, Special Issue, January 1962, pp. 100-1.

CHAPTER 6

Louis de Funes Le gendarme ef les c/ne'phi/es

The comic Louis de Funes (1914—83), the most popular star at the postwar French box-office, should have a place in a book on the great French film stars, though not everybody would agree with me. From the early 1960s, 'Fufu' not only smashed film-viewing records but was also much loved by French audiences. His phenomenal success was not matched, however, by critical approval. While Le Film franpais celebrated him as 'the comical, hilarious de Funes who, as a gendarme ... makes the audience burst into laughter at every turn',1 Francoise Aude's opinion that de Funes 'was only a grimacing, inarticulate and frustrated clown' (Aude, 1989, p. 6) is a typical view from film critics and historians in France. For instance, Rene Predal makes de Funes 'the measure of comic vulgarity' and, noting the box-office success of his greatest hits — Le Corniaud, La Grande vadrouille, the Gendarme series and Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob — adds, 'All this, of course, has little to do with cinema' (Predal, 1991, p. 339). Although de Funes was popular in some European countries, including Germany, where he was known as Baldwin, and Spain, he exported badly to the UK and the USA, and as a result is little known to the English-speaking public. Here, poor distribution is compounded by critical contempt. Surveys of French cinema give the briefest cursory mentions (Armes, 1985; Forbes, 1992; Williams, 1992; Hayward, 1993). Major encyclopaedias of stars (Thomas, 1992; Shipman, 136

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1972) leave him out altogether. Louis de Funes, it seems, is the abject of French cinema. But we should not be surprised. His fate as a star echoes that of the genre he worked in, mainstream French comedy. Both are critically despised as Vulgar', 'unrealistic' and 'reactionary', and, in France especially, viewed unfavourably against American and Italian comedy. In this respect, de Funes combined several crimes: he was not an auteuractor like Max Linder, Jacques Tati and Pierre Etaix; the theatrical tradition he came out of was that of the despised comic boulevard, and he never ventured out of the comedy genre, unlike Fernandel and Bourvil, who at least made a few 'serious' films.2 There are signs that, in France at least, de Funes is being reappraised. A play celebrating his talent and star persona, entitled Pour Louis de Funes and written by Valere Novarina was staged in March 1999 in Paris. It starred Dominique Pinon (lead actor in La Cite des enfants perdus), whose mobile face was a good match for de Funes. But even that play, and its press coverage, felt the need to apologize. One article led with 'Don't feel ashamed to laugh any more'.3 It is true that de Funes's star persona was, at first sight, off-putting, being that of an irascible, unheroic middleaged man who was neither attractive, sexy nor even sympathetic. In addition, the directors of his films ranged from journeymen of low critical status (Jean Girault) to competent mainstream cineastes (Gerard Oury). And yet, de Funes mattered to French cinema and mattered to his audience. Even Predal concedes that his death left an enormous gap' in the French film industry (Predal, 1991, p. 408). This chapter will try to unravel why de Funes was so popular and why he provoked such critical hostility.

Louis de Funes was born in a suburb of Paris in 1914, the son of an impoverished aristocratic Spanish immigrant family. After numerous small jobs, including nightclub pianist, he spent two decades, the 1940s and the 1950s, in endless small theatrical and filmic appearances, predominantly in comic parts which exploited his slight frame, angular face and big eyebrows. His first film appearance was in 1945, in La Tentation de Barbizon, and over the next ten years he had fleeting parts in dozens of films. In the second part of his film career, from the mid-1950s, he became known for brief but striking comic appearances as an irascible,

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Plate 15 Louis de Funes: a typical Tufu' face, voluble and disagreeable character. These were usually self-contained episodes which he enlivened as best he could: 'I tried to make the small parts I was given more colourful, with details, facial expressions, gestures. I thus acquired a certain comic baggage without which I would not have made the career I did' (in Loubier, 1991, p. 75). In these episodes, he was the cantankerous taxi driver (Innocents in Paris, 1953), the destructive neighbour (Papa, maman, la bonne et moi, 1954), the sinister undertaker (Le Mouton a cinq pattes, 1954) or the rapacious blackmarket grocer (La Traversee de Paris, 1956). According to his biographies (Chazal, 1972; Loubier, 1991; Jelot-Blanc, 1993), de Funes thought for a long time that this would be the pattern for the rest of his life and he set his ambitions on a career as a character actor, with people such as Carette as a model. Eventually, though, following a major success on stage in Oscar, he was offered lead parts in low-profile domestic comedies, such as M vu ni connu (1958) and Pouic-pouic (1963). Recognition finally came. Then, in September 1964, the enormous

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success of Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez, a relatively minor production, took everyone by surprise, and was compounded by the release of Fantomas in November, in which de Funes (as Inspector Juve) co-stars with Jean Marais. There followed a string of box-office hits and the third, triumphant part of his career began. Although de Funes went on to make many successful films until his death in 1983, notably Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob in 1973, the height of his popularity was from 1964 to 1970, the period I am going to concentrate on here, and in particular his three greatest hits, Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez (1964), Le Corniaud (1965) and La Grande vadrouille (1966). The star persona de Funes developed grew out of his earlier character incarnations. He perfected a vivid repertoire of manic facial and bodily gestures and made inventive use of his face, especially his mouth (with a moustache in early parts), eyes and balding scalp, and of his small size. De Funes's characters in his high stardom period occupy the middle to upper ground of the social scale, ranging from petit bourgeois (the gendarme) to rich executives and opera conductors, as in, respectively, Le Corniaud and La Grande vadrouille. The Gendarme series included six films from 1964 to 1982. Allegedly based on a true anecdote about laid-back Saint-Tropez gendarmes (Jelot-Blanc, 1993, p. 141), Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez introduced the viewers to Ludovic Cruchot (de Funes), a member of the Gendarmerie at Saint-Tropez, his daughter Nicole (Genevieve Grad), his superior Gerber (Michel Galabru) and his subordinates. With this film, de Funes moved straight from character actor to star comedian, and his subsequent films fell into the genre of the 'comedian comedy', namely episodic narratives subordinated to the personality and performance of the comic star.4 Among these were the other Gendarme movies. Le Gendarme a New York sends the squad to Manhattan; Le Gendarme se marie follows his successful courtship of Josefa (Claude Gensac); in Le Gendarme en ballade, the team is temporarily 'retired' to make way for a younger squad; Le Gendarme et les extraterrestres brings 'aliens' to Saint-Tropez and Le Gendarme et les gendarmettes registers the arrival of women in the profession. In addition, in 1966 de Funes recorded a Christmas tale for radio called Le Gendarme a Bethleem (Jelot-Blanc, 1993, p. 179). Like British Carry On films, the pleasure offered by the series is to place the familiar team, Cruchot and the other characters, in various combinations and locations.

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The films follow the brigade's endeavours to apprehend thieves, nudists or impatient drivers during the holiday rush. Their attempts are invariably botched, but in the end de Funes's cunning triumphs. The series also charts Cruchot/de Funes's relationships to those around him: his sycophantic attitude to Gerber, his brutal though ineffectual tyranny over his men, his failed attempts at controlling his daughter and wife. In Le Corniaud, de Funes plays a crooked businessman who engineers the unsuspecting corniaud ('sucker') (Bourvil) to drive a car full of drugs. La Grande vadrouille, set during World War II, reunites de Funes and Bourvil, with the British actor Terry-Thomas in an epic escape through occupied France. In all these films, de Funes's characters share a psychology of discontent, from simple disgruntlement to barely suppressed rage and hysteria, expressed verbally and in gestures. If one word describes the de Funes persona, it is that of the rdleur (rdler means to complain aggressively). Variety's review of La Grande vadrouille described him as 'irascible, mugging, overbearing, pugnacious, though harmless',5 and Jean Marais pointed out that 'his talent was based on bad temper' (Jelot-Blanc, 1993, p. 146). Most of the films were large-scale productions, aimed at a wide, family audience. Although de Funes is often described as a clown, and his films critically scorned as the lowest of the low, his comic style, like his films' humour, is mostly within the bounds of good taste, with no scatological or sexual play or innuendo, and no overt social or political satire. On the whole, the star and films would seem to fit Francoise Aude's characterization of French comedy as 'too nice' (Aude, 1989). As he became increasingly rich and famous de Funes maintained his screen persona, but developed a different public image, that of a distant, aristocratic figure who gave few interviews. This was encouraged by the fact that his 'return to nature', an important rite of passage for French stars (see Chapter 1), took the form of buying the chateau of his wife's ancestors (the family of the writer Guy de Maupassant) and growing roses. Nevertheless, the screen image endured and de Funes's star persona belongs totally to mainstream comedy.

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Saving French cinema The sales of Louis de Funes's films from 1964 to his death in 1983 made him the 'unsurpassed champion' of the French box-office.6 La Grande vadrouille Le Corniaud Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob Les Grandes vacances Le Gendarme se marie Oscar Le Gendarme et les extra-terrestres L'Aile ou la cuisse La Folie des grandeurs

1966 1965 1964 1973 1967 1968 1967 1978 1976 1971

17.2m Gerard Oury 11.7m Gerard Oury 7.7m Jean Girault Gerard Oury 7.2m 6.8m Jean Girault 6.7m Jean Girault Edouard Molinaro 6.0m 6.0m Jean Girault 5.8m Claude Zidi Gerard Oury 5.6m

Source: Le Film francais, No. 16, August 1993

(figures refer to number of cinema tickets sold)

De Funes's record was based on the unprecedented success of Le Corniaud, which sold 11.7 million tickets and La Grande vadrouille, which sold 17.2 million. These figures have since been paralleled only in 1993 by the comedy Les Visiteurs and surpassed by Titanic in 1998. De Funes, whose salary in Le Corniaud was still inferior to Bourvil's, was by the time of La Grande vadrouille very well paid, his contract on that film giving him a percentage of profits (Jelot-Blanc, 1993, p. 171). Though Le Corniaud, La Grande vadrouille and Fantomas co-starred other major actors, as other de Funes films went on to head the box-office, in particular Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez (7.7 million), de Funes was the individual who brought in the biggest audiences. The industry was quick to exploit de Funes's appeal after the surprise hit of Le Gendarme de SaintTropez, and the high numbers of prints struck for each of his major films, and distribution policies, reinforced exposure and contributed to his popularity. Le Film franpais reports that over the Christmas 1966 period, during the triumph of La Grande vadrouille, no fewer than eight other de Funes films could be seen in nineteen Parisian cinemas.7 Box-office figures are not the only indicator of popularity. They are, nevertheless, indicative of the attraction exercised by the star. As a point of

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Plate 16 La Grande vadrouille (Gerard Oury, 1966): Louis de Funes (top) and Bourvil (bottom).

comparison, at a time when the overall annual audience was almost double, Brigitte Bardot's greatest box-office hit, La Verite (1960), sold altogether 'only' 10 million tickets, while all others scored lower figures (for instance, Et Dieu ... crea la femme totalled 4 million). Through his high exposure in film, de Funes became a popular institution in France. He was nicknamed 'Fufu', his films have been constantly rerun on French television and video box-sets are available under his name. At the time of de Funes's greatest popularity 1964-8, French cinema was experiencing its first major crisis of the post-war period. After the peak of the late 1950s, the post-New Wave era saw a sharp decline in attendances (from 411 million spectators in 1957, to 328 million in 1961, 259 million in 1965 and 183 million in 1970); in other words the postNew Wave decade saw more than half the French cinema audience disappear, as well as a decline in production, which dipped below a hundred films a year in the early 1960s, with a third of these Italian co-productions. In 1965, only thirty-four wholly French films were made, together with fifty-six co-productions (de Funes's three most popular films and many others were co-productions, with Italy mostly).

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This crisis was not a specifically French phenomenon, though it took place later than in other European nations, due in part to the later arrival of mass ownership of television. The same period, which coincided with the economic boom of the Fifth Republic, concurrently saw a huge rise in other leisure forms, especially betting on horse-racing, tourism and second homes, all competing with film-going. Production picked up again in the late 1960s: 91 films in 1969, of which 56 were wholly French, and 102 films in 1970, of which 60 were French (Vincendeau, 1996, pp. 196-7). The mass popularity of de Funes's films from 1964 to 1970, therefore, helped the French film industry recover beyond the obvious revenue the films brought in. As overall audiences continued to decrease, the industry needed more than ever to maximize its assets: in other words, it needed blockbusters. The question is, why was it de Funes's films which fulfilled this function? I will offer three answers: the all-inclusive bricolage nature of his films, his appeal to a family audience and the 'negative masculinity' offered by his star persona.

Films 'with just about everything thrown in' By 1965, nearly half of French films were in colour, and by 1967, 64 per cent were shot on location. Competition came in the form of large-scale Hollywood epics and James Bond action movies — genres not normally suited to French cinema for both economic and historical reasons. The French popular genre cinema of that period, therefore, needed to incorporate aspects of 'high technology' into its own, small(er)-scale films. Some of Jean-Paul Belmondo's adventure films were one kind of response by the French industry (see Chapter 7). De Funes's comedies were another. Jean-Louis Comolli, in his review of Le Corniaud for Cahiers du cinema, complained that comedies of this type were trying to 'throw everything in' - comic gags, stars, beautiful landscapes, American cars, cops and sentimental stories — 'they want the spectators to be amused, diverted, moved, to feel pity, envy and even compassion'.8 Apart from his praise of 'the great Louis de Funes', Comolli's review is extremely disparaging of the film, but what he 'denounces' nevertheless pinpoints precisely its appeal: indeed, the 'all

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inclusive' aspect of de Funes's films was a large part of their success. Whereas earlier comedies such as Fernandel's could get away with relying entirely on the comic star and modest production values — Le Mouton a cinq pattes, where Fernandel plays six different parts, is a good example - by the mid-1960s, more was needed. Le Gendarme de SaintTropez, Le Corniaud and La Grande vadrouille all offer a plethora of 'spectacular' cinematic pleasures on a scale affordable by the French film industry. All three are large-screen, colour productions, a novelty for French comedy, shot by prestigious cinematographers: respectively, Marc Fossard, Henri Decae and Claude Renoir. Apart from the comic routines, there are musical scenes (Genevieve Grad sings), dancing in nightclubs, parades in the streets of Saint-Tropez. Thus, unlike some of the comedies de Funes appeared in early on in his career, such as Monsieur Leguignon, lampiste, his hits are not part of the cheap, 'inexportable' categories of French cinema, defined by Jean-Pierre Jeancolas as low-grade films that were destined to be seen only by audiences in their countries of origin' (in Dyer and Vincendeau, 1992, p. 141). Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez, the most modest of de Funes's big hits, nevertheless cashes in on the tourism and Bardot associations of Saint-Tropez. Episodes are designed to show named shops (such as clothes designer Vachon),9 cafe terraces, blonde starlets, beaches, yachts in the harbour, luxury villas. Genevieve Grad is a B.B. look-alike. The photography emphasizes the blue skies and pastel colours of SaintTropez's houses and squares, and the primary colours of the holidaymakers' clothes. As Le Film fmnpais put it, Those who love Saint-Tropez will think they're still on holiday'.10 The narrative of Le Corniaud weaves its way from Naples to Bordeaux, while La Grande vadrouille takes its heroes through Paris and several beautiful regions before culminating in the Hospices de Beaune. Even hostile reviewers noted the 'dreamy' landscapes and the quality of the photography of these films (Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob starts with spectacular shots of Manhattan before moving to Normandy and then Paris). De Funes blossomed against this opulent background, which functioned as a foil to his aggressive behaviour: for instance, conducting a Berlioz overture in the actual Paris Opera in La Grande vadrouille. The multi-star casts were part of the 'everything thrown in' aesthetics of the French blockbuster, but de Funes's excessive performance was also best suited to

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work against other actors. Hence, he is predominantly seen as part of a duo with Bourvil and Jean Marais, and later with Yves Montand, Coluche, Jean Gabin and Annie Girardot. In the Gendarme series, his highly kinetic performance bounces off Michel Galabru's lethargic blundering and the ensemble of the other gendarmes. The films frequently line them up, so that de Funes's manic gestures strike a vivid contrast.

A middle-aged star in sexless family comedy The films of Louis de Funes derive from two major French comic traditions: the French vaudeville (nineteenth-century theatrical farce, sometimes with song) and the comique troupier, a form of military comedy, which came from the turn-of-the-century cafe-concert and theatre. Both formed the basis of 1930s French film comedy (see also Chapters 1 and 2). Le Corniaud and La Grande vadrouille draw on vaudeville farce, with chases, mistaken identity and slammed doors, as in the hotel scene in La Grande vadrouille. The Gendarme series obviously draws on the comique troupier and it includes all its key elements: a play on hierarchy, bumbling officialdom, idiotic behaviour by the rank and file, regressive humour and transvestism. But what is different in these 1960s incarnations of vaudeville and comique troupier is that both forms are de-sexualized. In the 1930s, the genres were close to their bawdy live theatrical and cabaret origins and provided their stars, notably Georges Milton and Fernandel, with rich opportunities for sexual innuendo and drag acts. De Funes cuts out this dimension altogether. Unlike classic stage vaudeville, where heterosexual libertinage is de rigueur, the women in de Funes's films are comic nuns, prim wives and de Funes's daughter, Nicole, in the Gendarme series. Even in Le Gendarme se marie, Cruchot's courtship of Josefa is chaste and their attraction is comically figured by lightning when they kiss or touch demurely, literalizing the expression coup de foudre (love at first sight'). Relationships between de Funes and his men eschew the ambiguities and innuendo of the 1930s comique troupier and transvestism is free of sexual connotations - for instance, de Funes dresses up as an 'Arab' woman in Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez, a US policeman and a Chinese in Le Gendarme a New York and as a German officer in La Grande vadrouille. In

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the 1930s comique troupier, soldiers dressed as women to flirt with sexual ambiguity. De Funes's stardom arose between the New Wave and the post-1968 era, at a time which saw both the survival of censorship and an inescapable move towards liberalization. A degree of sexual innuendo had been historically acceptable to popular audiences in France by comparison with American and British audiences. So why were de Funes's films so chaste? His age and physique were one important factor. But it also enabled him to distinguish his films from the rising tide of eroticism which affected both mainstream and auteur cinema. In the period of de Funes's high stardom, instances of nudity multiplied exponentially in films such as L'Enfer dans la peau, Une femme mariee (1964), La Curee, Galia (1965), Belle de jour (1966), Barbarella, Manon 70 (1967), Erotissimo, La Piscine (1968). The very titles of de Funes's films signal their innocence. La Grande vadrouille (literally 'the big walkabout') fits in with the infantilizing tendency of many popular French titles (films, songs, books) to contain the word la grande or le grand, la petite or le petit. De Funes's hits also include Le Petit baigneur ('the little bather'), Le Grand restaurant ('the big restaurant') and Les Grandes vacances ('the summer holidays'). Like the use of the slang vadrouille (for 'promenade', a 'ramble'), the stress on petit or grand reinforces playful connotations, as does Le Corniaud ('the sucker', again a slang word). Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez fits in a long line of gentle derision of the police in France. But it also draws on the more innocent connotations of that profession. The gendarme signals the old tradition of Guignol (Punch and Judy) and the rural Gendarmerie (who are part of the army) have a better standing than the urban police, whose reputation for violence and corruption is still linked to its relationship with the Gestapo during the war. Allegedly, the gendarmes are the third most popular profession in France after fire-fighters and doctors (Horton, 1995). Thirty years after Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez, real gendarmes in Saint-Tropez complain of interference in their daily work from tourists seeking latter-day Louis de Funes. While the political thrillers of the 1960s and 1970s began to reveal financial or political corruption in the police, the Gendarme series was on a different plane, amiably deriding a profession seen as harmless. The titles of the Gendarme series reveal the films' visual and narrative programme. Although Saint-Tropez stands for

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the new permissiveness emblematized by Bardot, the function of the gendarme is to stem its tide. Besides, Bardot has been replaced by the pretty but anodyne Grad, and Bardot's frenzied mambo by a mild twist ('Do you, do you, do you Saint-Tropez?'). Nudity is infantilized in the nudists on the beach scene, the new mores made innocent, which is why Aude among others wrote accusingly that 'the comedies gave no hint that French society was on the verge of experiencing the turbulent events of May 68' (Aude, 1989, p. 8). De Funes's films provided, in their innocence, a safe haven from societal changes. But the Gendarme series also shows the futility of fighting them. In their ineptitude, the gendarmes are hardly guardians of morality. De Funes's age when he reached stardom (fifty) is also important. The innocence of his characters was also impotence. De Funes had made about seventy films before Le Gendarme de SaintTropez. But even his early character parts were never 'young'. He was, as it were, born middle-aged. Unlike other major French stars, he had no youthful persona to build on. His persona crystallized middle-aged values such as propriety, status and authority, and was the antithesis of the triumphant youth culture of the 1960s. In the Gendarme series, de Funes domesticates an already very tame youth through his daughter. See, for instance, the scene in which he dances at the fashionable Byblos club: he can invade a 'young' space without being a figure of ridicule. Of all the stars to emerge in the 1960s, de Funes is the one who most obviously turns his back on the New Wave. As the New Wave appropriated the notion of authenticity along with that of youth, it is not surprising that de Funes should have been disparaged as out of touch with his times. Yet, while his films made no claim to 'realism', his age echoed the age of a large part of his audience and his star persona tells us as much about France in the 1960s as the New Wave or the new erotic films did.

The performance of "negative masculinity' In de Funes's films of the 1960s, the barely suppressed rage of his secondary characters of the 1940s and 1950s took centre stage. Aggression and frustration are the keys to his persona. When he is

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psychoanalysed in Le Gendarme a New York, the diagnosis is as clear as it is self-referential: 'frustration complex'. De Funes presented his audience with a comically inverted image of dominant masculinity. He was uncoordinated, unpleasant and lacking in dignity. Other comic stars, especially Bourvil, function as a foil to, and a victim of, his aggression. Non-comic stars, such as Jean Marais in the Fantomas films and Yves Montand in La Folie des grandeurs, are tall, goodlooking and sexually attractive, and create a classic pair of opposites with him. Belmondo and Delon, the two rising male stars of the time, represent masculinity in control — a minimalist restraint of movements and emotions (see, for example, Le Samourai', released the same year as La Grande vadrouille), or spectacular agility (see Belmondo in L'Homme de Rio). De Funes's talent was his ability to create such negative portrayals without putting the audience off. In part, he achieved this through generic features. The accusations by critics that he was a 'clown' are both accurate and nonsensical. De Funes was a 1960s version of the 'ugly clown', linked to Bakhtin's (1968) 'grotesque body'. But, as Henry Jenkins argues (1992, pp. 222-3), we must be careful not to de-historicize Bakhtin. If de Funes is an exponent of the 'grotesque body' and the 'ugly clown', he is so in a very specific context: he portrays 1960s representatives of the law, company executives, etc. However, like all comics, he makes fun of his own shortcomings: for example, his small size. In Le Gendarme a New York, he is contrasted with tall handsome Italians and taller American policemen. In La Grande vadrouille, he wears pyjamas far too big for him. At the beginning of Le Corniaud, his giant office and enormous Cadillac dwarf him. There are purely visual gags, such as a scene in Le Corniaud in which he takes a shower next to a huge muscle man. In Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob, he is paired with another 'rabbi' who is tall and handsome. He uses many disguises. Beyond these 'universal' visual routines, de Funes's facial and body gestures have a particular Frenchness. As semioticians have shown, many gestures are nationally specific and therefore more easily readable by natives. For instance, in Genevieve Calbris's experiments, French natives were able to interpret correctly 85 per cent of French gestures out of context, as opposed to 46 per cent Hungarians and 29 per cent Japanese (Calbris, 1990, p. 34). Though undoubtedly caricatural, de Funes's movements and his voice

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seem in tune with what Calbris (1990) and Laurence Wylie (1977) have identified as 'French' gestures. Where Calbris argues that 'gestural references to positive qualities are few, while indications of faults are numerous' (Calbris, 1990, p. 84), the basis of de Funes's performance and star persona is a delight in criticism, discontent, bad temper. Favourite (and funniest) moments are those when he is telling other characters off. Close-ups highlight his fixed, intense stare and his mouth smirking sardonically, barking orders or mumbling threateningly. Calbris and Wylie also single out muscular tension, rigidity of the torso, puffed-up chest and an especially expressive use of the shoulders (the famous 'Gallic' shrug) and arms. This is complemented by high mobility of the wrist and elbow ('gracious and complicated movements of the hands take part in the conversation, efficiently completing what words are expressing'). Such an aggressive stance can be seen in one of de Funes's most common poses, standing rigid with hands jammed hard on his hips. His performance of ordinary tasks, from moving pieces of furniture to dancing, is suffused with repressed violence. His performance is also particularly mobile, almost puppet-like: windmilling arms, brandished fists and hands striking the air or another character, jabbing, two fingers pointing threateningly at his own eyes, striking his chest, hitting and kicking objects, slamming on hard surfaces. The films give him jobs which require him to make such movements: the gendarme is called upon to hail, whistle and gesture at people. In La Grande vadrouille, he is an orchestra conductor, gesturing wildly. One of his 1970 films is called L'Homme-orchestre. His first appearance in Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob condenses these gestures of frustration in one of the most topical motifs of the time: the traffic jam. De Funes's comic essence is based on his exaggeration of 'French' gestures as well as on his ritual undermining: he always gets his comeuppance. More subtly, he adeptly alternates between a fluent, efficient use of his body (for instance, the dance in Le Corniaud) and the gestures of frustration. The frustration/aggression which characterizes his gestures finds an equivalent in his use of language. His voice ranges widely, imitating other characters or animals, taking on accents, singing, whistling or mumbling, alternating with a fluent upper-middle-class accent. According to Calbris (1990, p. 94), many aggressive gestures are transferred expressions of sexual aggression. In this light, de Funes's

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'sexlessness' can be seen as a highly kinetic performance of frustration, and as part of his appeal. Like many male comics — the Italian Toto, and in France Fernandel and de Funes's co-star Bourvil — he provided a cathartic function in his portrayal of negative, dysfunctional masculinity. Bourvil took on this role through his figure of the Village idiot', a simpleton who appealed to a newly displaced audience in the age of the rural exodus. De Funes's malfunctioning male heroes connected with another aspect of the new France, that of its put-upon, conservative, urban lower middle classes, typically shopkeepers and artisans, descendants of the 1950s Poujadist movement.11

A hero of the France profoncfe As well as being middle-class and middle-aged, de Funes's characters always appear in a liminal position in the social hierarchy. His gendarme status encapsulates this: neither the underdog nor the boss. When he is a company executive or gangster, or both (as in Le Corniaud), there is a higher authority he must defer to as well as subalterns he can boss around. His films cast him endlessly asserting, negotiating and inverting hierarchies. He is sycophantic and self-abasing to Gerber in the Gendarme series (but usually gets his way). He is self-important and brutal towards his men (but usually ineffectual). In La Grands vadrouille, he is sadistic towards Bourvil, yet dependent on him. Le Gendarme se marie plays explicitly on this duality: having obtained promotion in a competition which Gerber also entered, he asserts his new status by being at his most offensive to his former boss. When the promotion is revealed to be a mistake after only one day, he in turn is humiliated by Gerber. De Funes's audience fully expected this dual pleasure, savouring both his ritual humiliations and his triumphs. These came about because of his ability to get out of scrapes through 'sysieme U — which means cheating your way out of a problem, bending the rules with gusto and wit, a habit deeply ingrained in French popular culture. De Funes, indeed, was characterized as 'the triumph of systeme D' (Chevalier and Billard, 1968). After Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez, de Funes was able to pick and choose his projects, directors and co-actors. He went on working with those who had served him well: Jean Girault and Gerard Oury, in

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particular. He was well aware of this when he said: 'My lucky break was never to meet a great director, a Rene Clair or a Rene Clement ... I only made films with commercial directors so I had to get on with it' (in Loubier, 1991, p. 129). But it was de Funes's representation of Frenchness which was (is) the problem. He did not correspond to the acceptable comic model of Jacques Tati, and he contravened, for foreigners, the mythical image of the French as intellectual, elegant and/or sexy (just as Norman Wisdom presents a less-flattering image of the British). While he was 'not French enough' for outsiders, he was 'too French' for the French. He presented an unglamorous, mediocre petit-bourgeois image of the France profonde ('grass-roots France'). As Sylvie Lindeperg argued in the context of war comedies (referring here to La Grande vadrouille), 'the comedies of the sixties insisted upon the true mediocrity of their characters who, against their will and purely through chance, find themselves forced to fight the occupying forces', thereby reinforcing the myth of universal heroism (Lindeperg, 1996, p. 7). But de Funes, in incarnating a vicious version of these 'mediocre' comedy heroes, thereby also put his finger on the concerns of France. His films multiply signs of Frenchness. The tricolore flaps in brilliant colours against the Saint-Tropez blue sky; Cruchot comes out of a baker's shop with beret and baguette. In Le Gendarme a New York, the squad cook entrecote in their hotel bedroom and defeat better-looking Italians and Americans. But they also botch safety exercises on the ship, lose at table football and bowling, can't operate technology and mess up a television show. As in La Belle Americaine, a comedy about an American car in which de Funes plays a small part, Le Gendarme a New York plays with anxieties about national identity and modernity. In turn dominant and defeated, mincing and deprecating, de Funes enabled his audience to laugh at their own shortcomings and to contemplate contemporary changes in a kind of history from below. True, the films are consensual (what mainstream comedy is not?) but de Funes has a grating, aggressive and mean streak. From within the harmless environment of the family comedy, he presented an inverted mirror to contemporary ideals of masculinity, whether the glamorous macho ideals of Belmondo and Delon or the narcissistically tormented heroes of auteur cinema. De Funes made people laugh, but his latent rage and discontent, which clearly found a huge echo in his audience, had a more menacing tone. De Funes's comedy was not so 'nice' after all.

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Biofilmography Born Louis de Funes de Galarza, Courbevoie, 31 July 1914. Married Germaine Carroyer (1936; divorced 1942),12 Jeanne Barthelemy de Maupassant (1943, with whom two sons: Patrick, born 1944, and Olivier, born 1950). Died 27 January 1983. Main acting awards

Victoire du Cinema Francais, 1965 Prix Georges-Courteline du Cinema, 1967 Nominated for an Academy Award Oscar in 1972 Honorary Cesar in 1980 (presented by Jerry Lewis) Films as actor

1945 1946

La Tentation de Barbizon (Jean Stelli) Six heures a perdre (Jean Levitte) Dernier refuge (Marc Maurette) Antoine et Antoinette (Jacques Becker)

1947 Croisiere pour I'inconnu (Pierre Montazel)

Du Guesdin (Bernard de Latour and Pierre Billon) Rendez-vous avec la chance (Emile Edwin Reinert) Je n'aime que toi (Pierre Montazel) Mission a longer (Andre Hunebelle) Vient de paraitre (Jacques Houssin) Au revoir Monsieur Crock (Pierre Billon) Ademai au poteau frontiere (Paul Colline) Millionnaire d'un jour (Andre Hunebelle) Pas de week-end pour noire amour (Pierre Montazel) Un certain monsieur (Yves Ciampi) 1950 Le Roi du bla-bla-bla (Maurice Labro) L'Amant de paille (Gilles Grangier) La Rue sans loi (Marcel Gibaud) La Rose rouge (Marcello Pagliero) Folie douce (Jean-Paul Paulin) Bibi Fricotin (Marcel Blistene)

1949

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Knock (Guy Lefranc) La Passante (Henri Calef)

1951

. . . sans laisser d'adresse (Jean-Paul Le Chanois) La Vie est un jeu (Raymond Leboursier) Boniface somnambule/The Sleepwalker (Maurice Labro) Le Voyage en Amerique (Henri Lavorel) Pas de vacances pour Monsieur le Maire (Maurice Labro) Ma femme est formidable (Andre Hunebelle) Us etaient cinq (Jack Pinoteau) La Poison (Sacha Guitry) Monsieur Leguignon, lampiste (Maurice Labro) Le Dindon (Claude Barma) Agence matrimoniale (Jean-Paul Le Chanois) Boite a vendre [short] (Claude Lalande)

1952

1953

Champions juniors [short] (Jean Blondy) Les Joueurs [short] (Claude Barma) Un amour de parapluie [short] (Jean Laviron) Les Sept peches capitaux/Seven Deadly Sins (Jean Dreville, France/ Italy) Les Dents longues (Daniel Gelin) La P... respectueuse (Charles Brabant and Marcello Pagliero) L'Amour nest pas un peche (Claude Cariven) Monsieur Taxi (Andre Hunebelle) Je I'ai ete trois fois (Sacha Guitry) Moineaux de Paris (Maurice Cloche) La fugue de Monsieur Perle (Roger Richebe) Legere et court vetue (Jean Laviron) Elle et moi (Guy Lefranc) Au diable la vertu (Jean Laviron) La Vie d'un honnete homme (Sacha Guitry) Le Huitieme art et la maniere (Maurice Regamey) Innocents in Paris (Gordon Parry, UK) Dortoir des grandest Girls' Dormitory (Henri Decoin) Man frangin du Senegal (Guy Lacourt) Capitaine Pantoufle (Guy Lefranc) Le Chevalier de la nuit (Robert Darene) Mam'zelle Nitouche (Yves Allegret)

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1954

1955

1956

1957


Tourments (Jacques Daniel-Norman) Le Secret d'Helene Marimon (Henri Calef) Faites-moi confiance (Gilles Grangier) Les Compagnes de la nuit (Ralph Habib) Les Corsaires du Bois de Boulogne (Norbert Carbonnaux) Les Hommes ne pensent qua ga (Yves Robert) Le Rire (Maurice Regamey) L'Etmnge desir de Monsieur Bard/The Strange Desire of Monsieur Bard (Geza Radvanyi) Le Ble en herbe/Ripening Seed (Claude Autant-Lara) Les Impures (Pierre Chevalier) Huis clos (Jacqueline Audry) Les Pepees font la loi (Raoul Andre) Les Intrigantes/The Plotters (Henri Decoin) Napoleon (Sacha Guitry) Poisson d'avril (Gilles Grangier) La Reine Margot/A Woman of Evil (Jean Dreville, France/Italy) Scenes de menage (Andre Berthomieu) Le Mouton a cinq pattes/The Sheep Has Five Legs (Henri Verneuil) Ah! Les Belles bacchantes! [Femmes de Paris] (Jean Loubignac) Escalier de service (Carlo Rim) Papa, maman, la bonne et moi/Papa, Mama, the Maid and I (JeanPaul Le Chanois) Frou-Frou (Augusto Genina, France/Italy) I 'Impossible Monsieur Pipelet (Andre Hunebelle) La Bande a papa (Guy Lefranc) Les Hussards (Alex Joffe) Papa, maman, ma femme et moi (Jean-Paul Le Chanois) Si Paris nous etait conte (Sacha Guitry) Bonjour, sourire [Sourire aux levres] (Claude Sautet) Bebes a gogo (Paul Mesnier) La Loi des rues/The Law of the Streets (Ralph Habib) La Traversee de Paris/Four Bags Full (Claude Autant-Lara, France/ Italy) Courte-tete/Short Head (Norbert Carbonnaux) Comme un cheveu sur la soupe/A Hair in the Soup (Maurice Regamey)

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Ni vu ni connu [L'Affaire Blaireau] (Yves Robert) Taxi, roulotte et corrida/Taxi (Andre Hunebelle) La Vie a deux/Life Together (Clement Duhour) 1959 Mon pote le gitan (Francois Gir) 1960 Certains I'aiment froide [Pour un milliard} (Jean Bastia) Le Capitaine Fracasse (Pierre-Gaspard Huit) 1961 La Belle Americaine/What a Chassis (Robert Dhery) Candide ou I'optimisme au XXe siecle/Candide (Norbert Carbonnaux) 1962 Le Crime ne paie pas/Crime Does Not Pay (Gerard Oury, France/ Italy) Le Diable et les dix commandements/The Devil and the Ten Commandments (Julien Duvivier, France/Italy) Le Gentleman d'Epsom [Les Grands Seigneurs} (Gilles Grangier, France/Italy) 1963 Les Veinards (Philippe de Broca) Carambolages (Marcel Bluwal) Faites sauter la banque (Jean Girault) Pouic-pouic (Jean Girault) 1964 Des pissenlits par la racine/Have Another Bier (Georges Lautner, France/Italy) Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez (Jean Girault, France/Italy) Une souris chez les hommes (Jacques Poitrenaud) Fantomas (Andre Hunebelle, France/Italy) 1965 Le Corniaud/The Sucker (Gerard Oury, France/Italy) Fantomas se dechaine (Andre Hunebelle, France/Italy) Le Gendarme a New York (Jean Girault, France/Italy) 1966 Les Bans vivants/How to Keep the Red Lamp Burning (Gilles Grangier and Georges Lautner) La Grande vadrouille/Don't Look Now ... We're Being Shot At (Gerard Oury, France/UK) Fantomas contre Scotland Yard (Andre Hunebelle, France/Italy) Le Grand restaurant (Jacques Besnard) 1967 Le Petit baigneur/'Bouncing Beaut]/ (Robert Dhery, France/Italy) Les Grandes vacances (Jean Girault, France/Italy) Oscar (Edouard Molinaro) 1968 Le Tatoue (Denys de la Patelliere, France/Italy) Le Gendarme se marie/How to Get Married (Jean Girault)

1958

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1969 Hibernatus (Edouard Molinaro, France/Italy) 1970 L'Homme-orchestre (Serge Korber) Le Gendarme en balade/How to Be an Honest Cop (Jean Girault, France/Italy) 1971 Sur un arbre per chef Up a Tree (Serge Korber, France/Italy) Jo/Joe — The Busy Body (Jean Girault) La Folie des grandeurs [Delirios de grandeza] (Gerard Oury, France/ Spain/Germany/Italy) 1973 Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob/The Adventures of Rabbi Jacob (Gerard Oury, France/Italy) 1976 L'Aile ou la cuisse/The Wing or the Thigh (Claude Zidi) 1978 La Zizanie/The Spat (Claude Zidi) 1979 Le Gendarme et les extra-terrestres/The Gendarme and the Creatures from Outer Space (Jean Girault) L'Avare/The Miser (Louis de Funes and Jean Girault) 1981 La Soupe aux choux (Jean Girault) 1982 Le Gendarme et les gendarmettes (Jean Girault and Tony Aboyantz) Notes 1. Le Film franpais No. 1060, 25 September 1964, review of Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez. 2. Fernandel made Angele in 1934, and Bourvil shot Le Cercle rouge in 1970. De Funes's only claim to seriousness was his starring in an adaptation of Moliere's L'Avare in 1978 and his sound recording of parts of the same play as well as some of La Fontaine's fables. 3. Pierre Notte, 'Le public riait, les intellos grimacaient', L'Evenement du jeudi, 4-10 March 1999, pp. 61-2. 4. For a good discussion of the 'comedian comedy', see Seidman (1981) and Jenkins (1992), pp. 221-3. 5. Variety, 21 December 1966. 6. Studio Magazine, November 1992, p. 96. 7. Le Film franpais, No. 1173, 16 December 1966. 8. Jean-Louis Comolli, Cahiers du cinema, May/June 1965. 9. Whose owner appears in the film, in the scene when Nicole goes shopping with her father. 10. Le Film franpais No. 1060, review of Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez. 11. Followers of Pierre Poujade, leader of a shopkeepers' union in the 1950s,

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who backed up (and encouraged the resentment of) those left behind by the economic boom. Poujadism is a byword for populist conservatism with a small 'c'. 12. Some sources indicate one child from this first marriage.

CHAPTER

7

Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon One smiles, the other doesn't

In Marc Allegret's comic thriller, Sois belle et tais-toi (1958), starring Mylene Demongeot and Henri Vidal, two young men appear near the beginning of the film. Their modernity is signalled by their placement near a pin-ball machine in a cafe with neon lights and jazz music. They wear blouson jackets and sweaters, and speak slang. They are graceful and exuberant. We recognize the young Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo. Though not exactly their first film (it was Delon's second and Belmondo's third), Sois belle et tais-toi marked a symbolic joint debut for these actors, who became two of the biggest French stars of the postwar period. From the early 1960s to the mid-1980s, Delon and Belmondo redefined French stardom and offered parallel yet divergent visions of French masculinity. Two years after Sois belle et tais-toi, both actors would become world famous: Belmondo through Jean-Luc Godard's A bout de souffle and Delon in Rene Clement's Plein soleil and Luchino Visconti's Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and His Brothers. As screen icons in the early 1960s, Delon and Belmondo inhabited the world of the cosmopolitan playboy, whose favourite playgrounds were Paris and Rome, trading on the display of their youthful muscles and fashionable Italian clothes (Chenoune, 1993, 158

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p. 241). They appeared in swashbucklers, notably Cartouche (1962) in the case of Belmondo and La Tulipe noire (1964) for Delon. More lastingly, they both evolved a tough guy image grounded in polider and adventure films. Delon and Belmondo became top French box-office draws in the 1960—4 period and remained in the top ten until the mid1980s, with an advantage to Belmondo, who was No. 1 from 1975 to 1984, while Delon's top score was No. 3, from 1965 to 1969.1 The pair's star vehicles were aesthetically and economically the antithesis of the New Wave-inspired auteur cinema which was the French critics' yardstick of quality. This is why they came to represent (along with Louis de Funes) a new, powerful and, for some critics, 'damaging' style of French film stardom. In the late 1980s and the 1990s Belmondo and Delon's mainstream film careers waned, a trend confirmed by the relative flop of Une chance sur deux (Patrice Leconte, 1998), in which they play the two 'fathers' of a young woman played by Vanessa Paradis. Both, however, had long since added other strings to their bows. At various times in their careers, they branched out into theatre and television, thus ensuring a constant presence in French media. Both of them also went into more or less risky business ventures (Belmondo in wine, Delon as a boxing manager and head of a cosmetics line); more successfully, both became film producers, producing some of their own films as well as others; Belmondo also built up a productive association with publicist and distributor Rene Chateau from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, which also contributed to his success.2 Une chance sur deux also shows the self-consciousness with which Delon and Belmondo have functioned as a pair since Sois belle et tais-toi, acting as mirrors to each other's careers and dropping references to their most famous on-screen partnership in Borsalino (1970), which Delon also produced. Certainly, critics have bracketed Delon and Belmondo together, especially for their work in thrillers (Guerif, 1981; Forbes, 1992; Maillot, 1996). Theirs is indeed an image based on criminality. In Chapter 3, I discuss how Jean Cabin's image was also marked by crime, and how the type of masculinity he embodies proved to be paradigmatic for subsequent French male stardom. Delon and Belmondo both claimed Cabin as a father figure, and they acted with him in parts which illustrate this legacy: Un singe en hiver (1962) for Belmondo, Melodie en sous-sol (1963), Le Clan des Siciliens (1969) and Deux hommes dans la ville (1973)

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for Delon. The young Cabin's criminal experience, however, was redemptive, making him the relay between fate and the pre-war community. The honest/criminal dichotomy which was the bedrock of his persona was reconciled in a fundamentally good and rooted character. Delon and Belmondo belong to a different era, and while the Gabin paradigm is crucial to an understanding of their representation of masculinity, they evolved as distinct figures of desire and identification, in tune with 1960s and 1970s social and cultural trends. As Pierre Maillot puts it, Delon and Belmondo were 'heroes of the trente glorieuses, of a France in the process of becoming wealthy' (Maillot, 1996, p. 174). Maillot's conceit is that French male stars are the 'fiances' of the French nation figured as female (the title of his book is Les Fiances de Marianne). For him, Delon and Belmondo represent a 'dissolution' of French national identity, as the heroes they embody lust after American goods in American-inspired thrillers. He wonders, in fact, whether they 'are still French' (ibid., 1996, p. 149). Yet, Delon and Belmondo, who in any case inhabited a wider range of genres than their pairing as thriller heroes would suggest, represent images of undeniably French masculinity. Furthermore, Maillot leaves performance and mise-en-scene largely aside, thus missing crucial aspects of both stars' performance of Frenchness. Delon and Belmondo interacted with international male icons such as Clint Eastwood, Sean Connery and Charles Bronson, but they must also be understood in relation to other French male stars of the period and French cultural trends. First of all, they formed a vivid contrast with Louis de Funes (examined in Chapter 6). To de Funes's comic image of irascible and blundering masculinity, Delon and Belmondo opposed a flattering ideal: cool, sexy, physically coordinated, in control. Their increasingly hard-edged virility also opposed the dandy-like minet of the affluent bourgeoisie, of whom we find a cinematic expression in the intellectual heroes of art cinema such as Jean-Pierre Leaud and Marcello Mastroianni, and the libertarian hippies of the post-1968 era. To pursue these themes further, I examine each star in turn before returning to a comparison between the two.


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Jean-Paul Belmondo: from Godard to Feydeau Jean-Paul Belmondo was born in 1933 into an artistic milieu, in a family of Italian origin (his father Paul Belmondo was a well-known sculptor). A sports enthusiast, Belmondo was barred from a professional career in boxing for health reasons. He opted for the theatre and was trained in the classical repertory at the Conservatoire d'Art Dramatique in Paris, from 1952 to 1956. An often-told anecdote about his graduation recounts that as he was awarded, against expectations, two humiliatingly minor prizes in comedy, his fellow students carried him triumphantly on stage while he gestured rudely to the jury. The anecdote's frequent reiteration is a typical retrospective construction of the star's image, since it happens to fit the 'future' Belmondo star persona: a talented, anti-authoritarian prankster. While he began to make headway in Parisian theatre, Belmondo appeared in small parts in mainstream films such as Sois belle et tais-toi and Marcel Game's highly successful portrait of late 1950s youth Les Tricheurs (1958). Godard cast him as the male lead in his short Charlotte et son Jules (1958) and then as small-time but charismatic hoodlum Michel Poiccard in A bout de souffle (1960). Emerging from behind a newspaper in the first shot, Belmondo, with his dangling cigarette and casually insolent delivery, was to symbolize 1960s cool ever since. Film history has recorded Belmondo's early career as steeped in auteur cinema: Godard's Unefemme est unefemme (1961) and Pierrot le fou (1965) as well as A bout de souffle, Peter Brook's Moderate Cantabile (1960) and Jean-Pierre Melville's Leon Morin, pretre (1961) and Le Doulos (1963). But almost immediately after A bout de souffle (1960), Belmondo began a career in mainstream films, ranging widely from the swashbuckler Cartouche to the comedy Un singe en hiver. He did many adventure comedies — among them L'Homme de Rio (1964), Les Tribulations d'un Chinois en Chine (1965), Cent milk dollars au soleil (1964) and Le Cerveau (1969), where his performance was distinguished by athletic stunts, most of which he carried out himself. Although Belmondo worked sporadically with auteurs such as Francois Truffaut (La Sirene du Mississipi [sic], 1969) and Alain Resnais (Stavisky, 1974), he became increasingly associated with mainstream cinema. From cool New Wave hero, his image evolved into that of a comic action man who was at once physically tough, gracious, sexy and humorous. This persona was close

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to the heroes of international action films such as James Bond and the television series Mission Impossible. But it also contained a comic-book dimension: revealingly, Philippe de Broca evoked Tintin as a source for L'Homme de Rio (Strazzulla and Leduc, 1996, p. 95). Concurrently, Belmondo's off-screen image both illustrated and validated his on-screen performances. His love of sports, as spectator, practitioner (boxing in the early days, daily workouts) and entrepreneur (he was co-founder of the Paris Saint-Germain football team) echoed the cinematic stunts. His penchant for fast driving, often referenced in the films, bordered on the reckless.3 A taste for outrageous practical jokes, usually while on foreign shoots (shifting hotel furniture, locking people up, nailing their shoes to doors or dropping baby alligators in baths), confirmed the jester persona. And several well-publicized relationships with young women bolstered his heterosexual image. They included actresses Ursula Andress (from 1965) and Laura Antonelli (from 1972). Belmondo also drops casual references to prostitutes in interviews.4 Finally, he showed a combative attitude to authority and the media. His career is rich in court cases against magazines that had published details of his private life and public disputes, including the Borsalino affair — Belmondo took Delon to court just before the release of the film in March 1970, because Delon's name appeared twice on the poster (as producer and star). By 1964, Belmondo's meteoric rise to stardom was such that a Parisian cinema showed a 'Belmondorama' festival. A year earlier, he had published a book of memoirs, Trente ans et vingt-cinq films ('thirty years old and twenty-five films') and the journal Cinema 63 published an article entitled 'Jean-Paul Belmondo and his myth'.5 The late 1960s signalled the beginning of the second, 'mature' phase of his career, built exclusively on mainstream cinema. Adventure thrillers were explicitly built around his persona, their titles drawing attention to his singularity: L'Heritier, Le Magnificjue, L'Alpagueur, L'Incorrigible, L'Animal, Le Guignolo, Le Professionnel, Le Marginal, Itineraire d'un enfant gate, Le Solitaire. In these films, his singularity and ubiquity are sometimes reinforced by his casting in double roles: for example, in Le Magnifique (dull writer/ glamorous spy) and L'Animal (gay man/macho womanizer); as the daily L'Aurore put it, 'Flic ou voyou, in any case it's Belmondo!' (quoted in Philippe, 1996, p. 36). Belmondo was harshly criticized by Rene Predal,


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among others, for 'making the same type of adventures, endlessly repeated, as if he was on a loop'.6 For his part, he increasingly reiterated a populist dislike of 'intellectual cinema'. When he became a producer, he also argued, like Delon, for a symbiosis between auteur and mainstream cinema: 'If I had not made films with Verneuil, Pierrot le fou would not have happened, and Stavisky or La Sirem du Mississipi would not exist.'7 In his 1970s and 1980s films, Belmondo plays individualistic heroes who perform heroic physical feats or impose their own justice against criminals or corrupt institutions. Martin O'Shaughnessy sees them as exemplifying a 'hypermasculinity' which is increasingly 'rigid and intolerant, especially as the values it incarnates are contested' (O'Shaughnessy, 1999, p. 375). Indeed, Belmondo's image on and off screen was certainly macho, and women in his films are marginalized and trivialized. In some cases, they suffer gross violence, as in the 'comic' rape fantasy of Le Magnifique. His masculine display is mostly for other males, with women acting as heterosexual tokens. However, I want to extend O'Shaughnessy's analysis. His view of the Belmondo image as a 'backlash' against feminism does not fully account for the star's specificity. First, because it would equally apply to Delon, Eastwood and others. As Yvonne Tasker argues of American screen muscle-men, a purely ideological analysis: often leads to a loss of specificity. We find an erasure of, on the one hand, the differences that exist between different stars and their films, and, on the other, the diversity of potential or actual readings available to audiences. (Tasker, 1993, p. 93)

Furthermore, many of Belmondo's features are genre rather than starbased. More importantly, a defining aspect of his star persona is left out of O'Shaughnessy's analysis, namely his humorous dimension: Belmondo constantly undermines or footnotes the activities of his characters with a range of comic devices: goofing, stunts, puns, gaffes and his trademark grin. After extraordinary success for over two decades, Belmondo's boxoffice magnetism finally waned in the mid-1980s, from roughly the time of Les Morfalous in 1984. That period corresponded to his move into the theatre, where he starred to high acclaim in popular plays such as Kean (1987) and Cyrano de Bergerac (1990). With the FF255m proceeds of the

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sale of his production company Cerito Films to Canal +, he acquired the Theatre des Varietes in Paris in 1991. Meanwhile, his films consistently generate high ratings on French television reruns. Belmondo's return to the theatre, and in particular to comedy, was undoubtedly a wise move. His triumphant version of Feydeau's La Puce a I'oreille (1996) is evidence of this. But, as I watched him in this production in October 1996, I was not the only person to applaud, via the accomplished stage actor, the aura of the film star. Below is an examination of key elements of that aura.

The face of the New Wave In 1998, two new French books on the New Wave both exhibited Belmondo's face on the cover. Antoine de Baecque's features him in A bout de souffle, while Jean Douchet's shows him in Pierrot le fou — confirming the cinephile status of both Belmondo as star and the New Wave as film movement. In a key scene in A bout de souffle, Belmondo stops in front of a cinema on the Champs-Elysees that is playing The Harder They Fall. We see a poster with the lower half of Humphrey Bogart's face, cigarette hanging from his lips. Belmondo looks at the poster, and reverentially says 'Bogie'; then Godard cuts twice between a close-up of Bogart's face from a still pinned up in a display cabinet, and a close-up of Belmondo, who is now taking his dark glasses off. Belmondo models his expression on Bogart's: slight frown, 'sad' eyes, introspective stance, a way of holding his cigarette and of rubbing his upper lip. In contrast with much of the film, which is characterized by movement and Martial Solal's jazz score, this moment is marked by immobility and silence. The end of this scene, with an iris-shot closing to black, reinforces the cinephilic force of the Bogart reference, but also the equation between Belmondo and Godard which had begun with Charlotte et son Jules, in which Belmondo's body is dubbed with Godard's voice. Both men in the early 1960s shared short dark hair, dark shades, a trim silhouette and fashionable single-breasted jackets and tapered trousers. This physical mirroring, evident in the scene where Godard in a cameo gives Poiccard/Belmondo away to the police, recurs at the beginning of Pierrot le fou, when Belmondo stands in


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Plate 17 A bout de souffle (Jean-Luc Godard, I960): Belmondo, the 'face of the New Wave'.

for Godard, asking Sam Fuller 'What is cinema?' This phenomenon is of course typical of auteur cinema, in which the male hero functions as an alter-ego of the director (think of Godard and Michel Piccoli in Le Mepris, Truffaut and Jean-Pierre Leaud in the Antoine Doinel films). But Belmondo in A bout de souffle is an archetypal New Wave hero in other ways too, which will condition his future star persona. As discussed in Chapter 5, the New Wave created a new stardom based, like the films, on the rhetoric of youth, authenticity and modernity, for which Belmondo turned out to be ideally suited. Belmondo's youthful performance is all infectious energy. Poiccard is a man on the move: the camera follows him from Marseilles to Paris, walking or running up and down the Champs-Elysees, cruising along the streets of Paris in an open-top car, roaming around bedrooms, offices and cafes. Authenticity was granted by his near-anonymity to the cinema audience of 1960, and by his performance style. Like Jeanne Moreau a few years earlier (see Chapter 5), Belmondo un-learnt his theatrical training and spoke his lines in a casual, naturalistic style. His delivery mixed Bardot-style insolence and the popular gouaille of Gabin, although here it is a sign of youthful Parisian-ness rather than

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working-class identity. But the sense of authenticity evoked by Belmondo's performance also had to do, importantly, with his face. Compared to Delon's exquisitely smooth features, Belmondo's face is what the French call a gueule (a word used for the face of an animal, a 'mug'). It is irregular, elongated, with thick lips and a nose flattened by boxing, and, from early on, expression lines. He was dubbed 'il brutto' (the ugly one) in Italy, and the director Rene Clair said, 'he is very good ... But he has such an ugly face!'8 The word gueule implies coarseness, but also, in a man, character and authenticity, precisely because it is not based on good looks. Belmondo's gueule suggests rugged virility, and here similarities with Bogart but also Gabin and Michel Simon come into view. Belmondo frequently performs cameo imitations of Michel Simon: for example, in Pierrot k fou and Itineraire d'un enfant gate. At the same time, the young Belmondo was undeniably sexy, featuring on the cover of Life magazine as 'The French Lover'. Russian novelist Andrei Makine gives a clue about this paradox by describing how the very coarseness of Belmondo's face constituted its appeal for a Russian audience: 'With his flattened nose, he looked like a lot of us ... a barbaric beauty pierced through the rough tortured features' (Makine, 1994, p. 128). Belmondo's sex appeal was also connected to his use of cigarettes. Stuck aggressively in his mouth, cigarettes forced him to purse his mouth in a masculine moue, and at the same time tilt his head back and squint slightly to avoid the smoke (see Plate 17), thus making him look down when he spoke, giving him an air of superior indifference (Calbris, 1990, p. 201). In A bout de souffle, Poiccard is egocentric and cynical, embodying the new positive value of cool, which his facial gestures expressed to perfection, in line with the modernity of the film. Parallel to New Wave cinema there emerged a new generation eager for the goods of modernity and in particular the trilogy of money, cars and sex (Orr, 1993; Ross, 1995). A bout de souffle put Belmondo's looks and gestures to the service of this ethos: he became Godard's alter-ego as well as the New Man of the New Wave. Five years later, in Pierrot k fou, Belmondo's Pierrot/Ferdinand is again embroiled in a plot combining cars, money and women. Like Jean Seberg's Patricia in A bout de souffle, the female lead in Pierrot k fou, Anna Karina's Marianne, is audibly not French. As a result, Belmondo's Frenchness comes into relief: much is made of Patricia not understanding Michel's expressions, and Marianne


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is ignorant of the cultural references thrown at her by Pierrot, be they Elie Faure's art criticism, the writings of Louis-Ferdinand Celine or the film Pepe le Moko. But by the time of Pierrot le fou, Belmondo had also acquired another French cinematic identity. He had left the rarefied realm of the New Wave to join mainstream cinema, in films which made a different use of his face: the moue around a cool cigarette became a broad grin around a huge cigar, the rare smile a flash of white teeth against bronzed skin. Above all, French popular cinema exploited to the full his highly kinetic performance.

The body of popular cinema Belmondo's performance throughout his career is characterized by an energetic display of his body across the frame. This phenomenon begins with A bout de souffle, where his muscular torso is on display as object of desire in the long hotel bedroom scene. By the time he made Pierrot le fou, Belmondo had acquired a new outdoor look, similar to that of the young Delon. The Cote d'Azur settings serve to exhibit his tall, slim and toned body in the outfit of the new holiday-maker: light suits and slipon shoes, jeans and clinging white T-shirts, the classic sexy male outfit of the post-war period (Bruzzi, 1997, pp. 80-2), showing off muscles and tan. Belmondo's physical allure thus connoted the modern Frenchman, now going on holidays in fashionable seaside towns and the successful Club Mediterranee, created in 1950. In Cent mille dollars au soleil, his jeans and Lacoste shirt mark him as modern by comparison to the older actors (Lino Ventura, Bernard Blier), who wear ordinary trousers and shirts. Later on in the 1970s and 1981s, his clothes evolve towards a rugged look such as black leather blousons or suede aviators' jackets, still contrasting with the suits and uniforms of other men. Throughout his career, Belmondo's films, both thrillers and comedies, include moments designed to show off his physique, such as getting out of bed in boxer shorts. By the time of the parodic L'As des as (1981), an entire comic scene features him running a race (in the 1936 Berlin Olympics!) and appearing in a hotel lobby in white boxer shorts. But Belmondo's body really came into its own through movement, in

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the new genre of adventure comedies. French cinema in the 1960s followed the international trend towards wide-screen cinematography and colour, producing spectacular adventure movies shot in exotic (and touristic) locations (the first James Bond film, Dr No, was made in 1962). Belmondo's energy, which had complemented the modernity of Godard's mise-en-scene, made him perfect for the new adventure movies, which demanded stars who could move and fill the newly wide screen. The paradigmatic L'Homme de Rio is based on the double spectacle of such locations and of Belmondo's kinetic performance. As the film progresses from a short prologue in Paris to stunning views of Rio de Janeiro, the Amazon forest and modernist Brasilia, Belmondo moves from banal stunts (a motorbike chase, tricking his way on board an aeroplane without a ticket) to increasingly spectacular ones: leaping from vertigo-inducing scaffolding, dangling from a parachute over an alligator-infested river. Stunts became key to Belmondo's star identity in two ways. First, they provided the spectacular moments which structured the films' narratives and were anticipated by the audience. John Caughie has characterized the Bond films as series of moments, which are remembered as such, rather than as part of narratives (Caughie, 1996, p. 31). The same is true of Belmondo's films, which became defined by the stunts. The stunts are ingenious and varied, from traditional chases to confronting a lion 'with bare hands' or crossing the Atlantic solo, and there is also a lot of running, leaping and getting into fights. But whatever the form, the point is the movement, the exertion, the spectacle but also the work involved in it. Second, Belmondo's stunts, however unbelievable, increased his authenticity, as he notoriously performed many of them himself.9 Here was a star who worked hard for his spectators and took risks for them. Thus, while the stunts were the most criticized aspect of his performance by cinephile critics, they constituted his way of interpellating his popular audience directly. Belmondo's stunts in his 1960s and early 1970s films were both daring and graceful, almost balletic. As he aged and progressed through his career, they became more routine, stiffer and more mechanized, involving machine-guns and cars: for instance, in Borsalino, Peur sur la ville, Le Professionnel and Le Solitaire. But one dimension remained. The Belmondo hero seemingly could extricate himself from any situation

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with a dazzling smile and a joke. His heroes came straight out of comic books and fairy tales. In the post-New Wave 1960s, when the art/popular cinema divide was at its sharpest, Belmondo's shift to the popular meant a move to comedy. He became affectionately known as 'Bebel' and his characters began to smile a lot. Already the typically 'tragic' endings of New Wave films (Sellier, 1997) were undermined by his nonchalance: 'C'est vraiment degueulasse' ('it's really disgusting'), he says as he dies at the end of A bout de souffle; 'Apres tout j'suis idiot' ('after all I'm stupid') at the end of Pierrot le fou, whereupon he tries unsuccessfully to stop the fuse which detonates the dynamite with which he is blowing himself up. While this irony is Godard's, Belmondo's performance advertises the fact that nothing is to be taken seriously. On the other hand, in the Melville films Leon Morin, pretre, Le Doulos and L'Ame des Ferchaux (1963), the fit between star and character is less good, especially in the first, where he plays a Catholic priest (although his performance as an actor is excellent). After 1963 Belmondo took the comic route and by the time of Le Samourai' (1967), Delon had replaced him at the centre of Melville's austere universe. Belmondo first appears in L'Homme de Rio as a soldier, a stock character from French military farce. Later, he makes a second entrance into the fiction proper by bouncing into a room and saying 'Coucou!' Itineraire d'un enfant gate, Lelouch's fictionalized commentary on his career and star persona, insists on his affinity with clowns. If L'Homme de Rio evokes the Bond films with its exotic beaches and international spy ring, the comparison stops there. Unlike Bond, the Belmondo hero's success is not due to technology and superior prowess, but to a combination of muscle and 'systeme D'.w His characters are naive and are thrown into adventures they do not understand, solving them with comic cunning (fighting dangerous gangsters with a shovel) and the ability to run faster. His energy, the externalizing of his emotions through his body and his perennial good luck all add up to the sense of a fairy tale or, in a modern context, of a comic-book hero. Like Tintin and other comic-book characters (who enjoyed renewed popularity in the 1960s and 1970s), the Belmondo hero traverses great distances - Paris to Rio, Africa to Paris, America to the Far East - and experiences fantastic happenings and abrupt changes of milieu. He

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exudes confidence and invulnerability, and defuses situations with a joke (Bond displays humour too, but in addition to, not instead of, intelligence and technological superiority; Le Magnifique, an overt parody of Bond, resorts to farce and shows the distance between the two). Even in supposedly tense thrillers, he grins as he threatens gangsters with a gun, or blows smoke into their faces. In Le Professionnel he plays a member of the French secret service who has been betrayed by his superiors while on a mission in Africa and who comes back to Paris seeking revenge. The credits display a grim Belmondo in toughguy pose with a gun, yet as the story unfolds, the thriller action pieces all end on a comic note, such as his propelling a policeman into a huge dish of couscous, joking 'couscous poulet' (poulet is slang for cop). I have already mentioned how Belmondo's early moue develops into a broad grin around a huge cigar — more phallic and more grotesque. Various comic techniques, such as letting his jaw drop and staring with glazed eyes, smoking his large cigar in all circumstances, even when shaving, emphasize his big mouth and thick lips in the 'low' comic tradition defined by Bakhtin (1968). Belmondo's comic hero also bonded him to a populist national identity. He was the familiar hero who took his audience by the hand, as it were, to exotic locations: see him, for instance, cycling in torn trousers through the sensational decor of Brasilia in L'Homme de Rio, dwarfed yet undefeated, and similarly in the Sahara of Cent milk dollars au soleil and the African jungle of Itineraire d'un enfant gate, and so on. In its populism, his star persona was undoubtedly conformist. His antiauthoritarian, anti-bureaucracy stance affirmed a caricaturally 'FrancoFrench' macho individualism, in the late Gabin mould. In Itineraire d'un enfant gate, Lelouch matches Belmondo's story with Jacques Brel's song 'Une ile', showing the wider resonance of this figure in post-war French culture (Brel's song, like most of his oeuvre, celebrates the anticonformist male's rejection of 'bourgeois values' but is blind to its own sexist bias). Two factors nonetheless contradict this macho supremacist image. First, several of his 1970s and 1980s films insist on the asocial, out-of-step nature of his heroes, sometimes killing or marginalizing him at the end (Le Solitaire, Le Professionnel, Itineraire d'un enfant gate), similar in this to the heroes of Miami Vice or Sylvester Stallone in Rambo, as discussed by Yvonne Tasker (1993, p. 113). Second, and

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more important, while the adventure comedies and thrillers enable Belmondo to externalize and test aspects of his masculinity (physical strength, bravery, dominance), his humour undercuts them, showing his performance of masculinity as 'just' a performance. Against the background of the cerebral New Wave cinema of the 1960s and of the naturalistic and politically explicit cinema of the 1970s, Belmondo's films provided entertainment that was modern (in location and the portrayal of new social types) and yet old-fashioned in their comic-bookstyle depiction of masculine values. Belmondo, like de Funes, reached a family audience while also addressing a male audience in sexual terms (unlike de Funes). Describing the reception of Le Magnifique and other Belmondo films of the 1970s in Siberia, Makine ascribes the star's success to his fairy-tale ubiquity: He came, multiple like some Hindu divinity in its infinite manifestations. Now driving a huge white car into the sea, now thrashing in a swimming pool under the lascivious gaze of bathing beauties. He knocked his opponents out in a thousand ways, wrestled in the traps they laid for him, saved his companions, (Makine, 1994, p. 107)

Alain Delon: f'homme fatal Unlike Belmondo, who came from an artistic background and studied stage acting, Delon's origins were modest and he had had no training as an actor. He volunteered to fight in Indochina at the age of seventeen and was in the army for four years. On his return in Paris, he did odd jobs. His devastating good looks ensured that he was immediately noticed. After a few small parts in comedies such as Sois belle et tais-toi, he quickly became a star. In particular, Christine (1958) and Faibles femmes (1959) brought him to national fame, along with his liaison with co-star Romy Schneider: they became known as 'Europe's little fiances' in a symbolically charged Franco-German pairing (Haymann, 1998, p. 43). International exposure came in 1960 with Plein soldi and Rocco e i suoi fratelli. Delon's encounter with Visconti also led to a brief career on stage in Paris. Through the early 1960s, Delon moved between France and Italy, where he starred in Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Edisse/The Eclipse (1962) and Visconti's sumptuous ll gattopardo/The Leopard (1963). These

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prestigious auteur films produced the accolade of a retrospective at the Cinematheque Francaise as early as March 1964. Meanwhile, Delon was also developing a tough guy image, like Belmondo, grounded in gangster films, but without the comic dimension. The second, more popular image had its genesis in traditional policiers such as Melodie en sous-sol (1963), in which Delon starred with Gabin, and continued with, among others, Le Clan des Sidliens (1969) and Borsalino (with Belmondo). Delon's cool gangster image made him a hugely popular star at the French box-office and a cult figure in Asian countries such as Japan and China, where he is considered an ideal of Western male beauty, while his body type and colouring are relatively close to the men of these countries. With the Melville trilogy of Le Samourai' (1967), Le Cercle rouge (1970) and Un flic (1972), Delon's image took on a more introspective, deeply enigmatic and melancholy cast. In his box-office heyday until the mid-1980s, Delon concentrated on mainstream policiers, whose titles reveal his identification with the cop (flic) figure: apart from Un flic: flic story (1975), Pour la peau d'un flic (1981), Parole de flic (1985), Ne reveillez pas un flic qui dort (1988). These films were the object of the same critical disapproval as those of Belmondo and were seen as a regression after the glory of his earlier career. Delon's flic and gangster personas also provoked a different kind of media speculation when he was embroiled in the Markovic affair, a criminal, political and sexual scandal which rocked late-1960s France. Delon later continued to appear in less commercially successful auteur films, such as Joseph Losey's Mr Klein, Bertrand Blier's Notre histoire and Godard's Nouvelle vague, some of which he produced. Indeed, like Belmondo he justified his dual-track career by saying, 'If I made "shootem up" films, it was precisely to produce Le Professeur or Mr Klein.'11 He had been a producer since the 1960s, when he founded his company Delbeau, which subsequently became Adel Productions, and he also produced popular films, such as Borsalino. But Delon's continued support for auteur cinema, and especially his casting by Godard in Nouvelle vague, worked as a passport to renewed artistic respectability. The late 1990s accordingly saw a renewed interest in him on the part of the French critical establishment. In April 1996, the Cinematheque Francaise mounted a major tribute, accompanied by a book (Cinematheque


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Francaise, 1996), while Cahiers du cinema ran an extended interview. It is not, however, only Delon's auteur cinema career which provoked this critical interest. It is also his projection of a wounded, melancholy masculinity, the antithesis of Belmondo's grinning heroes: for instance, Jean-Francois Rauger talks of Delon's 'morbid attraction'.12 Delon's trajectory nevertheless shows many parallels with Belmondo's. His box-office pull declined at the same time, around the mid-1980s. He also spread his activities beyond film acting and producing, directing some of his films in the 1980s (see filmography). He became involved in television, as presenter and supporter of classic films on the fifth channel, and as the star and producer of the high-budget, though unsuccessful, television mini-series Cinema (1988). In 1998 he returned to the stage in Paris, in a successful production of Variations enigmatiques (by Eric Emmanuel Schmitt) at the Theatre de Paris. These activities partly offset the box-office and critical failure of films like Le Retour de Casanova (1992), Le Jour et la nuit (1997, directed by philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy) and Une chance sur deux (1998). Still, like Belmondo, Delon's activities in the 1990s, however successful in themselves, were predicated on his younger star persona, kept alive by television reruns and boxed sets of his classic films on video. It is to this earlier stardom that I now turn.

Cruel beauty As Pat Kirkham and Janet Thumim put it, The combination of good looks and being tall is repeatedly shown to have played an important part in representations of acceptable or preferred masculinities. ... Attractiveness suggests the potential for counter attraction and, therefore for romance or sex' (Kirkham and Thumim, 1995, p. 23). From the beginning, Delon's stunning looks, his classically beautiful face and tall, slim yet muscular body were the defining aspect of his star persona. Cinemonde, among others, praised him as 'the new Don Juan discovered in France'13 and compared him to James Dean. Yet, as many of the adjectives used to describe him — 'devilish beauty', 'androgynous beauty', 'ambivalent beauty' — betray, this was a star who was in fact 'too beautiful'. Delon's beauty and objectification by the camera bring to

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the fore the issue of accommodating an eroticized male figure in the context of mainstream cinema, traditionally seen as a 'problem'. In his examination of masculinity on screen, Steve Neale has argued that Delon in Le Samourai illustrates how the male object of desire is 'disqualified' within the 'normal' economy of the look. Scenes of action involving male heroes are 'the repression of any explicit avowal of eroticism in the act of looking at the male' (Neale, 1983, p. 12). Although much of Neale's argument is compelling, Delon's star persona before and after Le Samourai, as we will see, very successfully accommodated explicit erotic display. In his assessment of Delon, Joel Magny quickly dismisses the star's function as object of the gaze 'on the cover of magazines for groupies and sentimental girls' (Cinematheque Francaise, 1996, p. 20), whereas it is plain that Delon owed his stardom in large part to that image. The early Delon films are structured around the narcissistic display of his face and body. As Donald Lyons says of Plein soleil, 'the film just swoons into the star's chilly beauty'.14 Throughout the 1960s, this display is channelled through two modes. On the one hand is the upbeat register of the early comedies such as So/5 belle el tais-toi and costume adventures like La Tulipe noire and Zorro. These show Delon as an energetic youth in pursuit of women and a good time. In La Tulipe noire, a Dumas adaptation, Delon plays twin brothers Julien and Guillaume, one of whom is the 'black tulip', a self-appointed agent of justice at the time of the French Revolution. One brother wears a powdered wig and the satin costumes of the aristocracy, the other a black mask, tight black trousers and an open white shirt. In both cases, the clothes reveal smooth and bronzed skin, while Delon's kinetic performance puts the accent on action. Elements of comedy (like Belmondo's Cartouche and many French costume films of the period, La Tulipe noire is very tonguein-cheek) and swashbuckling scenes distract the spectator from a purely contemplative look at the male star. On the other hand are films which simply narrativize Delon's beauty. In the two Visconti films, Rocco e i suoi fratelli and // gattopardo, Delon is pure object of desire, for men and women alike. The camera sculpts his face with lighting and camera angles in the black-and-white Rocco. One of the last shots of the film is emblematic: Rocco's younger brother caresses Delon's face on a poster for the boxing match he has just won.15


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A typical Delon pose, echoed in many other films and in stills, is of his face bent down but looking up, three-quarters to the camera, bringing out both cheek-bones and pale blue eyes. Delon is often shot in profile, his short straight nose and a lock of dark hair falling over his forehead defining a boyish identity. Delon notes that his hairstyle was widely imitated in Japan, as part of his cult following: 'I am a sort of masculine ideal, that is why I have seen Japanese men dressed like me, with hair like mine' (indeed Melville said that he thought of Delon when writing Le Samourai, because he found 'there was something Japanese about him').16 In // gattopardo, colour and costume add to his visual splendour, and fetishize him at least as much as the female lead played by Claudia Cardinale — there are indeed few more ravishing screen couples. The dialogue reinforces his desirability, as the Prince (Burt Lancaster) keeps pointing it out. In some films, Delon's characters border on the gigolo: Faibles femmes, Plein soleil, Les Felins (1964), La Piscine (1969). In all of them, women's desire for him is expressed through point-of-view shots. Intense use is made of frames within frames and reflections in mirrors to enshrine his face and body in repeated mise-en-abymes. The selfconsciousness and narcissism inherent in Delon are mocked by Brigitte Bardot, who claims in her autobiography that in their episodes together in Les Amours celebres (1961) and Histoires extmordinaires (1968), 'Alain never looked at me during love scenes, instead he looked at the spotlight behind me intended to bring out his blue eyes' (Bardot, 1996, p. 297). Petty rivalry among stars or a sign that such visual treatment of a man is troublesome? In any case, the popular success of Delon's early films shows that this erotic male display was widely pleasurable and acceptable to a mainstream audience. One indirect reason for this is historical, since the young Delon's face and body are strongly linked to the glamorous new world of 1960s consumerism. His characters desire commodities (money, cars, parties, women), while he himself metonymically signifies them. While this is also true of Belmondo, Delon's case is more akin to Bardot, because of his more blatant visual and narrative objectification - literally in the recurrent gigolo theme. His first appearance in Les Felins is in an opentop sports car with two women: one of them asks, 'Do you love me?', to which he replies, 'I love your car.' This brief exchange announces the main narrative, in which Delon is both the object of desire of two rich

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American women (Lola Albright and Jane Fonda) and desiring their wealth. Significantly, several of Delon's key 1960s films - Pkin soleil, Les Felins, Melodie en sous-sol, La Piscine - are set on the Mediterranean coast, giving him the opportunity to show himself off in glamorous surroundings. The opening of La Piscine is a long tracking shot of Delon in a swimsuit, lying by the side of the pool, hedonistically pouring a drink into his mouth. At the beginning of Melodie en sous-sol, the older Gabin returns home after five years in jail and finds France changed beyond recognition. Delon, his acolyte for a last heist, is the embodiment of the new mores. Our first view of him is of his legs and feet beating time to a jazz tune. He wears sporty clothes and has a cigarette permanently dangling from his mouth. In Cannes, where the two plan to rob the casino, Delon lounges by the poolside, the object of admiring gazes. He cruises along the sea front in a sports car, in white trousers and shirt and dark glasses, his signature lock of hair flopping on his forehead. He is pure commodity, an advertisement for a lifestyle'. But where Melodie en sous-sol is celebratory, Plein soleil, Les Felins, L'Edisse and La Piscine add to Delon's image a layer of cruelty, even sadism. As Magny says, 'By choosing to play Ripley [instead of the other male character, as initially planned], Delon fixes his image for the first time: a fundamental ambiguity between angelic beauty and nonchalance and a layer of malevolent cynicism' (Cinematheque Francaise, 1996, p. 20). In L'Edisse, Delon is an opportunistic stockbroker who cares neither about his clients' ruin nor about the anxieties of the heroine (Monica Vitti). In La Piscine, he murders a drunken and sleepy Maurice Ronet by coldly pushing him down into the swimming pool, almost as an afterthought. The William Wilson episode in Histoires extraordinaires is based on the extreme cruelty of his character towards women. The association of Delon's beauty with sadism is so recurrent that the conclusion is inescapable: it is his beauty itself, in its excess, which is cruel. As with the femme fatale of film noir, Delon's cruel beauty is deadly to those around him and often to himself. Claudia Cardinale offers a perceptive reading of its power: 'His beauty resided in his clear and malevolent look, in his nervous energy, but it also incorporated his biting irony. He was sure of himself, of his beauty, of his charm, and above all of his sexual power' (in Haymann, 1998, p. 130). The


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misogyny implicit in this figure is evident from the beginning, not only in his callous treatment of women in Plein soleil, Melodie en sous-sol and Les Felins but also in the narrative centrality he is given compared to the women. Unlike the femrne fatale, he is both object of the gaze and narrative agent. One prominent visual trope, found in many films, shows him turning suddenly to face the camera, usually framed in a doorway or window: the high-voltage flash of blue eyes, the commanding presence combine with the framing and the close-up to condense the subject/ object duality inherent in his star persona. This configuration is magnified in two very interesting films Delon made with Simone Signoret. In La Veuve Couderc (1971), Delon is a criminal on the run who brings love but also death to the older woman (Signoret) who shelters him, before he is himself killed by the police. As actors, Delon and Signoret form a powerful team: Signoret is one of the few female stars to appear in a strong role opposite Delon. However, as characters, his beauty and power of seduction underline the loss of hers. The alterations made to the Georges Simenon story on which the film is based also significantly enhance his character: the film transforms a rich drop-out's petty crime into a political one and erases his ignominious murder of her at the end, to replace it with his tragic death. Les Granges brulees (1973), a less successful repeat of the stars' pairing, reiterates a similar scenario. Delon plays an investigating magistrate conducting an enquiry among a peasant family of whom Signoret is the matriarch. Although this time there is no sexual relation between them, the underlying dynamic is the same. In the 1960s and 1970s, Delon's films showed his beauty to be ambivalent but a source of power. Where the spectacle of the femme fatale is usually opposed to the male hero's narrative drive, in Delon's case spectacle and narrative overlapped. As he moved into his mature period, Delon's image solidified into a new register: the hard cop or gangster who is also a fragile male. From a sign of insolent power and triumphant commodity, his beauty becomes both his armour and his tragedy.

Le Samourai' and after: melancholy masculinity From Melodie en sous-sol and especially the extraordinary Le Samourai, Delon developed an association with crime, as gangster or, with

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Plate 18 Le Samourai' (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967): Alain Delon, 'melancholy masculinity'. virtually no change in appearance or performance, as flic (cop). From the late 1960s, Delon's most popular films were thrillers (Le Clan des Siciliens, Borsalino, Le Cercle rouge), and, indeed, the word flic in his film titles seemed to guarantee box-office success - for the period 1980—93, his top two box-office successes are Pour la peau d'un flic (1981) and Parole de flic (1985).I7 The emergence of Delon's high visibility as a gangster or flic also coincided with the Markovic scandal. Between the release of Le Samourai and the making of Le Cercle rouge, Delon was publicly embroiled in what became known as the Markovic affair. Markovic, a Yugoslav with a criminal record who worked as Delon's secretary and lighting stand-in, was found dead on 1 October 1968. Although the murder was never solved, Markovic's death brought suspicion on Delon by highlighting his links with criminals such as Markovic and retired Corsican mafioso Antoine Marcantoni. Markovic was supposedly implicated in blackmail and in organizing sex orgies for high-ranking personalities, among them allegedly Claude Pompidou,


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wife of the future President of the Republic. The brilliant Melville trilogy, set in affluent bourgeois nightclubs and with gangsters who look like, and mix with, grands bourgeois and business executives, uncannily echoed events in the star's life. On screen, as gangster or cop, he was cold, restrained, sparing with facial and bodily movement. By contrast with Belmondo, who externalized his masculinity through movement, Delon internalized his. The contrast is clear in Borsalino, for instance, in the scene which brings the two stars together: Belmondo is playing billiards and fooling around when Delon appears as a silhouette through the cafe window. It is as if his beauty and presence were enough to signify his gangster identity as well as his virility. His appearance, his beauty, act as an armour and a spectacle sufficient to inspire awe. Colin McArthur, quoting Antonioni, talks of Delon's 'harsh, pitiless face' in Le Samourai' (McArthur, 1972, p. 170). To take one more example, in Flic story, the climactic scene in which Delon arrests the dangerous criminal he has been hunting throughout the film (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is played out entirely through gazes exchanged across a country restaurant. At the end, Delon collars Trintignant with hardly any movement. Delon's minimalist performance in the criminal register is clearly indebted to Gabin, but his more blatant objectification by the camera and the history of his 1960s films evoked earlier conspire to send the spectator back to his beauty as spectacle in and for itself. Among Delon's gangster films of the late 1960s, the tour de force of Le Samourai was also pivotal in inflecting his minimalist performance and cool persona towards fetishistic control on the one hand and melancholy on the other. Jef Costello (Delon) is a hermetic contract killer who conducts his business in single-minded silence. A job which goes wrong leads to his death, but the spectator is invited by Melville's pared-down mise-en-scene to view his doomed trajectory as existential rather than generic. Jef is a loner who lives in a grey room where the only life is a bird in a cage. Central to his character are narcissistic rituals, especially those involving clothing. As Stella Bruzzi has pointed out, Jef's crumbling identity is signalled by the disintegration of his clothes (Bruzzi, 1997, p. 79). Before leaving home, Jef slowly assembles his mythical gangster gear: gun, trenchcoat and hat, checking himself in the mirror while running his fingers along the rim of his hat (a gesture reprised in Borsalino). The obsessive, steely beauty of the film is

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inseparable from Delon's smooth face and metallic blue eyes, the dominant cool blue-and-green colour scheme of the film seemingly meant to match Delon's eyes. Le Samourai built on Delon's 'cruel beauty' discussed above, and enhanced it in the direction of a lonely, doomed hero who reappears in Le Cercle rouge and Un flic and inflects his subsequent persona. Melville's mise-en-scene, which coolly observes gestures and objects, has been characterized by Colin McArthur as 'cinema of process' (McArthur, 2000, pp. 189-201). In Le Samourai, it acts as both support to and expression of Delon's masculinity, which combines animal strength and control. From its title and (invented) opening proverb, Le Samourai spins the metaphor of Delon as lone wolf. The analogy with beautiful but dangerous animals, compounded by Jef's silence, meshed with Delon's established image: his beauty and ruthlessness, his physical fitness. This 'lone wolf is both agent and victim. Le Cercle rouge shows him bonding with other gangsters (Gian Maria Volonte and Yves Montand), but the message is man's loneliness. Un flic ends on his face, over which plays a song: 'Each of Us Is Alone'. Delon 'authenticates' this aspect of his persona by stressing in interviews that he has been 'lonely all [his] life',18 clearly a subjective rather than objective statement. His character in Le Samourai makes sense ultimately because of the singularity of the star. In the police identity parade, a man (played by director Michel Boisrond, who gave Delon his first leading part in Faibles femmes) recognizes Jef among a group of 'ordinary' men, despite his clothes having been altered by the police. Jef is an impassive, sad hero who never smiles. His 'liquid' blue eyes, seemingly always on the verge of tears as if to spell out vulnerability, are first seen through the wet windscreen of the Citroen DS he is stealing. In Le Samourai' and other films (for instance, Deux hommes dans la ville), Delon is frequently shot behind windows or bars, a prisoner confined to an existential jail. In this way, Delon, through his looks and performance, transforms ruthless contract killers and lonely cops into tragic heroes. His melancholy and 'autistic' masculinity is clearly misanthropist and misogynist. The only characters his heroes can bond with are other men - Volonte in Le Cercle rouge, Trintignant in Flic story, Gabin in Deux hommes dans la ville - a bond nevertheless destined to self-destruct. Delon's masculinity, like Depardieu's, is thus in the


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Gabin paradigm in appropriating 'feminine' vulnerability into his virile persona. This elevates ruthless gangsters or cops to universal figures, like Gabin in Pepe k Moko (Vincendeau, 1998). But where Gabin rose above the hoodlum in the name of a mythical pre-war community, Delon's melancholy man is the product of post-war individualism. While Gabin exuded a class identity which bonded him to a workingclass audience, Delon's image was a middle-class one, albeit with mass appeal. Delon's late-1980s and 1990s films saw a loss of popularity at the box-office as well as a transformation in his image. All ageing stars carry the memory of their younger glory, but with very beautiful stars the process is particularly poignant. This is true for Catherine Deneuve (see Chapter 8) but also for Delon. Swann in Love, Notre histoire and Nouvelle vague are revealing in their depiction of the demise of Delon's beauty. In Swann in Love, Delon is miscast as the Baron de Charlus in the sense that he is much better looking than Proust's character (he is made to look like Robert de Montesquieu, one of the real-life models for Charlus). His excessive make-up, visibly dyed hair and nasal voice, his camp gestures, shock as a departure from his usual looks and minimalist performance. Notre histoire shows him as 'still not bad', as Nathalie Baye's character puts it, but emphasizes through harsh lighting the lines, the bags under the eyes. The plot, which constructs him as unable to seduce, only makes sense, at times comically, in relation to his star persona as seducer (Le Retour de Casanova, for which Delon, Robert de Niro style, put on weight,19 concerns the decline of his body as well as face). Nouvelle vague filters this process through Godard's typical use of mainstream stars. As with Eddie Constantine in Alphaville and Bardot in Le Mepris (see Chapter 4), Godard takes up Delon at the point when his mainstream career is in decline. This enables him to 'quote' the star through his literal presence, as well as reflect on his image. Nouvelle vague introduces Delon as a sad, unshaven figure, despite being the owner of a large property on the banks of Lake Geneva. His character's trajectory seems more motivated by references to Delon the star than by events in the (obscure) plot. Scenes of Delon swimming and almost drowning evoke Plein soleil and La Piscine, while his appearance towards the end in a black suit and with slicked-back hair refers back to his gangster//7/c image. It is fitting that Belmondo's 'career summary' film is

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Itineraire d'un enfant gate, an extravagant epic in Lelouch's overblown style, while Delon's is Godard's cerebral and minimalist reflection on the star in Nouvelle vague, line chance sur deux brings the two stars together, but Itineraire d'un enfant gate and Nouvelle vague are more revealing of their contrasting representations of masculinity and of their respective audience appeal.

The virile icons of the frenfe g/or/euses From the early 1960s to the mid-1980s, Belmondo and Delon were two of the most prominent manifestations of French screen virility. In many ways, the two stars were unlike each other. They used their faces and bodies in strikingly different ways: Belmondo smiled a lot, Delon didn't; Belmondo moved a lot, Delon went for minimalist composure; Belmondo evolved towards the rugged adventurer, Delon towards the cool gangster. Borsalino, which brings the two stars together at the height of their mid-careers, is structured around this opposition, notably in their clothing: to Belmondo's line of soft caps and sporty clothes, mostly in brown, are opposed Delon's sharp suits and fedora hats in shades of black and grey (despite the film title, a borsalino being a kind of hat, Belmondo wears one only once in the film). While Belmondo's romantic relationships are presented comically, Delon is shown as suffering from unrequited love. Thus, although it is Belmondo who is shot at the end of the film, Borsalino is emblematic of how the two stars embodied the opposite poles of screen masculinity — comic exaggeration on the one hand, melancholy internalization on the other — analysed by Richard Dyer and Yvonne Tasker in the Hollywood context (Tasker, 1993, p. 111). These parallel and yet differentiated representations of masculinity were clearly internalized by the audience: Delon's 1976 film, Le Gang, in which he plays with a conscious imitation of Belmondo (smiles around cigars, physical stunts, humour) failed at the box-office. Belmondo and Delon's critical trajectories also went in very different directions: while Belmondo emerged with the New Wave and then moved to popular cinema, Delon bypassed the New Wave (appearing instead in Italian art films) and achieved success in French genre films, but moved back towards French auteur film in the latter part of his


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career. Yet both shared fundamental similarities which legitimate bracketing them as the last truly popular stars of French mainstream cinema. In the French public cinematic space, they acted as alter-ego to each other, as flip sides of the same coin. Those who saw 'the latest Belmondo' also saw 'the latest Delon'. Belmondo and Delon as stars were the product of a specific historical conjuncture. Their joint novelty was to put the eroticized male face and male body at the centre of the frame. In this they were the screen manifestation of important developments which took place during their period of high stardom, the 1960s and 1970s. These changes were first of all technological: the move to wide-screen, colour and location shooting demanded new types of performances for which, as we have seen, both stars' youthful bodies were perfectly suited. True, male stars such as Jean Marais, Gerard Philipe and Henri Vidal had offered overt male erotic displays since the late 1940s. However, they did so in distinctly non-realist genres: the swashbuckler for Marais and Philipe, the Italian peplum for Vidal. Delon and Belmondo's originality was to offer male erotic display in recognizable, contemporary settings, clothes and situations. It is telling that in Borsalino, set in Marseilles and with one key scene on the beach, the only two characters shown in bathing suits are Belmondo and Delon. This male display, in turn, was possible because of changing lifestyles. The move to a consumer and leisure society and the rise of tourism which accompanied the French 'economic miracle' of the post-war period (the so-called trente glorieuses) provided motivations for the films to display 'modern' locations, objects and behaviours. When they emerged in the early 1960s, Delon and Belmondo epitomized a type of young man popularly referred to as the minet. Inspired by British mods and Italian fashion rather than American screen models, the minet was well dressed and boyish: The minet is highly conformist and sensualist ... his raison d'etre is the infantile pleasure provided by the consumption of the light-hearted and pleasurable things in life: holidays in the sun, flirting, colour films, new sun-glasses' (Obalk et al, 1984, pp. 152—3). In this respect, the two key films of Belmondo and Delon's early careers as mainstream French stars are, respectively, L'Homme de Rio and Plein soleil (rather than the more critically acclaimed Pierrot le fou and Rocco), not only because they were popular at the box-office but also because they showed the two stars to be associated with the commodities they desire

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Plate 19 Borsalino (Jacques Deray, 1970): Belmondo (left) and Delon (centre) together. as characters — foregrounding their status as objects of desire rather than figures of identification: in these films, Belmondo clowns around while Delon is a criminal. Both are somewhat cynical and promiscuous figures, in line with what Antoine de Baecque has called the 'Sagan tendency' in late 1950s/early 1960s youth culture — a generation bereft of political commitment and enamoured with hedonistic consumption (de Baecque, 1998). In this respect, the success of Belmondo and Delon's star personas corresponds to a shift from spectatorial identification with a 'subject' (on the Gabin model) to spectatorial desire for a commodity: a face, a body, locations, consumer goods. From the late 1960s, Belmondo and Delon's characters 'hardened' into gangsters, policemen and tough adventurers. European and American cinema of the 1970s documented how crime infiltrated the upper echelons of society, increasingly blurring the borders between law and lawlessness. Delon in Flic story and Belmondo in Le Marginal, to take two examples, are policemen with clear sympathies for criminals, who do not hesitate to adopt criminal methods. This kind of moral ambivalence had been a feature of French thrillers before, as shown in Cabin's later career. What was new was the increased individualism of the characters on the


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one hand and their more explicitly bourgeois identity on the other. This was the way Delon and Belmondo distinguished themselves from the 'soft' ethos of the 1970s, which saw a decline in the traditional, tough, manual jobs normally undertaken by men, and a softening of shapes, clothes and objects. Just as 'the briefcase re-introduced rigidity in a soft universe, the gun did so in the policier world' (Obalk et al, 1984, pp. 423). Thus, whereas the young Depardieu emerged from within the 1970s ethos and moulded his representation of masculinity to the new mores (see Chapter 9), Delon and Belmondo pursued the logical trajectory of their younger consumerist heroes into figures of opposition to the new values. At the risk of anthropomorphism, where their young bodies had been in tune with modernity in the 1960s, their more mature and solid figures in the 1970s and 1980s aligned themselves with an embattled conservatism, losing critical respect but keeping their mainstream audience. The two stars' attitude to politics off screen, which was either resolutely 'apolitical' (Belmondo) or clearly sympathetic to the right or far right (Delon), reinforced their conservative screen image.20 As time went on, they also displayed continuity with a longer pattern of dominant French screen masculinity, by fitting in the Gabin paradigm. This worked by direct association with the older star in a few films, by incorporating 'feminine' vulnerability in macho and essentially misogynist figures and, when they reached middle age, by fitting into the fatherdaughter pattern, whereby they acted as sexual and paternal partners to young women (see Chapter 3). Thus, we can understand their appeal to a wide audience, even though they portrayed somewhat cynical and asocial figures. But their popularity reached further. Belmondo and Delon, along with de Funes, represent the end of an era of French cinema. Both stars addressed the last of the consensual French family audience in the final period of French cinema's systematic dominance of the national box-office. The repetitiveness of their parts, which critics deplored (Predal's accusation of 'the same type of adventures, endlessly repeated, as if on a loop') precisely evoked a familiarity on a par with earlier stars of classical cinema (Gabin, Fernandel, Bourvil). They achieved this not through class identification as Gabin, Fernandel and Bourvil had, but by difference. First of all, difference from the male heroes of 'intellectual' cinema, to which they provided young and sexy alternatives (Belmondo having

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initially achieved the perfect amalgam between the two in A bout de souffle and Pierrot le /DM). Against the cerebral heroes played by Leaud, Jean-Claude Brialy, Sami Frey, their screen masculinity was physical, whether externalized (Belmondo) or internalized (Delon). Their star persona proposed heroes (albeit cynical ones) in the context of a post-war modernist culture (the theatre of the absurd, the new novel, auteur cinema) which deeply undermined the concept of heroism. As the fan magazine Cine-revue put it, post-war cinema denied its audience an oneiric dimension: The audience does not dream any more because the stories they are presented with are ultra-realistic: social films, intellectual films, modern studies of society, such are the usual components of most films.'21 Hence the two stars' normal habitat was the thriller, the adventure film, and especially for Belmondo, comedy (Belmondo's presence in comedies as well as thrillers, as opposed to Delon's overwhelmingly dramatic register, accounts for the former's higher scores overall at the box-office).22 Second, they offered difference from sexually explicit cinema while being erotic figures. The period in which they emerged saw the loosening of taboos in society and on screen. In the 1960s the new mores enabled Delon and Belmondo to portray individuals unfettered by traditional morality, and in sexually explicit relationships: see Belmondo in A bout de souffle, Delon in La Piscine. Interestingly though, despite the abolition of censorship in the early 1970s and the rise of graphic sexual representions, Belmondo and Delon stayed within relatively chaste genres, thus still addressing a family audience. Comic actors like de Funes and Bourvil were the opposite of sex, but Delon and Belmondo provided 'sex' for a family audience. Third, they offered a valorizing difference from American cinema. Although clearly they and their films interacted with American cinema, both Delon and Belmondo cut distinctly French figures, in their language, gestures, names and in the preoccupations of their films. Their prestige for both home and international audience (for instance, Belmondo in Russia, Delon in the Far East) derived from that difference (Belmondo eschewed a Hollywood career altogether, and Delon's brief attempts were unsuccessful — see Chapter 1).


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At the time of the release of Belmondo's L'Animal in 1977, a polemic arose around the perceived worthlessness of French mainstream cinema and the excessive power of stars. One critic asked, 'Have Belmondo, Delon, de Funes killed French cinema?' (Strazzulla and Leduc, 1996, p. 141). Since L'Animal sold over three million tickets in France, the question was obviously rhetorical. With hindsight, it is clear that Belmondo and Delon (as well as de Funes — see Chapter 6) did not 'kill' French cinema but rather, for over two decades, significantly contributed to the survival of its home market. Films like Borsalino, Le Clan des Siciliens, Le Cercle rouge, Le Professionnel, L'As des as achieved box-office audiences of over 800,000 spectators on their first release in the Paris region alone. The film press treated the release of a new Belmondo or a new Delon as an event; for instance, Premiere described the release of Delon's Le Toubib (1979) as The filmic event of the month', while Telerama saluted Belmondo's Le Marginal (1983) thus: This week, Le Marginal comes out. If you don't know, your antinuclear shelter must be well insulated.'23 This, as well as the fact that both Belmondo and Delon have been very vocal in their defence of French cinema,24 makes the fact that neither star was invited to the Cannes festival fiftieth anniversary in 1997 seem all the more ungrateful. Like the remark quoted above about French stars 'killing' French cinema, the Cannes snub illustrates the endemic dislike of French popular genre films among French critics. However selfserving, the two stars' arguments about the symbiosis between mainstream and auteur cinema are nevertheless true: without Belmondo and Delon, we would not have had L'Animal and Le Gang, which may not have been a huge loss, but nor would, among others, Pierrot le fou and Mr Klein been made. To argue this, of course, is to fall into the elitist trap of assuming the popular films have to be endured only because they help produce auteur masterpieces. Many of Belmondo's and Delon's popular movies are not dependent on such faint praise - they are excellent genre films - while some, for instance those of Melville, transcend the mainstream—auteur division anyway. The point is that both stars offered to the audiences of all their films the potent pleasures of glamour, desire, identity and talent. As Melville put it, 'My films are better with stars than without.' 25

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Biofilmographies Jean-Paul Belmondo Born Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1933. Married Renee (Elodie) Constant (from 1953 to 1966), with whom three children: Patricia (1954—93), Florence (bom 1959) and Paul (born 1965). Main acting awards

Etoile de Cristal de 1'Academie du Cinema, Best Actor, A bout de souffle, 1961 Cesar, Best Actor, Itineraire d'un enfant gate, 1989 Films as actor

1954 Moliere [short] (Norbert Tildian) 1957 Les Copains du dimanche [Demain nous volerons] (Henri Aisner) A pied, a cheval et en voiture (Maurice Delbez) 1958 Charlotte et son Jules [short] (Jean-Luc Godard) Sois belle et tais-toi/Blonde for Danger (Marc Allegret) Les Tricheurs/The Cheaters (Marcel Carne, France/Italy) Un drole de dimanche (Marc Allegret) 1959 Mademoiselle Ange [Ein Engel auf Erden] (Geza Radvanyi, Germany/France) A double tour/Web of Passion [A doppia mandata] (Claude Chabrol, France/Italy) 1960 A bout de souffle/Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard) Classe tous risques/The Big Risk (Claude Sautet, France/Italy) Moderato Cantabile/Seven Days ... Seven Nights (Peter Brook) La Francaise et I'amour/Love and the Frenchwoman [ep. 'L'Adultere'] (Henri Verneuil) Les Distractions/Trapped by Fear (Jacques Dupont, France/Italy) Lettere di una novizia [La novice] (Alberto Lattuada, Italy/France) La ciociara/Two Women (Vittoria De Sica, Italy/France) 1961 La Chasse aux vedettes [short] (Camille Chatelot) La viaccia/The Love Makers (Mauro Bolognini, Italy/France)


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line femme est une femme/A Woman Is a Woman (Jean-Luc Godard) Leon Morin, pretre/Leon Morin, Priest (Jean-Pierre Melville, France/ Italy) Les Amours celebres [ep. 'Lauzun'] (Michel Boisrond, France/Italy) Un nomme La Rocca (Jean Becker, France/Italy) 1962 Cartouche/Swords of Blood (Philippe de Broca, France/Italy) Un singe en hiver/A Monkey in Winter (Henri Verneuil) 1963 Le Doulos (Jean-Pierre Melville, France/Italy) Mare matto [La Mer a boire] (Renato Castellani, Italy/France) Dragees au poivre/Sweet and Sour (Jacques Baratier, France/Italy) L'Aine des Ferchaux [Un jeune homme honorable] (Jean-Pierre Melville, France/Italy) Peau de banane (Marcel Ophiils, France/Italy) 1964 L'Homme de Rio [L'uomo di Rio] (Philippe de Broca, France/Italy) Cent mille dollars au soldi (Henri Verneuil, France/Italy) Echappement libre/Backfire (Jean Becker, France/Italy/Spain) La Chasse a I'homme/The Gentle Art of Seduction (Edouard Molinaro, France/Italy) Week-end a Zuydcoote/Weekend at Dunkirk (Henri Verneuil, France/Italy) 1965 Par un beau matin d'ete [Rapina al sole] (Jacques Deray, France/ Spain/Italy) Jean-Paul Belmondo [short] (Claude Lelouch) Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard, France/Italy) Les Tribulations d'un Chinois en Chine/Up to His Ears (Philippe de Broca, France/Italy) 1966 Tendre voyou (Jean Becker, France/Italy) Paris brule-t-il?/Is Paris Burning? (Rene Clement) La Bande a Bebel [short; unreleased] (Charles Gerard) 1967 Le Voleur/The Thief of Paris (Louis Malle, France/Italy) Casino Royale (John Huston, UK) 1968 Ho!7Ho! Criminal Face (Robert Enrico, France/Italy) 1969 Le Cerveau/The Brain (Gerard Oury, France/Italy) La Sirene du Mississipi/Mississippi Mermaid (Francois Truffaut, France/Italy) Un homme qui me plait/A Man I Love (Claude Lelouch, France/Italy)

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Borsalino (Jacques Deray, France/Italy) Les Maries de I'an II/The Scoundrel (Jean-Paul Rappeneau, France/ Italy/Romania) Le Casse/The Burglars (Henri Verneuil, France/Italy) 1972 Docteur Popaul [Trappoli per lupi] (Claude Chabrol, France/Italy) La Scoumoune/Hit Man (Jose Giovanni, France/Italy) 1973 L'Heritier/The Inheritor (Philippe Labro, France/Italy) Le Magnifique/How to Destroy the Reputation of the Greatest Secret Agent (Philippe de Broca, France/Italy) 1974 Stavisky (Alain Resnais) T'es fou Marcel (Hommage irrespectueux comme tous les hommages) [short] (Jean Rochefort) 1975 Peur sur la ville/Fear on the City (Henri Verneuil, France/Italy) L'Incorrigible (Philippe de Broca) 1976 L'Alpagueur/The Predator (Philippe Labro) Le Corps de mon ennemi/ The Body of Mine Emmy (Henri Verneuil) 1977 L'Animal (Claude Zidi) 1979 Flic ou voyou?/Cop or Hood? (Georges Lautner) 1980 Le Guignolo [II piccione di piazza San Marco] (Georges Lautner, France/Italy) 1981 Le Professionnel/The Professional (Georges Lautner) L'As des as [Das As der Asse] (Georges Oury, France/Germany) 1983 Le Marginal/The Outsider (Jacques Deray) 1984 Les Morfalous/The Vultures (Henri Verneuil, France/Tunisia) Joyeuses Pdques/Happy Easter (Georges Lautner) 1985 Hold-up/Quick Chance (Alexandre Arcady, Canada/France) 1986 Les Pros [short] (Florence Moncorge-Gabin) 1987 Le Solitaire/The Loner (Jacques Deray) 1988 Itineraire d'un enfant gate/Itinerary of a Spoiled Child (Claude Lelouch) 1993 L'Inconnu dans la maison [Les Inconnus dans la maison] (Georges Lautner) 1995 Les Miserables [Les Miserables du XXe siecle] (Claude Lelouch) Les Cent et une nuits de Simon Cinema (Agnes Varda, France/UK) 1996 Desire (Bernard Murat) 1998 Une chance sur deux (Patrice Leconte) Peut-etre (Cedric Klapisch) 1970 1971


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Alain Delon Born Sceaux, near Paris, 8 November 1935. Married Francine Canovas (Nathalie Delon) (1964; divorced 1969, with whom one son, Anthony, born 1964). One son with Nico, Christian Aaron Boulogne. With Rosalie van Breemen, one daughter, Anouchka, born 1990, and one son, Alain-Fabien, born 1994. Main acting awards

Etoile de Cristal de 1'Academic du Cinema, Quelle joie de vivre, 1962 Cesar, Best Actor, Notre histoire, 1984 Films as actor

1957 Quand la femme sen mele (Yves Allegret) 1958 Sois belle et tais-toi/Blonde for Danger (Marc Allegret) Christine (Pierre Gaspard-Huit, France/Italy) 1959 Le Chemin des ecoliers (Michel Boisrond) Faibles femmes (Michel Boisrond, France/Italy) 1960 Plein soleil/Purple Noon (Rene Clement, France/Italy) Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti, Italy/France) 1961 Les Amours celebres [ep. 'Agnes Bernauer'] (Michel Boisrond, France/Italy) Che gioia vivere [Quelle joie de vivre] (Rene Clement, Italy/France) 1962 Le Diable et les dix commandements/The Devil and the Ten Commandments (Julien Duvivier, France/Italy) L'Eclisse/The Eclipse (Michelangelo Antonioni, Italy/France) 1963 // gattopardo/ The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, Italy/France) Melodie en sous-sol/Any Number Can Win (Henri Verneuil, France/ Italy) 1964 La Tulipe noire/The Black Tulip (Christian-Jaque, France/Italy/ Spain) Les Felins/Joy House (Rene Clement) LTnsoumis (Alain Cavalier, France/Italy) The Yellow Rolls-Royce (Anthony Asquith, UK)

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Once a Thief [Les Tueurs de San Francisco] (Ralph Nelson, USA) Les Aventuriers/Last Adventure (Robert Enrico, France/Italy) Lost Command [Les Centurions] (Mark Robson, USA) Texas across the River (Michael Gordon, USA) Paris brule-t-il?/Is Paris Burning? (Rene Clement) 1967 Le Samourai' (Jean-Pierre Melville, France/Italy) Diaboliquement votre/Diabolically Yours (Julien Duvivier, France/ Italy) 1968 Histoires extraordinaires [ep. 'William Wilson'] (Louis Malle, France/Italy) Adieu I'ami (Jean Herman, France/Italy) The Girl on a Motorcycle [La Motocyclette] (Jack Cardiff, UK/ France) Jeff (Jean Herman, France/Italy) 1969 Le Clan des Siciliens/The Sicilian Clan (Henri Verneuil) La Piscine/The Swimming Pool (Jacques Deray, France/Italy) 1970 Borsalino (Jacques Deray, France/Italy) Le Cercle rouge/The Red Circle (Jean-Pierre Melville, France/Italy) Madly (Roger Kahane) 1971 Doucement les basses!/Easy Down There! (Jacques Deray) Red Sun [Soleil rouge] (Terence Young, France/Italy/Spain) La Veuve Couderc/The Widow Couderc (Pierre Granier-Deferre, France/Italy) 1972 L'Assassinat de Trotsky/The Assassination of Trotsky (Joseph Losey, France/Italy) iln flic/Dirty Money (Jean-Pierre Melville, France/Italy) La prima notte di quiete/'Indian Summer [Le Professeur] (Valeric Zurlini, Italy/France) The Scorpio File/Scorpio (Michael Winner, USA) 1973 Deux hommes dans la ville/Two Men in Town (Jose Giovanni, •France/Italy) Les Granges brulees/The Investigator (Jean Chapot, France/Italy) Big Guns/Les Grands Fusils (Duccio Tessari, France/Italy) Traitement de choc/The Doctor in the Nude (Alain Jessua, France/ Italy) 1974 Borsalino & Co. (Jacques Deray, France/Italy/Germany) La Race des seigneurs/Jet Set (Pierre Granier-Deferre) 1965 1966


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Les Seins de glace/Someone Is Bleeding (Georges Lautner) Flic story/Cop Story (Jacques Deray, France/Italy) Le Gitan/The Gipsy (Jose Giovanni, France/Italy) Zorro (Duccio Tessari, France/Italy) 1976 Comme un boomerang/Like a Boomerang (Jose Giovanni, France/ Italy) Le Gang (Jacques Deray, France/Italy) Mr Klein (Joseph Losey, France/Italy) 1977 Armaguedon (Alain Jessua) Attention, les enfants regardent/Attention, the Kids Are Watching (Serge Leroy) L'Homme presse/Man in a Hurry (Edouard Molinaro, France/Italy) Mort d'un pourri/Death of a Corrupt Man (Georges Lautner) 1979 Airport '79 - Concorde (David Lowell Rich, USA) Le Toubib (Pierre Granier-Deferre) Trois hommes a abattre/Three Men to Destroy (Jacques Deray) Teheran 4-3 (Alexandre Alov and Vladimir Naounov, USSR/ France) 1981 Pour la peau d'un flic/For a Cop's Hide (Alain Delon) 1982 Le Choc (Robin Davis) Le Battant/The Fighter (Alain Delon) 1983 Un amour de Swann/Swann in Love (Volker Schlondorff, France/ Germany)

1975

Notre histoire (Bertrand Blier)

1985 Parole de flic/Cop's Honour (Jose Pinheiro) 1986 Le Passage (Rene Manzor) 1987 Le Cinema dans les yeux [doc] (Gilles Jacob and Laurent Jacob) 1988 Ne reveillez pas un flic qui dort/Let Sleeping Cops Lie (Jose Pinheiro) 1990 Nouvelle vague (Jean-Luc Godard, France/Switzerland) Dancing Machine (Gilles Behat, France/Spain) 1992 Le Retour de Casanova/Casanova's Return (Edouard Niermans) 1993 Un crime (Jacques Deray) 1994 L'Ours en peluche [Orso di peluche] (Jacques Deray, Italy/France/ Belgium) 1995 Les Cent et une nuits de Simon Cinema (Agnes Varda, France/UK) 1997 Le Jour et la nuit/Day and Night (Bernard-Henri Levy, France/ Canada)

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1998 Une chance sur deux (Patrice Leconte) 1999 Luchino Visconti [doc] (Carlo Lizzani, Italy) Notes 1. Le Film franpais, 4 September 1992, p. 19. 2. la PME Belmondo', Telemma, No. 1763, 26 October 1983. 3. Belmondo caused a serious accident while driving his car with Jeanne Moreau's ten-year-old son, in 1960, during the shooting of Moderate Cantabile. 4. For instance, in the 'interview fleuve', Premiere, No. 217, April 1995, p. 73. 5. Jean Wagner, 'Jean-Paul Belmondo et son my the', Cinema 63, No. 78, July/ August 1963, pp. 36-55. 6. Rene Predal, Trench star system', Cinema 74, December 1974, pp. 26—33. 7. Belmondo, 'interview fleuve', Premiere, No. 217. 8. Rene Clair, quoted in ibid., p. 68. 9. Although not all of them, as is sometimes alleged. Belmondo pays tribute to Gil Delamare, a stuntman on his early films including L'Homme de Rio: 'I have done some hard things, but compared to Delamare I was a novice.' 10. 'Systeme D' — in which 'D' stands for debrouillard, meaning cunning and resourceful — refers to a penchant in French culture for cheating institutions, moonlighting and generally erecting parallel systems to the official channels. 11. Thierry Jousse and Serge Toubiana, 'Mystere Delon' (interview with Alain Delon), Cahiers du cinema, No. 501, April 1996, p. 31. 12. Jean-Francois Rauger, 'Alain Delon, 1'unique et son double', Cahiers du cinema, No. 501, April 1996, p. 33. 13. Cinemonde, \ August 1957 (quoted in Haymann, 1998, p. 34). 14. Donald Lyons, 'Purple noons and quiet evenings', Film Comment, Vol. 32, No. 3, May/June 1996, pp. 80-3. 15. Interestingly, this picture figures on the cover of Sam Rohdie's (1992) book on Rocco e i suoi fratelli, even though the book makes no mention of Delon in the text. 16. Jousse and Toubiana, 'Mystere Delon', p. 31. Melville's reference to Delon's 'Japanese' looks comes from an interview in a television documentary, Profession: Star; Nationality: Francaise, directed by Jean Quaratino, tx 1999. 17. Le Film francais, No. 2467, 13 August 1993, p. 2. 18. In Jousse and Toubiana, 'Mystere Delon', p. 24. 19. Ibid., p. 25. 20. Delon has explicitly stated right-wing allegiances and emigrated to Switzerland with the advent of the Socialist government; he also showed


21. 22.

23. 24. 25.

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sympathy for Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the ultra-right Front National. Belmondo has declared, 'I do not make and will never make films that are politically committed to the right, the left or the centre', quoted in Philippe (1996), p. 181. Cine-revue, Vol. 61, No. 30, 23 July 1981, pp. 4-5. Box-office figures for Belmondo for 1966—72 indicate an average number of 472,774 tickets per film (Le Film franpais, No. 1429, 10 March 1972, p. 10), compared to Delon's 399,138 for a similar period (Le Film franpais, No. 1440, 12 May 1972, p. 4). Premiere, No. 32, October 1979, p. 17; Telerama, No. 1763, p. 4. Alain Delon, 'La France est colonisee par le cinema americain!', Cine-revue, Vol. 59, No. 42, 18 October 1979, pp. 34-7. From a television documentary on Melville, Portrait en neuf poses, directed by Andre S. Labarthe (1966).

CHAPTER 8

Catherine Deneuve From ice maiden to living divinity

In French town halls, two icons, one male and one female, symbolize the nation-state: one is a photograph of the President, looking down in a benignly patriarchal way; the other is a plaster bust of Marianne, the effigy of the French Republic. Whereas the president's identity is selfevident at any given moment, French mayors have a choice when it comes to Marianne. They can order the 'traditional' model, a version modelled on Brigitte Bardot, or, since October 1985, the Catherine Deneuve model.1 Since her elevation to the status of 'face of a nation',2 Deneuve's reputation has continued to grow, and in the late 1990s, in her fifties, she is more active than ever, challenging the rule that beautiful female stars' careers decline in middle age. Born in 1943, Deneuve has made over eighty feature films since she began her career in the late 1950s, still in her teens. She established herself as a major international star in the 1960s with three classics: Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964), Repulsion (1965) and Belle de jour (1967). These films popularized her stunning looks and set her star image as a 'cool' blonde. She then went on to star in many French films, and a few other, notably Italian, international movies, but quite a lot of her parts — as, for instance, in Un flic (1972) — became acts of symbolic presence rather than leads, a little like Marianne in the town halls. It seemed that by the mid-1970s, the prime of her stardom was over, and although she T96

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Plate 20 Belle de jour (Luis Bufiuel, 1967): Catherine Deneuve and Francis Blanche. © Ministere de la Culture, France — Raymond Voinquel.

kept working, her filmography was somewhat duller. But then Le Dernier metro in 1980 and The Hunger in 1983 again propelled her to the forefront as a 'mature' female beauty. The crowning achievement of that second period was Indochine in 1992. Deneuve has subsequently cast her net increasingly wide, ranging in rapid succession from the tortured heroines of Andre Techine in, for instance, Ma saison preferee (1993) and Les Voleurs (1996), to the work of idiosyncratic auteurs such as Raul Ruiz, Leos Carax and Philippe Garrel, to mainstream projects like Place Vendome (1998) and Belle Maman (1999). Through her abundant film work, but also through a range of other activities such as official appearances at festivals, premieres and the like, and the endorsement of French fashion and cosmetics (Chanel, Yves Saint-Laurent), Deneuve has maintained a high-profile media presence and added an aura of 'quality' to her early 'ice maiden' image. Her popularity in late-1990s France cannot be overstated. She is admired, loved and respected and celebrated as much by the popular as by the

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specialist film press.3 When Jean-Pierre Bacri, one of her co-stars in Place Vendome, expressed irritation at the deluge of reverential press coverage of Deneuve in the film, his outburst that 'Deneuve is no living divinity'4 only pointed out, on the contrary, that if any contemporary French star has attained the status of a 'divinity', it is Deneuve.

From sweet jeune fille to 'ice maiden' For an international art cinema audience, Catherine Deneuve is likely to evoke two things: French chic and 'perverse' sexuality. The first derives from her association with Chanel and Saint-Laurent, the second from her performances as the angel-faced schizophrenic murderess of Polanski's Repulsion, and, especially, Severine, the shy bourgeois wife of Bunuel's Belle de jour who spends her afternoons as a prostitute in a discreet but luxurious Parisian brothel. For the French, though, Deneuve started in a different mode. After a few small parts with her sister Francoise Dorleac in light comedies like Les Collegiennes (1957, when she was only fourteen) and Les Fortes claquent (1960), she began her career proper as Virtue' in Vadim's Le Vice et la vertu (1962, based on a novel by the Marquis de Sade), in which her bouffant hairstyle reflected Vadim's attempt to clone her, after Annette Stroyberg and before Jane Fonda, on Brigitte Bardot. But Deneuve did not pursue the libertine line long, and her real breakthrough came with a better hairstyle in a better film, Les Pampluies de Cherbourg, the first of Jacques Demy's gloriously colourful musicals. Although internationally Deneuve is associated with Polanski and Bunuel, at home she has paid tribute to Demy's pivotal role in her career. Within the still repressive sexual mores of early-1960s France, Deneuve triumphed as a sweet, sexy-but-innocent and yet glamorous blonde, a persona solidified in two other Demy films, the musical Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967) and the costume fairy tale Peau d'ane (1970), as well as several light comedies such as La Vie de chateau (1965). Deneuve's glamour was a throwback to great Hollywood icons like Greta Garbo and Grace Kelly, to both of whom she was often compared. But that association, especially with Garbo, is also traceable to the aura of aloofness and mystery maintained by Deneuve, from very early on,

Catherine Deneuve

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through her firm protection of her private life. Deneuve has been helped in this respect by French privacy laws (see Chapter 1), and she has defended her right to privacy with compelling arguments (Manceaux, 1999, pp. 69—85). Nevertheless, her famous reluctance to give interviews and, when she does, to stray beyond the strictly professional, became in itself part of her star image. The perceived gap between the innocent screen image of Les Parapluies de Cherbourg and Deneuve's 'scandalous' private life — for instance, she had given birth to her illegimate son with Roger Vadim three months before shooting Les Parapluies de Cherbourg - reflected that between the two aspects of the Severine character in Belle de jour - proper bourgeoise and prostitute - and reinforced her aura of 'mystery'. In the 1990s, Deneuve's greater inclination to talk about her children in interviews reflects the fact that, as adult actors, they have both entered the public arena. Christian Vadim (born 1963) and Chiara Mastroianni (born 1972) both appear with Deneuve in, among other films, Le Temps retrouve (1999). She has also been highly visible throughout the 1990s in women's magazines as the official face of SaintLaurent cosmetics, backed by features such as 'Beauty according to Catherine Deneuve' and 'My Christmas in Saint Laurent'.5 But other aspects of her private life, especially relationships, remain taboo, a fact especially highlighted in Anglo-American interviews, in which the star's reluctance to talk about them always becomes an issue. Back in the early 1960s, Deneuve's aura of mystery also emerged from her looks. It is worth pausing for a moment on the early Deneuve image, first established in Les Parapluies de Cherbourg. Her face is characterized by translucent skin and smooth, yet well-defined, lines: a short and straight nose, perfectly arched eyebrows, a full yet delicate mouth and high cheek-bones attract lighting and sculpt a Garbo-like face. Her make-up is discreet. The use of Deneuve's exquisite features to portray sweet, submissive young femininity is manifest from her first appearance in Les Parapluies de Cherbourg. There, neatly framed by the window of her mother's umbrella shop, she waves discreetly to her lover waiting outside in the dark rainy street. This image describes the trajectory of her character in the rest of the film and encapsulates one key aspect of her star persona through most of the 1960s. She has enough sexual drive to defy her mother and sleep with Guy (Nino Castelnuovo), yet she lets herself be imprisoned in a loveless marriage

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with the wealthy Roland Cassard (Marc Michel) when Guy seemingly deserts her. Her ravishing beauty is the narrative motivation of the film, yet she obediently (if tearfully) allows herself to be corralled back into the fold. The defining hairstyle of Les Parapluies de Cherbourg draws her hair back in a neat half pony-tail, or ties it with little coloured ribbons that match her outfits; the overall effect is girlish (until the final scene where, as a married woman, she sports a highly constructed hairdo). Subsequently, her hairstyle went through a number of transformations: through the thick but controlled locks of Belle dejour and the 1970s films, to the structured short cut of the 1980s and early 1990s, and a return to a longer style in the late 1990s. All, however, sweep the hair back from her face, revealing and encasing her face, and her hair is, whatever the style, carefully coiffed and lacquered, proclaiming the well-groomed woman (the Marianne bust modelled on Deneuve equally sports luxuriant but neat shoulder-length hair); filmmakers who have wished to change her image have talked of 'messing up her hair'. The tinted blondness of Deneuve's hair (early photographs show she is a brunette) emphasizes connotations of sophisticated affluence, as opposed to Bardot's sunbleached and untamed mane. Like her hair, Deneuve's movements are graceful but controlled - compare her very sedate mambo in Les Parapluies de Cherbourg and the charming ballet scenes of Les Demoiselles de Rochefort with Bardot's frenzied sexual mambo in Li Dieu ... crea la femme (1956). The Deneuve visual image of the early 1960s was thus one of smoothness and restraint, building up the persona of a well-behaved, essentially bourgeois girl. In this respect, she contrasted strongly with the two dominant models of femininity in late 1950s and early 1960s cinema. On the one hand were the stars of the 1950s who projected unfettered, 'natural' sexuality — Silvana Mangano, Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, Brigitte Bardot - through their voluptuous curves and a close association with nature. Against them, Deneuve appeared as a woman whose sexuality was under wraps and under control, not a hair out of place, and her body concealed under fashionable clothes, a creature whose habitat was the salon rather than the hayfield or the beach. For example, in La Vie de chateau, a comedy set during the German occupation and in which she is the object of desire of most of the male characters, the apex of her sexual display is to frolic around the

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chateau in a pristine white nightdress. Her ordeal at the end of the film, while the men are busy with D-day, is to wade through a lake, ruining her tailored suit. On the other hand, Deneuve is also different from the predominantly dark-haired New Wave actresses like Anouk Aimee, Anna Karina and Jeanne Moreau, who embodied 'intellectual' versions of French femininity (see Chapter 5). Her position half-way between these two poles in terms of star persona is reflected in the type of films she made: appearing neither in 'core' New Wave films nor in the popular genre movies in which Bardot featured, Deneuve in the 1960s was the star of the polished, 'crossover' auteur cinema of Demy and Bunuel, addressing a relatively widespread art cinema audience. Deneuve thus evolved a perfectly groomed and well-behaved image, where impeccable clothes evoked an 'impeccable' personality (and where her voice spoke of bourgeois propriety and control in her precise, almost clipped, tones). In this respect, Deneuve continued the tradition of elegant French actresses such as Michele Morgan, Edwige Feuillere, Martine Carol and Danielle Darrieux (she was called 'the new Danielle Darrieux' at the beginning of her career). But whereas in the 1950s these actresses and their films (such as Adorables creatures [1952] and Mannequins de Paris [1956]) celebrated women's fashions, in the 1960s, Deneuve's clothes took on a more ambiguous role, particularly in auteur cinema. Bunuel, especially, used her clothes as an index of bourgeois repression, as part of his own ideological and aesthetic project. Belle de jour, which marked the beginning of a long-standing partnership between Deneuve and Saint-Laurent, fixed her image for many years to come as the epitome of the chic bourgeoise. The Saint-Laurent clothes — figure-hugging, tailored and cut just above the knee - included an element of sexual display, but a controlled and, importantly, class-coded one, which acted as a foil and screen to Severine's supposedly 'true' sexuality. That was expressed in the film through both her seemingly masochistic fantasies and her rough sexual encounters at the brothel. A great deal of writing on Belle de jour has pondered where the division between 'reality' and 'fantasy' in the film lay, but with feminist hindsight both sides of the Severine figure appear equally fantastic. As Deneuve said, clothes in Belle de jour, in their ultra-sophistication, 'brought an almost surrealist aspect to the film'.6 Belle de jour truly turned Deneuve into an international star. Creating a

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moment of perfect fit between performer, character and image, Bunuel's film successfully combined two hitherto antagonistic personae in Deneuve. On the one hand was the proper jeune fille of Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, as discussed above, and on the other hand the schizophrenic killer of Repulsion. Whereas both films exploited Deneuve's angelic blonde looks to very different ends, Bunuel produced a successful (that is to say, culturally believable) amalgam: that of the ambiguous 'ice maiden' whose intimidating, cool beauty both covers and suggests intense sexuality. The success of this 'cover up' aspect of Deneuve's persona was reinforced by her naturalistically 'innocent' performance style. One of the frequently recounted anecdotes of Deneuve's professional life, and one she tells herself, is the fact that she 'fell into' acting 'by accident' without training, bringing her own voice and set of gestures to her performance, thus establishing the allimportant value of authenticity. In this respect, Deneuve is similar to Bardot, who also performed in film without training as an actor (and both were criticized because 'they could not act'). For an art film, Belle de jour was a box-office success, and the persona it established for Deneuve endured, notably through Truffaut's La Sirene du Mississipi (1969), Bunuel's Tristana (1970) and Marco Ferreri's Liza (1971), and, in a subdued form, Le Dernier metro and Indochine. Given her popularity at home and abroad, it is worth pondering the appeal of the young Deneuve's star persona, beyond the obvious fact of her extreme beauty. Key to her early image is the concept of coolness (terms such as 'ice', 'iceberg' and 'cool' recur in all the literature on her), which refers to her personality and especially her sexuality. As opposed to Bardot's 'hot' availability, the young Deneuve's dominant trope was that of 'cold' unavailability (but with the 'fire' underneath): in other words, virginity. One clue is that, as Simone de Beauvoir has pointed out, female virginity and so-called frigidity invite male conquest and suggest the need for a man to reveal to the woman her own sexuality (de Beauvoir, 1974, pp. 209-13). In Belle de jour, the Michel Piccoli character fulfils this revelatory function. The young virgin (the older one can only ever be an object of ridicule) is thus attractive because of her presumed incompleteness. It is not surprising to find her celebrated in Bunuel's work, since this figure is a version of the child-woman much loved by Surrealists (to whom Bunuel belonged in the 1920s), who

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wrote about her abundantly (see Sarde, 1983, p. 127, for a compilation of their views). There is a sadistic twist to this figure of male fantasy. The more immaculate and inaccessible the woman, the more she is deemed to invite profanation, which is then ascribed to her 'masochism'. The youthful Deneuve got a lot of that: she is flagellated and pelted with mud in Belle de jour, amputated in Tristana and treated literally like a dog on a leash in Liza. Later, as a vampire in The Hunger, she is covered with blood. Many actresses have been through such ordeals on screen, but the specificity of Deneuve is her simultaneous representation of extreme beauty and its defilement, from reverence to rape7 rolled into one image. In the 1980s and the 1990s, as Deneuve's image matured into different characters, this duality still formed the bedrock of her persona. Thus, watching her doing something as mundane as peel potatoes in Le Dernier metro causes a special frisson, and her films of the 1990s to some extent trade on the degradation of her once-perfect image. Viewed historically, Deneuve's early 'core' persona is essentially prefeminist. It emerged in the early 1960s, after the explosion of physical sexuality epitomized by the voluptuous bodies of Bardot, Loren, Lollobrigida and Monroe, but before the post-1968 era of the naturalistic, 'liberated' heroines embodied by stars such as Annie Girardot, Isabelle Huppert and Miou-Miou. Indeed, it is Deneuve's transitional status which I would argue explains her durability. Whereas both the 1950s and the 1970s stars are grounded by their physique and performance in their historical moment, Deneuve's success pertains to her ambivalence (the 'ice and fire' image) and mystery, but also to her evocation of 'eternal' femininity through the timelessness of her classic facial features and clothes (Saint-Laurent's designs have always been noted for their classic modernity, in other words timelessness — the dress and black shiny coat worn by Severine in Belle de jour were reissued in 1996, to great success).8 Her enigmatic private life at the time was also instrumental in creating that image of excitement and unattainability. Deneuve's early image was basically conservative, which explains why her 1970s films were not so successful, as she was out of step with the more political and predominantly naturalistic French cinema. But with Le Dernier metro, a polished 'heritage' film set during the German occupation of France, Deneuve could re-enter the more glamourconscious 1980s. Her career in the 1980s and 1990s also shows that her

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timelessness enabled her to shift to a more mature image, while retaining her core duality of 'ice and fire'.

Bourgeois glamour, feminism and 'the ultimate lesbian icon' Deneuve's international career took her mainly to Italy, and she made only four films in Hollywood, including Hustle and The Hunger, but her fame (like that of Bardot) is international, projecting an image of French femininity qualified by superlatives such as 'the most beautiful woman in the world'. The exportability of her image, rare for a French star, gives us another clue to the appeal of her star persona. The duality she embodies, of classic elegance and sexuality, also fits the two dominant national cliches attached to French women internationally: they dress well and they are highly sexed. As Michele Sarde put it, the Frenchwoman 'appears as a kind of ultra-woman in whom femininity is exacerbated to the point of caricature', a woman who must also participate in the national reputation for good taste and elegance: 'knowing how to dress is a key element of the French way of life' (Sarde, 1983, pp. 26 and 28). Deneuve's success is linked to the way she has, more or less consciously and more or less willingly, embraced these nationally marked values at home and abroad. Acting as semi-official ambassador for French fashion on and off screen. Deneuve has been conscious of the high-class model image which emerged from Belle de jour. 'I always dress well in public, it is true, wearing Saint-Laurent clothes. Belle de jour produced an image which is irredeemably ... that of the ambiguous bourgeoise' (Manceaux, 1999, p. 82). She is conscious of how constraining this image-making process is: The image I project is more sophisticated than my true self. It necessitates an important preparation which can be both a pleasure and a chore' (Sarde, 1983, p. 26). This emphasis on elegance and grooming informs the image she projects in extra-cinematic appearances, on television and so on. Both on and off screen, Deneuve's clothes, whether by Saint-Laurent or Saint-Laurent-inspired, have foregrounded the feminine bourgeois image of a woman in a tailored suit, with short skirt and high heels (she is rarely seen in trousers). Her clothes also act as a determining aspect of her films' mise-en-scene, where her appearance is

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frequently commented upon, as, for instance, in Le Dernier metro, or in films such as Indochine, where her elegant clothes are a constant focus. These two films are also good examples of how Deneuve's clothes participate in the construction of both her class and her national identity. Le Dernier metro explicitly opposes her fur coats, structured clothes and high heels to Depardieu's working-class caps and jackets; as he put it: 'People have fantasies about us two since Le Dernier metro. There is a taboo between us. You are a classy bourgeois idol; I am a peasant's son' (Depardieu, 1988, p. 122). In Indochine (set mostly in the 1930s), Deneuve's fabulous dresses 'from Paris' construct her as symbol of France, both by contrast with Vietnamese clothing and, in some cases, by a tasteful 'orientalization' of her dress, which symbolizes the symbiotic relation the film wishes to portray between France and Indochina. Conversely, films such as Les Voleurs, where Deneuve is made to look 'dowdy' in brown cardigan and glasses, or Place Vendome, where she is frequently covered in loose trench-coats, trade indirectly on her elegance - her 'dowdiness' or the deliberately drab colour scheme of Place Vendome (with the exception of a red suit) are significant because the spectators' mental picture of the 'real' Deneuve image will be projected on these films' images of her. As Deneuve aged, extremely gracefully, the 'ice maiden' image has given way to a tragic grande bourgeoise, often a heroic mother, whose sedate — if glamorous — life is disturbed by sexual passion, usually initiated by a younger man. Le Lieu du crime (1986, with Waldeck Stanczak as a young criminal) and Paroles et musique (1984, with Christophe Lambert as a rock star) show the perenniality of the sexual (re)awakening theme. Both deal in the familiar screen conflict between a woman's sexuality and motherhood. Le Lieu du crime, typical of Techine's anguished narratives, resolves it in apocalyptic fashion: the young man is killed, her son is estranged, she gives herself up to the police; while in Paroles et musique, she goes back to her husband and children. Similarly, Indochine allows her a sexual relationship with a younger man (Vincent Perez), only to take it away from her, in this case by pairing the young lover with her adopted daughter. Such narratives which ultimately punish or deny the older woman's liaison with a younger man (contrary to the older man-young woman axis which tends to be the norm in French cinema), and the way they use Deneuve, are indicative of our

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culture's uneasiness in dealing with sexually active mature female characters and actresses. They are, however, also attempts at integrating societal changes in France that are indebted to feminism, and have made her characters much more pleasurable - certainly for female spectators than the violated male fantasies of the 1960s and early 1970s. Off screen, Deneuve was increasingly perceived as liberated and independent, for the same reasons that she was scandalous in the 1960s. Gerard Depardieu's tongue-in-cheek remark that 'Catherine Deneuve is the man I would have liked to be' (Depardieu, 1988, p. 123), typical of his attitude to gender (see Chapter 9), translates well the stronger screen image of the mature Deneuve as well as her overtly feminist positions off screen. She is one of the actresses who makes sound recordings of women's novels for the feminist Editions des femmes, and in 1971 she was among the celebrities who signed the anti-abortion manifesto (admitting that they had had an abortion, in defiance of the law).9 In 1982, when it was less fashionable, she told Le Nouvel Observateur, 'Yes, I am a feminist'. In her combination of feminist positions and glamour, Deneuve is a Very French' feminist. As feminism disappeared as an explicit discourse from the French political and cultural scene in the 1980s, one of the ways it endured was through the presence in public life of professionally and intellectually powerful women who are also glamorous — examples would include feminist writers Julia Kristeva and Helene Cixous, broadcaster Christine Ockrent (who looks not unlike the short-haired Deneuve) and politician Elisabeth Guigou. Arguably, these women achieved their prominent positions partly because they endorsed the accepted signs of 'French femininity'. In this respect, the mature professional French woman's elegance, coupled with real clout, is a sign of her being in control, rather than, as in the 1960s, of being controlled. Deneuve's sexual image also took an unexpected turn when The Hunger (an otherwise marginal movie in her career, if only because of its genre, that of the vampire movie) made her an explicitly acknowledged lesbian icon. It did so despite her public heterosexual image, reiterated by Deneuve in interviews and reinforced by her suing of the American lesbian magazine Deneuve for taking her name without permission. Obviously, the fact that The Hunger (co-starring David Bowie and Susan Sarandon) contains an explicit sex scene between Deneuve and Sarandon

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is key to this. However, as the American magazine The Advocate, which ran an interview with Deneuve as 'the ultimate lesbian icon',10 put it, lesbians watching The Hunger did not — at least at the time — grab on to Sarandon the way they did to [Deneuve]'.11 So why Deneuve? Because her 'core' characteristic of cool unattainability, according to The Advocate, echoed longings in the audience, especially a lesbian audience.12 But it is clear also that Deneuve's mature star persona she was exactly forty when she appeared in the film — enabled her to portray a seducer in charge of her desires who nevertheless remained a traditionally glamorous feminine figure in appearance. In other words, Deneuve epitomized lesbian chic' at a time when the notion was emerging as an important trend. The fact that the camp stylization of The Hunger and Deneuve's glamour were key to her identity as a lesbian icon' is also illustrated by the fact that her portrayal of a lesbian university lecturer in Techine's Les Voleurs, a film shot with a low-key realistic mise-en-scene, failed to provoke the same reaction. Apart from its importance for a lesbian audience, Deneuve's lesbian icon image arguably also served to reinforce the sexual aspect of her mature star persona, and in particular that of a strong, dominating sexual figure, which found its strongest expression in the hugely successful Indochine.

Indochine and after Indochine did not exactly 'revive' Deneuve's career (since it cannot be said that it was dead), but it marked an important threshold to a third phase, confirming her as the most important (and highest paid) female star in the French film industry. The television cultural chat show Bouillon de Culture, which devoted a whole issue to Deneuve to coincide with the release of Indochine in France, underlined the fact that the relatively unknown director Regis Wargnier would not have got the film off the ground without her, at least not on such a scale. In return, Deneuve was given a real leading part in a major mainstream production, something that had become increasingly rare for her since Le Dernier metro. In many of her 1980s films, it was as if her presence and looks were enough to signify a constellation of traits (career woman

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Plate 21 Indochim (Regis Wargnier, 1992): Catherine Deneuve.

who remains 'feminine', determined but tragic mother, strong-willed but vulnerable lover) that allude to French women's changing parts, while her roles confined her to precisely this symbolic function. Indochim gave Deneuve a role which was both highly symbolic — her character, Eliane, adopts a young Vietnamese woman, in a clear metaphor of benign colonialism — as well as a real star leading role, around whom the whole film revolves. Indochim paved the way for Deneuve to a status so inalienable that it enabled her in the rest of the decade to play anything she wanted, including, paradoxically, the demolition of her own image and beauty. In the late 1990s, the dominant motif in French commentaries on Deneuve is that of an actress 'who takes risks', meaning both that she appears in films that are not likely to be box-office successes - for instance, Ruiz's Genealogies d'un crime (1997), Carax's Pola X and Garrel's Le Vent de la nuit (both 1999), and even Techine's Les Voleurs - and films, such as these and others like Place Vendome, which downplay or destroy her glamorous image. In terms of the first aspect, Deneuve plays a typical role for post-war French stars, that of a bridge between auteur and mainstream cinema, as discussed in Chapter I. The importance of this role for the survival of auteur cinema, but also for the acceptability

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of the star in cinephile circles, can be measured by the excessive praise Deneuve has received in the late 1990s for acting in such a way. The director and critic Olivier Assayas is typical when he says to Deneuve in Cahiers du cinema, There are small [films], medium ones, larger ones, more or less radical ones, etc., but you circulate between all of these with a fluidity I find admirable.'13 The popular film magazine Studio praised her in similar terms: 'Never has she been so present, inspiring directors as diverse as Carax, Aghion, Wargnier, Ruiz, Beauvois and Garrel.'14 Bringing the legitimacy of cinephilia to a popular comedy like Belle Maman, and the potential audience (or at least media awareness) of popular cinema to auteur films, Deneuve is the perfect lynch-pin of the French film industry. As Studio also put it, 'Rarely has an actress embodied to this extent French cinema.'15 It is this feature which enables her to play a high-profile ambassador role - accompanying Jack Lang, then Minister for Culture, to open a festival of French film in New York in 1983, being consulted by Prime Minister Edouard Balladur in 1993 on how to fight American imperialism during the GATT negotiations, collecting the Trophy for the Arts in New York in November 1998, and numerous other awards such as her Silver Bear for life achievement at Berlin in 1999. The way Deneuve's 1990s films play with her image is indicative of both the continuation of her earlier star persona and, at the same time, of the inevitable change that her ageing brings. Les Vokurs attempts to deglamorize Deneuve, who is seen in shapeless brown or beige clothes and glasses. Place Vendome goes further than most in this respect. Its deliberately obscure semi-thriller plot set in the world of diamond jewellers remains little more than a McGuffin (the film retains a number of Hitchcockian echoes, including the music and the story of a man attempting to remake the young woman played by Emmanuelle Seigner into a version of the older Deneuve - typically, difference and similarity between the two are signalled through a play on their hairstyle, a classic Trench bun', which is also a reference to Hitchcock's Vertigo). Indeed, Place Vendome unfolds as a story of the unmaking and the remaking of Deneuve's image. The film opens with Deneuve in a rehab clinic, where she is trying, not for the first time, to conquer alcoholism. Her hair is relatively unkempt and she is wearing a shapeless khaki sweater. Later, when back home, she goes to a dinner with her husband, dressed in the

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signature Deneuve ensemble: high heels, black evening dress, red lipstick, blonde hair done up. In the next scene, she is unkempt again, with a hangover. And so on throughout the film. Both aspects of her character allude to the core duality in Deneuve's star persona, the 'ice and fire' binary opposition being played as control and letting go. But it also acknowledges the ageing of the star in a way which, similar to that of Delon (see Chapter 7), is not without cruelty and yet which also celebrates her beauty by default. On several occasions she looks at herself in a mirror and expresses disgust. The spectator is thus constantly reminded of her 'normal' image, and of its unmaking. Similarly, the role of the younger woman (Seigner) is to remind us of what she was, yet by the very difference (Emmanuelle Seigner is not the young Deneuve), also of the uniqueness of Catherine Deneuve, the star, both past and present.

Biofilmography Born Catherine Dorleac, Paris, 22 October 1943. Married David Bailey (1965—72). Two children: Christian Vadim (born 1963, son of Roger Vadim) and Chiara Mastroianni (born 1972, daughter of Marcello Mastroianni). Main acting awards Etoile de Cristal de 1'Academic du Cinema, Best Actress, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, 1964 Cesar, Best Actress, Le Dernier metro, 1980 Cesar, Best Actress, Indochine, 1992 Venice, Best Actress, Place Vendome, 1998 Berlin, Silver Bear for life achievement, 1999 Films as actor

1956 Les Comediennes (Andre Hunnebelle) 1959 Les Petits chats (Jacques R. Villa) 1960 Les Portes claquent (Jacques Poitrenaud/Michel Fermaud) L'Homme a femmes (Jacques-Gerard Cornu) 1961 Les Parisiennes [ep. 'Sophie'] (Marc Allegret)

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. . . Et Satan conduit le bal/Satan Leads the Dance (Grisha M. Dabat) Le Vice et la vertu/Vice and Virtue (Roger Vadim, France/Italy) Vacances portugaises (Pierre Kast) 1963 Les Plus belles escroqueries du monde [ep. 'L'homme qui vendit la tour Eiffel'] (Claude Chabrol) 1964 Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (Jacques Demy) La Chasse a I'homme/The Gentle Art of Seduction (Edouard Molinaro, France/Italy) Un monsieur de compagnie/I Was a Male Sex Bomb (Philippe de Broca) La costanza della ragione/Heart in Mouth (Pasquale Festa Campanile, Italy/France) 1965 Repulsion (Roman Polanski, UK) Le Chant du monde (Marcel Camus) La Vie de chateau/A Matter of Resistance (Jean-Paul Rappeneau) Das Liebeskarussell [ep. 'Der Somnambule'] (Rolf Thiele, Austria) 1966 Les Creatures (Agnes Varda) 1967 Belle de jour (Luis Bunuel, France/Italy) Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (Jacques Demy) 1968 Benjamin ou les memoires d'un puceau/Benjamin (Michel Deville) Manon 70 (Jean Aurel, France/Italy) La Chamade/Heartbeat (Alain Cavalier, France/Italy) Mayerling (Terence Young, France/UK) 1969 The April Fools (Stuart Rosenberg, USA) La Sirene du Mississipi/The Mississippi Mermaid (Francois Truffaut) Tout peut arriver/Don't Be Blue [doc] (Philippe Labro) 1970 Tristana (Luis Bunuel, Spain/Italy/France) Peau d'dne/The Magic Donkey (Jacques Demy) Henri Langlois [doc] (Roberto Guerra) 1971 Qz n'arrive qu'aux autres/It Only Happens to Others (Nadine Trintignant, France/Italy) Liza/La Cagna (Marco Ferreri, France/Italy) 1972 Un flic/Dirty Money (Jean-Pierre Melville) 1973 L Evenement le plus important depuis que I'homme a marche sur la lune/The Most Important Event since Man First Set Foot on the Moon (Jacques Demy, France/Italy) Touche pas a la femme blanche (Marco Ferreri, Spain/Italy/France) 1962

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Fatti di gente perbene/Drama of the Rich (Mauro Bolognini, Italy/ France) La Femme awe bottes rouges/The Woman with Red Boots (Juan Bunuel) 1975 Zig-zig (Laszlo Szabo) L'Agression [Sombres vacances] (Gerard Pires) Hustle (Robert Aldrich, USA) Le Sauvage/Lovers Like Us (Jean-Paul Rappeneau, France/Italy) 1976 Si c'etait a refaire/Second Chance (Claude Lelouch) 1977 Anima persa/Lost Soul (Dino Risi, Italy/France) // casotto/The Beach Hut (Sergio Citti, Italy) L'Etat sauvage (Francis Girod) March or Die (Dick Richards, UK) 1978 L'Argent des autres/Other People's Money (Christian de Chalonge) Ecoute voir .. ./Look See ... (Hugo Santiago) 1979 A nous deux/Us Two (Claude Lelouch) Us sont grands ces petits/These Kids Are Grown Ups (Joel Santoni) La vita interiore/An Interior Life (Gianni Barcelloni, Italy) Courage, fui/ons/Courage — Let's Run (Yves Robert) 1980 Je vous aime (Claude Berri) Le Dernier metro/The Last Metro (Francois Truffaut) 1981 Le Choix des armes/Choice of Weapons (Alain Corneau) Hotel des Ameriques/Hotel of the Americas (Andre Techine) Reporters (Raymond Depardon) 1982 Le Choc (Robin Davis) 1983 L'Africain/The African (Philippe de Broca) The Hunger (Tony Scott, USA) 1984 Le Bon plaisir (Francis Girod) Fort Saganne (Alain Corneau) Paroles et musique/Love Songs (Elie Chouraqui, France/Canada) 1985 Speriamo che sia femmina/Let's Hope It's a Girl (Mario Monicelli, Italy/France) 1986 Le Lieu du crime/The Scene of the Crime (Andre Techine) 1987 Agent trouble/Trouble Agent (Jean-Pierre Mocky) 1988 Drole d'endroit pour une rencontre/A Strange Place to Meet (Francois Dupeyron) Frequence meurtre/FM — Frequency Murder (Elisabeth Rappeneau) 1989 Helmut Newton: Frames from the Edge (Adrian Maben, Denmark) 1974

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1990 Fleur de rubis (Jean-Pierre Mocky) 1991 La Reine blanche/The White Queen (Jean-Loup Hubert) 1992 Indochine (Regis Wargnier) Contre I'oubli/Against Oblivion [series of shorts] (various directors) 1993 Ma saison preferee/My Favourite Season (Andre Techine) Les Demoiselles ont eu 25 ans [doc] (Agnes Varda) 1994 La Partie d'echecs/The Chess Game (Yves Hanchar, France/Belgium) 1995 O convento/The Convent (Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal/France) Les Cent et une nuits de Simon Cinema (Agnes Varda, France/UK) L'Univers de Jacques Demy/The World of Jacques Demy [doc] (Agnes Varda) 1996 Les Voleurs (Andre Techine) 1997 Genealogies d'un crime (Raul Ruiz) 1998 Place Vendome (Nicole Garcia) 1999 Pola X (Leos Carax) Belle Maman (Gabriel Aghion) Le Temps retrouve/Time Regained (Raul Ruiz) Le Vent de la nuit (Philippe Garrel) A carta/The Letter [La Lettre] (Manoel de Oliveira, France/ Portugal/Spain) 2000 Est-Ouest/'East-West (Regis Wargnier) Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier, Denmark/Sweden) Notes 1. Catalogue, Accessoires municipalises, 1999. The Deneuve model costs the same price as the Bardot model (FF 3,750). From 2000, a new model, based on model Laetitia Casta, is available too. 2. Vanity Fair, April 1999, p. 164, includes Deneuve as 'the lioness', along with Jean-Paul Belmondo, 'the idol' (p. 165) and Jean Reno, 'the rascal' (p. 184), as the only French actors in the Hollywood 'Hall of Fame'. 3. In 1998-9, among others, both Studio Magazine (October 1998) and Cahiers du cinema (May 1999) ran extended interviews and celebratory pieces coinciding with the release of Pola X, Le Temps retrouve and Belle Maman. 4. Jean-Pierre Bacri, 'Deneuve n'est pas une divinite vivante', L'Evenement du jeudi, 8-14 October 1998 p. 92. 5. Elk, 16 December 1996. 6. Catherine Deneuve, L'elegance francaise au cinema, exhibition catalogue,

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Musee de la Mode et du Costume, Palais Galliera, 1988. 7. This is the title of Molly Haskell's early classic feminist study of the representation of women in the cinema: From Reverence to Rape (Haskell, 1974). 8. Catherine Deneuve, 'Yves, 1'elegance et moi', Elle, 16 December 1996, p. 108. 9. Le Nouvel Observateur, 5 April 1971. 10. The Advocate, July 1995, cover. 11. Ibid., p. 53. 12. Ibid., p. 51. 13. Olivier Assayas, interview with Catherine Deneuve, Cahiers du cinema, May 1999, p. 57. 14. Studio Magazine, October 1998, p. 76. 15. Ibid.

CHAPTER 9

Gerard Depardieu The axiom of confemporary French cinema

Apart from Brigitte Bardot and Max Linder, Gerard Depardieu is the only French star to achieve true global stardom. He is as well known to cinephiles as the Jean Gabin of the 1930s, and as much of a popular international icon of Frenchness as Maurice Chevalier used to be, especially since Jean de Florette (1986), Cyrano de Bergemc and Green Card (both 1990). As Angus Finney says, 'he is unquestionably the biggest non-English-speaking film star that the European industry has to offer' (Finney, 1994, p. 23). The Guardian of 10 March 1995 published a poll in which Depardieu was the only non Englishspeaking star among the top ten of both critics and readers. Depardieu has been at the top of the French box-office since 1985 as well as the highest paid French star for some time, with an average of FFlOm per film in the late 1990s.1 As the newspaper Le Monde put it in March 1999, The French film industry revolves around Depardieu' . . . He is the only quality French star who lasts.'2 Depardieu, who has made 100 films in under thirty years, has stupefying energy and is an outstandingly talented and versatile performer. But these assets are only preconditions for his immense stardom. The purpose of this chapter is to try to account for Depardieu's exceptional status and key role in contemporary French cinema.

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Gerard Depardieu's life is by now the stuff of legend, retold in massive press coverage and numerous biographies (among others: Chazal, 1982; Chutkow, 1994; Dazat, 1988; Gonzalez, 1985; Gray, 1991). He was born into a working-class family in Chateauroux, in central France, in 1948. An attraction to the theatre rescued him from a delinquent adolescence, providing the education that school had failed to give him. The theatre led to Paris, where from 1967 he studied acting with the reputed JeanLaurent Cochet, and later worked with avant-garde stage director Claude Regy. This experience introduced him to a whole set of literary texts and taught him to master both his voice (he had had speech problems) and his body. Depardieu's theatrical training is the foundation of his performance style, especially his ability to modulate his voice across a huge range of texts and registers, and a surprisingly graceful use of his bulky physique. At that time, he also came into contact with the satirical cafe-theatre. Depardieu's immediately obvious talent meant that despite his 'unconventional' looks, he started acting in popular comedies and thrillers in 1971 and was noticed by the likes of Marguerite Duras (Nathalie Granger, 1973). Les Valseuses (1973) turned him into the star of the post-1968 generation: young, virile and anti-conformist. His rebellious macho persona, honed in this film, worked equally well in auteur films such as Loulou (1980), Man oncle d'Amerique (1980) and Police (1985) and popular comedies (Les Fugitifs, 1986; Tenue de soiree, 1986; Les Anges gardiens, 1995), and he would continue to straddle both ends of the film spectrum throughout his career: thus, in 1999 he starred in both Asterix et Obelix contre Cesar (the most expensive French film ever made, with a budget of FF240m) and his own modest feature, Un pont entre deux rives. Like Delon and Belmondo, Depardieu also spread his activities: he became involved in theatre and film production, winemaking, business and political ventures. Spreading physically, too, with middle age, he gravitated via the success of Jean de Florette in 1986 and especially of Cyrano de Bergerac in 1990 to a series of heritage movies in which he played historical figures, adding a new layer to his screen image. Depardieu's historical parts, from Danton to Balzac, literalize his star status as a national symbol, exported through films such as Green Card, 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992) and The Man in the Iron Mask (1998). The late 1990s also saw him move into television, with the spectacularly successful adaptation of Alexandre Dumas's Le Comte de

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Monte-Cristo (1998), which attracted a record 12 million spectators in France and was — exceptionally for non-English-speaking television — sold to the American network HBO. Depardieu's brilliant career runs parallel to a more rocky lifestyle, in line with his star persona. Boys will be boys: the boisterous, larger than life, amiable macho periodically gets into trouble. His adolescent escapades came back to haunt him when the American media attacked him in 1991 for his alleged involvement in a rape in Chateauroux. Although the allegation was partly based on a linguistic misunderstanding,3 the media scandal which ensued probably cost him the best actor Oscar for Cyrano de Bergerac for which he had been nominated. Depardieu's trajectory features fallings-out and reconciliations with directors such as Maurice Pialat, a complicated love life, gargantuan eating and drinking, two drink-driving convictions (in 1990 and 1998) and controversial involvements in politics and business.4 This came to a head in 1998 when Depardieu was threatened with the removal of his Legion d'honneur as a result of his second drink-driving offence and of his support of Slovakian presidential candidate Vladimir Meciar. Nevertheless, as the weekly Marianne put it, Depardieu's Legion d'honneur had been conferred not for a blameless lifestyle but for 'the impact that his acting talent has on foreign trade'.5 It is to Depardieu's talent and his impact on French cinema that I now turn.

Male stardom in post-war French cinema: the comic imperative Gerard Depardieu's consistent top box-office performance since 1985 is testimony to his overall prominence, in part due to heritage films such as Cyrano de Bergerac. It is, however, grounded in his comic films. Already in the 1930s, while Poetic Realist films privileged alienated male workers (archetypally played by Jean Gabin), the bulk of popular cinema relied on comic male stars like Georges Milton, Bach, Fernandel and Raimu. While the French critical pantheon consists of avant-garde and dramatic auteur films, box-office charts show that to be popular a French male star has to work in comedy. Even though the end of family comedy is regularly predicted, record-breaking French hits such as Les Visiteurs (1993) and Asterix et Obelix contre Cesar continue to be comedies.

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Plate 22 Loulou (Maurice Pialat, 1980): Isabelle Huppert and Gerard Depardieu.

Comedy has consistently functioned as a training ground and rite of passage for most French male stars, even those who are best known for their (melo)dramatic repertoire, such as Cabin and Montand, and indeed Depardieu, among whose biggest box-office hits, alongside Jean de Florette and Cyrano de Bergerac, are his three comedies directed by Francis Veber and co-starring Pierre Richard: La Chevre (1981), Les Comperes (1983) and Les Fugitifs (1986).6 The importance of comedy in relation to male stars goes beyond casting. In French comedy, stars establish and perpetuate a closeness to their audience, and signs of social identity,

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despite the common critical charge that mainstream French comedy is escapist. For whereas French female stars have only been able to develop sexual types (Musidora, 'the vamp', Viviane Romance, 'the bitch', Brigitte Bardot, 'the sex kitten', Catherine Deneuve, 'the ice maiden', Juliette Binoche, 'the emotional gamine'), male stars have had the latitude to create socially coded types and stereotypes. The derision aimed at social figures or institutions is, to be sure, politically limited, which is why French comedy is often criticized for being 'too nice' (Aude, 1989). However, major French comic types, as embodied by stars, evolved at focal points of social change or unease. For instance, Fernandel in the 1930s epitomized incompetent soldiery in the comique troupier films when the competence of the French army was severely in question but when to challenge it in serious film was rendered impossible because of censorship. In the 1950s and 1960s, Bourvil popularized the country bumpkin in Paris, against the backdrop of massive population shifts from the country to large cities. Comic stars like de Funes (see Chapter 6), Bourvil and Fernandel, through comic performance of social types, offered the audience a fantasized negative caricature of national identity in a carnivalesque world of social and sexual regression and excess permitted by the genre. This excess is channelled through grotesque physical expression - de Funes's gesticulations and grimaces, Fernandel's horse-like laugh, Bourvil's Village idiot' expression - but set within the recognizable everyday world, and ultimately redeemed and valorized by the charisma of the stars. Depardieu's comic persona is his least known outside France. Right from the start, he combined a burlesque physical demeanour with a specific social identity, which I will call the 'comic loubard' (a loubard is a proletarian petty hoodlum). Predicated on his early life in working-class Chateauroux, Depardieu's comic loubard is defined in performance terms by an aggressive, and yet agile, display of his massive, thick-set body. Shots emphasize his heavy, flat-footed walk and swaggering shoulders. Frequent flipping of the head highlights lanky, longish (sometimes greasy) hair; insolent turn of voice and laugh are punctuated by a belligerent jutting chin which, with a boxer's irregular nose, serves to compose a recognizably 'tough' face. Depardieu's persona is also one which, in comic as in dramatic mode, links a class identity shaped by body, gestures and voice (Bourdieu, 1979) to sexual display. Epitomized in Les Valseuses -

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where, for instance, a scene in which he is confronted by a supermarket manager capitalizes on the nimble choreography of his gestures - this persona is found right from the beginning of his career in small parts, in films like Le Tueur (1972) and L'Affaire Dominici (1972), and later others such as Inspecteur La Bavure (1980) and Les Fugitifs. Depardieu's comic loubard evolved along two parallel axes: a social and a sexual one. The social axis fused a socio-cultural climate, the post-1968 libertarian ethos, with new trends in comic performance, crystallized in the emergence of cafe-theatre. Working from small Parisian theatres doubling up as cafes, of which the most famous were the Cafe de la Gare and the Splendid, the writers and performers of cafe-theatre deployed a humorous, 'alternative' attack on the French establishment based on 1968-inspired new sexual mores and the new cultural identity of the youth generation. They were against 'the system', represented by the right-wing regimes of Georges Pompidou and Valery Giscard d'Estaing, and, more pervasively, the older generation. Cafe-theatre performers went on to sustain modern French film comedy, as performers (Coluche, Miou-Miou, Patrick Dewaere, Josiane Balasko, Michel Blanc, Gerard Jugnot, Thierry Lhermitte, Dominique Lavanant, Christian Clavier) and writers/directors like Patrice Leconte, Balasko and Jugnot. Even though he was not initially directly involved in cafe-theatre, Depardieu's comic loubard owes a lot to it. In Les Valseuses,7 Depardieu and Dewaere follow a picaresque trail through France, encountering women in a series of scenes which exemplify both Blier's misogyny and the limitations of libertarianism as far as women are concerned. The Depardieu character's main function is to lead the male pair into comic confrontations with middle-aged representatives of the social order: a hairdresser, a supermarket manager, a doctor, a farmer, middle-class parents. These confrontations make sense visually and linguistically. As his opponents wear suits and ties or the uniform of their status, Depardieu exhibits both his young, tough loubard''s 'class body' and the 1970s signs of male youth dissent: long hair, flares and a leather jacket. Les Valseuses, in line with the new naturalism of 1970s French cinema and the semi-improvisational performance style of cafe-theatre, also makes widespread use of slang. The perceived closeness, at that point, of Depardieu the star to Depardieu the man in terms of class origins added authenticity to what had become the new orthodoxy in French cinematic performance styles.

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Les Valseuses built on elements of the comic loubard persona already present in previous films. It made them cohere in a particularly successful way, fixing this persona in such a way that from then on, despite Depardieu's versatility, and his avowed desire to 'escape [his] Les Valseuses image',8 subsequent films for a long time worked as declensions on it, whether they be reinforcement, allusion or denial. This continuity has to do with his physique and performance as well as with the nature of the loubard image. In the fitness-obsessed late twentieth century, Depardieu's departure from the slim and fit ideal 'speaks' a proletarian identity: hearty food and red wine rather than bourgeois nouvelk cuisine. The marginality of the loubard also allows for social mobility, while hanging on to the ordinariness of the popular, a familiar trajectory with stars. Thus, in later comedies such as the Veber-Richard trilogy, while the Depardieu characters are varied in terms of occupation, the star's performance as loubard is still at their core. In Les Fugitifs, Depardieu plays an ex-convict determined to go straight, who accidentally gets embroiled in a bank robbery botched by Pierre Richard. When he comes out of the bank as Richard's hostage, he is assumed to be the criminal by the police who know him, but he also slips with ease into the hoodlum's gestures. Humour partly derives from the contrast between character definition and star performance signs, in which the latter always win. In Les Comperes, Depardieu is a journalist who accidentally gets involved in finding Richard's - or possibly his - son. Again, it is his behaviour as a heavy, similar to that of his detective character in La Chevre, which gets results, over and above his characterization. In Le Sucre (1978), a political satire on the stock market, Depardieu surprisingly plays a young aristocrat who works for a crooked stockbroker. But his movements (he gets into fights), his clothes (for instance, a black leather blouson), his hair, which is longer than that of the other men, and his speech all connote the comic loubard. As the film progresses, he teams up with a small stock-holder (Jean Carmet) against his employers, a move which makes sense in relation to Depardieu's star persona but contradicts his narrative role. The sexual axis of Depardieu's comic loubard image, as with earlier comic stars, involves a play on regression and emasculation, in which his body and performance provide the 'evidence' of heterosexual virility (implied in the social image of the loubard), against narrative attempts at

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undermining it. Thus, many Depardieu comedies hinge on his physical maiming and/or symbolic emasculation. In one of the funniest scenes in Inspecteur La Bavure (in which Colikhe plays the eponymous incompetent policeman), Depardieu is in hospital bandaged from head to foot, groaning in frustration as a woman (Dominique Lavanant) calls him 'impotent' on television, whereas he is in fact a notorious womanizer. In Les Fugitifs, he is shot in the thigh by Pierre Richard, and terrified to find that he is being operated on by a vet (Jean Carmet). Les Valseuses and Tenue de soiree (1986, directed by Blier) most explicitly exploit this feature of the Depardieu comic persona. In each film, Depardieu forces sex on to another man. Humour derives from the contrast between the narrative event of a homosexual encounter — based on the homophobic assumption that to be gay is funny in itself — and the star persona affirming heterosexual masculinity. Homosexuality is equated with sodomy and conceived as a humiliation of the passive partner (Marshall, 1987, p. 241). This point is understated in Les Valseuses but systematically exploited in Tenue de soiree: for example, in the seduction of Michel Blanc, in which Depardieu parades his 'beefcake' body in leopard-skin pants, and the ending with Depardieu and Blanc in drag. Depardieu's representation of heterosexual masculinity is shored up in these comedies by his consistent teaming with a man who is coded as less socially skilled, less physically competent and less attractive to women: Dewaere in Les Valseuses, Coluche in Inspecteur La Bavure, Richard in the Veber trilogy and Blanc in Tenue de soiree. The popularity of Depardieu's comic masculinity, especially in its combination of sexual explicitness and misogyny, can be partly explained by its intertexts in other forms of French popular culture. There are literary antecedents, going back to Rabelais, in which maleoriented sexuality is at the core of the carnivalesque world. In the cinema, the post-1968 era made sexual visual display and verbal explicitness possible, leading to the explosion of porn film. Such display also became a core element of strip-cartoons, some of them, like those of Reiser and Wolinski, explicitly left-wing. Another reference point for the Depardieu comic-sexual persona, especially in the Blier films, but also in the strange wartime comedy Rene la Canne (1976), is the immensely successful comic thriller oeuvre of Frederic Dard, published since the 1950s under the name of his hero San Antonio. Couched in obscene

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slang, the San Antonio novels relentlessly foreground male sexuality through a central comic pair: a handsome stud (San Antonio) and his grotesque sidekick (Berurier), of whom, in a way, Depardieu's comic loubard is a fusion. The success of these texts in French popular culture underscores the acceptability of male sexual behaviour considered abusive in other cultures, at least in representations. This gap is at the heart of the rape affair. Depardieu's references to the rape, reported by Time magazine on 4 February 1991, sparked off a huge polemic in America; they had been mentioned in Lui in November 1980 with no repercussions in France.9 As Depardieu reached middle age, the comic loubard persona, predominantly a young image, inevitably faded, turning into the figure of the beauf, both its opposite and logical conclusion. The beauf (short for beau-frere, 'brother-in-law') is an expression that has entered the French language, based on a 1960s strip-cartoon character by Cabu. The beauf is a caricatural image of working-class, middle-aged male vulgarity. In the late 1980s and 1990s, the slide from comic loubard to beauf appeared in some Depardieu comedies, now often put to the service of anarchic right-wing narratives: for example, in Uranus (1990), Merci la vie (1991), Les Anges gardiens (1995) and XXL (1997). What saves Depardieu's later comic persona from the vulgar but also fascist excesses of the beauf is his comic talent, his physical grace and the memory of the proletarian comic loubard. As the flip side of this comic strand, from the start of his career Depardieu developed the figure of the 'tragic' loubard, crystallized in Maurice Pialat's Loulou (1980) and pastiched in Jean-Jacques Beineix's La Lune dans le caniveau (1983). This figure of suffering marginality was also coded with strong erotic appeal and became key to French auteur cinema from the 1970s.

Auteur cinema's suffering macho Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Fernandel, de Funes and Bourvil offered French audiences variations on masculinity as incompetence and lack of control (though ultimately saved by cunning), while Belmondo and Delon incarnated a valorizing portrayal of virile control and

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strength. These contrasting versions of masculinity echoed the polarized genre structure of the French popular cinema of that period, in which both comedy and the thriller flourished. From the 1970s, French cinema witnessed a significant narrowing of its popular base which affected both genre and stardom. While de Funes, Fernandel and Bourvil sustained their stardom within popular genres to the end of their lives, this became increasingly difficult in the 1980s and 1990s, as Delon and Belmondo's waning careers show (see Chapters 6 and 7). The need to feature in domestic comedies has been a precondition of major stardom in France for men, but so has the ability to cross over to auteur cinema. The latter provides cultural legitimacy, but also media exposure via festivals, award ceremonies, television and press coverage. This is the path chosen by the prize-festooned Depardieu, who has on several occasions emphasized his desire for a 'wider audience base'.10 In terms of his star image, this means his investment in the reverse mirror image of his comic macho men, that of 'tragic' masculinity in crisis. From the beginning of his career, when he appeared in Marguerite Duras's Nathalie Granger as a funny and touching washing-machine salesman, Depardieu has pursued an active career in auteur cinema. As with his work in comedy, there has, inevitably, been an evolution in his parts and in his status vis-a-vis the directors. While Duras cast an unknown in Nathalie Granger, by the time of Le Camion (1977), she was using a 'recognizable icon' (Hill, 1993, p. 16). By the 1980s, and especially after 1986, the 'miracle Depardieu year',11 with the triple triumph of Les Fugitifs, Jean de Florette and Tenue de soiree, Depardieu, by his presence (as well as his co-producing), could single-handedly ensure the making of a first film by an unknown director, such as Francois Dupeyron for Drole d'endroit pour une rencontre (1988, co-starring Catherine Deneuve). And whereas New Wave directors in the 1950s and early 1960s rejected mainstream stars, preferring to create their own alternative star system (see Chapter 5), the auteurs of the 1970s and beyond have been queuing up for Depardieu. Truffaut, for instance, who had declared in 1959 that he would never use stars like Cabin, Fernandel or Michele Morgan, because 'they are dangerous artists who make decisions on the script or change it if they don't like it',12 featured Depardieu — who certainly would have been in a position to do so — in Le Dernier metro (1980) and La Femme d'a cote (1981). This shows us that

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just as mainstream French stars now need auteur cinema, auteur cinema needs them in a way it did not in the 1950s and 1960s. But also, Depardieu's presence in the work of very distinct filmmakers - from Duras to Blier, Resnais to Sautet, Pialat to Godard - is traditionally ascribed to his versatility. But Depardieu's continued presence in auteur films also points to the suitability of his star image for post-1970 French auteur cinema, in particular his romanticization of narcissistic suffering and his play on sexual ambiguity. Depardieu's dramatic star persona is that of the 'suffering macho', a figure of misogynistic virility who is simultaneously in crisis. The intense, suffering male hero has a long history in French culture and cinema, and Depardieu has predecessors here too, from Gabin to Montand and Delon, especially in his juxtaposition of proletarian-ness and criminality (it also has American equivalents, notably Robert de Niro in Scorsese's work). The figure of the suffering male is also embedded within French culture. The New Wave turned the melodramatic patriarch of the classical cinema into the romantically anxious young man and introduced a narcissistic dimension into male suffering. Depardieu merged these diverse histories while providing the added value of class authenticity necessary to the context of the more naturalistic 1970s. Key films here include Claude Sautet's Vincent, Franpois, Paul et les autres (1974), in which Depardieu figures in a minor role as a young boxer as the symbolic heir to the group of troubled patriarchs played by Montand, Serge Reggiani and Michel Piccoli, and especially Loulou (1980). The latter film crystallized the early Depardieu type of suffering macho in such an acute form (in the same way as Les Valseuses epitomized the comic loubard) that it is worth examining in detail. For a start, Loulou is not an innocent title. As well as being a working-class male nickname (short for Louis or Jean-Louis), it echoes the word loubard. Pialat's film depicts the meeting of Depardieu's working-class tearaway with a middle-class young woman played by Isabelle Huppert; this gender/class encounter is pursued in various forms throughout Depardieu's career: for instance, with Catherine Deneuve in Le Dernier metro, described by Depardieu as the meeting of 'a peasant with strong hands' with a 'classy and bourgeois idol' (Depardieu, 1988, p. 122), and again with Deneuve in Fort Saganne (1984). Though the narrative line of Loulou inadequately describes the film, which is more concerned with the

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raw, semi-verite, depiction of his milieu through a series of disjointed scenes, it roughly follows the course of the two protagonists' strong sexual attraction, leading Huppert to leave her middle-class husband. She becomes pregnant and has an abortion; the film ends on the uncertain future of their relationship. Loulou's depiction of a tormented masculinity through the Depardieu character is romantically 'existential' (he is devastated at the loss of his prospective fatherhood) and class-bound: the film clearly embeds his violence in his milieu. His discontent is not shown to result from political class awareness, but his milieu injects authenticity into his alienation. In the same way, it is no accident that in the preface to Depardieu's autobiographical Lettres volees (1988, a poorly written but interesting reconstruction of his life), the editor of the letters' characterizes Depardieu, alongside his identity as primeval 'cave man', as in a direct line from some of the hallowed heroes of French literature. In particular, he singles out Jean Valjean, from Victor Hugo's Les Misembles, whose suffering is individual and social. Loulou/Depardieu is also an object of beauty, not in a traditional, romance-inspired, woman-oriented way (Gerard Philipe, the young Alain Delon), but in the sense of a fetishized, fantasized, class identity. His is the rougher beauty of the lower depths, personified by his intense physical presence (as with the young Gabin), his lack of conventional physical beauty adding another layer of authenticity. In this film, as in other roles, his performance makes use of the bulk of his body as 'metaphysical' weight, with the added intensity of a minimalist acting style, as opposed to the animation of the comedies. Wearing a leather blouson like Cabin's suicidal hero in Le Jour se leve, he is another doomed 'Oedipus in a cloth cap' (Bazin, 1983, pp. 123-4), even if, by 1980, the referential proletariat of this fantasy figure has become increasingly marginalized, and Loulou's rapport with his family and community is more oblique. But the mythic strength of this doomed populist hero, partly because of its accumulated layers in French film history, is such that it informs a great deal of subsequent Depardieu parts, and endures through performance continuities. Fort Saganne, for instance, casts this figure in a nostalgic light. In a direct reference to the Gabin character of Gueule d'amour (Jean Gremillon, 1937), Depardieu plays a Spahi officer of popular origins in the pre-World War I Sahara, who is, again, of

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particular erotic attraction to bourgeois women. By virtue of his uniform, as in Gueule d'amour, the display of the male hero as object of desire is emphasized, but the desire is also for the fantasy of the popular origins which he represents, as it is in La Lune dans k caniveau. In Pialat's Police (1985), Depardieu is a policeman, theoretically on the other side of the tracks from the immigrant working-class milieu he is investigating. It is clear, however, that despite his law-enforcing status vis-a-vis clearly oppressed 'deviants', he is the focus of angst and suffering, theirs only a background. At the end of the film, after the female protagonist Noria (Sophie Marceau) leaves him to go back to her milieu (and possible death), the camera lingers on him, not her. In a cinematically overdetermined night scene, the camera follows his silhouette through a Parisian cityscape (a street, a railway bridge), expressing his sadness and solitude. Throughout the film, he has been shot behind windows, bars and railings. Later, in his home, the camera remains on his vacant face, in a very long take which closes the film, ending on a freeze-frame over which classical music is heard. At this point, the star image of the suffering macho clearly replaces the character. The French auteur cinema, devoted to forms of psychological realism as well as abstract explorations of the human condition, can thus make good use of Depardieu's social-existential tragic persona. In Mon oncle d'Amerique (1980), he attempts suicide because of work-related stress, but his anxieties have a wider resonance than that of his white-collar job, as shown by Resnais's careful inscription of his character's childhood as a farmer's son, and visual identification with the 1930s Gabin through mini flashbacks from Cabin's films. In Le Choix des arm.es (1981), Depardieu's criminality is connected to his loubard origins. His ability to embody such figures of crisis-ridden masculinity, at least up to Pialat's Sous le soleil de Satan (in which he plays a tortured priest), is apt for an auteur cinema which has a stake in exploring 'difficult' characters and unhappiness, if only to distinguish itself from popular genres such as comedy. Further than that, Depardieu's persona of tormented malehood has been used as a mirror image of some auteurs, including Blier and Pialat. As the older Depardieu plays the hero of Pialat's autobiographical Le Garpu (1995), Pialat remarked, 'He's ended up looking like me.'13 Adding to this complex image is Depardieu's ambivalent depiction of sexuality, another reason for his popularity in an auteur cinema which

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exalts ambiguity. While in many ways Depardieu represents a traditional vision of aggressive French machismo (from Les Valseuses to Uranus, and Cyrano de Bergemc's 1990 swaggering Gascon), one of the most common descriptions of his screen image as well as his behaviour as a performer, to the extent that it has become a cliche, is that of his 'femininity' - as Cahiers du cinema put it, 'a fragile man, with a flaw in his personality, a very feminine character in the end'.14 As director and star of Tartuffe, Depardieu made the eponymous character into a camp, sexually ambiguous figure, soft spoken and sporting eye make-up and lipstick. In Lettres volees, he extravagantly praises men (including Francois Mitterrand) for their 'feminine side', while his highest compliment for the women he admires, such as Catherine Deneuve, is their Virile' qualities. Beyond the fact that sexual ambivalence and gender-bending are fashionable (and Depardieu has been analysed by three analysts, including Jacques Lacan), what are we to make of such discourses? Is Depardieu's star persona truly evidence of the breaking down of gender boundaries? If so, how does this relate to the misogynistic aspects of his image? In French cinema, masculinity is not traditionally defined as violently opposed to femininity (as in, say, the American Western) but as incorporating values normally ascribed to femininity, such as gentleness, caring and nurturing. This takes us back to the loving fathers of the French classical cinema and the gentleness expressed by male characters towards each other in male-bonding narratives. If we also take into account the high value placed on amorous relations in French culture, we can understand why, as Michele Sarde argues, French men are perceived (at least in the USA) as 'feminized', if not effeminate (Sarde, 1983, p. 11). The propensity of male characters in French cinema to evoke suffering may be recast in the light of this alignment with femininity. In Depardieu's case, this takes two forms: victim roles and the performance of weakness. The maiming and symbolic emasculation noted in Depardieu's comedies is equally found in his dramatic roles, most obviously in The Last Woman (1976), in which he castrates himself with an electric carving knife as an expression of his impotence in the face of feminism. Other films more subtly position him as a victim, allegorizing fears of sexual/social impotence: for instance, in Mon oncle d'Amerique, Danton (1982), Le Retour de Martin Guerre (1982), Jean de Florette, Cyrano

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de Bergemc. In performance terms, this is expressed by the frequent impairment of his body (hunchback in Jean de Florette, decapitated in Danton, sexually impotent at the beginning of Le Retour de Martin Guerre) and the effective use of his voice, its softness and subtle modulations providing a contrast to the size of his body. The 'feminized' aspect of Depardieu's image extends to his invasion of the traditional topographies of femininity such as domestic spaces, as in Tenue de soiree. Many couples at the centre of Depardieu's narratives are formed with another man, from Les Valseuses to Cyrano de Bergerac, reconstituting a symbolic male family unit, as in many of the comedies. Ultimately though, this gender displacement does not entail changes in either casting patterns, or the values associated with femininity and masculinity, which are left at their most traditional (male = active, female = passive). The occupying of feminine-identified spaces not only leads to the narrative marginalization of women but also to a widening of the psychological base of Depardieu's characters, and, not negligibly, the number and importance of the parts he can play. In Mon pere, ce hews, for instance, he is, like many French male stars before him, both father and mother to his daughter in the same way as, in Les Comperes and Les Fugitifs, he and Richard form an all-male parental couple to a child. Such a fantasy of androgynous completeness has a long history in French literature, going back to Rousseau and the Romantics (Coquillat, 1982, pp. 153-60). It is taken up by both popular and auteur cinema, which not only marginalize women but also condone their oppression (see the Blier films, Tous les matins du monde, Mon pere, ce hews, Elisa). Here, an old pattern is brought up to date by Depardieu, taking on arguably an added resonance in the context of a backlash against feminism. Like Gabin in the 1940s and 1950s, Depardieu since the mid1980s has occupied the place of the simultaneously nurturing and erotic father figure: Elisa, co-starring 'sex kitten' Vanessa Paradis, foregrounds this theme with a clear incestuous slant. Depardieu's repeated stress on his 'femininity' also adds a modish sexual aura. His sexual identity appears to go beyond that of a mere heterosexual man, although he is, also, unambiguously that. The successful Trap belle pour toi (1989) is another good illustration of Depardieu's adoption of femininity, but also of how this serves to erase other differences. He plays a garage owner in Marseilles, married to the

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ravishingly beautiful Florence (Carole Bouquet), who falls in love with his 'homely' secretary Colette (Josiane Balasko - 'homely' is how the subtitles coyly translate the funnier but more vicious French slang expressions designating supposedly ugly women, such as tarte [lit: tart as in pastry] and boudin [lit: black pudding, or turd]). Though the film is funny, it is meant to be understood as a serious statement on male suffering, underlined by the use of Schubert on the soundtrack. Depardieu, physically fulfils his function as macho stud ('I have never been so well fucked', says Colette) and is the locus of suffering, as he is finally abandoned by both women. We hardly need Colette to say, 'He is fragile, underneath his robust appearance'. The discourse of male fragility conveniently erases that of gender and class power. Through the choice of actresses, beauty and attractiveness are shown as classbound. Carole Bouquet (who, like Deneuve, advertises high-class cosmetics) is the image of grand-bourgeois beauty, while Josiane Balasko (a comic actress and filmmaker from the cafe-theatre tradition) represents proletarian-ness. But if Colette is shown to be attractive to Depardieu because of her proletarian-ness, the film at the same time (for instance, through the language used to describe her) puts her down for being so. Depardieu, on the other hand, through his accumulated image from the past, can encompass proletarian-ness and transcend it, through his tragic suffering. Ms proleterian-ness is attractive to the bourgeois woman, without being condemned or belittled. Finally, as the international success of Trap belle pour toi shows, Depardieu's added sexual aura, which comes from his representation of sexual ambivalence, updates the cliche of the Frenchman as bearer of 'earthy' virility and of romance, something which has not harmed his export value.

Heritage and export: our 'Gege' vs 'Mister Dipardiou'15 Depardieu's middle age corresponded to the success of what are known in France as 'cultural super-productions' and in English-speaking countries as heritage cinema. After early examples such as 1900, Le Retour de Martin Guerre, Danton and Fort Saganne, the genre really took off, as far as Depardieu is concerned, with Jean de Florette, which was then

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followed by Camille Claudel, Cyrano de Bergerac, Tons les matins du monde, Germinal, Le Colonel Chabert and, for television, Le Comte de Monte-Cristo and Balzac - some of Depardieu's and France's biggest international hits. In the face of global image culture (television, advertisements, music videos), heritage films strategically place cinematic and national specificity on the agenda. The accent is on high production values, a mise-en-scene which stresses beautiful landscape (Jean de Florette), decor and costumes (Cyrano de Bergerac), music (Tons les matins du monde) and the French language. Heritage films foreground French culture and history for a mainstream audience. They fulfil the 'middle-brow' function of the popular literary classics on which they are often based, as in Cyrano de Bergerac and Germinal (1993). Le Colonel Chabert, for instance, perfectly merges culture and history, with Balzac's tale set at the time of the Napoleonic wars. Internationally, the successful French heritage films must offer a Janus-faced vision of Frenchness, attractive to the home audience and consumable abroad, especially in the USA. Noel Burch has argued that the world-wide success of Cyrano de Bergerac was based on a misunderstanding: In France the success of the film was the result of erasing the theatricality of the text, whereas abroad Cyrano was sold on the image of the historic values of France. ... Rappeneau became the itinerant ambassador of French culture in the world.16 Although I disagree with Burch's notion of 'erasing the theatricality of the text', I would extend his insight about the duality of these films to say that with heritage films Depardieu became the 'itinerant ambassador of French culture'.

Depardieu reached the heritage cycle with a strong star persona which at first sight seemed ill-adapted to it. The spectacular nature of heritage pictures contrasts with the naturalism of most of his films, and the artificiality of incarnating well-known historical figures, with their durable 'traces' (Comolli, 1978, p. 44), clashed with the 'authenticity' of Depardieu's loubard image. Depardieu, however, turned out to be perfect for the heritage genre, which, indeed, propelled his stardom into a new global phase. The 'larger-than-life' aspect of his persona, first of all, fits roles which are implicitly or explicitly about fame, display and acting — in short, about stardom. Among others, Le Retour de Martin Guerre rests

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on the performance of identity (true or false), Cyrano de Bergerac on pretence, acting and the beauty of literature. Depardieu's physical and moral expansiveness, his various excesses, are frequently compared to those of the famous French figures he has incarnated, whether real or fictional: Rodin, Balzac, Cyrano de Bergerac, Porthos, Danton and Obelix. There are plans for starring roles in Victor Hugo's Les Miserabks and Notre-Dame de Paris, and a film in which he would play General de Gaulle.17 Jean-Paul Rappeneau, the director of Cyrano de Bergerac, said that he picked Depardieu because 'he can express perfectly both sides of the character: the proud and brilliant personality, alongside the suffering soul'.18 This remark is very apt for Cyrano, a combination of comic braggadocio and romantic suffering, but it would equally apply to Danton, Jean de Florette and most of Depardieu's heritage films. These tend to be about the split between the public and the private, about outside strength and inner weakness, often figured as the 'masculinefeminine' dichotomy evoked above. In Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, Depardieu incarnates the hero Edmond Dantes, a victim of injustice who takes spectacular revenge, but he said that 'what interests me in the character is the hidden pain'.19 Depardieu's star persona also matches the genre's merging of roots with internationalism. Language, which is at the core of the French heritage film, is a channel for his expression of Frenchness. Depardieu's elocution is a joy for his French audience, who can pick up his subtle vocal modulations, but not an impediment for foreign audiences, who can appreciate his energetic physical performance as well as other visual pleasures. Other heritage films offer Depardieu fine moments of verbal display — for instance, the tour-de-force monologue in Le Colonel Chabert when Depardieu as Chabert explains his circumstances to the young lawyer (Fabrice Luchini) — without jarring with the spectacular mise-en-scene. Depardieu's screen persona, as I have noted earlier, is rooted in a symbolic social national identity (as opposed to female stars like Deneuve and Bardot who are emblems of an abstract national identity). While it is predicated on his earlier suffering or comic loubard, this image can move out of its class context and be exported as simply Trench' across his body and persona. For instance, the Gascons' bragging in Cyrano de Bergerac, which in the French context is understood as a

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cliched vision of the men of one area (geographically and historically placed), becomes, outside France, a sign of, simply, Frenchness. A star who has achieved global stardom, Depardieu off screen also skilfully displays and markets signs of Frenchness. For example, his wine business, the only aspect of his business ventures of the 1990s that has not come under fire in France, is a means of exporting himself as well as his product. Depardieu the wine-grower is constantly associated with his terroir (which means both the soil and the area of origin) in Anjou, where, as is often pointed out, Rabelais is one of his 'neighbours'. Like his heritage films, Depardieu's Chateau de Tigne wines are sold both in France through mass-market channels (the Carrefour hypermarket chain sells them)20 and globally through Planet Hollywood. As a comparative reading of the French- and English-speaking press on Depardieu reveals, there is a price to be paid for this successful export, and that is caricature. Carolyn Durham rightly points out that in / Want to Go Home (1989), Depardieu functions as 'a self-reflexive visual joke' (Durham, 1998, p. 30), playing the triple cliche of the Frenchman as intellectual, bon vivant and sexual predator. But the very subject of Resnais's film is an elaborate reflection on Franco-American cliches, and the film addressed a very small audience. Green Card takes the cliche to mass audiences, whereby Depardieu's personal behaviour, particularly relating to food and sex, is turned into signs of Frenchness.21 In a Barthesian sense of myth, Depardieu's quaffing red wine, for instance, becomes the signifier of truth about a nation. Perhaps this is the fate of all French and European male stars outside their country: to export, they must either erase all signs of cultural difference under a universal robotic identity (Schwarzenegger, Van Damme) or travesty this identity for outside consumption, like Chevalier in the 1930s. The international blockbuster The Man in the Iron Mask, built around the young star Leonardo DiCaprio, delivers a cruel parody of Depardieu as Porthos: eating like a pig, falling into the mud, speaking atrocious English. Or perhaps it is that Depardieu understands only too well the power of cliches. For one grotesque Porthos he can sell the rights of his television series, Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, to American network television.

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Plate 23 Tenue de soiree (Bertrand Blier, 1986): Gerard Depardieu (left), Michel Blanc (centre), Miou-Miou (right). In the late 1990s, Depardieu moved to yet another phase of stardom, that of multimedia celebrity. He is everywhere: in television series, in commercials (Barilla pasta), directing films (Un pont entre deux rives), on stage (in Jacques Attali's Les Fortes du del),22 cutting deals with President Jacques Chirac in Romania, prospecting for oil in Cuba, making all creative decisions on the FFlOOm French television programme Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (choosing director, producer, sales agent, co-stars), and co-starring in the blockbuster comedy Asterix et Obelix contre Cesar (FF240m).23 As the daily Le Parisien put it on 13 September 1999, on the release of Balzac, 'Does he [like Balzac] have a bailiff pursuing him?' His ubiquity has attracted criticism, even in popular magazines hitherto sympathetic to him. Premiere, for instance, remarked that 'All those parts he played, others did not get them. He gobbled everything up.'24 Depardieu understands that stardom can no longer be confined to film and he plays the celebrity game to the full, reaching into everyday popular culture — thus, he is interviewed by Le Parisien by a panel of 'ordinary readers',25 he appears in supermarket wine catalogues and on television chat shows, at the risk of over-exposure. He has nevertheless

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kept the respect of the profession. Le Film francais noted that although his 1990s box-office was uneven, 'His films show the diversity of his parts. The "Great Gerard" does not hesitate to take risks.'26 Depardieu's 'risk-taking' is ultimately what defines his star persona. Where Gabin, Delon and Belmondo embodied rebellious characters in their youth, they did so within an established system. Depardieu 'broke the codes', as Claude Regy, his influential theatrical mentor in the 1970s, put it.27 The 1960s first displayed the male body with Delon and Belmondo, as noted in Chapter 7, but their bodies were traditionally beautiful objects of desire. Depardieu's was rugged, tougher and less shapely, he let it all hang out': the bulging stomach, the hairy chest, the pallid skin. He put on weight, lost it, put it on again, and, like Robert de Niro, he made an expressionist use of his body. The French public followed his hangovers, his visits to health farms, his promises to stop drinking, his diets. Depardieu managed the transition from the anticonformist post-1968 era to 1990s confessional celebrity culture without - it appears — alienating his popular audience. His star's luxury trappings lack ostentation. He reputedly has no yacht, no bodyguard, no chauffeur. His Chateau de Tigne is an expensive folly but it produces a little local wine. Moreover, wine-growing is a noble masculine activity which has the approval of popular culture (by contrast, Bardot's anti-hunting positions fly in the face of populist opinion in France). Gabin retained the traces of his pre-war working-class heroes even as a rich farm-owner in the 1960s, through the power of his 'myth' (see Chapter 3). Despite some questionable performances as 'Dipardiou' and dubious extracinematic ventures, Depardieu's own myth has kept alive the raw energy of the post-1968 days. As he churns out canonical versions of French culture for home consumption and export, he is still the lad who 'brought with him the no-man's-lands of Chateauroux, another idea of virility, of morals, of beauty'.28

Biofilmography Bom Chateauroux, 27 December 1948. Married Elisabeth Guignot (1970), with whom two children: Guillaume, born 1971, and Julie, born 1973.

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Main acting awards

Cesar, Best Actor, Le Dernier metro, 1980 Venice, Best Actor, Police, 1985 Cesar, Best Actor, Cyrano de Bergerac, 1990 Cannes, Best Actor, Cyrano de Bergerac, 1990 Golden Globe, Best Actor, Green Card, 1991 Films as actor

1971 1972

1973

Le Cri du cormoran le soir au-dessus des jonques (Michel Audiard) Un peu de soldi dans I'eau froide (Jacques Deray) Le Viager (Pierre Tchernia) Le Tueur (Denys de la Patelliere, France/Italy) La Scoumoune (Jose Giovanni) Au rendez-vous de la mart joyeuse (Juan Bunuel) Nathalie Granger (Marguerite Duras) L'Affaire Dominici (Claude Bernard-Aubert) Deux hommes dans la ville/Two Men in Town (Jose Giovanni, France/Italy) Rude journee pour la reine (Rene Allio) Les Valseuses/Going Places (Bertrand Blier)

Les Caspards (Pierre Tchernia) La Femme du Gange/Woman of the Ganges (Marguerite Duras) Stavisky (Alain Resnais) Vincent, Francois, Paul et les autres/Vincent, Francois, Paul and the Others (Claude Sautet, France/Italy) 1975 Pas si mechant que c.a (Claude Goretta, France/Switzerland) Sept marts sur ordonnance (Jacques Rouffio, France/Spain) 1976 Maitresse (Barbet Schroeder) Je t'aime, moi non plus (Serge Gainsbourg) La Derniere femme/The Last Woman [L'ultima donna] (Marco Ferreri, France/Italy) 1900 [Novecento] (Bernardo Bertolucci, Italy/France/Germany) Barocco (Andre Techine) 1977 Rene la Canne (Francis Girod, France/Italy) Le Camion/The Truck (Marguerite Duras)

1974

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Baxter - Vera Baxter (Marguerite Duras) Dites-lui que je I'aime/This Sweet Sickness (Claude Miller) La Nuit tous les chats sont gris (Gerard Zingg) 1978 Violanta (Daniel Schmid, Switzerland) Preparez vos mouchoirs/Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (Bertrand Blier) Ciao Maschio/Bye Bye Monkey [Reve de singe] (Marco Ferreri, Italy/France) Die linkshandige Frau/The Left-handed Woman [La Femme gauchere] (Peter Handke, Germany) Le Sucre (Jacques Rouffio) 1979 Les Chiens (Alain Jessua) L'incorgo/Traffic Jam [Le Grand embouteillage] (Luigi Comencini, Italy/France/Spain/Germany) Buffet froid (Bertrand Blier) 1980 Mon oncle d'Amerique/My American Uncle (Alain Resnais) Temporale Rosy/Rosy Storm [Rosy la Bourrasque] (Mario Monicelli, Italy/France/Germany) Le Dernier metro/The Last Metro (Francois Truffaut) Loulou (Maurice Pialat) Inspecteur La Bavure/Inspector Blunder (Claude Zidi) ]e vous aime (Claude Berri) 1981 Le Choix des armes/Choice of Weapons (Alain Corneau) La Femme d'a cote/The Woman Next Door (Francois Truffaut) La Chevre (Francis Veber) 1982 Le Retour de Martin Guerre/The Return of Martin Guerre (Daniel Vigne) Le Grand frere (Francis Girod) Danton (Andrzej Wajda) 1983 La Lune dans le caniveau/The Moon in the Gutter (Jean-Jacques Beineix, France/Italy) Les Comperes (Francis Veber) 1984 Fort Saganne (Alain Corneau) Tartuffe (Gerard Depardieu) Rive droite, rive gauche (Philippe Labro) 1985 Police (Maurice Pialat) Une femme sur deux/One Woman or Two (Daniel Vigne) 1986 Tenue de soiree/Menage (Bertrand Blier)

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Jean de Florette (Claude Berri, France/Italy) Je hais les acteurs (Gerard Krawczyk) Rue du depart (Tony Gatlif) Les Fugitifs (Francis Veber) Sous le soleil de Satan/Under Satan's Sun (Maurice Pialat) 1988 Drole d'endroit pour une rencontre/A Strange Place to Meet (Francois Dupeyron) Camille Claudel (Bruno Nuytten) 1989 Deux (Claude Zidi) Trap belle pour toi/ Too Beautiful for You (Bertrand Blier) / Want to Go Home (Alain Resnais) 1990 Cyrano de Bergerac (Jean-Paul Rappeneau) Green Card (Peter Weir) Uranus (Claude Berri) 1991 Merci, la vie (Bertrand Blier) Mon pere, ce hews (Gerard Lauzier) Tous les matins du monde (Alain Corneau) 1992 Le Visionarium/From Time to Time [short] (Jeff Blyth, France/USA) 1492; Conquest of Paradise (Ridley Scott, UK/France/Spain) 1993 Francois Truffaut: portraits voles/Francois Truffaut: Stolen Portraits [doc] (Michel Pascal, Serge Toubiana) Helas pour moi (Jean-Luc Godard, France/Switzerland) Germinal (Claude Berri) 1994 My Father the Hero (Steve Miner, USA) [remake of Mon pere, ce heros] Le Colonel Chabert (Yves Angelo) Una pura formalita [Une simple formalite] (Giuseppe Tornatore, Italy/France) La Machine (Francois Dupeyron, France/Germany) 1995 Les Anges gardiens (Jean-Marie Poire) Elisa (Jean Becker) Le Garcu (Maurice Pialat) Le Hussard sur le toit/The Horseman on the Roof (Jean-Paul Rappeneau) Les Cent et une nuits de Simon Cinema (Agnes Varda, France/UK) 1996 The Secret Agent (Christopher Hampton, USA/UK) Unhook the Stars [Decroche les etoiles] (Nick Cassavetes, USA)

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Bogus (Norman Jewison, USA) Le Plus beau metier du monde/The Greatest Job in the World (Gerard Lauzier) Hamlet (Kenneth Branagh, USA/UK) Le Gaulois (Gerard Lauzier) 1997 XXL (Ariel Zeitoun) She's So Lovely (Nick Cassavetes, France/USA) 1998 The Man in the Iron Mask (Randall Wallace, USA) Bimboland (Ariel Zei'toun) La parola amore esiste/Mots d'amour (Mimmo Calopresti, Italy/ France) Town and Country (Peter Chelsom, USA) Mammy (Angelica Huston, Ireland) Le Comte de Monte-Cristo [TV] (Josee Day an) Raspoutine (Constantin Costa-Gavras) 1999 Balzac [TV] (Josee Dayan) Un pont entre deux rives (Gerard Depardieu) Asterix et Obelix contre Cesar (Claude Zidi) 2000 Les Acteurs (Bertrand Blier) Vatel (Roland Joffe, France/UK) Notes 1. According to his agent, Bertrand de Labbey, Depardieu was paid FF8m for Monte-Cristo, 17m for Bogus, 15m for 1492, 10m for Asterix. Quoted in Guerrin and Salino, Le Monde, 24 March 1999, p. 14. 2. Ibid., p 15. 3. Depardieu declared he had 'assiste a un viol', which means 'witnessed' a rape, but was translated as 'assisted'. 4. Among other business ventures in the 1990s, Depardieu controversially invested in a Cuban oil company. 5. Marianne, 2-8 November 1998, p. 12. 6. Two of which were among the numerous Franco-US remakes of the 1980s: La Chevre as Pure Luck (1991) and Les Fugitifs as Three Fugitives (1988). Richard and Depardieu have equal billing on the films, though the trilogy marked the end of Richard's mainstream career. 7. For a view of Les Valseuses as part of the Blier canon, see Forbes, in Hay ward and Vincendeau (2000), pp. 213—23. 8. Gerard Depardieu, interview in Cahiers du cinema, May 1981, p. 114, and

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9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.


interview with Serge Toubiana, Cahiers du cinema, December 1986, p. 35. Le Monde, 24 March 1999; Guerrin and Salino, p. 14. Depardieu, interview in Cahiers du cinema, May 1981, p. 112. Toubiana, Cahiers du cinema, p. 35. Francois Truffaut, Arts, 29 April 1959. Maurice Pialat, quoted in Studio Magazine, No. 104, November 1995, p. 80. Depardieu, interview in Cahiers du cinema, May 1981, p. Ill (Depardieu has repeatedly made variations on this statement in many contexts). Le Film francais, No. 2690, 24 October 1997, p. 18. 'Dipardiou' is the French transcription of the American pronunciation of Depardieu's name. Noel Burch and Genevieve Sellier, Taire le point', Les Lettres franpaises, May 1991. Quoted in Telerama, No. 2537, 26 August 1998, p. 41. Jean-Paul Rappeneau, 'Cyrano — the movie', Cyrano de Bergerac, press book, Artificial Eye, 1991. Telerama, No. 2537, p. 40. Carrefour 'foire aux vins' catalogue, 21 September 1999, p. 16: 'GD et son vignoble'. Particularly interesting in this respect is an interview in Interview, December 1990, pp. 120-4. Jacques Attali, the author of the play, is also a politician and friend of the late President Francois Mitterand. The play, performed in 1999, is about Charles Quint. Le Film francais, No. 2661, 18 April 1997, p. 6. Premiere, Hors serie, special 20 ans, December 1996, p. 52. Le Parisien, 2 February 1999, pp. 2—4. Le Film francais, No. 2536, 9 December 1994, p. 4. Claude Regy, interviewed in Le Monde, 24 March 1999; Guerrin and Salino, p. 14. Ibid., p. 14.

CHAPTER 10

Juliette Binoche The face of neo-romanf/c/sm

In the mid-1980s, three young actresses exploded on to the French film scene: Beatrice Dalle in 37-2 le matin/Betty Blue, Sandrine Bonnaire in A nos amours and Vagabonde and Juliette Binoche in Rendez-vous and Mauvais sang. Their youth bracketed them into a new generation: Dalle and Binoche were both born in 1964 and Bonnaire in 1967. This was the moment when Emmanuelle Beart (born 1964), Sophie Marceau (born 1966) and Julie Delpy (born 1969) also appeared. Remarkably, fifteen years later, these actresses, except for the unpredictable (and sadly typecast) Dalle, are all active and successful. Their careers, however, have taken different paths. While Dalle's 'in-your-face' sexuality seems to confine her to repeats of her Betty Blue persona, Bonnaire has successfully channelled her naturalistic style into the work of respected auteurs such as Maurice Pialat (with whom she started), Agnes Varda, and Jacques Rivette, and she also maintains a presence in the mainstream with films such as Monsieur Hire and the 1997 television series, Une femme en blanc. Marceau and Beart also managed the transition to international blockbusters: Beart in Mission Impossible in 1996, Marceau in Braveheart (1995) and the Bond movie, The World Is Not Enough (1999). Binoche succeeded in going international while remaining identified as an auteur cinema star, moving from Jean-Luc Godard, Andre Techine and the young Leos Carax to prestigious international art 241

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films. She starred in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Damage, Three Colours: Blue, Le Hussard sur k toit (the most expensive French film of its time) and The English Patient, gaining an Oscar for the latter. Thanks to the success of these films, to her universally praised performances and to her advertisements for the Lancome perfume 'Poeme', Binoche is a potent ambassador of French femininity the world over. As opposed to Dalle's pop sexual persona (a throwback to Bardot) and Bonnaire's earthy naturalism, Binoche's image is altogether more cerebral, more anguished and more fragile, making her a direct inheritor of New Wave actresses such as Jeanne Moreau, Emmanuelle Riva and Delphine Seyrig (see Chapter 5). At the same time, her distinguishing characteristic is her ability to evoke, alongside the cool exterior, the intensity of passion. One key to her success is this play on surface and depth, which has turned her into an icon of Neo-Romanticism. Another is her ability to shift between two feminine archetypes which somehow seem to require French names: the gamine and the femme fatale. Binoche obviously does not have the longevity of the other stars in this book. But the fact that she projects a complex French-identified image (as opposed to Beart and Marceau's blockbuster 'babes') on a global scale places her in the same league as Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve and Jeanne Moreau, as well as Isabelle Adjani and Isabelle Huppert (following the latter into London theatres, she gained added publicity when she appeared in a low-budget avant-garde stage production of Pirandello's Naked at the Almeida Theatre). In the late 1990s, along with Deneuve and Depardieu, she is the best-known French star internationally.

The early gamine The very young Binoche was a picture of adolescent spontaneity. Yet, she trained in the theatre and retained the discipline and professionalism associated with the stage. Unlike Dalle and Bonnaire, who were cast, respectively, from a magazine cover and a newspaper advert, Binoche did not emerge overnight. She comes from a family of actors and started acting at school in the late 1970s, moving on to classes at the Paris Conservatoire. This was followed by professional stage productions in

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the early 1980s and a couple of television films. Her first film part was in Pascal Kane's Liberty Belle in 1982, followed in 1984 by a small part in Godard's ]e vous salue, Marie and a more substantial one in Annick Lanoe's Les Nanas. In Les Nanas, a 'post-feminist' comedy remake of George Cukor's The Women (featuring a 100 per cent female cast endlessly discussing men), Binoche weaves her way through the film on roller skates and in hot pants, a representation of youth, compared with her mature co-stars Macha Meril and Marie-France Pisier. Interestingly, given her future development and in view of the wacky tone of the film, her character is the only one with a 'tragic' dimension, being blighted by unrequited love. ]e vous salue Marie reinforces her dramatic register. She appears in two short scenes in which 'Joseph' rejects her for 'Marie'. Godard's intense camera focuses on her anguished face, and here are the round, pink cheeks in the milky complexion, the retrousse nose, liquid brown eyes and short dark hair, as well as the pink lips and pearl-white regular teeth which would become familiar. Already, Binoche strikes an original figure in the gamine spectrum: she possesses the petite but bouncy physique, glowing health and tomboyish energy of Colette's Gigi, as well as the romantic despair associated with the Victorian waif and her modern counterparts: for instance, the young Isabelle Adjani and Mireille Perrier in Carax's first film Boy Meets Girl. Another element of her persona is put in place: unlike Lolita, whose point is sexual attraction, the young Binoche is defined by a sublimated form of romantic passion, like the actresses of the New Wave (see Chapter 5). This is the persona which emerges fully in Techine's Rendez-vous (1985), of which Binoche said, Tor me this film was a detonator, like a birth'.1 In her first starring role, Binoche plays Nina, an aspiring young actress, whose triumph is to play Shakespeare's Juliet. Besides the theatrical narrative, the film chiefly depicts her amorous relationships with several male characters. While her youthful physique and vitality connote modernity, her cultural points of reference are romanticism and courtly love. Apart from an uncharacteristic comic role in Jacques Rouffio's altogether unsuccessful Mon beau-frere a tue ma soeur (1985), in which her kookiness is mainly a foil to the performances of veterans Michel Piccoli and Michel Serrault, her Rendez-vous persona sets the tone for her subsequent career. It is this persona which Leos Carax takes up and transforms into an icon.

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The Garax muse: cinephilia and amour fou It is hard not to use the Pygmalion metaphor in the case of Carax and Binoche, whose partnership on two films - Mauvais sang (1986) and Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (1991) - went publicly beyond the professional. Carax single-handedly remodelled Binoche for the part of Anna in Mauvais sang. She was made to lose weight, take dancing and singing lessons — even change her laugh — as well as to read novels by Balzac and Radiguet, listen to Jean Cocteau and the songs of Barbara. Carax demanded from her an ever-increasing commitment, which, although she perceived it to be impossible to satisfy, she proceeded to give. She did so in career terms, turning down many projects during the three long years it took to film Les Amants du Pont-Neuf.2 Another image of her commitment to Carax's projects is the unusual degree of her physical investment in their two films: very long and demanding shooting schedules, parachute-jumping in Mauvais sang and water-skiing down the Seine in Les Amants du Pont-Neuf. Most importantly, Carax instilled in her his passion for the cinema, introducing her to 'the history of cinema: Griffith, Dreyer, Vidor',3 including Lillian Gish. Thus, he fashioned her in the mould of the New Wave dnephile star. There is in the Carax—Binoche partnership the deliberate making of a mythic identity: a male auteur constructs his personal filmic universe with the help of a female star. She functions both as beautiful female 'object' within a long iconic tradition, and as a 'subject' who focalizes the auteur's philosophical and aesthetic preoccupations. Her character in Mauvais sang tellingly says of her older lover (Michel Piccoli), 'He demands very beautiful and very demanding things of me. He immediately looked at me with the eyes of an inventor, a scientist.' This is not a one-sided process, though, and Binoche knowingly undertook this project: 'My character was the image of a woman seen through the eyes of a man. I wanted to be filmed by somebody who loved me and whom I loved.' She admitted: 'I entered this film [Mauvais sang] like one enters religion'.4 There have been precedents for this kind of creative partnership, some of which were explicit models for Carax, especially Griffith and Lillian Gish and Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina. The Godard-Karina reference was particularly important, because their relationship was both sexual and professional. This legacy

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of Godard on Carax is also evident in textual terms: for instance, in Carax's use of primary colours, but especially in his way of filming Binoche's face. Mauvais sang is a series of cartoon-like, magnified and detached images, in which Binoche's face occupies a central place, shot from all possible angles, including laterally and upside down, as Jacques Aumont points out (Aumont, 1992, p. 151). Rarely has an actress's face been so overtly reified. The central paradox of Mauvais sang is that its highly mannered style is put to the service of a study of love, of desperate amour fou, in its most sincere and passionate dimensions, a project in which Binoche's image was central. Carax took her gamine/passionate lover duality, and rewrote it through Chaplin, Lillian Gish and other figures in film history. Binoche's appearance in Mauvais sang, especially her hairstyle, was an allusion to the Anna Karina of Godard's Vivre sa vie (1962), herself an allusion to Louise Brooks in Pabst's Pandora's Box (1929). Together with these echoes of modernist heroines, the framing of Binoche's face is also a reference to the female face as an icon of suffering. Karina's face in Vivre sa vie is visually equated with Falconetti's in Carl Theodor Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). Binoche's face in Mauvais sang reprises this trope, in a very long take of her face looking up, tears silently rolling down her cheeks. Binoche's detached, fetishized vision of loveliness and melodramatic suffering is also a reference to Lillian Gish. At the same time, though, Mauvais sang capitalized on her capacity to evoke a robust vision of childlike innocence and wonderment. To Louise Brooks and Lillian Gish are added the Pierrot figure from the commedia dell'arte, and its paradigmatic screen incarnation, Chaplin. Here, Binoche's short hair, triangular face and large dark eyes evoke an androgynous urchin, reinforced by the similarities with her co-star Denis Lavant. The two of them are cast as a pair of milkdrinking children, contrasted with Michel Piccoli's father figure who, for instance, finds them fooling around with shaving cream on their faces. Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, with the same central pair of actors (and another father figure played by Kauld-Michael Griiber), is a long elaboration on this configuration. Similarly, it is another - albeit perverse - tribute to Binoche's face, its exquisite features spectacularly degraded. She spends most of the film unwashed, and with an eye patch; those luscious lips ('wet like those of old film stars', says Alex in Mauvais sang)

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are dry and chapped, her delicate complexion coarse and reddened. Carax teases us with the memory of her beauty, on the posters pasted up all over Paris and with her return at the end of the film, finally as 'herself. Rather than the cinema du look of Beineix and Besson, with which they are often compared, the Binoche—Carax films are exemplars of a new Romantic streak in 1980s and 1990s French cinema. Its exponents are directors such as Olivier Assayas (Paris s'eveille), Jacques Doillon (Le Jeum Werther), Eric Rochant (Un monde sans pitie) and Chantal Akerman (Nuit et jour, Un divan a New York). These films focus on heterosexual couples and their amorous liaisons and endorse the values of Romanticism, updated to contemporary Paris and filtered through the New Wave: imagination, tenderness, lyricism, freedom, the love of art. Carax's international success, compared to the filmmakers mentioned above, is connected to his more overt post-modern mise-en-scene. But it is also because in Binoche he found, and helped construct, a star who summed up the seductive paradox of his mise-en-scene: a smooth, youthful surface hiding romantic passion. The centrality of Binoche to this 'NeoRomantic' streak is evident in this comment on Les Amants du Pont-Neuf: 'Carax's vision of the Parisian dochard is undoubtedly a Romantic, and Romanticized, one; indeed, given the casting of Binoche in particular, it could perhaps hardly fail to be otherwise' (Hayes, 1999, p. 209). The Carax—Binoche partnership ended with Les Amants du Pont-Neuf. But unlike Karina, who never really made her mark outside Godard's films, Binoche moved on. Her image clearly had a wider resonance, making it possible for her to adapt to other films, while retaining a continuity with her earlier work necessary for stardom.

Sex, art and anguish The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988, an adaptation of Milan Kundera's novel) was Binoche's first international production, a high-profile American film with European subject, location and cast. Her part as Teresa, the simple young provincial wife of a womanizing Prague surgeon (Daniel Day-Lewis) recycles many elements of her Mauvais sang persona in a more classic narrative form; indeed, Binoche said, 'Anna

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Plate 24 Un divan a New York (Chantal Akerman, 1995): Juliette Binoche. helped me play Teresa'.5 Her gamine dimension feeds the innocence and supposed lack of sophistication of the character, contrasted to the wordly Sabina (Lena Olin), in the same way as her romantic melancholy is opposed to Sabina's high spirits. But what also connects her to her previous parts is that her character is defined by being in love. Her passionate nature induces switches between paroxysms of joy and sorrow. However, a shift has occurred in her passage from national to international star, along the lines of the sexualized image of French women. The tortured nudity of Rendez-vous and the sublimated amorous discourse of the Carax films are replaced by more traditionally packaged sex. Traces of the innocent gamine are retained, however: the hairstyle (including the childlike blowing on her fringe from Mauvais sang) and the startling, magic, transformation of her face from melancholy to joy with a sudden flash of her luminous smile, revealing her small white teeth.

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Louis Malle's Damage (1992, titled Fatale in French) shifts the persona further, transforming the mercurial gamine into a more mature femme fatale. Like a sphinx, she mesmerizes all men around her. Although Damage features notorious sex scenes and nudity, it is still Binoche's face which is the centre of interest and the basis of her star identity, evoking no longer Lillian Gish but the great femmes fatales of the 1930s, in particular Garbo (as well as the actresses of the New Wave, as discussed in Chapter 5). Discussing its detached, insubstantial nature, Roland Barthes said of Garbo's face that it was a mask, and 'an idea' (Barthes, 1973, p. 56). Binoche shares this cerebral, abstract quality. Garbo's face, however, belonged to the era of the classical Hollywood cinema. How does the idea of the femme fatale, as embodied by Binoche, function in the more explicit, more realistic contemporary cinema? First, her looks in Damage are redefined ('Louis Malle wanted someone who would be very sophisticated. He called a stylist to make me over, give me a "look" ').6 The glossy black hair is smoothed down, the round cheeks give way to a more prominent bone structure, the voice is deepened. The stillness of her performance increases, reaching its most minimalist. Like Garbo's, Binoche's face is made to look like a mask and, recalling Manuals sang, 'comes to resemble the flour-white complexion of Charlie Chaplin' (ibid.). Second, like the films of Garbo or Dietrich, Damage capitalizes on the idea of the foreignness of the femme fatale, as if the power of sexual desire could be best understood when turned into an alien. Third, in Damage, as well as in Kieslowski's Three Colours: Blue, her social identity is constituted by an association with art, thus detaching her from any precise milieu while keeping a contemporary setting, and stressing the romantic construction. She is an actress in Rendez-vous, a photographer in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a painter in Les Amants du Pont-Neuf. In Damage, she works in art, in Three Colours: Blue, in music, in Alice et Martin, she plays the violin. In The English Patient she is an art-loving nurse. An important scene shows her admiring frescoes by Piero della Francesca in a church. The importance of art in her characters echoes her extra-cinematic identity as an amateur painter. Binoche, who contributed paintings to Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (and designed the poster), had her work exhibited in Tours in 1994. And she said of The English Patient, 'When I read the scene with the paintings of Piero della Francesca ... I knew I just had to be inside this film, because I'd been in love with Piero

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della Francesca for a long, long time'7 (see Chapter 1 for her encounter with Francois Mitterrand in a bookshop, while she was reading books on painting). In terms of her screen image, the art connection connotes sensitivity and reinforces her identification as an art cinema actress by stressing her empathy with the world of the films and their directors. Finally, Binoche partakes of the mystery characteristic of the classic femme fatale. Reviews of her films frequently use words such as 'enigmatic' and 'mysterious' (her dark looks are often contrasted to a blonde, vivacious and more 'transparent' actress - Miranda Richardson in Damage, Charlotte Very in Three Colours: Blue, Kristin Scott-Thomas in The English Patient). These qualities, together with her beauty, lead men to their downfall (Damage) or simply echo their morbidity - for instance, in Three Colours: Blue and in Alice et Martin. Yet hers is not the unknowability of the scheming femme fatale, but of femininity itself, which her films convey in lingering close-ups. I have already noted the use of her face in Mauvais sang and Les Amants du Pont-Neuf. Kieslowski's Three Colours: Blue begins and ends on her face in extreme close-up. In all three cases, the manipulation of proximity and distance characteristic of close-ups (Aumont, 1990, pp. 105-7) relies on the quality of Binoche's face: its beauty and luminosity attract the camera like a magnet, but its smoothness refracts the gaze of the spectator. Julia Dobson's argument that Three Colours: Blue's 'persistent emphasis on reflection and light ... presents Julie as icon and ultimately represses her subjectivity' (Dobson, 1999, p. 238) is dependent on the mask-like quality of Binoche's face, eliciting a sense of opacity which serves directors as diverse as Carax, Kieslowski and Malle. Binoche's face, capable of extreme mobility as well as extreme stillness, has thus moved from being the archetype of the romantic gamine to that of Neo-Romantic woman in Damage, Three Colours: Blue, Alice et Martin, archetypal European art films which value ambivalence, mystery and anguish, especially when embodied by a beautiful, 'tragic', woman. One recurring image sums this up, from Mauvais sang to Alice et Martin: a close-up of Binoche's face with a cigarette - not the showy cigarette on the long cigarette-holder of 1930s Hollywood femmes fatales, but the more 'existential' cigarette of Gabin in Le Jour se leve and of New Wave heroes, a signifier of anguish and aesthetic cool (despite, or perhaps because of, its 'political incorrectness'). It is an image which

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combines the sexual appeal of French female icons (Bardot, Deneuve) with the anguish of male stars (e.g. the young Depardieu): in other words, which sexualizes anguish. One could hope for a change in the Binoche persona towards more positive, less melancholy figures. More than ten years on, her character in Alice et Martin is given more autonomy and strength than in Techine's earlier Rendez-vous. And in Les Enfants du siecle (1999, based on George Sand's affair with Alfred de Musset), she is given a truly independent historical figure to play and reports having been attracted to Sand's 'strength'.8 Yet her roles in both Les Enfants du siecle and La Veuve de Saint-Pierre (2000) still privilege a melancholy and at times even morbid persona.9 Binoche's embodiment of sexy melancholy, epitomized by Three Colours: Blue, is so central to her image that it is difficult to imagine her otherwise. Her smiling or laughing come as a shock, almost as if from another actress. If her face evokes Garbo's, as indicated above, then equally, like Garbo, she 'must not laugh'.10 Binoche reports that on the shooting of Le Hussard sur le hit, 'As soon as there was a smile, [Jean-Pau Rappeneau] wanted to remove it,'11 adding later on, 'When people say, "you do films about death and loss, why don't you do comedies?" Well, I'd love to, I've done one or two, but it might not be the purpose I'm here for.'12 She has also figured out that French comedy is not as exportable as romantic melancholy; as she told the British magazine Premiere, 'English people are not interested in my comedies.'13 There is indeed a scene in Alice et Martin, set in a provincial bar with a rowdy audience, in which Binoche unexpectedly laughs. The laugh tears right through the fabric of the film and of her image. Her laugh, mouth wide open, is 'shocking', because it evokes the Rabelaisian body, but also because, as feminists have pointed out, there is something subversive in women's laughter.14 Similarly, while most of her films since La Vie de famille feature what she calls 'the obligatory little nude scene',15 she reports that Techine refused to show her pregnant in Alice et Martin although her character in the film is. The face of the Neo-Romantic woman must remain mask-like and distant, her body ethereal. Like the perfume Binoche advertises, she must be a 'poem'.

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Biofilmography Born Paris, 9 April 1964. One son (Raphael), born 1994, and one daughter, born 1999. Main acting awards Prix Romy Schneider for Rendez-vous, 1985 Venice, Best Actress, Three Colours: Blue, 1993 Cesar, Best Actress, Three Colours: Blue, 1994 Berlin, Silver Bear, The English Patient, 1997 Academy Award, Best Supporting Actress, The English Patient, 1997 Films as actor 1982

Liberty Belle (Pascal Kane) Dorothee ou la danseuse de fil [TV] (Jacques Fansten) Fort blocjue [TV] (Pierrick Guinard)

1983

Le Meilleur de la vie (Renaud Victor)

1984

]e vous salue, Marie/Hail

Mary

(Jean-Luc Godard, France/

1992 1993

Switzerland) Les Nanas (Annick Lanoe) Adieu Blaireau (Bob Decout) La Vie de famille (Jacques Doillon) Rendez-vous (Andre Techine) Mon beau-frere a tue ma soeur (Jacques Rouffio) Mauvais sang/Bad Blood (Leos Carax) The Unbearable Lightness of Being [LTnsoutenable legerete de I'etre] (Philip Kaufman, USA) Un tour de manege (Pierre Pradinas) Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (Leos Carax) Mara [Women and Men — In Love There Are No Rules] [short] (Mike Figgis, USA) Wuthering Heights (Peter Kosminski, USA/UK) Damage [Fatale] (Louis Malle, UK/France) Trois couleurs: bleu/Three Colours: Blue (Krzysztof Kieslowski,

1994

France/Switzerland/Poland) Trois couleurs: blanc/Three Colours: White (Krzysztof Kieslowski,

1985 1986 1988

1991

France/Switzerland/Poland) [brief appearance]

252

Stars and Stardom in French Cinema Trois coukurs: rouge/Three Colours: Red (Krzysztof Kieslowski, France/Switzerland/Poland) [very brief appearance]

1995 Le Hussard sur le toit/The Horseman on the Roof (Jean-Paul Rappeneau) Un divan a New York (Chantal Akerman, France/Belgium/ Germany) 1997 The English Patient (Anthony Minghella, USA) 1999 Alice et Martin (Andre Techine) Les Enfants du siede (Diane Kurys) 2000 La Veuve de Saint-Pierre (Patrice Leconte) Notes 1. Juliette Binoche, quoted in Sophie Cherer, 'L'annee Juliette', Premiere (France), September 1995, p. 84. 2. Les Amants du Pont-Neuf began shooting in 1989, but because of production and financial difficulties, was not completed until 1991, with two long interruptions in the shooting schedule and a relocation from Paris to Southern France. For details, see David Thompson, 'Once upon a time in Paris', Sight and Sound, September 1992, pp. 6—11. Binoche later turned down a part in Jurassic Park in favour of Three Colours: Blue. 3. Juliette Binoche, quoted in 'A comme Anna', Cahiers du cinema, November 1986, pp. 20—1, and in Cherer, 'L'annee Juliette', p. 86. 4. Ibid. 5. Binoche, in A comme Anna', p. 24. 6. Binoche, in Cherer, 'L'annee Juliette', p. 87. 7. Juliette Binoche, quoted in Darren Bignell, The sunshine girls', Empire, No. 94, April 1997, p. 60. 8. Juliette Binoche, interviewed by Lanie Goldman, Guardian, 12 March 1999, p. 2. 9. For a development of Binoche's later star persona, especially in Les Enfants du siecle and La Veuve de Saint-Pierre, see my article The erotic face', Sight and Sound, June 2000, pp. 15—16. 10. The publicity for Ernst Lubitsch's film Ninotchka (1939) was famously based on the slogan 'Garbo laughs!', referring to the central scene in the film when Garbo finally 'thaws out' and laughs heartily. 11. Binoche, in Cherer, 'L'annee Juliette', p. 87. 12. Binoche in Bignell, The sunshine girls', p. 61. 13. Juliette Binoche, quoted in Premiere (UK), Vol. 5, No. 2, March 1997, p. 62. 14. As illustrated, for instance, in Marleen Gorris's A Question of Silence (1981). 15. Binoche, in Cherer, 'L'annee Juliette', p. 84.

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Periodicals By their nature, stars generate massive media coverage. In addition to the French and British daily and weekly press, the publications I consulted most frequently were: French-language Cahiers du cinema CinemAction Cinemonde La Cinematographic francaise Cine-miroir Cine-revue Le Film francais Positif Pour vous Premiere (France) La Revue du cinema Studio Magazine Telerama English-language Film Comment Film Dope Films and Filming Films in Review Monthly Film Bulletin Screen International Sight and Sound Stars Variety

ndex Page numbers in bold type indicate a substantial entry; page numbers in italics indicate photographs. A bout de souffle 113, 164, 165, 166 accessibility 14, 15, 19 from autobiographies 22—3 from biographies 22 from interviews 23 from political stands 20 from singing careers 20—1 see also press action films 143, 162, 168-70 see also genre films Actors' Studio, vs national theatre style 9 adventure films 143, 162, 168-70 see also genre films advertising 37-8, 242 agents 13-14, 21 Alberoni, Francesco, on star system 1—2 Amants, Les 130 Amants du Pont Neuf, Les 244, 245-6 American cinema, see Hollywood Annabella 26, 27 Arletty 27, 60 art films, European erotic image, face vs body 125—6 explicit sexuality 92—3 Ascenseur pour I'echafaud 125—6 auteurism 29, 62, 121 as art 116 director—actor partnerships 115-17, 123, 164-5, 244-5, 246 distance aesthetic 114 vs mainstream actors 23, 24, 114, 187 authenticity, see natural style

autobiographies 22-3, 85, 106, 226 see also biographies awards 17-18, 121-2, 129, 209, 217 Bandera, La 65—9 Bardot, Brigitte (1934- ) animal lover 100 audiences 104 box-office vs cinephilia 84, 86 career history, continued popularity 29 dancing roles 95, 100 emancipated image 106 En cas de malheur 89 Et Dieu ... crea la femme 82—3, 85, 86, 88, 90, 91-2, 93, 96, 99, 100, 101, 102 and fashion 87 clothes worn for unintended uses 88-9 as impracticalities 101 as spectacle 95 young 88, 89, 90 feminine image 84, 93 feminist discourse on 83, 94—5, 96-7, 100, 106 hairstyles 88, 94 hostility from women 97-8 as influence 83 influences 86 intonation 87 life 84, 85, 86, 105 autobiography 106 La Mariee est trop belle 91 Le Mepris 103, 104-6

264

Index

Bardot, Brigitte, continued and national identity 104 as Marianne (Republic symbol) 36-7, 83 natural style 86, 99-101, 102 New Wave roles 104-6, 115 political stands 20, 84 press coverage 82, 83 and paparazzi 84 'primitive' image 100 public us personal identities 98-9, 100, 105 rebel image 84, 88-9, 90-1 sexual image 83-4 confidence 95-6 explicitness 92 us gamine image 93—4 objectification 94—5, 96 pin-up 101 punishment for 98, 105 striptease 101 as threat 97 transitional nature 92 singing career 84, 95 Le Trou normand 85 la Verite 89, 90-1, 103-4 Vie privee 104—6 youthful image 82, 85, 86, 87, 88-9 vs elders 91—2 and music 90 Barthes, Roland, on mythology 64 Baume, Georges, on Jean Gabin 59 de Beauvoir, Simone on Bardot 94-5, 96-7 on sexual revelation 202 Belle de jour 197, 201-2 Belmondo, Jean-Paul (1933- ) A bout de souffle 113, 164, 165, 166 on Actors' Studio 9 alter-ego to Delon 183 auteur vs mainstream roles 161, 162-3, 187

Borsalino 179, 182, 184 box-office us cinephilia 159, 187 career diversity 159 career history 161 mature roles 182-3 conservatism 185 cool image 160, 161, 166 defence of national cinema 187 erotic image 183 in family films 186 and fashion 167 as minet (fashion-conscious mod) 183-4 father figure image 185 Jean Gabin as influence 185 gangster roles 159-60, 182, 184-5 gueuk ('ugly mug') appeal 166, 170 on Hollywood 39 L'Homme de Rio 168, 169 image vs Delon image 182-3 life 22 anti-authoritarian image 161, 162 court case vs Alain Delon 162 mainstream roles 159, 167 masculine image 160 as comic action man 161—2, 163, 168-70 as individual 170 marginalization of women 163 stunts in action films 168 modern image 167 and national identity 160, 166—7,

170, 186

natural style 165-6 as New Wave hero 164-5, 165 nonchalant image 169 non-political views 185 physique 167-8 Pierrot le fou 164-5, 166-7 prankster behaviour 162

Index Belmondo, Jean-Paul, continued press coverage 162, 164 Le Professionnel 170 public us personal identities 161, 162 role with Jean Gabin 159—60 Sois belle et tais-toi 158 systeme D (beating the system) image 169 on television 19 theatre career 163—4 theatre, as influence 161 ubiquity 2, 171 youthful image 165 Binoche, Juliette (1964- ) on accessibility 19 advertising for Lancome perfume 242 Les Amants du Pont-Neuf 244, 245-6 art lover 248-9 auteur vs international roles 241-2 career history 242—3 cerebral image 242 comedy roles 250 Damage 248 Un divan a New York 247 The English Patient 248-9 face 243, 245-6 as mask 248 close-ups 249 gamine image 243, 247 innocence image 245 Leos Carax partnership 244—5, 246 Mauvais sang 244, 245 Les Nanas 243 and national identity 242 as Neo-Romantic icon 242, 243, 246, 247, 249-50 on publicity 23 public vs personal identities 248-9

265

reconstruction of image 245—6 Rendez-vous 243 sexual image 247 as femme fatale 248, 249 suffering image 245 theatre career 242-3 The Unbearable Lightness of Being 246-7 youthful image 243 biographies 22-3, 62 see also autobiographies blockbusters 23—4, 143—5 Blum—Byrnes agreements (1946—48) 20, 31, 90 Bonnaire, Sandrine 241 Borsalino 179, 182, 184 boulevard theatre 3, 5, 8, 25, 47, 137 Bourvil 219 La Grande vadrouille 142 rural nostalgia (France profonde) 35, 150 La Traversee de Paris 75 box-office us cinephilia 26-7, 84, 86, 136, 141-2, 159, 187 from 'film package' 13 us genre films 224 major names 12 polls 25-8 vs television 30 Brel, Jacques, and national identity 170 Bunuel, Luis 202 cafe-concert 3, 5 cafe-theatre 5, 6, 216, 220 Cannes festival 17—19 Carax, Leos, and cinephilia 244—5 Carol, Martine 18 distance aesthetic 114 casting directors 14 Cesars (awards) 17 character actors, terminology 3

266

Index

Chateau, Rene, on star system 1 dnema-verite 6 class affluent leisure pursuits 102 bourgeois 50-1, 149-50, 200 chic 124-5, 201, 204-5 theatre as influence 47-8 portrayed by physical appearance 230 portrayed by theatre traditions 8-9 proletarian 61, 65, 70, 71, 73, 75, 219-22, 223, 225, 226-7, 230 close-ups face 249 vs Hollywood styles 10 Comedie-Francaise 3—4, 6, 11 comedies 224, 250 action man in 161—2, 163, 168-70 actors, influences 3 bourgeois 47—8 burlesque 46 comique troupier (military comedy) 145 commedia dell'arte 245 distance aesthetic 45—6, 47, 49-50, 54 family appeal 140, 217, 219 infantile views 146—7 Gendarme films 139-40, 144, 145, 146-7 gestures 138, 139, 148-9 influence 45 mainstream, hostility to 137 multi-faceted blockbusters 143—5 narrative 46—7 and national identity 219 producer vs individual in 48 risque 51—2 sexless 145—6 sexually explicit 51; see also Bardot: Et Dieu ... crea la femme

social identity in 218-22, 223 theatre as influence 47—8, 51 see also genre films Comperes, Les 221 copyright, agreement with theatre 4 cottage industry, French cinema as 11 Crisp, Colin, on star system 11-12 culture 17 artistry vs commercialism 12 bohemian lifestyle 102 colonialism 65, 66-7, 68 consumerism 74, 87, 88, 119-20, 166, 175-6 vs American 160 minets (fashion-conscious mods) 183-4 playboys 158 in heritage films 231 vs Hollywood culture 38—9 popular 103, 105 bias to women 104 Cyrano de Bergerac 231, 232 Damage 248 dandyism 43, 44, 50-1 decalage (ironic disparity), in New Wave 118 Delon, Alain (1935- ) alter-ego to Belmondo 183 auteur roles 171-2, 173 vs mainstream roles 187 Borsalino 179, 182, 184 box-office vs cinephilia 159, 187 career diversity 159, 173 career history 171—2 mature roles 181, 182-3 conservatism 185 and consumerism 175—6 cool image 160 court case vs Jean-Paul Belmondo 162 cruel image 176-7, 179-80 defence of national cinema 187

Index Delon, Alain, continued erotic image 183 beauty paradoxes 173—4, 176, 177, 179-80 in family films 186 as gigolo 175-6 narcissistic appeal 174, 175, 179 face, poses 174-5, 177, 179 and fashion, as minet (fashionconscious mod) 183—4 father figure image 185 Jean Gabin as influence 159—60, 180-1, 185 gangster roles 159-60, 172, 176, 177-81, 182, 184-5 // gattopardo 175 Les Granges brulees 177 image us Belmondo image 182—3 Japanese fan base 175 life 171 banned biography on 22 mainstream roles 159 masculine image 160 as loner 180 vulnerability in 180 melancholy image 173, 179-81 Melodie en sous-sol 176 minimalism 179 misogynistic image 177 and national identity 160, 186 Notre histoire 181 Nouvelle vague 181 policiers 172, 184-5 political stands 185 public us personal identities, Markovic affair 22, 172, 178-9 recognition of status 172—3 Rocco e i suoi fratelli 174 roles with Jean Gabin 159-60, 172, 176 roles with Simone Signoret 177 Le Samourai' 178, 179-80

267

Sois belle et tais-toi 158 Swann in Love 181 La Tulipe noire 174 La Veuve Couderc 177 Demy, Jacques 198 Deneuve, Catherine (1943— ) advertising for Chanel perfume 3 7 auteur roles 201 us mainstream roles 208—9 awards 209 Belle de jour 197, 201-2 bourgeois image 200, 201, 204-5 career diversity 197 career history 196, 198, 202 mature roles 197, 205-6 controlled image 200—1 face 199 and fashion chic, Saint-Laurent partnership 201, 203, 204-5 feminine image, from timeless appeal 203—4 feminism 206 glamorous image 198, 207 hairstyles, coiffed appearance 200 The Hunger 206-7 image reconstruction 209—10 Machine 205, 207-8, 208 in magazines 199 mystery appeal 198—9 and national identity 205, 206, 209 as Marianne 37, 196 natural style 202 Les Parapluies de Cherbourg 199 Place Vendome 205, 209-10 privacy 198—9 public us personal identities 199, 202, 204, 206 on publicity 23 risk-taking 208 sexual image

268

Index

Deneuve, Catherine, continued as ice maiden 202—3 as lesbian icon 206-7 obedience in 199-200 punishment for 203, 205 Depardieu, Gerard (1948- ) auteur roles 227—8 vs mainstream roles 216, 224-5 awards 217 as beauf (proletarian vulgarity) 223 career diversity 216 career history 216 global audience 215, 231 Hollywood career 217 comedy roles 217, 218 as comic loubard (proletarian hoodlum) anti-authoritarian image 220 emasculation 221—2 influences 221, 222 physical aggression 219 Les Comperes 221 Cyrano de Bergerac 231, 232 father and mother figure image 229 feminine image 228, 229-30, 232 Les Fugitifs 221 Jean Gabin as influence 226—7, 229 Green Card 233 heritage roles 216-17, 230-2 life 22, 216, 217, 223, 235 autobiography 226 Loulou 218, 225-6 masculinity, suffering image 225, 226, 227 Man oncle d'Amerique 227 and national identity 215, 216, 231 from intonation 232 stereotyped 230, 232—3

natural style 226 Police 227 press coverage 234 proletarian image 225, 226—7, 230 public vs personal identities 220 rebel image 216 risk-taking 235 sexual image, emasculation 228—9 Le Sucre 221 television career 216-17, 233 Tenue de soiree 222, 234 theatre career 216 as influence 220 Trap belle pour toi 229-30 ubiquity 234-5 Les Valseuses 220-1 wine-growing career 233 distance aesthetic in auteur films 114 in comedies 45-6, 47, 49-50, 54 from long shots 9-10 divan a New York, Lin 247 documentary style, New Wave 117 editing, vs Hollywood styles 9—10 En cas de malheur 89 English language, resistance to 38—9 English Patient, The 248-9 Et Dieu... crea la femme 82—3, 85, 86, 88, 90, 91-2, 93, 96, 99, 100, 101, 102 etoiles (stars) 2 Eva 127 fashion for men flattering 167 as minets (fashion-conscious mods) 183-4 for women chic 87, 124-5, 201, 204-5

Index

fashion, continued clothes worn for unintended uses 88-9 impracticalities 87, 101 modernization 89-90 as spectacle 95 symbol of repression 201 young 88, 89, 90 femininity 84, 100, 121, 122, 126, 128, 129, 130 'dumb blonde' image 93 implied by acting terminology 3 obedience in 199-200 timeless image 203-4 youthful image 93 feminism 206 on Bardot 83, 94-5, 96-7, 106 Fernandel 219 film d'art movement 3—4 Film d'Art studio 4, 11 Foreign Legion 67, 68 framing, vs Hollywood styles 9—10 France profonde (rural nostalgia) 19, 35, 71-2, 150 Fugitifs, Les 221 Funes, Louis de (1914-83) aggressive image 140, 147, 151 frustration in 149 and partnerships 144—5 box-office vs cinephilia 136, 141-2 career history 136—9 character parts 138 diminutive image 148 family comedies 140 infantile views 146—7 Gendarme films 139-40, 144, 145, 146-7 gestures 138, 139, 148-9 Grande vadrouille, La 142 influences 145 life, play about 137 mediocrity image 151 middle-aged image 147

269

middle-class image 149-50 multi-faceted blockbusters 143-5 and national identity 151 negative masculinity 148, 149-50 public vs personal identities 140 salary 141 sexless comedies 145-6 sysleme D image 150 La Traversee de Paris 75 'ugly clown' image 148 Cabin, Jean (1904-76) auteurism 62 Bandera, La 65-9 body 73 boss image 62—3, 74—5 career history 59-60, 61, 62-3, 64-5

mature roles 73—5 face 72-3 father and mother figure image 76 genre films 59 Hollywood career 62 as influence 60, 226-7, 229 on Belmondo and Delon 159-60, 185 Le Jour se leve 60 life 61, 62 cycling as pastime 70 masculinity 68 male-bonding image 66, 67 minimalism 8, 72, 75-6 mythological image 61—2, 63—4, 65, 69, 70, 74-5 and national identity 61, 65, 66-7, 68, 69, 76-7 natural style 64—5, 66 on New Wave 77 outbursts in roles 73 as Popular Front hero 65, 70 press coverage 60—1 proletarian image 61, 65, 70, 71, 73

270

Index

Gabin, Jean, continued cumulard incident 75 public us personal identities 60, 66, 69, 70, 73 rural nostalgia (France profonde) 71-2 role with Jean-Paul Belmondo 159-60 roles with Alain Delon 159-60, 172, 176 singing career 64 Touchez pas au grisbi 74 La Traversee de Paris 75 work ethic 71 gattopardo, II 175 Gaumont studio 11, 45 Gendarme films 139-40, 144, 145, 146-7

gendarmes 146 genre films 23-4, 38, 59, 143, 187 us box-office 224 women in 28 see also action films; comedies; heritage films; musicals; policiersTradition of Quality films glamour 14, 198, 207 from advertising 37—8, 242 us domesticity 15 photographs 4, 16-17, 18, 34 see also location shooting; SaintTropez Godard, Jean-Luc 112 cinephilia 116, 164-5, 181, 244-5 mainstream actors 24 Grande vadrouilk, La 142 Granges brulees, Les 177 Green Card 233 hairstyles 15, 88, 94, 200 heritage films 6, 216, 230-2 see also genre films Hollywood 22 distribution agreements (1946—48)

20, 31, 90 earliest publicity us national studios 5, 49 editing styles us national cinema 9—10 global dominance us national cinema 49, 54 lack of stage influences us national cinema 7 muscle-men 163 us national culture 38—9 photographs us national cinema 5, 49 on physical appearance 21-2 Homme de Rio, L' 168, 169 Hunger, The 206-7

identities, public us personal, see individual names: public us personal identities identity, national, see individual names: and national identity Indochine 205, 207-8, 208 Jour se leve, Le 60 Jules et Jim 124, 126-7 Karina, Anna 112 Kristel, Sylvia 28-9 large-scale productions 23—4, 143-5 Le Forestier, Laurent, on distance aesthetic 45-6, 49 Levi-Strauss, Claude, on mythology 63-4

Linder, Max (1883-1924) ban vivant image 50 bourgeois image 50—1 career history 42, 45, 49 and Charlie Chaplin 50, 54 Hollywood career 44 comedy styles 46, 47-8, 49-50, 51-2

Index

Under, Max, continued dandy image 43, 44, 50-1 diminutive image 52 feminization 54 infantile image 52 as influence 42 life 43-5, 48-9 and national identity 53 photographs as early publicity 5, 49 public vs personal identities 48—9 Seven Years' Bad Luck 46 sexual image 51 symbolism 52—3 Three Must-Get-Theres, The 46-7 literary classics 231 location shooting 85, 144, 168, 169, 176 see also glamour; Saint-Tropez long shots distance aesthetics 45—6, 47, 49-50, 54, 114 vs Hollywood styles 9—10 Loulou 218, 225-6 magazines 14—17 on Bardot 82 on Deneuve 199 glamour vs domesticity 15 Hollywood vs national actors 15—16 importance 14 for men 17 photographs in 14—15 for women 16, 17, 89 Makine, Andrei, on Jean-Paul Belmondo 171 Malle, Louis, on Jeanne Moreau 124 Marceau, Sophie, on publicity 23 Mariee est trap belle, La 91 masculinity 160, 223—4 as comic action man 161-2, 163, 168-70 implied by acting terminology 3

271

male bonding 66, 67, 228, 229 misogyny 177 negative 148, 149-50 sexual boundaries vs American norms 217, 223 suffering image 68, 225, 226, 227 Mauvais sang 244, 245 Melodie en sous-sol 176 Melville, Jean-Pierre 180, 187 men father figure image 76, 185, 229 feminization 54, 76, 185, 228, 229-30, 232 films for 67-8 magazines for 17 masculinity, see masculinity mod image 183—4 and national identity 36 New Wave, vulnerable image 112 playboy image 158 sexual images supremacy 97 threats 35 stereotyped 53—4 us younger woman 91—2 Mepris, Le 103, 104-6 minimalism 8, 72, 75-6, 179 Mon oncle d'Amerique 227 Moreau, Jeanne (1928— ) Amants, Les 130 anti-stardom stand 123—4 Ascenseur pour I'echafaud 125—6 auteur roles 121 awards 121-2, 129 career diversity 121 career history 122-3 mature roles 128-9 director partnerships 123 erotic image, face vs body 125—6 Eva 127 and fashion chic, Pierre Cardin partnership 124—5

272

Index

Moreau, Jeanne, continued feminine image 121, 122, 128, 129, 130 as flaneur (nightlife frequenter) 126 intellectual image 125 intonation 126 Jules et Jim 124, 126-7 mainstream career 122—3 modern image 123, 125, 126 natural style 123—4 Nikita 129 public vs personal identities 127—8 Querelle 129 sexual image, as femme fatale 127, 128 theatre as influence 122 Valseuses, Les 128—9 Vieille, La 129 vulnerable image 128 Morgan, Michele 4 musicals 198, 199 see also genre films Musidora 25 mythology 63—4 Nanas, Les 243 national cinema defence of 187 vs foreign genre films 143 global dominance us Hollywood 49, 54 vs leisure pursuits 143 mid-1960s decline 142-3 1980s actresses 241 national identity 231 us American consumerism 160 through comedies 219 from everyday objects 31, 32—4 from food 16 from national language 39 represented by men 36 represented by women 36—7, 83, 196

stereotyped 204 from rural nostalgia (France profonde) 19, 35, 71-2, 150 stereotyped, by Hollywood 22,

38, 39

see also individual names: and national identity natural style 64-5, 66, 86, 99-101, 102, 123-4, 202, 226 us Actors' Studio style 9 New Wave 6, 165-6 decalage (displacement) 118 from documentary style 117-18 from theatre 8 New Wave 111 auteurism, see auteurism camera us actor 118 cinephilia 116-17, 164-5 decalage (ironic disparity) in 118 director—actor partnerships 115-17, 123, 164-5 and Et Dieu ... crea la femme 85, 86

on Jean Gabin 77 mainstream actors 114 us new actors 110 natural style 6, 165—6 from documentary style 117-18 Paris in 120, 165 women 112-13, 117 and consumerism 119—20 emotions us rationalism theory 120 erotic image, face us body 119, 125-6 as fldneuses 126 inner beauty 119 intellectual image 117 lack of training 117 youthful image 117 nicknames 19

Index nicknames, continued Nikita 129 Notre histoire 181 Nouvelle vague (film) 181 nouvelle vague (movement), see New Wave Ophuls, Max, distance aesthetic O'Shaughnessy, Martin, on masculinity 163

114

Parapluies de Cherbourg, Les 199 Paris centre of theatre industry 7 and national identity 31 in New Wave 120, 165 Pathe studio 11, 45 earliest publicity us Hollywood 5, 49 Philipe, Gerard 6 photographs earliest publicity vs Hollywood 5, 49 glamour 4, 14-15, 16-17, 18, 34 in magazines 14-15 Pierrot le fou 164-5, 166-7 Place Vendome 205, 209-10 policiers 62, 68, 172, 184-5, 227 see also genre films political correctness, vs American morality 22 political stands 20, 84, 185 polls box-office 25—8 cinephile 28-30 Popular Front 20, 64, 65, 70 press 22 magazines on Bardot 82 on Deneuve 199 glamour vs domesticity 15 Hollywood vs national actors 15-16 importance 14

273

for men 17 photographs in 14—15 for women 16, 17, 89 photographs earliest publicity vs Hollywood 5, 49 glamour 4, 14-15, 17, 18, 34 in magazines 14-15 publicity actors' reluctance towards 23 from advertising careers 37-8, 242 at Cannes 18-19 diverse coverage 2, 29, 60, 83, 84, 162, 164 earliest publicity vs Hollywood 5, 49 from everyday objects 31, 32-4, 60-1 intensive coverage, by paparazzi 84 see also accessibility privacy laws 14, 22 Professionnel, Le 17 Q Querelle

129

Rendez-vous 243 Renoir, Jean, on Jean Gabin 72 Rocco e i suoi fratelli 174 rural nostalgia (France profonde) 19, 35, 71-2, 150 Saint-Tropez 82-3, 102 in Gendarme films 139, 140, 144,

146-7

see also glamour; location shooting salaries, 12, 14, 141 Samourai, Le 178, 179-80 San Antonio novels (comic thrillers) 222-3 Schneider, Romy 30 Sellier, Genevieve, on gender in New Wave 112-13, 129-30

274

Index

Seven Years' Bad Luck 46 Shipman, David, on new actors 110 Signoret, Simone 35 roles with Alain Delon 177 singing careers 20-1, 64, 84, 95 Sois belle et tais-toi 158 star system 1-2, 39-40 us studio system 11 us Hollywood system 11—12 Studio Harcourt, glamour photographs 4, 16-17, 18, 34 studio system actors as producers 13 us Hollywood system 21, 39 us star system 11 stunts 168 Sucre, Le 221 Swann in Love 181 systeme D (beating the system) 150, 169 Tasker, Yvonne, on American musclemen 163 television 19, 216-17, 233 and box-office 30 Tenue de soiree 222, 234 theatre boulevard 3, 5, 8, 25, 47, 137 cafe-concert 3, 5 cafe-theatre 5, 6, 216, 220 Comedie-Francaise 3—4, 6, 11 comique troupier (military comedy) 145 commedia dell'arte 245 copyright agreement 4 as influence 3-4, 5-6, 47-8, 51, 122, 161, 220 from power basis in Paris 7 from schooling structure 7 from work dependence 7, 163-4 modernization 8 natural style 8

us Actors' Studio style 9 sound systems 3 stilted style 72 style diversity 8—9 terminology 2-3, 24 Theatre National Populaire 6 vaudeville 5, 47-8, 51, 145 Three Must-Get-Theres, The 46-7 Touchez pas au grishi 74 Tradition of Quality films 5—6, 10, 104, 117 see also genre films Traversee de Paris, La 75 trente glorieuses (post-war boom) 160, 183 Trap belle pour toi 229—30 Trou normand, Le 85 Truffaut, Francois on auteurism 114 on Bardot 85, 115 on mainstream actors 110 Tulipe noire, La 174 Unbearable Lightness of Being, The 246-7 Vadim, Roger 86 on Brigitte Bardot 83-4 on sexual explicitness 93 Valseuses, Les 128-9, 220-1 vaudeville 5, 47-8, 51, 145 vedettes (prominent people) character actors 'eccentrics' 3 monstres sacres 3 definition 2—3, 24 Verite, La 89, 90-1, 103-4 Veuve Couderc, La 177 Vie privee 104—6 Vieille, La 129 women in box-office polls 28 careers, lengths 7, 28

Index

in cinephile polls 28—30, 113 domineering presence 52 femininity, see femininity films for 68 in genre films 28 hostility to Bardot 97-8 magazines for 16, 17, 89 marginalization 163, 229 and national identity 36—7 New Wave 112-13, 117 and consumerism 119—20 emotions vs rationalism theory 120 erotic image, face us body 119, 125-6 as fldneuses 126

275

inner beauty 119 intellectual image 117 lack of training 117 youthful image 117 in popular culture 104 sexual repression 97, 98 stereotyped 53, 204 struggles for emancipation 35, 106, 120 vs younger woman 91 youth 87 fashion 88, 89 image 93, 117 see also individual names: youthful image

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