Non-conformist, free, devoted. Jeanne Moreau, the epitome of modernity

“This morning I allowed myself a fantasy game,” confided Jeanne Moreau in 2005. “I told myself that I am 29 years old instead of 85 years old. I was walking to the elevator to Lastam, my step was light, and God, how beautiful, young and free I was. I lived every moment and made the same choice as fifty years ago: I will be an actress, a singer, in love and shamefully free. »

When Jeanne Moreau (who died in July 2017, aged 89) arrived on set, “ it was just him, it was like an apparition said Louis Malle. That’s how Moreau was: a total artist, a free woman, a total rebel. Theater, cinema or song, he was thirsty for art and life. “I was already thinking about becoming an actress, but that Sunday afternoon in 1944, I passionately, irrevocably devoted myself to this need. It is my whole life that I commit to,” he writes, recalling his first emotions after the discovery.Antigone, d’Anouy in the theater, in the unfinished autobiographical story, which is revealed for the first time in c. Jeanne Jeanne Moreau.

The basics of a non-conformist

With a foreword by actress Rebecca Marder, this richly illustrated work, published by Gallimar, is an intimate portrait of the actress through unpublished documents—texts, correspondence, and personal photographs—from filming and company. These fragments reappeared thanks to the Jeanne-Moreau Foundation, created in October 2017, which opened its archives and made possible the publication of this beautiful book. Through the pages we find the basics of a non-conformist who knew how to lead his life with control; a British mother who dances at the Folies Bergère and through whom she imagines becoming a classical dancer; father, a French restaurateur, who harshly condemns his artistic aspirations. Theater lessons were taken in secret, which led him to the Comédie-Française…

And, of course, his film debut in small roles before the consecration in 1954. don’t touch the grisby By Jacques Becker and Queen Margot By Jean Dreville. A decisive meeting with Louis Malle followed, who, even before Antonioni (La Nuit, 1961), recognized her as the actress he was waiting for. The free electron of the new wave (of which he became one of the muses), the director offered him his first unforgettable role: Elevator to the gallows, where his unique appeal is immortalized by his wanderings in night Paris. She appears there bare-faced, radically makeup-free, which was revolutionary at the time. The polar opposite of a fifties Hollywood star who cultivates her image of perfection, Moreau scandalizes and delights, playing innocence and provocation.

The first movie star

In The loversalways in front of the camera of Louis Mal, with whom she had a great love story, she strips down for a scene of eroticism and nudity rare for the cinema of the time… What follows is the real success of the scandal, then. as many roles in legendary and non-conformist films – Les Quatre Cents Coups, Jules and Jim And The bride was dressed in black. by Francois Truffaut, The Maid’s DiaryBy Luis Buñuel Angel’s Bay By Jacques Demy… Jeanne Moreau has been in the cinema for nearly sixty years, starred in more than 130 feature films and played all the scores with the greatest French directors. mavericks Americans (Orson Welles, Elia Kazan, Joseph Losey) and new German cinema (Wim Wenders, Rainer Werner Fassbinder). But he is more than a formidable performer. he represents the first cinephile star whose astute judgments about creativity and direction have always guided his career choices.

A lover of great authors, he is the first one to create a filmography reminiscent of a film library. ” He freed himself through contact with New Channel to begin selecting his directors. “, admires François Ozon. Stylistically, she adapted her unique character, Jeanne Moreau, immediately onto the screen with a mesmerizing deep voice, opal eyes, a fleshy mouth with fatigue and an elegant physique, a bit against the current trends. Her beauty, sometimes distant and cold, which was considered too atypical at the beginning of her career, would feed the imagination of many filmmakers as well as fashion designers. The most unusual of all her romantic passions was with Pierre Cardin, a leading fashion designer of the 1960s and an admitted homosexual, to whom Coco Chanel introduced her.

In search of deep love

Known as a cannibal, emancipated and free, Jeanne Moreau always claimed that she sought deep love rather than passion, which she considered fleeting. Married twice, to two directors (Jean-Louis Richard, then William Friedkin), a mother, but not a mother. I had a child, I didn’t want it. I know I shock a lot of women He announced on our pages in 2012. she always went to the men separately: François Truffaut, Tony Richardson, Georges Moustachy, Marcello Mastroianni…”. I felt freedom. My life is full of experiments and experiences to learn what it means to love he said, paraphrasing StormSerge Rezvani’s chant in which he sings Jules and Jim.

Zhanna was a kind of tornado. His films set him apart “, her friend Margarit Duras wrote, noting that she played rebellious women like her, atypical, marginal. Correspondence is published Jeanne Jeanne Moreau testify to the relations that the actress has established with the elite of the French and international intelligentsia. We discover Orson Welles’ letters, daily exchanges with Roger Niemeyer, Peter Handke, declaring to him that he ” the greatest, the most dignified, the most gorgeous of all actresses ” that he knows, François Ozon confirming that we feel smarter in his company… And Delphine Seyrig, a figure of feminism in France, writing to him that she would like to play under his leadership.

Director since the 1970s (two feature films, light And The teenage girland a documentary film, Lillian GishJeanne Moreau has always campaigned for women. He kept repeating that ” It is the predominant presence of women in films as heroines that will give cinema its true existence “. And women, Jeanne Moreau will embody all of them, serving herself to the cause she defends. Rejecting labels, he has repeatedly stood up for their rights. In 1971, along with others (including Simone de Beauvoir and Catherine Deneuve), she claimed that she had already performed an illegal abortion on a famous ” 343 Whores’ Manifesto “, which contributed to the legalization of abortion. The elusive, radical and libertarian Jeanne Moreau remains, to use Serge Tubiana’s phrase: memory time “.

Jeanne: Jeanne Moreau Éditions Gallimard, 304 p., €39. In bookstores from October 5.