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Faber and Faber

Cinema as a Way of Life: Notes from a conversation with Jeanne Moreau

By Peter Cowie

Jeanne Moreau is the European actress par excellence. The length and abiding vigor of her career, allied to her creative alliances with such brilliant directors as Antonioni, Losey, Malle, Truffaut, and Welles, has given her a pre-eminence that none of her contemporaries can match. Turning eighty in 2008, she exults in her profession. (Her awards include Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival 1960, the Lion d'Or at the Venice Film Festival 1992, Fellowship of BAFTA in London 1996, European Film Academy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997, Special Tribute at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles 1998, and the Festival Trophy at Cannes in 2003.)

'It's a calling,' she emphasizes. 'I never leave the set. Being a director as well as an actor, I'm interested in everything that's going on. When I read a new script, not only am I concerned with what I have to do, but with all the other performers.'

You are half-French, half-English. Do you find that this blend of cultures has helped you in your career — perhaps to think of Europe in a wider context?

Jeanne Moreau: I think so, in many ways. I find in myself a touch of Irish blood. I can be very shy, very introverted, but when I start speaking in public, I love it.

I didn't look forward to the life of an average woman: marriage, raising a family and so forth... I loved studying. I had to pass an exam each year, I never failed. So now, when I receive an award or a tribute in a festival, there's a little girl inside me that says 'You see, I was good!' Then I think of my father's antagonism; he despised actresses and women artists.

My mother was born in Oldham, Lancashire. My grandfather and grandmother moved to the south, and when I spent time with them in the summer, we used to live on the yacht my grandfather had bought to teach sailing. We were in small harbors on the south coast — Hove, Southwick and Littlehampton. My sister lives in Brighton now, and I still have family on the Isle of Man. My grandma was born in Ireland, in the same county where Nora, James Joyce's wife, was born and raised.

I started films and theatre at the same time. I made a lot of films before I worked with Louis Malle, and then became famous in internationally successful movies. Before – in the 1950s – physically I didn't meet the usual standards of beauty, it was the period of Martine Carol, Françoise Arnoul, Dany Robin - blonde girls, big eyes and 'tits'.

While still young, she became a highly regarded stage actress at the Comédie Française and the Théâtre National Populaire, but found herself confined to supporting roles in gangster films like Touchez pas au grisbi, with Jean Gabin.

Her talent attracted attention, nonetheless. In 1953, Michelangelo Antonioni wanted to sign her for I Vinti, but the Comédie Française refused to release her. Also in the early 1950s Orson Welles wanted her to act in his stage production, The Unthinking Lobster, at the Théâtre Edouard VII in Paris. But once again, her contract held her fast.

One evening Maurice Bessy, a French journalist, came to my dressing room and said that Orson was in town and wanted to meet me. I was then playing Bianca in Othello. Orson sat opposite me at the table, and years later he reminded me that when he'd dropped me in the street outside my apartment, I had been too shy to say anything and that he was 'dying' to kiss me.

Moreau would go on to take parts in four of Orson Welles's films: The Trial, Chimes at Midnight (Falstaff), The Immortal Story, and The Deep, which was shot in Yugoslavia and remains unreleased to this day.

I persuaded him to meet Romy Schneider, whom he took for The Trial. During that time, Orson was staying at the Hotel Meurice in Paris, and from his balcony he could see the two huge clocks of the Gare d'Orsay across the Seine. We used to peer through the barred gates of the old, abandoned railway station at night, and he finally chose it as the location for The Trial.

When I started appearing in films, it did not automatically bring money and fame. At least it didn't for me. In fact I am born on the stage of a theatre. All the time I wanted to prove to my father that I was right to have chosen that craft. My decision provoked a real break between him and myself. My mother had gone back to England, and my father literally threw me out of the house.

My meeting with Louis [Malle] was like a rebirth for me. Miles Davis agreed to do the music after seeing the scene of my walking along the Champs-Elysées at night in Lift to the Scaffold (Ascenseur pour l'échafaud).

What is a European film? How does it differ, at its best, from the typical American studio production?

It implies a very special approach towards people and emotions that can bring the best and the worst in films. There was a very important book that everyone who's involved in cinema knows, a book about the cinéma d'auteur by André Bazin, the godfather of François Truffaut. That theory inspired some great directors, and some disastrous ones, because not everyone can write his own script, and direct his own script.

What came with the New Wave was that powerful energy, that aggressive antagonism and the lack of money. The crew was very reduced. Hierarchy as such didn't exist. Prior to that, you couldn't imagine someone playing the main part, the star, without a car, a driver, a personal assistant, dresser, make-up, hairdresser... When I made Ascenseur, I did my make-up, my own hair, the costumes were my clothes, there was no driver, and nobody was following me around.

I used to do the make-up in a café at a quiet table out of sight, usually near the toilets, surrounded with the smell of urine and detergent! An assistant would close his eyes, holding a big coat while I undressed and changed.

Can you recall some personal memories from the European Film Awards?

What makes the European Film Awards so special is the friendly atmosphere of the event. At my first ceremony (Ingmar Bergman was not coming any longer) it was Wim Wenders who presented the evening. I liked the fact that people came from all over the world for this event. In 1997, we gave awards to The Full Monty, Juliette Binoche for The English Patient, Bruno Dumont's La Vie de Jésus, Manoel de Oliveira... In 2002, in Rome, the winner of the European Film and European Director prizes was a man who has become a close friend, Pedro Almodóvar. And in 2003, it was Good Bye Lenin!, and Charlotte Rampling for Swimming Pool. The European Film Awards are less sophisticated than Cannes. This year [2006], when Pedro won his statuette for the European Director's prize for Volver, everybody went to hug him, it was wonderful. Nothing is more provocative than cinema. It shows the life of the world. It gives us the knowledge of other people, of other cultures. For me, my life feeds my art, and my art feeds my life. The cinema is a way of life more than a career.

Interviewed by Peter Cowie in Paris, 19 December 2006.

Jeanne Moreau (born 1928, in Paris, France) has made some 130 films over a span of more than 59 years. She had already made twenty screen appearances when she was chosen by Louis Malle to appear as the femme fatale in Lift to the Scaffold (Ascenseur pour l'échafaud, 1958). In the years that followed, she became the emblematic star of numerous New Wave films, from Jules et Jim, La Mariée était en noir (Truffaut) to Une Femme est une femme (Godard), from Les Liaisons dangereuses (Vadim) to La Baie des anges (Demy). She worked with some of the greatest directors, including Welles, Losey, Antonioni, Jacques Demy, Tony Richardson, Martin Ritt, Fassbinder and Buñuel, as well as several times with Malle (Les Amants, Le Feu follet, Viva Maria! ). In 1975 she made her debut as a director with Lumière, and in 1979 also directed L'Adolescente. She portrayed Marguerite Duras in Cet amour-là directed by Josée Dayan. In 2005 she appeared in Time to Leave (Le Temps qui reste, by François Ozon). In recent years she has made frequent appearances in important television series. She has been president of the jury at Cannes, Tokyo, New Delhi, Berlin, Ghent, and San Sebastian. Jeanne Moreau has also served ten years as chairperson of Equinoxe, a European initiative for scriptwriting, and is an honorary member of the board of the European Film Academy. She directs a cinema school in Angers once a year during summer.

Published on: February 23, 2008