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

288 Pages·2001·16.12 MB·English

by  Ginette Vincendeau

Stars and Stardom in French Cinema
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Stars and Stardom
in French Cinema
Ginette Vincendeau

CONTINUUM
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© Ginette Vincendeau 2000
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
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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 vi
Preface vii
Conventions xii
Chapter 1 The French Star System 1
Chapter 2 Max Linden the world's first film star 42
Chapter 3 Jean Gabin: from working-class hero to godfather 59
Chapter 4 Brigitte Bardot: the old and the new:
what Bardot meant to 1950s France 82
Chapter 5 Jeanne Moreau and the Actresses of the
New Wave: New Wave, new stars 110
Chapter 6 Louis de Funes: le gendarme et les dnephiles 136

Chapter 7 Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon:
one smiles, the other doesn't 158
Chapter 8 Catherine Deneuve: from ice maiden to living
divinity 196
Chapter 9 Gerard Depardieu: the axiom of contemporary
French cinema 215
Chapter 10 Juliette Binoche: the face of neo-romanticism 241
Bibliography 253
Index 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 Jean-
Louis, 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 stude nts 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, Jean-
Paul 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
viii 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 commod-
ities 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 pre-
World 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