Michel Piccoli : Young Parisian
Mar 13, 2020 23:55:40 GMT
theravenking, spiderwort, and 4 more like this
Post by petrolino on Mar 13, 2020 23:55:40 GMT
Piccoli Boit
Michel Piccoli was born Jacques Daniel Michel Piccoli on 27 December, 1925 in Paris, France. His French mother, Marcelle, was a pianist, and his Italian father, Henri, was a violinist. Michel plays the piano. One of his marriages was to chanteuse Juliette Gréco.
"Juliette Gréco was just 16 when the Gestapo arrested her and her older sister in Paris in 1943. Their mother, a résistante, had vanished shortly before. Gréco was released, alone, a few months later. Wearing just the blue cotton dress she'd had on when she was arrested, and with no home to return to, she stepped out of the notorious Fresnes prison into one of the coldest winters on record – and walked the eight miles back into town.
She turned to her mother's friend Hélène Duc, an actor and fellow résistante who lived in a shabby little hotel. Duc found her a room and some food, but Gréco had nothing to wear apart from that blue dress and raffia sandals. "I was so cold and so hungry," she says, "that I stayed in bed for two years." Male friends, aspiring actors and art students, gave her clothes. Except they were far too big, so she rolled them up: shirts, jumpers, jackets, trousers, the lot. In the streets and cafes, heads turned – and a new fashion was born. And a star, too. Gréco's look and intense gaze would soon be immortalised by the giants of photography: Willy Ronis, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Doisneau all shot Gréco.
Postwar life was harsh: food was scarce, housing shabby, but the feeling of freedom was a joy. "We were poor," she says. "But it didn't matter, for we were free at last, and we all shared the little we had." Gréco, like all the artists and intellectuals of the time, lived on the left bank, renting a room with a bath tub. She never locked it, so other people could use it. "The room wasn't great for sleeping: there were always a few friends who needed a shower in the middle of the night. I'd find some of them asleep in the corridor – they'd passed out before reaching the door."
With her long black hair and fringe, her penetrating stare and her oversized clothes, Gréco became the left bank's muse, its existentialist mascot, the gamine girl photographers never tired of. She was keen on acting, but when she started singing, things took off in that direction. "I wanted to be a tragedian, but a friend suggested I use my voice differently. I loved poetry and literature, so why not voice poems?" Voicing is a good way of describing Gréco's singing style. "I am no Maria Callas, that's for sure," she laughs, "but I have had this truly astonishing career, touring the world, singing all those wonderful things in front of large crowds."
She chose poems by the likes of Jacques Prévert and asked composers to set them to music. One was Joseph Kosma, who wrote soundtracks for Jean Renoir. When she sang Parlez-Moi d'Amour, it was a sign that her days of earning a paltry five francs per show were over. This 1930s classic, now recorded in 37 languages, is one of those inimitable chansons about love and kissing that made French singers – from Charles Trenet to Georges Brassens to Serge Gainsbourg – famous the world over. Gréco joined their ranks, and now Prévert was writing songs for her. And Jean-Paul Sartre, too.
Yes, Sartre penned songs for Gréco. Ah, those were the days. "Gréco has a million poems in her voice," wrote the world's most famous intellectual. "It is like a warm light that revives the embers burning inside of us all. It is thanks to her, and for her, that I have written songs. In her mouth, my words become precious stones."
Men were drawn to her. Women, too. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the phenomenological philosopher, fell in love with her; Simone de Beauvoir, acting as chaperone, introduced her to Truman Capote and William Faulkner (who looked the other way when, starving, she stuffed her bag with petits fours at a famous publisher's cocktail party). Miles Davis, playing in Paris with Dizzy Gillespie, fell madly in love with her. "Sartre asked Miles why we didn't get married, but Miles loved me too much, he said, to marry me. You'd be seen as a 'negro's whore' in the US, he told me, and this would destroy your career. We saw each other regularly until his death. He was one of the most elegant men I have known."
Davis was just one in a long list of suitors: Gréco has left dozens of heartbroken men in her wake. Two committed suicide, and a few others made failed attempts. The press tried to make her feel responsible. "I don't care what they say," she wrote in Jujube, her 1982 autobiography. "I don't believe I can inspire such passion." Other men who fell for her included the Hollywood tycoon Darryl F Zanuck, who gave her starring roles in John Huston's Roots of Heaven and Richard Fleischer's Crack in the Mirror.
"I played alongside Orson Welles in both," she recalls. "I don't think I have ever laughed as much in my life as during those years. The writer Françoise Sagan was always visiting me then, too – she was barely 20 and really wicked, in the nicest way. We were like children. Orson was a genius and a gentle ogre, Françoise was extraordinarily witty. We loved eating, drinking and being merry. You should have seen us all after a dinner, roaring with laughter in St Tropez's deserted streets at night. We were very naughty."
She turned to her mother's friend Hélène Duc, an actor and fellow résistante who lived in a shabby little hotel. Duc found her a room and some food, but Gréco had nothing to wear apart from that blue dress and raffia sandals. "I was so cold and so hungry," she says, "that I stayed in bed for two years." Male friends, aspiring actors and art students, gave her clothes. Except they were far too big, so she rolled them up: shirts, jumpers, jackets, trousers, the lot. In the streets and cafes, heads turned – and a new fashion was born. And a star, too. Gréco's look and intense gaze would soon be immortalised by the giants of photography: Willy Ronis, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Doisneau all shot Gréco.
Postwar life was harsh: food was scarce, housing shabby, but the feeling of freedom was a joy. "We were poor," she says. "But it didn't matter, for we were free at last, and we all shared the little we had." Gréco, like all the artists and intellectuals of the time, lived on the left bank, renting a room with a bath tub. She never locked it, so other people could use it. "The room wasn't great for sleeping: there were always a few friends who needed a shower in the middle of the night. I'd find some of them asleep in the corridor – they'd passed out before reaching the door."
With her long black hair and fringe, her penetrating stare and her oversized clothes, Gréco became the left bank's muse, its existentialist mascot, the gamine girl photographers never tired of. She was keen on acting, but when she started singing, things took off in that direction. "I wanted to be a tragedian, but a friend suggested I use my voice differently. I loved poetry and literature, so why not voice poems?" Voicing is a good way of describing Gréco's singing style. "I am no Maria Callas, that's for sure," she laughs, "but I have had this truly astonishing career, touring the world, singing all those wonderful things in front of large crowds."
She chose poems by the likes of Jacques Prévert and asked composers to set them to music. One was Joseph Kosma, who wrote soundtracks for Jean Renoir. When she sang Parlez-Moi d'Amour, it was a sign that her days of earning a paltry five francs per show were over. This 1930s classic, now recorded in 37 languages, is one of those inimitable chansons about love and kissing that made French singers – from Charles Trenet to Georges Brassens to Serge Gainsbourg – famous the world over. Gréco joined their ranks, and now Prévert was writing songs for her. And Jean-Paul Sartre, too.
Yes, Sartre penned songs for Gréco. Ah, those were the days. "Gréco has a million poems in her voice," wrote the world's most famous intellectual. "It is like a warm light that revives the embers burning inside of us all. It is thanks to her, and for her, that I have written songs. In her mouth, my words become precious stones."
Men were drawn to her. Women, too. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the phenomenological philosopher, fell in love with her; Simone de Beauvoir, acting as chaperone, introduced her to Truman Capote and William Faulkner (who looked the other way when, starving, she stuffed her bag with petits fours at a famous publisher's cocktail party). Miles Davis, playing in Paris with Dizzy Gillespie, fell madly in love with her. "Sartre asked Miles why we didn't get married, but Miles loved me too much, he said, to marry me. You'd be seen as a 'negro's whore' in the US, he told me, and this would destroy your career. We saw each other regularly until his death. He was one of the most elegant men I have known."
Davis was just one in a long list of suitors: Gréco has left dozens of heartbroken men in her wake. Two committed suicide, and a few others made failed attempts. The press tried to make her feel responsible. "I don't care what they say," she wrote in Jujube, her 1982 autobiography. "I don't believe I can inspire such passion." Other men who fell for her included the Hollywood tycoon Darryl F Zanuck, who gave her starring roles in John Huston's Roots of Heaven and Richard Fleischer's Crack in the Mirror.
"I played alongside Orson Welles in both," she recalls. "I don't think I have ever laughed as much in my life as during those years. The writer Françoise Sagan was always visiting me then, too – she was barely 20 and really wicked, in the nicest way. We were like children. Orson was a genius and a gentle ogre, Françoise was extraordinarily witty. We loved eating, drinking and being merry. You should have seen us all after a dinner, roaring with laughter in St Tropez's deserted streets at night. We were very naughty."
The movie mogul David O Selznick once sent Gréco his private plane so she could join him for dinner in London. He offered her a seven-year contract in Hollywood. "I declined politely, trying not to laugh," she says "It felt too inappropriate. Hollywood was definitely not for me." There was also the great French actor Michel Piccoli, who won her over during a dinner by making her laugh for the whole evening. "A few weeks later, we were married. And then, after a while, we both stopped laughing."
- Agnès Poirier, The Guardian
Michel Piccoli & Juliette Gréco
'La Javanaise' - Juliette Gréco
He's co-authored books with music historian Alain Lacombe and documenatarian Gilles Jacob, written performance pieces for theatre, and composed music for film. His grounding in professional theatre came while studying under Jean-Louis Barrault. He performed on stage in the Left Bank of Paris in the 1950s, appearing regularly at Jean-Marie Serreau's Théâtre de Babylone, a workers' co-operative where Jean-Louis' brother Max Barrault was based, as well as Swiss grande dame Eléonore Hirt, director Maurice Cazeneuve and experimental composer Maurice Jarre. Piccoli became noted for his unusual interpretations of the work of Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello.
Like cleaning lady Sylvette Herry (later to adopt the stage name Miou-Miou) who performed at the Café de la Gare dinner theatre in the Left Bank, Piccoli was originally an odd-jobs man who worked the ticket booth, zipped up dancing girls and swept the floors; he'd do anything to keep his foot planted firmly in the door.
Brigitte Bardot & Michel Piccoli
Michel Piccoli & Romy Schneider
Valérie Lemercier, Miou-Miou & Michel Piccoli in 'May Fools' (1990)
'Amoreaux De Paname' - Renaud
He's spent a lifetime angering the Catholic Church and shows no sign of ever letting up. Church officials have frequently accused him of being unapologetic and they may have a case. His associations with Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel (6 collaborations) and Italian filmmaker Marco Ferreri (6 collaborations) are characteristic of this. Buñuel was declared public enemy number 1 by the Catholic Church in the 1960s and his exiled compatriot Jesús Franco was declared public enemy number 2 (both directors worked with French novelist and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière around this time).
Church officials regularly condemned Ferreri, casting him down as an unrepentant sinner within the pages of religious publications. In one of his final big screen performances before taking retirement, Piccoli portrayed Cardinal Melville in Nanni Moretti's 'We Have A Pope' (2011), provoking Vatican correspondent Salvatore Izzo to call upon Catholics to boycott the film "en masse".
"I consider him my Spanish father, and I called him that. We met simply because of box-office considerations: he didn’t know what actress he wanted for Le journal d’une femme de chambre, and the producers offered me. We met in an apartment in St. Tropez for lunch and enjoyed so much being together that we also had dinner. He was a fantastic person. He was the only director I know who never threw away a shot. He had the film in his mind. When he said “action” and “cut,” you knew that what was in between the two would be printed.
He worked with me mostly on physical movement. We didn’t speak too much about the character. But, as in life, sometimes you express yourself better and end up saying more by talking about something else."
- Jeanne Moreau on Luis Buñuel
He worked with me mostly on physical movement. We didn’t speak too much about the character. But, as in life, sometimes you express yourself better and end up saying more by talking about something else."
- Jeanne Moreau on Luis Buñuel
"He never liked to give psychological explanations or discuss motivation. He was very polite and lovable, very attentive to people, and he had a great sense of humor. And a terribly perceptive eye. If you made a mistake or told an ugly joke or hurt somebody, he would judge you immediately. Otherwise, he was very sweet — but with the calm that accompanies great authority.
He was very kind with actors and suggested things gently, and they knew he was right. They knew he had no hesitation about his work, no doubt at all. In one scene in Belle de Jour, Georges Marchal had to go down the staircase, in a close-up, and you imagined him masturbating. It wasn’t easy. Buñuel told him, “Think of the setting sun.” It was wonderful: at the same time that he gave no explanation — he simply told him to go down — he also told the actor he thought of him as a sun.
He was severe in life and very hard to please. He was a great Spanish bourgeois by birth, and very well organized. He was very good about working within the budget, because when he was young, he had experienced economic hardship, especially in the U.S. He lived very modestly.
We had great fun. He used to joke like a kid, always telling the same jokes. He never wrote letters, except when there were very precise reasons for it. Each time, he signed, “Disrespectfully yours.” For my part, I used to taunt him that it was Catherine Deneuve and I who made him. I said, “For years, nobody saw your films , except intellectuals, until we did Belle de Jour.” And he’d become very animated and agree and say, “You’re right, thank you.” We laughed and joked all the time. His laughter came out of a terrible anguish, but was non-stop.
He was once interviewed in Spain by French TV, which sent a crew with two trucks. He told them, “I could make a film with what it cost you to bring all this here.” He told them he preferred to do the interview in Toledo. They asked him if he liked that town especially and he answered, “No. I detest it. It’s full of flies.” Then they asked him if in El, he was influenced by Sade. He said no. The interviewer insisted: “In the movie, the man sews up the woman’s vagina.” Buñuel responded, “When your wife betrays you, you get drunk. I simply sew her up. There’s nothing sadistic about it.”
He respected others. When De Richaux died, I went on the radio to talk about him. I asked him if he wanted to do the same, and he said, “No. I never speak about dead friends. I just give stars as you would a restaurant: Sadoul, 5 stars. De Richaux, 4.”
When we were shooting Belle de Jour, I posed for some publicity photos for Lui and Buñuel saw them and said, “You call this an actor? It’s a puppet! The great actor Piccoli doing a thing like that! What a horror!” He folded the magazine under his arm and kept it throughout the shoot, making frequent references to it. I loved him."
He was severe in life and very hard to please. He was a great Spanish bourgeois by birth, and very well organized. He was very good about working within the budget, because when he was young, he had experienced economic hardship, especially in the U.S. He lived very modestly.
We had great fun. He used to joke like a kid, always telling the same jokes. He never wrote letters, except when there were very precise reasons for it. Each time, he signed, “Disrespectfully yours.” For my part, I used to taunt him that it was Catherine Deneuve and I who made him. I said, “For years, nobody saw your films , except intellectuals, until we did Belle de Jour.” And he’d become very animated and agree and say, “You’re right, thank you.” We laughed and joked all the time. His laughter came out of a terrible anguish, but was non-stop.
He was once interviewed in Spain by French TV, which sent a crew with two trucks. He told them, “I could make a film with what it cost you to bring all this here.” He told them he preferred to do the interview in Toledo. They asked him if he liked that town especially and he answered, “No. I detest it. It’s full of flies.” Then they asked him if in El, he was influenced by Sade. He said no. The interviewer insisted: “In the movie, the man sews up the woman’s vagina.” Buñuel responded, “When your wife betrays you, you get drunk. I simply sew her up. There’s nothing sadistic about it.”
He respected others. When De Richaux died, I went on the radio to talk about him. I asked him if he wanted to do the same, and he said, “No. I never speak about dead friends. I just give stars as you would a restaurant: Sadoul, 5 stars. De Richaux, 4.”
When we were shooting Belle de Jour, I posed for some publicity photos for Lui and Buñuel saw them and said, “You call this an actor? It’s a puppet! The great actor Piccoli doing a thing like that! What a horror!” He folded the magazine under his arm and kept it throughout the shoot, making frequent references to it. I loved him."
- Michel Piccoli, Film Comment
“The cinema is an instrument of poetry, with all that that word can imply of the sense of liberation, of subversion of reality, of the threshold of the marvellous world of the subconscious, of nonconformity with the limited society that surrounds us.”
- Luis Buñuel
"He showed us we didn't need to be afraid of existence and the catastrophes of existence. For him, those catastrophes were lies, political lies, fascism, Franco, and the Pope."
- Michel Piccoli on Luis Buñuel
Michel Piccoli & Jerzy Stuhr in 'We Have A Pope' (2012)
He's commonly regarded to be an activist who holds strong ties to the radical left. Having been branded a dangerous communist in his youth, Piccoli has clashed publicly with the Front National party over the years. His identity on the fringe of a political art movement once led to him being investigated by the authorities and some of his friends (among artists) were also committed political activists. Though never officially blacklisted, Piccoli became associated with an emerging group of filmmakers connected to the publication 'Cahiers du cinéma', though he also held links to those working at rival publication 'Positif'.
He worked with "auteur" theorist Alexandre Astruc and "proto-nouvelle" figurehead Jean-Pierre Melville early in his career, as well as "Left Bank" directors Jacques Demy and Alain Resnais. He worked with "Nouvelle Vague" directors Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette, who all wrote for 'Cahiers du cinéma'; he was also acquainted with Éric Rohmer and François Truffaut, though I don't recall him ever working with either of them. He did, however, work with Philippe de Broca, Michel Deville, Jean Douchet, Claude Lelouch, Louis Malle, Claude Sautet, Bertrand Tavernier and Roger Vadim, all of whom held connections to the architects of the "nouvelle vague", and all of whom were instrumental in the creation of a new style of modern French cinema.
Piccoli acted in Godard's 'Comtempt' (1963) which features filmmakers Luc Moullet and Jacques Rozier among its cast (he also appeared in Rozier's 1963 mini-documentary 'Paparazzi'). Decades later, Belgian director Agnès Varda cast Piccoli in the role of Mr. Cinema in her film 'One Hundred And One Nights' (1995). A Franco-Italian, Piccoli's worked with many prominent Italian filmmakers during his lengthy career, as well as numerous filmmakers from around the world.
Jane Fonda & Michel Piccoli in 'The Game Is Over' (1966)
Michel Piccoli & Nathalie Baye in 'Strange Affair' (1981)
It's been said that Michel Piccoli's worked with French filmmakers of the 20th century whose collective careers span the establishment of French, feature-length, narrative filmmaking as a global force, right through to the indie cinema reinventions of the 1980s. To cite a few examples from this particular time frame, this would range from the silent era (eg. René Clair & Jean Renoir), through the "réalisme poétique" cycle of the 1930s (Jean-Paul Le Chanois & Jean Delannoy), German occupation in the 1940s and post-war emancipation (Henri-Georges Clouzot & Maurice de Canonge, respectively), the period dramas and historical adventures of the 1950s that aimed to restore national pride (Rene Clement & Christian-Jacque), the aforementioned "new wave" cinema and comic book explosion of the 1960s (Jean-Luc Godard & Roger Vadim), extreme political cinema and boundary-breaking genre filmmaking in the 1970s (Jean-Louis Bertuccelli & Yves Boisset), and slick video-based visual stylings and post-modern storytelling in the 1980s (Leos Carax & Richard Dembo). The filmmakers I've chosen to mention, all of whom he's worked with, are just the tip of a creative iceberg as Piccoli's a workaholic.
Michel Piccoli & Catherine Deneuve
Michel Piccoli & Claudia Cardinale
He's spoken in interviews about his many years working without an agent and some of the unnecessary problems that arose because of this. At times, such gall angered studio executives and perplexed angry film critics. If Piccoli believed in a director's artistic vision, he would work on their movie. No role was considered too big or too small, and he often worked for peanuts, missing out on receiving potentially lucrative job offers. Having earned a degree of fame in the 1970s, he came under intense pressure to remedy this situation, but resisted. He worked with filmmakers long before they'd scored a significant box-office success ... sometimes mutliple times, which did not phase him, nor did it bother him. He's cited Marco Ferreri as a director who endured several box-office failures yet retained his clarity of vision and sense of purpose.
Isabelle Huppert & Michel Piccoli in 'Passion' (1982)
He was close friends with Austrian actress Romy Schneider and they cut a couple of records together. Journalist Eugène Moineau initiated the Prix Romy Schneider award in 1984. It's now regarded as one of the most prestigious awards for actresses in the French film industry, as selected by a jury each year in Paris, though the nominations have been criticised by some feminist groups as glorifying the "widespread exploitation" of feminine sexuality that "so often poisons the well of female talent within the French film industry" ('Femmes de pouvoir', 2017 statement).
Past Winners : Prix Romy Schneider Award
1984 - Christine Boisson
1985 - Élizabeth Bourgine
1986 - Juliette Binoche
1987 - Catherine Mouchet
1988 - Fanny Bastien
1989 - Mathilda May
1990 - Vanessa Paradis
1991 - Anne Brochet
1992 - Anouk Grinberg
1993 - Elsa Zylberstein
1994 - Sandra Speichert
1995 - Sandrine Kiberlain
1996 - Marie Gillain
1997 - Julie Gayet
1998 - Isabelle Carré
1999 - Mathilde Seigner
2000 - Clotilde Courau
2001 - Hélène de Fougerolles
2002 - Emma de Caunes
2003 - Ludivine Sagnier
2004 - Laura Smet
2005 - Cécile de France
2006 - Mélanie Laurent
2007 : not awarded
2008 - Audrey Dana
2009 - Déborah François
2010 - Marie-Josée Croze
2011 - Anaïs Demoustier
2012 - Bérénice Bejo
2013 - Céline Sallette
2014 - Adèle Exarchopoulos
2015 - Adèle Haenel
2016 - Lou de Laâge
2017 : not awarded
2018 - Adeline d'Hermy
2019 - Diane Rouxel
1985 - Élizabeth Bourgine
1986 - Juliette Binoche
1987 - Catherine Mouchet
1988 - Fanny Bastien
1989 - Mathilda May
1990 - Vanessa Paradis
1991 - Anne Brochet
1992 - Anouk Grinberg
1993 - Elsa Zylberstein
1994 - Sandra Speichert
1995 - Sandrine Kiberlain
1996 - Marie Gillain
1997 - Julie Gayet
1998 - Isabelle Carré
1999 - Mathilde Seigner
2000 - Clotilde Courau
2001 - Hélène de Fougerolles
2002 - Emma de Caunes
2003 - Ludivine Sagnier
2004 - Laura Smet
2005 - Cécile de France
2006 - Mélanie Laurent
2007 : not awarded
2008 - Audrey Dana
2009 - Déborah François
2010 - Marie-Josée Croze
2011 - Anaïs Demoustier
2012 - Bérénice Bejo
2013 - Céline Sallette
2014 - Adèle Exarchopoulos
2015 - Adèle Haenel
2016 - Lou de Laâge
2017 : not awarded
2018 - Adeline d'Hermy
2019 - Diane Rouxel
Romy Schneider & Michel Piccoli
'Sunday Girl' - Blondie
He became an unlikely sex symbol himself in the 1970s, after Claude Chabrol jokingly promoted Piccoli's "Italianate on-screen machismo" during press junkets, leading to reports of French women removing their panties in cinemas during late night screenings of controversial "scandale exposé" 'Wedding In Blood' (1973). This was a year before the commercial phenomena of Just Jaeckin's 'Emmanuelle' (1974).
Michel Piccoli & Jeanne Moreau in 'Diary Of A Chambermaid' (1964)
Michel Piccoli & Stephane Audran in 'Wedding In Blood' (1973)
Jane Birkin & Michel Piccoli in 'The Prodigal Daughter' (1981)
'Denis' - Blondie
He became a figurehead in the 1970s, mentoring young professionals at the Café de la Gare. During this time, Piccoli headlined Claude Faraldo's experimental piece 'Themroc' (1973) which featured members of the theatre troupe, and acted in Maurice Dugowson's lasting document 'F Comme Fairbanks' (1976).
Piccoli was also lensed for a photography project by Marilù Parolini, as was Marie-France Thielland (who'd adopt the stage name Bulle Ogier). Ogier knew singers Jacques Higelin and Renaud from the Café de la Gare. She'd previously appeared in Jacques Baratier's short film 'Voilà l'ordre' (1966) alongside several emerging French pop artists.
Gerard Depardieu & Michel Piccoli in 'Sugar' (1978)
Michel Piccoli, Bulle Ogier & Jeanne Balibar in 'Don't Touch The Axe' (2007)
Michel Piccoli has been in retirement since 2015.
Michel Piccoli & Mylène Demongeot
Michel Piccoli in 'You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet' (2012)
'Picture This' - Blondie
