Jeanne Moreau

The Full Biography

Jeanne Moreau. Actress. The Paris kid who made a New Wave face into Europe’s idea of a thinking woman, then refused to become a wax muse for men who had already filmed her.

This is her story.

The image most people still carry is a woman walking, a cigarette, Jules and Jim on either side, a voice that can speak a song as if it were a verdict. What the still cannot show is Jeanne Moreau of Paris, a music-hall English mother and a French father, Truffaut and Antonioni and Welles, and a life of directing, a late marriage, and a death in 2017 that the walk has never accepted as a muse’s whole file.

She was born on January 23, 1928, in Paris. Her mother, Kathleen Buckley, was an English dancer from the music halls. Her father, Anatole-Désiré Moreau, ran restaurants. Two languages sat on the table. She trained at the Conservatoire national d’art dramatique and joined the Comédie-Française in 1948, a young official actress in the official house. She left. The leaving is the first refusal. The New Wave sat on that leaving even before it had a name. She worked the boulevard stage and took film parts through the 1950s that did not yet make her a climate.

Louis Malle made the face a climate. Elevator to the Gallows (1958) is a noir with a Miles Davis score; she walks Paris at night as if the city belonged to her insomnia. The Lovers (1958) made an international scandal of a bourgeois woman’s desire and made Moreau a name that crossed the Atlantic. Michelangelo Antonioni put her in La Notte (1961) with Marcello Mastroianni and Monica Vitti, a long night of a marriage ending. François Truffaut’s Jules and Jim (1962) made the climate a syllabus: Catherine, two men, a song — “Le Tourbillon” — a crash. She is a woman who will not be owned by either man. The crash is the picture’s. The walk is hers.

She was not only Truffaut’s woman. Orson Welles put her in The Trial (1962) and in Chimes at Midnight (1965); he called her the greatest actress in the world, a sentence that is too large and still useful. Luis Buñuel directed her in Diary of a Chambermaid (1964). Jacques Demy’s Bay of Angels (1963) put her in a gambling light. Joseph Losey’s Eva (1962) and Tony Richardson’s Mademoiselle (1966) used the face as a danger, not a prize. Malle put her opposite Brigitte Bardot in Viva Maria! (1965), a comedy that let two kinds of French stardom share a frame. Truffaut came back for The Bride Wore Black (1968), a revenge picture. She was, for a stretch, the most complete European leading woman the art house hired: a mind, a walk, a refusal to be only pretty in the Hollywood sense. She sang. She recorded. “Le Tourbillon” is the song people hum. The voice that could speak a song as a verdict was not a side hobby. It was another instrument.

She directed. Lumière (1976) was her first feature, a film about actresses that the muse story skips. L’Adolescente followed in 1979. She made a documentary about Lillian Gish. The chair is the correction. She kept acting for decades after the New Wave had become a syllabus: Going Places, The Old Lady Who Walked in the Sea (1992), which won her a César, an honorary César in 1998, tributes at Cannes. She took marks in her seventies and eighties. She did not become a wax muse. She became a colleague.

Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.Jeanne Moreau

The turn is the chair. A lot of New Wave women became interviews about the men. She became a director and an old actress who still took a mark. Moreau is more interesting for Lumière than for a twelfth tribute reel. The walk is the climate. The chair is the file.

She married the actor-director Jean-Louis Richard; they had a son, Jérôme, born in 1949. Other marriages ended, including a brief one to the director William Friedkin in the late 1970s. Jérôme has had to share a mother who is a syllabus. Friends from the sets describe a professional who was regal, funny, and finished with a man’s idea of her mystery. Moreau in a Paris room was a woman who had already been a climate and was now a colleague. Both are the life.

The later years

The years after the syllabus pictures were long: more parts, the chair, honors, a death at eighty-nine. Home remained Paris. She did not become an exile in Los Angeles or a monument in a Swiss village. She stayed in the city that had made the walk, and she kept working in it. Jérôme was the son. The marriages did not hold. The work did. She lived as a woman who had already been Catherine and was now a director, a singer of record, a César winner, a face festivals put on a poster when they wanted to say European cinema and mean it.

The last jobs were not a fade into cameo only, though cameos came. She took leading work into her sixties and seventies. The Old Lady Who Walked in the Sea (1992) gave her a César for Best Actress — a prize for a performance, not a lifetime apology. The honorary César in 1998 was the lifetime sentence. Cannes and Venice put her on stages and let the walk be applauded by people who had written papers about it. She accepted the applause without becoming only the applause. She still took a mark. She still said a line as if the line had not been said before.

Companion, in those decades, was not a single public household the columns could file as a second act. Friedkin was brief. Pierre Cardin was, for years, the companion the fashion pages named. Other attachments were quieter. She had said that age does not protect you from love and that love, to some extent, protects you from age. She lived as if that sentence were a working note, not a greeting card. She kept the English mother’s language and the French father’s city. She kept the refusal that had begun when she left the Comédie-Française: no official house would own the rest of the file. Going Places (1974) gave her a cameo that altered the picture. She kept taking marks that were not tributes. The honorary Palmes and Lions arrived. She treated them as evenings, not as a retirement.

Jérôme remained the son in Paris. The syllabus remained the public mother. She did not write a long memoir that settled the men. She directed, she acted, she sang, she showed up at Cannes as a colleague. The last years were the city, the work that still came, and a death at eighty-nine that France treated as a national fact. The obituaries led with Catherine. The better ones led with the leaving of the official stage and the chair she took in 1976. Both leads are true. Only one of them is the second act she chose.

Elevator to the Gallows still plays with the Miles Davis score as if the night had not ended. The Lovers still carries the scandal that made her a name that crossed the Atlantic. La Notte still plays as a marriage ending. Jules and Jim still plays as a syllabus. The Trial and Chimes at Midnight still put Welles in the sentence and widen it. Diary of a Chambermaid still puts Buñuel there. Lumière still puts her in the chair. The César for The Old Lady Who Walked in the Sea is a prize for a performance, not a lifetime apology. The honorary César is the lifetime sentence. She died on July 31, 2017, in Paris, the city of the English mother and the French father and the walk. Eighty-nine years. A colleague, not a muse. That is the second act. The walk can keep the still. The chair keeps the life. Kathleen Buckley’s music hall and Anatole-Désiré Moreau’s restaurants are still the first table. The Conservatoire and the Comédie-Française are still the official rooms she left. Malle’s night walks are still the climate. Truffaut’s Catherine is still the syllabus. Welles and Buñuel are still the widening. Cardin is still a companion the fashion pages named. Jérôme is still the son. Paris is still the death city and the birth city. July 31, 2017, is still the date. The muse story is still too small. She directed Lumière in 1976 and L’Adolescente in 1979 and a film about Lillian Gish. She took a César in 1992 for a performance, not a lifetime apology, and an honorary César in 1998 for the life. She kept acting into her eighties. She stayed in Paris. She did not become an exile or a Swiss monument. Friedkin was a brief marriage. Cardin was a named companion. Jérôme was the son who had to share a mother with a syllabus. The last years were the city, the marks that still came, and a death France treated as a national fact. The obituaries led with the walk. The better ones led with the chair. She had already refused the muse story. The death did not reverse the refusal.

She died on July 31, 2017, in Paris. She was eighty-nine. The death was not a scandal and not a short file. It was a long life ending in the city where it had started. France treated it as a national fact. The obituaries led with Jules and Jim. The better ones remembered Malle’s night walks, Welles, Buñuel, and Lumière. Jérôme survived her. The pictures survived her. The walk outlived the men. She had already, by directing, refused to remain a character in their files only.

Illness, at the end, was age. She had outlived Malle, Truffaut, Welles, and the first audience that had called her a scandal. She had not outlived the walk. Students still find Catherine on a screen and think they have found the woman. The woman had spent fifty years after 1962 proving she was a worker: a chair, a César, a song, a mark at eighty. Paris still claims the girl. The syllabus claims the picture. The chair claims the rest. The closed official house — the Comédie-Française she left — is the first correction. The last correction is that she died a colleague, not a muse.

She had already, in the walk and the song, written the public woman. What she did with the remaining decades was refuse to let the public woman be the only woman. That is the second act. It is not a footnote. It is thirty years of call times she ran or took, a son, a city, and a death at eighty-nine that the walk has never accepted as a muse’s whole file. The walk can keep the still. The chair keeps the life.

After she was gone

Every thinking woman on film still pays her a tax in walk. Every New Wave tribute still steals Jules and Jim. Truffaut still arrives in the same sentence. The sentence is too small. Welles is the widening. The chair is the file. Lumière is still the picture the muse story skips. Paris kept the funeral. The syllabus kept the crash. The colleagues kept the woman who had been finished with mystery.

She came out of Paris, left the official stage, walked between two men without becoming a prize, directed, and died in the city after the muse story had already been refused. If you only remember the walk, you have the still. If you remember the leaving, Welles, Buñuel, the chair, and Lumière, you have her. Paris kept the funeral. The syllabus kept the crash. The colleagues kept the woman. The chair is the correction. The walk is only the climate. She left the official house and never went back to being owned by it. That leaving is the first fact. The chair is the last. Two languages sat on the first table. A walk sat on the syllabus. A director’s chair sat on the rest. She died a colleague in the city where she was born. Eighty-nine years. Not a muse’s file. The walk will last. The chair is the part the walk cannot show.

Portrait: Mario De Biasi (1923-2013) · Public domain (PD-Italy, 20 years after creation) · via Wikimedia Commons

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