Thursday, Aug 21, 2008
When you visit the woman Orson Welles called "the greatest actress in the world," don't try to light her cigarette -- you might get burned.
Dec 6, 2001 | Actress and director Jeanne Moreau spent half of the 20th century on screen. From one Age of Anxiety to another, she has appeared in more than 110 films and dozens of plays. She is, as she likes to say, "a woman with absolutely no sense of nostalgia." And like a Gaulois-smoking, pouty-lipped Energizer Bunny, she's still going and going. In the last year and a half, Moreau directed her own adaptation of Margaret Edson's "Wit"; purchased the French rights to Marie Jones' "Stones in His Pockets" and Noel Coward's "Fallen Angels"; has been dramaturge to the Opera Bastille's production of Verdi's "Atilla"; and has two films on the way to the festival and art house circuit: "Zaide," inspired by Mozart's unfinished opera; and "Cet amour-là," in which she plays the late novelist and filmmaker Marguerite Duras.
In her four best performances from the '60s, "Moderato Cantible," "Eva," "Mademoiselle" and "La Notte," Moreau demonstrates a broader range than most actresses do in their entire careers. And that's leaving out "Jules and Jim," "The Immortal Story," "Bay of Angels," "Chimes at Midnight," "Diary of a Chambermaid," "The Bride Wore Black" and a half-dozen other films. She is the heavyweight of '60s cinema, and so far, the last of the heavyweights. In the three decades since Moreau's heyday, many fine welterweights have come up through the ranks (Susan Sarandon, Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, Kevin Spacey), but no one who could have handled her run of '60s films with the intelligence, wisdom, range and unself-consciousness she conveys with preternatural ease.
And it's not just the upcoming new films that make this a fine time for Moreau fans: Criterion recently brought out "Diary of a Chambermaid," her 1964 collaboration with Luis Buñuel, on DVD; "The Bride Wore Black" has been put back into video circulation; Jacques Demy's "Bay of Angels" will be rereleased in theaters this fall. And distributors have at last atoned for two home-viewing crimes: A shimmering print of "Mademoiselle" is now available on VHS, and "Eva" can at last be found in the United States.
Unavailable for years, Joseph Losey's "Eva" is a famously butchered film. Originally 155 minutes long, it was chopped down to 103 minutes by the producers. The Kino DVD contains a bonus Swedish cut of the film that runs 112 minutes, but the odds of a full version ever reemerging seem dim. And that's a shame, considering "Eva" contains Moreau's riskiest performance. Eva Olivier, as portrayed by Moreau, is probably the best depiction of a case of borderline personality disorder ever put on film. I once watched the movie with a psychiatrist, who was amazed at the intuitive accuracy of Moreau's performance. (I was told Eva would have been diagnosed "a functional schizoid" at the time the film was made.)
"You're fantastic in that film," I said to Moreau when I interviewed her, "even though it doesn't quite hold together as a movie."
"There are scenes missing," she said.
"I've heard that."
"Joe Losey was not able to do his editing."
"The Hakim brothers?" I asked, referring to the film's producers.
"I had to fight with them. I ran after one with a knife," Moreau told me.
"Really?"
"I wanted to open him up."
"I've heard they were really hard to work with."
"He closed a door just in time. Otherwise I would have skinned him," Moreau said as she smiled and lit a cigarette.
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