Simone Signoret

Reviews the life and career of the beloved French actress and international star, detailing her relationship with husband Yves Montand, her political and intellectual involvements in the 1940s, her many film roles, and more.

Bittersweet rise and decline of the great French movie star Simone Signoret (1921-85), by a writer for Paris's Nouvel Observateur. David improvises in a gaga style, telling us that the writing has been ``a long daydream in which I took over Simone's memories like a squatter.'' The author managed to get one interview with Signoret at the end of her life, and a half hour with an untalkative Yves Montand, Signoret's second and last husband. The actress was born in Wiesbaden to a Jewish French Army officer who had married a German, and she was raised in comfort. Back in France, her father became a multilingual translator whose many travels away from home fed her growing self-reliance. During the Nazi occupation, she became secretary to the editor of a collaborationist newspaper, Les Nouveaux Temps, who was shot by a French firing squad after the war. Signoret got into films by playing bits and extras, and she had a daughter by Yves Allegret, the director who launched her to stardom. Her most memorable roles in France were as the tart in La Ronde, the blond in Casque d'Or, the stony-faced murderess in Les Diaboliques, and the adulteress in Th‚rŠse Raquin. In 1949, Signoret met then-music-hall singer-dancer Montand and life was never the same. The night she won an Oscar for her role in Room at the Top, Montand sobbed in his seat beside her- -but he was already into his scandalous affair with Marilyn Monroe. That wound never healed, says David, and Signoret, defiantly, began aging. Alcohol and Gaulois did the rest, with the actress growing fat, wrinkled, bad-tempered, and half-blind, while Montand had his mistresses. Long politically active, Signoret died at age 64. Far, far less fulfilling than Signoret's own Nostalgia Isn't What It Used To Be (1972) or Montand's You See, I Haven't Forgotten (1992). (Twenty-two b&w photos--not seen) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Actress Simone Signoret (1921-1985), an important figure in French cinema and the author of several books, was known for her roles as femme fatale in a series of films including Macadam (1946), La Ronde (1950) and Casque D'Or (1951), until she achieved international fame and an Academy Award in 1958 for her portrayal of a rejected woman in Room at the Top. David, a Parisian journalist, provides little new insight into her subject's career or into the commitment to political activism Signoret shared with her husband, singer and film star Yves Montand. Claiming that she was stonewalled by Montand and Signoret's inner circle, David relies on information already provided in Signoret's 1973 autobiography, Nostalgia Isn't What It Used to Be , and sprinkles her text with conjecture regarding Signoret's childhood, marriage and her reaction to Montand's much publicized affair with Marilyn Monroe. David's personal ruminations regarding her obsession with Signoret's life further flaw this biography. Photos.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

She made only a handful of English-language films, but an Academy Award for Room at the Top (1960) and a lifelong marriage to celebrated entertainer Yves Montand made Simone Signoret world famous. She was arguably the finest French cinema actress of her generation. To create this portrait, Nouvel Observateur writer David draws on her own and other interviews and the actress's autobiography, Nostalgia Isn't What It Used To Be (1976. o.p.). David cogently analyzes Signoret's support for left-wing causes, and, after the revelations about Stalinism, her championship of the individual against whatever state infringed on one's rights, whether socialist, fascist, or republican. Also examined is Signoret's novel Adieu Volodia , the writing of which helped her trace the Jewish side of her family. Interested readers should be well versed in 20th-century French politics, history, and film to appreciate this volume. For large film collections.
- Kim Holston, American Inst. for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters, Malvern, Pa.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.