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Home , Audrey Tautou, Babette Goes to War, Brigitte Bardot, Bruno Nuytten, Capucine, Carole Bouquet

IRRESISTIBLY FRENCH: FEMALE STARDOM AND FRENCHNESS

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree of Philosophy in the

Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By

Nicoleta Bazgan, M.A.

*****

The Ohio State University 2008

Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor JUDITH MAYNE, Advisor

Professor EUGENE HOLLAND ______Professor KARLIS RACEVSKIS Advisor Graduate Program in French and Italian

Copyright by

Nicoleta Bazgan

2008

ABSTRACT

French actresses have exerted an endless fascination on film audiences

worldwide. , , , and, more recently,

Amelie’s star epitomize the lasting appeal of the glamorous French star

system, inviting a critical exploration of their prominent star images and of the bridges of

desire that connect them to national and global audiences.

French female stars cross the boundaries of popular and cinema, and their mythical star text is refracted across both material and discursive practices, pointing to

their status as French cinema icons, national treasures, and objects of consumption. On

the one hand, French female stardom is represented as an elusive essence, a self-made

myth inspired by a reputable tradition of cinematic and artistic excellence, its allure

residing in the infamous je ne sais quoi that refuses easy consumption. On the other hand,

stars as icons of femininity are the objects of an intense scrutiny that invites consumption

through various practices, as the glamorous French actresses are exclusively faithful to

the national industries of , perfume, , and .

My research also reveals that the various cultural products related to French

female stars initiate a dynamic and visionary mode of transnational cultural exchanges.

Contrary to a French cultural tradition turned inward to protect its national authenticity,

the cultural products related to French female stars are open to export their Frenchness in

ii a global market. Consequently, despite the construction of French cinema split between a commercial and an art sector with less popular appeal, female stars contribute to its perpetuation as art, industry, and commerce, providing a vital link in the negotiations between feminine identities, cinema, nation, and (inter)national consumption.

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To my mother, Eli

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research project enabled by the professional advice, intellectual

guidance, and moral support of several scholars, colleagues, and friends.

First, I deeply indebted to my dissertation advisor, Professor Judith Mayne. In

every possible way, Professor Mayne was the perfect advisor for this dissertation and an inspiring for both scholarship and teaching. Her breath and depth of knowledge, passion for teaching cinema, intellectual generosity, and critical enthusiasm shaped and inspired my entire education and research. Through several film courses, numerous

discussions concerning many facets of this project, and generous comments, Professor

Mayne encouraged me to develop my passion for French cinema and to grow

intellectually during my graduate years.

I am grateful to the other members of my committee, Professor Karlis Racevskis

and Professor Eugene Holland for their generous comments and incisive observations at

various stages in the development of this dissertation. I am thankful to Professor Danielle

Marx-Scouras for her unwavering support of this project from its incipient stages and for

her inspiring passion for popular . During the later stages of the dissertation,

Professor Wynne Wong and Professor Dana Renga have provided me with constant and

very generous academic guidance and moral support.

This project would have not been possible without two grants for conducting

research abroad: the Coca-Cola Critical Difference for Women Research Grant on

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Gender & Gender Studies and The Ohio State Alumni Grant for Graduate Research and

Scholarship. The materials consulted in the Bibliothèque du Film and Inathèque were significant resources for my research.

I would like to extend my thanks to numerous friends for their advice and support:

Wendy and Florin, who put their time and energy in reading parts of my dissertation, as well as Adela, Andrei, Ioana, Iulian, Mirela, and Simona, who constantly supported me through numerous conversations and kind gestures. I am particularly grateful to Laura

Hetel. I was fortunate enough to have in her an intellectual companion and a dear friend who made my graduate journey infinitely richer. Laura and I were undergraduate and graduate students, teaching assistants and resident directors for study abroad programs, good friends and enthusiastic travelers. In addition, she was a careful reader of this dissertation, offering me insightful comments and much-needed reassurance at critical moments during the writing process. A very special and heartfelt thank you goes to

Konstantin for ink tanks, positive spirit, and invaluable friendship. The last, and surely the most, I want to thank my family for their support.

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VITA

2001 – 2008 ...... Combined undergraduate / graduate program The Ohio State University

B.A., Summa cum laude Majors: Political Science World Business & Economy

M.A., French

2001 – 2008 ...... Teaching Assistant The Ohio State University

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: French Studies French Film Studies, Twentieth Century and Culture and Advertising

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

P a g e

Abstract...... ii

Dedication...... iv

Acknowledgments ...... v

Vita ...... vii

List of Figures ...... x

Introduction...... 1

1. The Star as Icon of Cinema ...... 16

1.1. French Female Stars and the Divide Between Art and Popular Cinema...... 19

1.2. Paradoxical Female Stars: The French Star and Anti-Star System...... 25

1.3. The French Female Star, the Myth and Artistic Collaboration . . . . . 33

1.4. French Privacy and Artistic Labor ...... 45

1.5 A Cinematic History of Pygmalion Myth ...... 51

2. Icons of the Nation: Female Stars and Frenchness ...... 62

2.1. The Feminine Star, Cinema and the Nation...... 67

2.2. Resistance and : Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve ...... 75

3. is a Movie Star: Parisian Women and Iconic Urban Femininity ...... 89

3.1. The Myth of Parisian Women...... 95

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3.2. Parisian Women: Representations and Difference...... 99

3.3. On-Screen Representations: Icons, Flâneuses and Voyageuses...... 104

3.4. and Maps of Paris ...... 113

3.5. Parisian Female Stars in Extra-Cinematographic Discourses...... 124

4. Icons of Feminine Consumption: On How to Become a French Female Star...... 134

4.1. On How To Become a French Woman ...... 138

4.2. Fashionable : Stars and Cultural Product Industries...... 143

5. : A With a French Twist ...... 158

Conclusion ...... 187

Bibliography...... 192

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LIST OF FIGURES

1.1. . Studio Harcourt, 2006 ...... 18

1.2. Final shot in 8 Femmes (2001) ...... 57

2.1. Germaine Lefebvre. , 1951...... 62

2.2. Busts of Marianne...... 64

2.3. Poster for ’s electoral campaign, 1965...... 73

2.4. Figure 2.4. Poster for Babette s’en va-t-en guerre. (1959)...... 78

3.1. Laetitia Casta by Jean Paul Goude for Galeries Lafayette, 2001...... 89

3.2. Willy Ronnis. Place Vendôme, 1947 ...... 92

3.3. Galeries Lafayette advertisement by Jean Paul Goude, 2001...... 97

3.4. Brigitte Bardot and in Viva Maria. (1960) ...... 98

3.5. Poster for Une Parisienne. (1957) ...... 105

3.6. Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001)...... 123

3.7. Paul Moreau-Vauthier, Paris Welcoming Her Guests, 1900 ...... 125

4.1. Laetitia Casta by Jean-Paul Goude for Galeries Lafayette, 2001...... 134

4.2. Diane Vreeland. Boots by Roger Vivier...... 145

4.3. Le Rouge. Film by Rheims for Rouge Allure, 2007. . . .154

5.1. Audrey Hepburn. Gap Advertisement. 2006...... 158

5.2. Posters for Charade (1963) and How to Steal a Million (1966) ...... 181

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INTRODUCTION

French female stars have intrigued and allured audiences worldwide. Free-spirited gamines, sophisticated Parisian women, and magnetic femmes fatales populate the screen of French cinema, radiating the celebrated and mythic quality of French femininity and of its star system. Jeanne Moreau’s defiant laughter disguised as a newsboy with plaid cap and penciled-on moustache racing on the wooden railroad bridge in Jules et Jim. Brigitte

Bardot’s adulated beauty and irrepressible sexuality revealed with Et Dieu . . . créa la femme. Catherine Deneuve’s charismatic passion and majestic coolness. Juliette

Binoche’s and subtle blue aura, sophisticated and expressive, bold and contained. ’s immaculate fierceness and captivating fragility. Emmanuelle

Béart’s liberating sensuality and passionate dignity. Audrey Tautou’s impish gamine look and magic innocent charm. These different facets of the glamorous French star system epitomize the fascination that French actresses have always exerted on film audiences worldwide.

The proliferation of discourses that surround French stars and the types they embody acknowledges this magnetism. Best-sellers such as Entre Nous: a Woman’s

Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl, photographic albums like Parisienne(s), a BBC documentary investigating French feminine charm, French Beauty (2005), François

Ozon’s to French actresses in 8 Femmes (2002) as well as countless other

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magazines and movies, all point to the je ne sais quoi of beauty, freedom, glamour, and

that is at the heart of the French feminine and constitutes its appeal.

A central impetus of this study is the systematic examination of female stardom to explore the ways in which the French female star system occupies a unique place in the

global market. To do this, I set out to examine how cinematic narratives and extra-

cinematic discourses signify French female stardom. These star texts constantly construct

and, in turn, are determined by, representations of femininity, Frenchness, and .

To account for this complex process, I advance a model that reads female stars with the

aim of explaining the myth of the French feminine and its capacity for seduction.

Encompassing film narratives as well as extra-cinematic narratives of stardom, this study of stars regards them as complex discourses elaborated through diverse sources: their

roles and characters, publicity, multiple media discourses, such as specialized film

magazines and newspapers, critical reviews, (auto)biographies, but also fanzines and

women’s magazines. Through this critical lens, I read the myth of French female stars as

a tri-faceted prism that enables them to signify as icons of cinema, of the nation, and of

feminine consumption.

To explore the ways in which the myth of Frenchness is circulated by and through

French female stars, I examine in-depth their triple iconicity. As icons of cinema, French

female stars negotiate the tension between art and popular cinema and differentiate

themselves from their Hollywoodian counterparts through their signification practices. As

icons of the nation, French female stars crystallize a certain idea of Frenchness embodied

in specific types such as Marianne, the gamine, and the Parisian woman. Finally, as icons

of feminine consumption, they bridge the gap between national and international

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audiences through the promotion of Frenchness as a desirable and paradoxically acquirable trait. I argue that the synergies of facets of French stars construct

their mythical status as icons of feminine Frenchness.

I will first proceed with an in-depth look at the component parts of this model and

with a discussion of the theoretical tools I use, demythologization and contradiction, in

order to analyze the signifying power of movie stars. Subsequently, I will employ this

analytic model to elucidate the discursive power of French female stardom both in

cinematic and extra-cinematic texts and to illuminate the ways in which the French star

system functions in an international and national context.

The most basic concept on which I rely to address critically French female

stardom is iconicity. The term “icon” carries the imprint of its etymology. Derived from

the Greek eikon “likeness, image, portrait” and related to eikenai “be like, look like,” icons are images that bear a distinct resemblance to their model, according to the Online

Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. When analyzing the relation between objects and signs, Charles S. Pierce used this very quality of resemblance to draw a distinction between icons and symbols:

Icons are completely substituted for their objects as hardly to be distinguished from them. A diagram indeed, as far as it has a general signification, is not a pure icon; but in the middle part of our reasoning, we forget that abstractness in great measure, and the diagram for us is the very thing. So contemplating a painting, there is a moment when we lose the consciousness that it is not the thing, the distinction of the real and the copy disappears, and it is for the moment a pure dream, – not any particular existence, and yet not general. At that moment we are contemplating an icon. (163)

The necessary characteristic of an iconic representation is the resemblance to its model. However, the signification of the term “icon” greatly changed in a ubiquitous

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contemporary usage. To clarify this shift in meaning, I use Philip J. Ethington’s and

Vanessa R. Schwartz’s analysis for an online project concerning urban icons,

“Introduction: an Atlas of the Urban Icons Project,” which offers an insightful definition

of icons that I adopt to investigate French female stardom:

All Icons: (1) Are graphic simplifications and condensations of meaning. They distill a range of ideas into a single representation and act metonymically as a substitute for a multi-faceted whole. (2) Circulate across semiotic forms and across media. (3) Are both singular and repeated. (4) Function as visual clichés, despite . (13)

With these insights in mind, I will henceforth consider icons as metonymical

representations that acquire high visibility through both their uniqueness and repetition in

cinematic as well as extra-cinematic texts. I examine this appeal, engendered and exerted

by French female stars, by using a Barthesian demythologizing approach and the notion

of contradiction, a central concept in stardom studies.

In order to scrutinize French female stars and their capacity for seduction, I employ the notion of contradiction central to both Edgar Morin’s and Richard Dyer’s work on stars. In 1957, Edgar Morin initiated a critical approach in the analysis of stars through his pioneering work The Stars. Morin traces the of movie stars from their status as gods to their decline in the more familiar realm of the mortals at the crossroads of the 1930s. In Morin’s view, the star is manufactured at the intersection of desire and (65). Although he does not specifically address the idea of contradiction, Morin mentions it on numerous occasions in his star analyses when he notes that stars reconcile tensions between leisure and labor (27), are “like gods made of

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everything and nothing” (106), “rare as gold and common as bread,” and “goddess and

merchandise” (141).

Stars lose their divinity aura and unexplainable appeal even more in 1979 when

Richard Dyer’s influential work Stars contributed to the establishment of star studies as a critical field of investigation. Dyer theorizes the previously opaque fascination with stars and reads them as complex networks of signs. He develops a twofold critical approach where semiotic reading needs to be accompanied by sociological interpretation, thus equally emphasizing the stars’ capacity of producing meaning and their function within a specific cultural-historical context. Within these two research fields, Dyer develops a formalized and organized methodology to investigate stars and addresses contradiction as

an essential element of their charisma.

To analyze star texts, Dyer introduces the concept of “structured polysemy,”

which he defines as: "the finite multiplicity of meanings and affects they [stars] embody

and the attempt to structure them so that some meanings and affects are foregrounded and

others are masked or displaced” (3). The polysemy of star texts illustrates their capacity

of embodying a finite multiplicity of meanings as well as the process of being structured

around contradictions. As Dyer explains: “In some cases, the various elements of

signification may reinforce one another. . . . In other cases the elements may be to some

degree in opposition or contradiction, in which case a star’s image is characterized by

attempts to negotiate, reconcile or mask the difference between the elements, or else

simply hold them in tension” (1979:63). Consequently, contradiction is the core concept

of star text analysis for Dyer and, contrary to Morin, he reads it within the all-

encompassing discourse of ideology:

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I would generalise from this the notion of the star’s image being related to contradictions within the dominant ideology, or between it and other subordinated/revolutionary ideologies. The relation may be one of displacement, or the suppression of one half of the contradiction and the foregrounding of the other, or else it may be that the star effects a ‘magic’ reconciliation of the apparently incompatible terms. (1979: 26)

Stars therefore are not simply or directly reproducing dominant ideology, but they negotiate contradictory significations relevant to their historical and social context.

Nevertheless, in Dyer’s view, they remain ideological stars.

Even though the illustrations Dyer uses refer mainly to Hollywood cinema, the critic suggests that his theoretical apparatus is to be regarded as universally valid if one takes into account additional national characteristics: “the specificities of these other places where stars are to be found would always have to be respected, although at the level of theorisation and methodology I believe most of what is elaborated here in relation to Hollywood film stars is broadly applicable to these kinds of stars” (1979: 3).

Following Dyer’s advice, scholars such as , Ginette Vincendeau, and Guy

Austin have recently investigated the French star system along these lines.1 At stake in

these various authors’ works is the deliberate attempt to anchor star images and their

contradictions in the historical and cultural conditions of the French society that produced

them.

A close reading of these French star analyses reveals that the charismatic

contradictions central to stardom are more accentuated in French cinema due to its

artisanal quality and to the fact that French female stars need to signify in multiple

discourses (i.e. popular and auteur film, theatre, , advertisement) in order to counter

the “instability of film production” (Vincendeau 2000:13). In other words, due to the

6 specific conditions of production, the notion of contradiction is highly accentuated at the level of French female stars, which renders Judith Mayne’s reading of the appeal of stardom as “the constant reinvention, the dissolution of contraries, the embrace of widely opposing terms” (1993:138) a useful tool for my theoretical model of French stardom.

Mayne’s view situates the contradictory elements embodied by stars as a characteristic of cinema itself and matches my analysis of the paradoxical dimension of French female stars that relentlessly negotiate among iconic aspects of cinema, nation, and femininity.

To analyze the myth of female stars and Frenchness, I work in the light of Roland

Barthes’s tradition of demythology. From this perspective, I view the French female stars’ iconicity as condensing and reiterating a set of connotations that reflects and constructs Frenchness as a myth. Emerging from the three iconic facets of French feminine, these connotations engender constant contradictory tensions between their significations while, at the same time, constitute the mythical appeal of French female stars. Although the divisions of this study reproduce the three sides of the stardom model,

I frequently focus on the interaction and paradoxical convergences among these three facets rather than on their individual characteristics.

Certainly, this process includes the perpetuation of some visual clichés or connotations at the cost of others, but thinking in terms of the contiguity between myth and mask – a well-traveled metaphor present both in Roland Barthes’s Mythololgies

(1957) and in Edgard Morin’s The Stars (1957) – is productive here. As Claude Lévi-

Strauss puts it: “Like a myth, a mask denies as much as it affirms. It is not made solely of what it says or thinks it is saying but of what it excludes” (144). My work will address how certain signs of Frenchness are foregrounded at the expense of others since this

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visibility, this mask of feminine Frenchness is based upon exclusion. Nevertheless, these

bracketed elements can, in the long run, also function as a resource pool that serves to

reinvent female Frenchness within the innovative parameters of modern stardom.

In the first chapter, I look at the complex ways in which French female stars

question the generic distinction between popular and auteur cinema. This tension equally

establishes the limits and direction of the present study since my star analyses gravitate

around two : on the one hand around the mid- and early and, on the

other hand, around the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Uruguay round,

culminating in 1993. The first period illustrates the growing schism between popular and

art cinema initiated by the young writers of the Cahiers de Cinéma through their criticism of popular cinema in its tradition de qualité. This period equally marks the debut of the consumerism era in and thus the beginning of the inherent tensions between national difference and the threat of an outside, uniformly Americanized, excessive consumption. The second period, centered on the 1993 GATT agreement, relaunches the same debate around French cinema and, implicitly, French stars. This time, however, the national difference, marked by the dispute between commercial objects and artistic creations, is staged in front of a global forum at the World Trade Organization. These two gravitational centers problematize the uneasy cohabitation of economy and culture in the images of French female stars that also construct Frenchness as a site of alluring significations for (inter)national audiences.

Subsequently in this first chapter, I analyze extra-cinematographic discourses constructing paradoxical star and anti-star systems that reflect the duality of popular and auteur cinema bridged by female stars. While discussing the construction of French

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female stars in terms of artistic labor, I look at how extra-cinematographic celebrity texts

construct the relationship between high- female stars and directors in terms of an

artistic inventive process through which French actresses and directors as creative agents make an essential contribution to the strength and success of French national cinema.

Consequently, not only does French stardom refuse easy consumption through a

Pygmalion model and strict privacy laws, but it also constructs distinctiveness through its vital role in circulating artistic creation in the national institution of French cinema, therefore distancing itself from the Hollywood star-system. The highly visible off-screen discourses that circulate artistic creation through the images of French stars either in the form of the Pygmalion myth or the individual artistic creator reveal a parallel on-screen representation. I conclude, therefore, on the tradition of movies reflecting upon the role of female stars, as illustrated by François Ozon’s meta-commentary in 8 Femmes (2001).

My study of French female actresses shifts the critical discussion away from both a history of postwar cinema in terms of crisis and movie production and a politique des (politics of film authorship). Instead, I look at a politique des femmes stars

(politics of female stars) in order to analyze how French female stars circulate in

cinematic, national, and commercial discourses. In doing so, I argue that French female

stars, through their paradoxical qualities, are more prone to exports that their masculine

counterparts who are caught on the side of the elite culture as auteurs, cultural

policymakers, and of national culture. In fact, the stars’ femininity as a construct enables them to transgress the problematic barrier between art and popular cinema, between cultural and commercial products.2

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Chapter 2 focuses on the role of French female stars as icons of the nation. Within this framework, female star texts cluster signs of Frenchness through the incarnation of a long lineage of French historical and literary heroines, their association with the symbol of the French , Marianne, their significant presence in iconic French, and especially Parisian, public spaces. I work at the intersection of gender and national imaginary studies to illuminate the strong connection between French female star bodies, on the one side, and cinematic and political discourses, on the other.

In Chapter 3, I analyze the link between the star images of French actresses, the city of Paris, and the construction as well as the mapping of female subjectivities. I examine the strong metonymical relationship between Paris and its female inhabitants in cinematographic and extra-cinematographic texts in order to reveal the construction of

Parisian women as modern urban icons. To this purpose, I greatly rely on Tom Conley’s theoretical tools developed in Cartographic Cinema and Giuliana Bruno’s voyageuse concept laid out in Atlas of Emotion to reassess the representation of women in urban spaces. I argue that the symbiosis between women and the city of Paris opens up new readings of the place(s) of women in the city and allows for a better understanding of their positions and roles in public spaces. I show how readings of objectification and fetishization of the Parisian women and gamines are intertwined with readings that point to their influence on the urban space and interpretations that position female spectators as voyageuses. Moreover, I argue, that French female stars on- and off-screen map the city of Paris in terms of their feminine subjectivities. I end with Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie

Poulain (2001) since this movie holds in perfect tension the objective and subjective filmic representations of the gamine and the city of Paris.

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French female stars function at a level of idealization that reaches the discourse of

the archetype, of the myth, while, at the same time, they are anchored in the national and

historical context. In this sense, my goal is to illuminate how feminine stardom bridges

the national specific and the archetype of femininity through cultural consumption.

Therefore, in Chapter 4, I argue that this construction of French actresses as icons of

consumption facilitates exports of cinema and of the related national industries of

fashion, perfume, and cosmetics. Female stars need to convey an iconic image of

Frenchness while functioning as merchandise for a niche, created by their difference, in a

global market. Their Frenchness is perpetuated through high-end cultural products and

their connotations of exclusivity and cultural elitism. Nevertheless, female stars’ images

as merchandise will be inflected by their status as French cinematic icons. Despite the

fact that representations of French women operate in a particular national dimension, they

also signify as archetypes of femininity and thus as acquirable models of the eternal

feminine. This contradictory tension between the national and the universal is unique to

the representations of French women and allows them to signify in national or

international contexts.

I devote Chapter 5 to Audrey Hepburn, a Hollywood star and a gamine with a

French twist and I apply to her star image the three-faceted model of French female

stardom to scrutinize her long-lasting appeal. Through her capacity of connoting

Frenchness, her roles of Parisian gamines, and her association with fashion

designer Hubert de , Hepburn offers a rare successful example of constructing

Frenchness on the Hollywood silver screen.

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This tri-faceted model of cinematic, national, and consumption iconicities can equally explain how, if French actresses signify in only one of these three dimensions, their charisma at an (inter)national level decreases. For instance, if French actresses do not reconcile both the art and popular dimension of French cinema, their stardom becomes unilateral and only functions at one circumscribed level. Hence, French popular stars such as , Françoise Arnoul and Valérie Lemercier are to be analyzed in the socio-historical context of popular and national stardom. Conversely, French auteur stars such as , , achieve iconic status exclusively in limited art-house audiences and therefore lack high visibility.

When contrasting French female stardom with French stars as sole icons of consumption, Dyer’s distinction between a type and a stereotype becomes a useful tool for illustrating this decrease in visible iconicity. Dyer defines a type as “any simple, vivid, memorable, easily grasped and widely recognized characterization in which a few traits are foregrounded and change or ‘development’ is kept to a minimum (1980: 28-9)”.

Stereotypes reduce, freeze, and exclude differences. He also argues that the distinction between types and stereotypes is most visible in relation to plot. Whereas social types have a high flexibility and can assume different roles, stereotypes “always carry within their very representation an implicit narrative” (Dyer 1993a: 14). Consequently, if French stars signify only as icons of consumption in a cinematic text, they move from embodying types to incarnating stereotypes as their Frenchness is consumed exclusively as an exotic, highly sexualized type of beauty. In this case, French female stars freeze into stereotypes because they shift from the multidimensionality of the type to the unidimensional nature of the stereotype. In their first status as types, they reconcile

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Frenchness, cultural cinematic aura, and consumption whereas in their second role as stereotypes, they are exclusively destined to consumption. As an illustration,

Hollywood’s casting of French actresses in roles of French seductresses is symptomatic of this stereotyping process, as Emmanuelle Béart’s appearance in Mission Impossible

(1996), Isabelle Adjani’s part in the remake of the Diabolique (1996), Juliette Binoche’s typecast in Chocolat (2000), and Marillon Cottilard’s role in (2006) illustrate. When it came to explaining the difficulties in exporting French actresses to

Hollywood, language was thought to be the main barrier to the international promotion of

French stars (Finney 1997, Vincendeau 2000). However, another important element that contributed to recurrent failures of French female stars in Hollywood is their stereotyping as seductresses. These one-dimensional representations of French femininity are uttermost reductive and fail to reflect the tri-parted iconicity of French stardom by ignoring the other two synergy generating dimensions. Moreover, the stereotype of the exotic sexualized woman does not mark a significant difference from a reputable competition of other variations of exoticism such as those of Hispanic, Italian or Asian female stars. This final point raises another issue on which I wish to conclude, the concept of distinctiveness.

Only a few national cinemas challenge the dominance of the Hollywood star system in the global market. Alongside , French cinema stands out through the production and construction of a constant collection of stars. Within the framework of constructing national difference, the French star system is situated in a perpetual conversation with its Hollywoodian gigantic counterpart. Illuminating the viability of cultural products in a global market, Allan J. Scott writes that copying Hollywood-type

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movies as in the case of Luc Bessons’ Fifth Element (1997) is not a productive strategy

since the construction of uniqueness in the market is paramount:

Over and above questions of authenticity and standards of cultural judgment, this remark can be justified by invoking the general theory of industrial districts, which suggests that because of increasing returns effects, the long-term survival of any industrial agglomeration is more likely to be secured by meaningful differentiation from a dominant competitor that it is by imitation. (109-10)

Therefore, as cultural products, French female stars have to construct themselves

as significantly different from their Hollywood counterparts if they want to maintain a

presence in a competitive global market in the long run.3 Concurrently, their star texts

have to be readable for and fascinating to both national and international audiences. This

marketable difference arising from the triple iconicity of French female stars warrants

their visibility and survival in an international cinematic arena.

I argue that the fusion between national representations, cinematic icons, and

feminine consumption constitutes the heart of French stars’ widespread appeal and allows them not only to function both as artistic subjects and objects of consumption, but also to

tell significant stories to global audiences through their universal charisma. I conclude

that, at the confluence of the national imaginary and feminine gender representation, a

new form of cultural exchange emerges in the media texts surrounding French female stars. Films revolving around a masculine star, be they auteur cinema or popular heritage cinema, turn inward and mobilize all signifying resources to protect the national filmic industry. In opposition, French female stars shift the perspective to a cultural difference open to the world and ready to be exported in a global market. But what exactly constitutes their global appeal and what significant stories do they tell? Ultimately, within this framework, my study is about the fascination that representations of French

14 femininity engender, their inspirational quality, and the bridges of desire that connect

them to worldwide audiences.

1 See Ginette Vincendeau and Claude Gauteur . L’Anatomie d’un mythe, Guy Austin Stars in Modern French Film, and Susan Hayward : The Star as Cultural Sign. Several articles on the topic of French stardom are regularly published in French Cinema Studies, to quote only a few: Fiona Handyside “Stardom and Nationality: the Strange Case of ,” Sarah Leahy 'The Matter of Myth: Brigitte Bardot,” Jacqueline Nacache “Group Portrait with A Star: and French ‘jeune’ cinema,” Ginette Vincendeau “Juliette Binoche: From Gamine to Femme,” and Isabelle Vanderschelden, “: A new popular French star?”

2 The studies of gender in French cinema have followed different filiations centered mainly on filmmakers and gender representations. Sandy Flitterman’s study To desire differently: feminism and French cinema (1990) addresses female authorship in French cinema. The author analyzes the productive interactions between authors’ personal histories and visions (such as Germaine Dulac, Marie Epstein, Agnès Varda) and historical contexts (Avant-Garde, Poetical Realism, New Wave) to argue that these interactions create the possibility of a feminine filmic enunciation in French cinema. Cinema and the second sex: women's filmmaking in France in the 1980s and 1990s is Brigitte Rollet’s and Carrie Tarr’s contribution to the histories of French women directors. Although the authors include contribution of women other than directors (i.e. actresses, producers, screenwriters), they mainly focus in their analysis on an overview of films made by women directors in France. These two studies make an important contribution to shedding light on women’s filmmaking both as cultural producers and objects of critical scholarship. Finally, Gender and French Cinema, edited by Alex Hughes and James S. Williams contributes to the gender literature in French cinema with a project of reading gender representations in a comprehensive panorama of French cinema. In terms of female stars, two tendencies are to be found. First, there are studies providing biographies, filmographies, and memorable photographs of the French female stars such as Françoise Ducout, Séductrices du cinéma français (1978) or, Herny Jean Servat. Vénus de mélos: les belles actrices du cinéma français des années 60 (1987). The second trend, offering in-depth analyses of Female stars in socio-historical contexts, as previously mentioned, is reflected by Ginette Vincendeau’s studies of Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche, Susan Hayward’s study of Simone Signoret and Guy Austin’s study of Emmanuelle Béart, to name only a few.

3 I adopt Scott’s definition of cultural products: “outputs consist of artifacts imbued with imaginative aesthetic and semiotic content – sometimes even at high levels of artistic accomplishments – while at the same time they are subjects to the discipline of profitability criteria and market signals (i.e. they are produced in commodity form)” (33).

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CHAPTER 1

THE STAR AS ICON OF CINEMA

In 1957, the socio-economic and cultural changes brought about by the

consumerism era became highly evident in the critical discourses scrutinizing French

society. It was during this year, for instance, that Roland Barthes published Mythologies,

Edgar Morin wrote Les Stars, and France was still under the fascination of the Brigitte

Bardot phenomenon since she had erupted the previous year in Et Dieu . . . créa la femme.

Barthes, one of France’s most prolific philosophers and literary critics, was intrigued by the life of cultural objects in the Coty republic and launched a critical attempt to understand the functions of an emerging commodity culture.1 Political,

economic, domestic, and commercial objects became the target of Barthes’s intellectual

curiosity and demythologizing efforts. In Mythologies, one by one, toys, Romans in

movies, Abbé Pierre, detergents, bifteck and frites, wine, ’s face, the Tour de

France, the ornamental cuisine of Elle magazine, and the new Citroën in front of

the reader while Barthes deciphers each of them and exposes their capacity to condense

multiple layers of significations. In the theoretical chapter following these case analyses,

Barthes coins the mythology of cultural objects as a second order of signification serving

16

“to naturalize the cultural.” Subsequently, he recommends the uncovering and demystification of cultural myths through semiotic analysis (1957: 181-233).

Preoccupied by a different but related mythology, the sociologist Edgar Morin directs his critical interest towards the phenomenon of stars and their role in contemporary cultural life. He observes a “secularization” process, a metamorphosis of stars from gods to mortals as a consequence of transformations in cinema itself, which was screening more realistic, “more psychological and cheerful movies” after 1930 (16,

23). As a result, Morin argues, the star becomes more “familiar and familial” and inhabits the daily contemporary life without losing its mythical quality (32). Although the author’s argument is mainly based on Hollywood stars, a highly visible French star, “the sexiest of the baby stars, and the babiest of the sexy stars,” Brigitte Bardot becomes the target of his critical attention:

Her kitten-like face simultaneously expresses the infantile and the feline: the long hair falling down her back is the very symbol of lascivious undress, the proferred nudity, yet a deceptively disordered row of bangs across her forehead reminds us of the little high-school girl. Her tiny roguish nose accentuates both her gaminerie and her animality; her fleshy lower is pursed into a baby’s pout as often as into a provocation to be kissed. The little cleft in her chin adds the final touch to the charming gaminerie of this face, of which it would be libelous to say it has only one expression – it has two: eroticism and childishness. (31)

When contrasted with Barthes’s tribute to Greta Garbo, Morin’s description of Bardot’s face reveals the gap between eternal universal gods and mortal French girls:

C’est sans doute un admirable visage-objet . . . le fard a l’épaisseur neigeuse d’un masque; ce n’est pas un visage peint, c’est un visage plâtré, défendu par la surface de la couleur et non par ses lignes; dans toute cette neige à la fois fragile et compacte, les yeux seuls, noirs comme une pulpe bizarre, mais nullement expressifs, sont deux meurtrissures un peu tremblantes. Même dans l’extrême beauté ce visage, non pas dessiné, mais plutôt sculpté dans le lisse et le friable c’est-à-dire à la fois parfait et éphémère, rejoint la face farineuse de Charlot, ses yeux de végétal sombre, son visage de totem. (65-66)

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I use these two descriptions as illustrative of a pair of elements that I employ as tools in

my analysis of French stars. On the one hand, Barthes sees in Garbo’s face the mask of

the actress that, through artistic labor, incarnates the “archetype,” “the essential beauty”

(66). Morin, on the other hand, overwhelms the reader with his detailed description of

Bardot’s physical and sexualized persona. While Barthes looks at the inscrutable image

of the cinema actress, Morin takes pleasure in describing Bardot’s star beauty. This

opposition between mythical actress and star, I argue, is at the heart of the phenomenon

of French female stars, since it engenders their

inner structure and charisma as icons of cinema

in on-screen and off-screen discourses. Studio

Harcourt, the unquestionable photographic art

institution of French stardom, is a persuasive

illustration of the perpetuation of a mythical star

image up to the contemporary era. The

photographic technique promoted by the studio

Figure 1.1. Laetitia Casta. connotes eternity and sublime luxury (Baqué Studio Harcourt, 2006.

10). Barthes dedicated an essay in Mythologies

to it, remarking that the Harcourt studio is the ultimate confirmation of stardom: “En

France, on n’est pas acteur si on n’a pas été photographié par les Studios d’Harcourt.

L’acteur d’Harcourt est un dieu; il ne fait jamais rien: il est saisi au repos” (1957: 23).

Even after seventy years of existence, as Laetitia Casta’s recent portrait shows, the

Harcourt aesthetics remained the same: the three quarter profile focusing the attention on

the face and, in particular, on the eyes as well as the cinematic lighting that dramatizes

18 the use of contrast between light and dark, contributing to the overall aura effect. In brief, the visual approach of the studio Harcourt recalls Barthes’s description of the mask, as

Dominique Baqué and Françoise Denoyelle notice: “L’esthétique Harcourt élabore un idéalisme des apparences forgé par l’artifice, promet la beauté canonique de l’acteur dont le visage fardé, retouché, rejoint le hiératisme sacré du masque, devient un type idéal.

L’essence même du visage” (18). Laetitia Casta thus epitomizes the glamour of the mythical and archetypal actress as well as both the modern French Republic as Marianne

– to be discussed in Chapter 2 – and the contemporary fashion and cinema star.

Equally important, a Pygmalion model constructed in cinematic and extra- cinematic texts channels artistry discourses and reveals the capacity of French female stars to impact their future roles. While the recurrent Pygmalion model and the mythical actress discourse mark a difference from Hollywoodian stardom, the star image offers pleasurable and recognizable anchor points for (inter)national consumption. I will analyze this model in both movies that stage star images, such as Et Dieu . . . créa femme and movies that reflect upon them as, for instance, 8 Femmes.

1.1. French Female Stars and the Divide Between Art and Popular Cinema

The 1950s debuted with numerous representations of French femininity that flooded the silver screen: Jacqueline Audry’s (1949), Minne l’ingénue libertine

(1950), and Olivia (1951), ’s Casque d’Or (1951), Max Ophüls’s Madame

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de . . . (1953), ’s French Cancan (1954) as well as René Clair’s Les Grandes

manoeuvres (1955). Looking at this prolific film production, Geneviève Sellier identified

fifty films between 1945 and 1959 that she has labeled as Belle Époque genre films, out

of which twenty-seven tell the story of a female protagonist. Contrasting the

psychological drama tradition, Black Realism, dominated by masculinity with the Belle

Epoque genre staging femininity, Sellier argues that, through situating the feminine in a

distant past, this type of movie served as a “protective disguise to deal with the burning

questions of the time,” that is, the emancipation of women (2003: 53).

These genre movies created, nevertheless, a record box-office success. René

Prédal cites 1957 as a landmark of the highest number of French film spectators since the

end of the war (1991: 68). Central to this period is Martine Carol’s stardom reflecting the

quality of cinema as “popular spectacle” before the schism between art and popular

cinema (Prédal, 1991: 72). Carol nourished numerous extra-cinematic discourses

surrounding her persona, texts that scrutinized and reported her affairs, marriages, and

private life. Her on-screen performances polarized public opinion but her impact on

audiences was tremendous, as André Bazin’s 1954 article titled “De la Carolisation de la

France” illustrates. In this piece of virulent criticism, Bazin starts by noting that Caroline

Chérie starring Martine Carol represents the contemporary French feminine myth.

Immediately after this remark, the illustrious film critic harshly condemns the tradition of quality films as mindless copies of Hollywood’s blockbusters: “A l’âpre et rouge Scarlett confondant le démon de l’ambition et celui de la chair, Cécil Saint Laurent [scriptwriter] substituait une sorte de putain ingénue traversant les périls d’une époque trouble avec une innocente perversité” (298).

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Bazin’s comments show that popular stardom and Belle Époque genre movies

generated a wave of negative contemporary art criticism. In 1953, Jean de Baroncelli

claims to have coined a formula for popular films staging women while analyzing

Femmes de Paris: Bt+ 20 FN+VI+m (3AS). It can be simply read as “bon titre,” “femmes

nues,” “vedettes internationals,” “attractions sensationnelles.” This type of critique resonates with the tone of the subsequent 1954 article of François Truffaut “Une certaine tendance du cinéma français.” Truffaut marked a clean break with the past as he and the young writers and filmmakers of the Cahiers du cinéma deepened the gulf between cinematic and commercial movies through their insatiable critique of contemporary commercial cinema.2 The word “crisis” becomes a recurrent occurrence in the

entanglements and feuds between economic trade and artistic quality.

At the institutional level, the identical tension between culture and economy was

in the spotlight as well. André Malraux, named head of the newly founded ministry of

Cultural Affairs, brought under one roof education, architecture, historical monuments, and archives, as well as the CNC (Centre National de la Cinématographie) that was transferred from the Ministry of Industry and Commerce. In fact, Malraux himself identified with uncanny accuracy this tension between art and merchandise through the phrase – noted in his Esquisse d’une psychologie du cinema (1946) – on which numerous variations were played: “Par ailleurs, le cinéma est une industrie.”

An institution that also bears this contradiction at heart is Unifrance. Founded in

1949 under the supervision of the CNC, Unifrance’s role is to export French film around the globe. In the 1950s, its creator, film executive Robert Cravenne, was part of a delegation that met with American executives of its counterpart organization, the Motion

21

Picture Export Association of America, in an effort to capture broader American audiences. The consensus of the meeting was that more popular genres will generate more success in international terms (Seagrave 114-5). Stars were central to this approach, and the French Film Office in organized United States tours of French stars such as Martine Carol, Gérard Philippe, Françoise Arnoul, and . The program of Unifrance marked the promotion of stars abroad as part of its publicity and propaganda plans. Cravenne’s words reflect this approach that emphasizes the paramount

importance of stars in exporting movies: “On saisira et suscitera toutes occasions

d’assurer la présence de nos vedettes à l’étranger principalement à l’occasion de la sortie

de leurs films” (95). Unifrance also promoted assiduously a potential star, Brigitte

Bardot, from the early 1950s until she became the embodiment of its successful

promotion model (Schwartz 118, 123). As an international star, Bardot was the epitome

of a popular highly sexualized model of youth combined with what Schwarz has termed

to be the ultimate Frenchness cliché of the “gaieté française, the Belle Époque Can-Can girl, and the decadent world of ” (121). Accordingly, Time magazine noted the success of European movies in the United States in an article “In the Meantime,” attributing it to the shift from an art house trend to a more popular appeal caused by the

Bardot phenomenon:

Hundreds of independent theater owners have decided that U.S. moviegoers will gladly jump the language barrier if they are promised plenty of sex on the other side. “Frankly carnal!” shout the extra-column ads. “Passion-driven . . . she married the father to seduce the son!" And God . . . Created Woman (“but the Devil invented Brigitte Bardot”) will probably be booked into no fewer than 4,000 U.S. movie houses – largely on the strength of the heroine's moral weakness.

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This highly sexualized brand of French, and more inclusive European femininity waned in the global market by the end of the decade under the criticism of “too artsy before, too sexy now” (Seagrave 141). However, this phenomenon illustrates the destabilizing oscillations between art and popular cultural product that are visible in the international marketing techniques of French movies.

Malraux’s tenets of democratization of culture and preservation of heritage became the focus of Jack Lang’s cultural policy during his two mandates as Minister of

Culture (1981-1986 and 1988-1993). He continued the conservation of heritage (le patrimoine) and aimed at breathing new life into contemporary art through its diffusion to a broader audience at home and internationally. In his view, Malraux’s juxtaposition of

“art and industry” becomes reconciled through the notion of the “tout culturel”: “Il peut y avoir autant acte de culture dans le dessin d’une robe, le design d’un objet ou l’élaboration d’un film annonce-publicitaire que dans l’écriture musicale, l’art graphique ou l’architecture” (qtd. in Loosely 127).

The Lang cinematic years mark the appearance of a new cinematic genre, the heritage film. Constructed according to a technique of the film-événement, with big budgets and highly visible stars, heritage films dominated the 1980s and 1990s aiming at popularizing national culture through French historic or literary adaptations.

Consequently, they are inherently introspective, scrutinizing and screening a coherent national story when a sense of economic decline and growing disillusionment with the powers of the political dominated French society.3 As Guy Austin remarks,

Lang’s plans were to link the heritage movie to a golden age of the popular cinema which resembles the Poetic Realism movement of the 1930s (1996: 142-3). The minister of

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culture envisioned heritage film as a redoubtable concurrence against Hollywood in the

global market. Most importantly for our purposes, they screen a “crisis of masculinity,”

which, in Powrie’s terms, is as a social phenomenon that also places the male spectator in

a masochist position in terms of primary identification (1997: 11, 26). Guy Austin, again, points out a discrepancy between the goals of the heritage film – “the democratization of high-culture” and the celebration of “cultural industry and popular forms” – and its

results in 1993. The outcome is reversed, he argues, as the divide between the popular

and the cultural grew deeper given that Lang’s policy artificially favored heritage films

over successful popular genre movies such as (Austin 1998: 279, 295).

Both Malraux’s and Lang’s cultural actions illustrate the fact that culture becomes

a state matter, and also the implication that, as Cravenne puts it, cultural defense becomes

a matter of state defense (20).4 With a reputable tradition in France, the defensive

movement against Hollywood entails a description of French cinema in terms of crisis.5

From the New Wave to the French cultural exception, from the notion of auteur to the defense against the Hollywood economic machine, the critical and filmic debates have been conducted predominantly in terms of the masculine.6 The combination between star,

Gérard Depardieu, director, , and movie, Germinal, central to the GATT

cultural exception dispute is highly revealing in this sense.7

I will use the comments of Daniel Toscan du Plantier – president of Unifrance

from 1998 up to his death in 2003 – to illustrate my point. When explaining the

marketing of French films to international audiences, he argues that French movies

should be a “collection haute-couture cinématographique,” an epitome of luxury, elitism,

and refinement:

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Dans les pays riches, le cinéma français doit être vendu comme un produit haut de gamme: c’est le seul cinéma international non américain du monde, la seule alternative au cinéma américain dont il est complémentaire comme le produit de luxe est complémentaire du produit de consommation courante. De la même façon que l’on propose la collection d’automne de la Haute Couture ou un cru de Château Margaux, il faut proposer les nouveaux films français. (qtd. in Cravenne 154)

In his optics, if French cinema desires to gain visibility in a global scene, it needs to

market and promote itself by reinforcing cultural connotations of Frenchness. The results

of Du Plantier’s strategies were very successful as reflected by the high figures of movie

sales in 2002, including Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain, 8 Femmes, Le Pacte des

loups, and Ma Femme est une actrice.8 For the purpose of this study, Du Plantier’s term of “haute couture cinématographique” reinforces the notion of difference, of an elite cinema that has to be sold as commercial product in a global market. The images of

French female stars connote ideals of sophistication associated with French cinematic

culture and, at the same time, they meet the expectations of popular stardom. Through

their capacity of reconciling art and mass culture, they embody a refined and unique type

of femininity circulating the popular connotation of Frenchness while also functioning as

exportable high-end products.

1.2. Paradoxical Female Stars: The French Star and Anti-Star System

Colin Crisp’s study The Classic French Cinema 1930-1960 makes an argument

that there is no star system in French cinema. Looking at cinema as an industrial system

and focusing on its mode of production, Crisp argues that France did not have the

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necessary degree of industrial organization in order to develop and maintain a star

system:

The relative absence of a star system in France is due primarily to the distinctive nature of its production system and to the less developed form of capitalism of which that in turn was a symptom. A fully developed star system requires a conjunction of textual, industrial, and socioeconomic factors which simply did not exist in France. (224-5)

In Crisp’s view, French cinema was lacking essential resources to build a viable star system such as a well-functioning publicity machine, fan clubs, fan magazines, film production stability, a stable pool of scenarists to create roles accommodating a star image, and a studio base that would have an interest in promoting stars (1993: 225). Guy

Austin points to the time limitations of Crisp’s study and claims that by the beginning of the 1960s a fully developed star system emerged in France when the economic conditions necessary to the emergence of a star system were met (2003: 6). Despite its time constraints, Crisp’s analysis reveals an important distinction between Hollywood cinema and French cinema in terms of modes of production: “The French studio system was frozen in an artisanal mode of production, and it is arguable that a full-fledged industrial capitalism such as existed in Hollywood is necessary to support the merchandising of actors central to the star system” (1993: 226). Consequently, Crisp argues not so much against the existence of a French star system but against the presence of a Hollywood-

type star system in France. The artisanal quality of French cinema marked its star system

in a singular manner, rendering it highly different from Hollywood.

Turning to the definition of a star, Vincendeau identifies the star as “a celebrated

film performer who develops a ‘persona’ or myth composed of an amalgam of their

screen image and private identities, which the audience recognizes and expects from film

26 to film and which in turn determines the parts they play” (2000: viii). French stars, in order to be defined as stars, need a media apparatus to create extra-cinematic discourses targeting both the professional and the private life of the performer. Furthermore, French female stars, in Vincendeau’s terms, need roles constructed through and inflected by their star image as well.

Taking into account national specificity, Ginette Vincendeau demonstrates that extensive filmographies and extra-cinematic discourses surrounding actors and actresses are a viable proof of a long-lasting and well-operating French star system. Additionally, she mentions the international recognition of French actors as another staple dimension of their stardom, the order of her observations also revealing that French stars achieve stardom first within the Hexagon and subsequently at an international level:

France has a star system by virtue of the number of major film stars in activity, the length of their filmographies and the discursive production that exists around them: press, radio and television coverage, award ceremonies (the Césars) and festivals, especially Cannes. Yes, also, in terms of the glamour internationally associated with French stars – from Max Linder to Juliette Binoche – who frequently function as ambassadors of French cinema and French culture abroad. (2000:1)

While investigating the state of European cinema, Angus Finney explains that

France has a unique star system in European cinema. As opposed to Britain where stardom is mainly reliant on Hollywood, France offers the alternative of an independent star system. According to him, the privileged centrality of cinema in France’s cultural and daily life generates mass media discourses in newspapers, in magazines, and on television, actively promoting public awareness of French stars (63).

The Cannes festival is certainly one of the most visible cinematic events in France functioning both as an artistic and commercial event where stars and unknown actors

27

have an equal chance of winning the highest prize, La Palme D’Or, under the aegis of international cinematic competition. However, the Cannes festival has also been criticized for a too excessive exposure of its participating stars and their commercialization. Pierre Billard notes the underlying tension between the commercial and political dimension of the :

Les deux préoccupations essentielles – économique avec le tourisme et politique avec le prestige national – qui ont présidé aux origines du Festival vont imprimer leur marque à cette grande fête internationale, ponctuée de feux d’artifices et d’incidents de frontière, et de fixer son image de kermesse aux étoiles, de croisière de luxe pour VIP et beautiful people. (14)

In Billard’s comments, the Anglicisms “beautiful people” and “VIP” recall

Hollywoodian discourses, clearly indicating this problematic cohabitation of commerce,

national politics, and stars. In her overview of the Cannes festival, Vanessa R. Schwartz

emphasizes two other structural aspects of the festival: its declared cosmopolitanism

meant to accommodate both independent auteur and popular movies as well as the duality between the official photo shoots and the more spontaneous stars at the beach (2007: 66,

78). These distinctive features of the festival distance it from overt Hollywood consumption and serve to release tensions among commerce, national politics, and stars.

However, only the word “star” itself is a trace of the Hollywood system from which the French cinema needs to differentiate itself. The existence of a star system thus

becomes an uninvited sign of Americanization, as in René Prédal’s explanation that :

“Alors qu’on aime le dire moribond à Hollywood (ce qui est d’ailleurs tout à fait faux), le star-system triomphe en effet en France selon l’habitude qui veut que l’on imite chez nous avec cinquante ans de retard ce qui s’est fait de plus mauvais aux Etats-Unis: le vedettariat comme le système d’éducation, la drogue ou le Coca-Cola” (1991: 333). In

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Prédal’s view France does have a star system, but it only expresses the trade-off between

the star and the artistic quality of movies: the more glamorous the star, the less artistic the

movie. For instance: “Catherine Deneuve . . . tend alors à devenir, après Brigitte Bardot,

une authentique star à l’américaine, c’est-à-dire une curieuse figure occupant tellement

la « une » de l’actualité que les spectateurs ne se croient plus obligés d’aller, en plus, la

voir dans ses films” (1991: 333). In Prédal’s depreciative examination, if Bardot is a star,

she can be only a Hollywood star since French actresses have to serve and attend to the

artistic career of their movies.

Both Prédal’s and Billard’s comments reveal a surprising consistency with the

tone of the debate launched by Walter Benjamin’s 1936 essay “The Work of Art in the

Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” as these two authors allude to the diminishing artistic aura and the suspicion looming over cultural objects in capitalist exchanges. In fact, in his

short collection of essays reflecting upon cinema, Esquisse d’une psychologie du cinema

(1946), André Malraux contributed to this idea, drawing a clear-cut dichotomy between

art cinema and popular cinema as mediums for great actress and stars respectively:

Une star n’est en aucune façon une actrice qui fait du cinéma. C’est une personne capable d’un minimum de dramatique dont le visage exprime, symbolise, incarne un instinct collectif. . . . Il en est si bien ainsi que les stars connaissent obscurément les mythes qu’ils ou elles incarnent et exigent des scénarios capables de les continuer. Le public, à cause des gros plans, les connaît comme il ne connut jamais les acteurs de théâtre. Et artistique des uns se développe en sens inverse de celle des autres: une grande actrice est une femme capable d’incarner un grand nombre de rôles dissemblables, une star est une femme capable de faire naître un grand nombre de scénarios convergents. (N. pag.)

Malraux blatantly values artistic performances over female stardom and distinguishes clearly between the minimum of talent required for stardom and the artistic gift of the actress to incarnate various diverging roles rather than repetitive, converging

29

characters. In a similar manner, a critique of Jeanne Moreau’s performance in Les Amants

holds in exclusive opposition the term “star” and the health of the French cinema:

Pour la première fois depuis de longues années, un film sur l’amour s’écartait de la mythologie traditionnelle, et du “star-system.”. . . Bien que l’interprétation de Jeanne Moreau soit un chef d’œuvre de tact, d’élégance, de métier consommé, on n’a jamais avec Les Amants l’impression d’assister à l’écran à la tranche de vie d’une star. Ce film-là n’est pas l’histoire d’un monstre sacré, ni l’exercice de prouesse d’une vedette, Jeanne Moreau. . . . Mais ce défi au «star-system», ce cri de santé du jeune cinéma français, ne furent entendus qu’à demi. (Chapier 23-4)

If the status of French actresses as artistic agents and depositories of a French cinematic heritage is not at all problematic for their contribution to the cultural life of the nation, their status as objects of consumption requires a definition that clearly differentiates them from their Hollywoodian counterpart. In this perspective, French female stars have to negotiate the tension between cinema actresses and stars, as both dimensions are necessary for them to develop durable and viable careers. Vincendeau reformulates this dichotomy when she asserts that French female stars develop dual-track careers in both auteur cinema and popular cinema due to two reasons: the artisanal quality of French cinema and its generic fluidity (2000: 24). I observe that the polarization of this opposition between the star and cinema actress is highly visible in the mid-1950-1960s and it becomes increasingly softened through the accumulation of

paradoxical discourses reinforcing both terms “star” and “cinema actress,” in the late

1980s and 1990s.

According to , the term “star” does not belong in the France of 1962.

In a radio interview, he argues that, since stars are mass culture products, essential instruments for marketing, publicity, and promotion, the French have “anti-stars” while

Hollywood has “stars”:

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C’était le côté “anti-star” de Hollywood que représente . . . Brigitte; aspect particulier du mythe Bardot . . . Ce n’est pas la fille dont l’enfance a été malheureuse, qui a crevé la faim, qui a une revanche à prendre sur la vie. . . . L’exemple type, n’est-ce pas est Marilyn : Brigitte c’est le contraire. On sait que cette carrière, elle n’y tenait pas tellement. Elle aimait danser, elle aimait la musique. . . . Cette attitude lui donnait une certaine assurance. (Malle qtd. in Chapier 44)

The same discourse emerges at the release of Jules et Jim (1962) where Truffaut states that he intended to offer Jeanne Moreau a role that would her authenticity, by sheltering her from stardom: “Je voulais faire du bien à Jeanne Moreau actrice, et il m’a semblé que je devais l’empêcher de devenir prestigieuse, qu’il fallait lui épargner toute exhibition.” (Truffaut qtd. in Frodon 128)

Accordingly, French actresses refuse the term “star” in different media texts because they perceive it as echoing a Hollywood dimension and the exacerbated practice of consumption accompanying it. For instance, in an interview with Yves Alion in Ecran

(1978), Catherine Deneuve contests the notion of a French female star on behalf of actresses’ artistic freedom (23). French film critics generally echoed this tendency, creatively avoiding the term “stars,” by devoting film journal issues to French actors and actresses, interprètes or vedettes. Even though French actresses are not constructed by the

French media as stars, they are elevated to the status of royalty and divinity in the popular press. As a consequence, Brigitte Bardot becomes “La Reine Bardot” (Cravenne 220). In

France Soir, Monique Pantel praises Juliette Binoche’s performance in the English

Patient (1997) under the “Divine Juliette.” Along the same lines, Catherine Deneuve becomes “la grande ” of French cinema and “trésor national français” in the

September 1995 issue of French Vogue dedicated to the appeal of French women. More recently, ’s “Amélie Poulain, un tour du monde en 17 millions d'entrées,” by

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Claudine Mulard and Thomas Sotinel, represented Audrey Tautou as a “fragile” and

“tiny” gamine in her Amélie role, fighting the gigantic Hollywood film machinery of stardom and blockbusters.

On the other hand, the words “star” and “anti-star” came to inhabit the same discourses in the case of established female stars with a reputable career in both popular and art cinema in the 1980s and 1990s. For instance, in an article previewing an interview with Deneuve, revealingly titled “Catherine Deneuve ou le triomphe de l'ambiguïté,”

Yves Alion states that the first incarnated by Deneuve is the one between star

and anti-star: “Il n’y pas de stars en France nous dit Catherine Deneuve dans l’entretien

qui . Pourtant s’il ne reste qu’une star en France, Catherine est celle-là” (12). Agnès

Peck, dedicating a Dossier to Isabelle Adjani in Positif, illustrates in a similar manner the

contradictory concept of star/actrice at the heart of her image:”Isabelle Adjani est plus

qu’une remarquable actrice, plus qu’une star, que ce soit dans le sens ancien,

hollywoodien du terme, ou dans le sens actuel médiatique. Etre de fuites, véritable mythe

français résistant à toute réduction . . .” (25). Finally, Juliette Binoche reveals an anti-star

attitude in her own words: “Je suis actrice et je n’aime pas me faire remarquer. Star, c’est

quoi? Ce serait rester lumineux et humain en toutes circonstances. C’est une illusion, une

image fabriquée.” Thus, she directly critiques the star system in France. Nevertheless,

Richard Gianorio, the author of the interview, qualifies her as a star, granted a

contradictory one, in the interview title “Binoche, star paradoxale.”

French female stars incarnate and circulate desire therefore through a living paradox that allows them to function as icons of cinema in their dual quality of star- commodities and mythical actresses. Recurrent and highly visible extra-cinematic

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discourses construct the paradoxical stardom of French female actresses, which constitutes the first distinctive element of their French stardom. I will now turn to the second element of Vincendeau’s definition of stardom, the set of roles that accommodate and perpetuate the star image.

1.3. The French Female Star, the Pygmalion Myth, and Artistic Collaboration

The artisanal quality of French cinema underlined by Crisp triggers alternative collaborative patterns in French cinema. Vincendeau mentions that a model based on contractual deals involving a small number of films, in which a star and a producer collaborate, has developed since the 1930s. Therefore, the relationship between stars and the movie industry evolved in the form of theatrical troupes, couples, and friendships

(2000: 11). Artistic coupledom constructed between a movie director and a star fits precisely in this mold and, at the same time, marks a difference from the Hollywood model by constructing the cinematic couple as artistic agents rather than merchandise.

An illustrative example is to be found in the long-term collaboration between

Claude Chabrol and . In her article for Die Zeit titled “Arming Juliette,”

Katja Nicodemus reflects on the impact that the artistic partnership between star and

director had on both their careers:

She has killed her daughter for him, her parents, an entire family and even herself. In seven films, she has lied, betrayed, fired a gun and spread poison through the world. For about 30 years, actress Isabelle Huppert has dragged director with her into battle. She is the guerilla warrior of his cinema, his muse,

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his accompanist and an ally with a flexible arsenal. She was armed with a pinch of deadly powder in Violette Nozière, with a shotgun in La Cérémonie and now, as an investigating magistrate in Chabrol's new film, of Power, her weapons are the legal articles of a French judge. Sometimes Chabrol dreams of putting Isabelle Huppert on the big screen with just a machine gun in her hands, letting her mow everything down.

Through this brief summary of Huppert and Chabrol’s collaboration, it becomes evident not only that director and star become one person, as Nicodemus argues, but also that through this partnership, Huppert’s star image inflects her roles in a recognizable and foreseeable manner for the audience. As Jacqueline Nacache puts it in her study L'acteur de cinéma:

La collaboration passionnée d’un acteur et d’un cinéaste n’est pas seulement la reproduction d’une formule efficace, mais garantit la permanence d’un regard sur un visage. Elle efface toute limite entre les films, les construisant en un long discours, visite guidée, interminable d’un être humain, allant jusqu’à l’inscrire en creux dans les œuvres. (2003: 71)

Based on all these examples, I argue that a repetitive work pattern promoting a star image across different movies contributes to the stardom of French actresses.

When Morin talks about the star system, he asserts that “The star adheres most effectively to her screen in the affairs of the heart. . . . It is preferable that a star love a star” (52). He goes on to enumerate the situated at the star’s level: , aristocrats, heavy weight champions, bullfighters, and band leaders. Morin’s omission of the director as a suitable half of the star couple becomes understandable when taking into account that he addresses exclusively the Hollywood star system. When talking about French cinema, the director becomes a highly desirable (artistic) partner for the star. In the documentary titled French Beauty (2005), the American film critic Kent

Jones observes that French stars think about their career in terms of directors, not mainly

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in terms of roles as Hollywood actors do. Hence, a different artistic relation between

movie stars and directors is constructed in French cinema.

The Pygmalion myth in French cinema cannot be read in simple terms of an

exterior author (Pygmalion) modeling a star (). Neither does the active/passive

dichotomy work as Nicodemus’s analysis of the relationship between Chabrol and

Huppert shows. I keep in mind Dyer’s warning about the trap posed by the discussion of

authorship in terms of self-expression since “it cannot acknowledge that all language of

whatever kind ‘escapes’ its individual users to a greater or lesser extent and, secondly,

that it assumes a self that exists outside of and prior to language rather than one that is

formed in and through language” (1979: 158). Rather, through retracing the history of the

Pygmalion myth and observing where the focus of attention lies in extra-cinematic texts,

I examine its transformations since the mid-1950s. In addition, I analyze how star images

are revealed or disrupt filmic texts while circulating desire on screen.

I look at three French couples: and Brigitte Bardot, Catherine

Deneuve and Francois Truffaut, and, more recently, Juliette Binoche and Leos Carax, to

analyze the recurrent Pygmalion model according to which notable celebrity couples in

French cinema have been constructed in extra-cinematographic discourses. I limit my

discussion to male directors and female actresses while illustrating, at the same time, three different interactions within these artistic partnerships to see how they circulate artistic creation and consumption within the institution of French national cinema.

Through this diachronic analysis, I show that the collaborative dynamics between directors and stars valorizes progressively the artistic labor of French female stars, culminating in an altered Pygmalion myth of artistic collaboration.

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The most controversial Pygmalion story in French cinema was probably Roger

Vadim’s 1956 feature Et Dieu . . . créa la femme starring his wife at the time, Brigitte

Bardot. It was Vadim’s directorial debut and Bardot’s seventeenth movie that finally

granted her star status as a new sex-symbol. After Bardot’s breakthrough performance in the role of Juliette, texts addressed divergent notions of authorship related to her performance. The conversation around this creative authority is especially captured by the movie’s U.S. promotion tagline: “And God Created Woman . . . But the Devil Created

Bardot.” This overt emphasis on sexuality attracted a prompt reply from feminist critics who viewed Bardot as the incarnation of modern feminine sexuality, re-launching the debate in the form of the following terms “Et L’Homme créea la salope” (Hayward,

1993: 177). The critic Claude Mauriac in the Figaro Littéraire of 8 December 1956, uses

the same authorship pattern but conveys a different message. From a masculine viewer’s

perspective, Mauriac argues that too much exposure of Bardot’s body does not

communicate an effect of seduction, but quite to the contrary, a harmful exhibitionist

result, hence, the title of the article, “Où l’homme détruit la femme.”

In contrast, in one of his several autobiographies titled Bardot, Deneuve, Fonda,

Roger Vadim humbly tempers the claim of artistic authorship: “I did not invent Brigitte

Bardot. I simply helped her to blossom to learn her craft, while remaining true to herself.

. . . Above all I provided her with a role that was a perfect marriage between a fictional

character and the person she was in real life” (69). Extra-cinematic discourses

surrounding Bardot’s star image emphasize her naturalness as a vital feature in order to create desire. Guy Austin quotes to reinforce the text of spontaneity constructing Bardot: “Elle est coiffée à la diable, à peine maquillée, vêtue comme

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n’importe quelle autre fille de son âge, et elle se comporte avec la même spontanéité qu’à

l’écran. . . . Des milliers de jeunes femmes s’identifient à elle, la copient” (2003 :12). In

addition, between Juliette’s character on-screen and Brigitte Bardot’s image off-screen

there is a “perfect fit” in Dyer’s terms (1979: 129). The naturalness of her image feeds

into infantilization. As observes:

The legend that has been built up around Brigitte Bardot by publicity has for a long time identified her with this childlike and disturbing character. Vadim presented her as a “phenomenon of nature.”. . . B.B is a lost, pathetic child who needs a guide and protector. This cliché has proven its worth. It flatters masculine vanity; it reassures mature and maturing women. (1959: 34)

Vadim could not have artificially fabricated Brigitte Bardot as this construction

went against the naturalness conveyed by her star image, so he presents himself as

guiding her feminine essence and revealing her to the world. However, once the exposure

happened in And God . . . Created Woman, it is notable that Vadim’s role ended suddenly and the myth of Brigitte Bardot captured all the attention of the following generations.

The star image of Brigitte Bardot is the site of numerous contradictions: the infantile and the feline, the sexualized woman and the child, the emancipation and objectification of women, mass culture and art cinema. I will briefly discuss the last two oppositions as they directly address the social imaginary context and the relation of the star to cinema. Brigitte Bardot became a text where the ambivalence towards a changing femininity in modern French society surfaces (Vincendeau 92). An earlier history of the changes in femininity in the social imaginary traced by Noël Burch and Geneviève Sellier in La Drôle de Guerre des sexes du cinéma français: 1930-1956 has offered a comprehensive account of relations between the masculine and the feminine in French

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cinema. If the of the father dominated filmic representation in the cinema of the

1930s, the period of the Occupation (1940-1944) privileged the image of the heroic mother, relegating a weak masculinity to the background in order to convey the figure of the patriarchic failure. The Liberation of 1945 marks the return of patriarchy with a vengeance as independent women are constantly demonized in the filmic imaginary.

Burch and Sellier’s study stops at reading the post-war emancipation discourses related to female sexuality – of which Brigitte Bardot is the quintessential expression – as deceiving:

L’arrivée massive des femmes de la classe moyenne sur le marché de travail pose de façon aiguë la question de leur émancipation, le cinéma privilégie le thème de la libération sexuelle, en proposant des figures féminines d’un érotisant sans précédent, comme pour mieux détourner le spectateur (et surtout les spectatrices) des autres dimensions de l’émancipation. (257)

But Bardot had an illustrious contemporary defender, Simone de Beauvoir. In

“Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome” written for Esquire magazine in 1959, de

Beauvoir argues that Bardot’s image, by bursting the strict delimitations of morality and , becomes a form of emancipation, inaugurating the advent of a female “sexual autonomy” (38). In addition, in Vincendeau’s view, not only does Bardot’s image crosses moral and sexual boundaries, but also negotiates the new and the old in terms of cinema itself through her roles in both mainstream and New Wave cinema (2000: 103).

Et Dieu . . . créea la femme shocks through the representation of the highly sexualized femininity of the protagonist and also through Vadim’s disrespect for cinematic conventions that was highly praised by the young critics of the Cahiers du

cinema. The movie’s plot, set in the small village of Saint-Tropez, stages the seductress

Juliette, played by Brigitte Bardot, as a focal point where the desires of three men

38 converge. Michel Tardieu (Jean-Louis Trintignant), her naïve husband is the first one, followed by his brother Antoine Tardieu (), Juliette’s previous lover who abandoned her, and another wealthy older lover, Eric Carradine (Curd Jürgens). The plot of the movie lacks depth but excels in glamorizing the free-spirited sexuality of its protagonist, to the delight of the three male characters, of the movie director, Bardot’s husband at the time, and of the audience. Roger Vadim’s experience as a photographer at

Paris Match is visible in the movie, as Brigitte Bardot is always framed in a photogenic context. Numerous medium close-up shots focus the attention on Bardot’s face but also her body posture. Further, long shots picturing Juliette in the savage and sensuous scenery of the Riviera and immediate cuts to close-ups of her engender a repetitive editing pattern that condenses the iconicity of the juxtaposed to that of

Bardot’s body. Through a play on words, Hayward reads the movie as being more about

BB –Bardot’s Body and the Body Beautiful – than about the character Juliette and quotes the final mambo scene, where Bardot accompanied by Latin American musicians frenetically dances in front of the camera (1993: 177). The mambo sequence, although it has been analyzed as an example of male voyeurism and fetishist gaze (Hayward 1993:

177), is also the point where the movie makes a statement about the stardom of its protagonist: Bardot’s star image embodies a modern sexuality threatening two generations of French males, Michel and Eric, sharing the same consternation when watching her dance. In this sense, de Beauvoir’s insight is useful as she reads the episode of the mambo as making the spectator “a voyeur in spite of himself, forced to watch a hot performance cold-bloodedly” as Bardot is exhibiting her star image “famous, rich, adulated, and completely inaccessible” (1959: 32). In a predictable manner, Bardot is

39 disciplined at the level of the narrative through Michel’s slap and, at the level of the spectators, through violent contemporary critiques regarding her performance.

The fidelity to the Pygmalion model is central to François Truffaut’s films, since most of them are structured as love stories revolving around his actresses from Françoise

Dorléac in La Peau douce (1964) to in La Femme d’à côté (1981). In 1969,

Truffaut casts a young star, Catherine Deneuve, as the on-screen lead in La Sirène du

Mississippi. After a cinematic separation of more than a decade, he directed Deneuve again in Le Dernier Métro (1980) when she already was an established star. If the extra- cinematic discourses related to Truffaut’s filmic creation focus on the actress as a source of inspiration, Deneuve, in return, presents her stardom as a laborious process of artistic transformation. She addresses her relation with François Truffaut both on and off-screen in terms of an essential change in her star persona. When evoking her movie Le Dernier

Métro (1980), Catherine Deneuve for the TV show Le Bon Plaisir explained how François Truffaut pushed her on screen because he knew her in real life:

“He always thought that there was something of a Sleeping Beauty element in me which offered and refused itself at the same time, and that had to be unlocked,” confesses

Deneuve (Simone and Vulser). The Pygmalion discourse evolves into a process of mutual artistic inspiration and creation.

Set during the Occupation, Truffaut’s Le Dernier Métro tells the story of theater director and actress Marion Steiner (Catherine Deneuve) and her attempts to rescue both her Jewish husband Lucas (Heinz Bennent), hiding in the cellar, as well as her theatre, under threats of closure.9 While struggling through the grim daily life, she constructs an amorous, artistic, and political triangle as she falls for Bernard Granger (Gérard

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Depardieu), an actor in the theatre's latest production and a member of the Resistance. It is Deneuve’s star image that manages to solve the problematic conflict between duty and passion through her aura of “ice and fire” (Vincendeau 2000: 204). As the recurrent pick- up line used by Bernard in the film states, there are two women in Marion. The end of the movie raises interesting questions about performance, directing, and stardom. When

Marion meets Bernard, wounded after the war, this last scene of reunification becomes in fact the last scene of a theatrical play staged after the war by Steiner and he joins both the actors on stage for the final round of applause. Higgins emphasizes this overall self- reflexivity of the movie when she writes that: “the pervasive use of mirrors, mises en abymes, and autoreflexivity, together with the trick ending, suggest an infinite regress into fictionality. Such procedures blur any referential dimension and cause the spectators

(and the characters) to lose sight of the boundaries between reality and fiction” (152).

However, this auto-referentiality brings to the fore Deneuve’s close-up, frequently reflected in mirrors, as a twofold link. First, she enables the economic survival of the theatre. Second, she assures the plot coherence through balancing a triangle both on a personal and political narrative level, between husband and lover and, respectively, passive and active forms of resistance. Finally, her star image points to its own paradoxical construction in the last scene of the movie in which Marion is situated in an impossible situation, in-between and holding hands with both her husband and her lover.

Her position embodies a physical connection that reconciles two opposing tendencies in a utopian ending thus recalling the very paradoxical fabric of her star image around which the filmic narrative, the director, and other star, Gérard Depardieu, gravitate.

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The last Pygmalion model reunites Juliette Binoche and Leos Carax through their

artistic collaboration in two movies: (1986) and Les amants du Pont-Neuf

(1991), the latter being one of the most controversial films in French cinema in terms of its costs and artistic audacity. Their private love story is filtered through the cinematic screen and becomes the very essence of their movies, as Juliette Binoche testifies in the

documentary French Beauty: “I think that Bad Blood was the way to be loved by Leos

Carax. I became his imago for a while, his fantasy for this movie.” In Les amants du

Pont-Neuf, Carax turns to the marginal and dark side of Paris as contrasted to its on- screen iconicity. Michèle (Juliette Binoche) is an artist who suffers from a degenerative eye disease that ultimately will lead to blindness. In her homeless journey, she is accompanied by Alex, Carax’s transparent alter-ego, as a drug addict street performer and

Hans (-Michael Grüber), an old alcoholic widower. The three of them meet and live

on the Pont-Neuf bridge in Paris and become connected through their inconsolable

losses.10 By filming Binoche’s extreme physical performances, the movies reveal her

artistic legitimacy in terms of labor and, in particular, pushes the Pygmalion myth to a

different level. Binoche’s face filmed adoringly under multiple angles in Mauvais sang

becomes the raw material for a new piece of work in the movie as she portrays a

distraught, homeless, and sick character. In rags and wearing an eye patch, her degraded

complexion, ratty hair, and dry lips illustrate the female star body at work in an intense

transformation.

Throughout the movie, Binoche’s filmic image becomes a place for

concomitantly creating and destroying stardom. This process becomes highly visible in a

central episode of the movie that affects Michèle’s and Alex’s undisturbed happiness.

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Michèle’s family, having found out that her eye disease is curable, starts posting announcements in a desperate attempt to find her. A tracking shot following Alex screens a metro corridor where Binoche’s iconic image is glued on the walls in infinite representations. Alex sets each of the images on fire and a close-up of Binoche’s face is filmed at length while on fire. We subsequently cut to a long shot depicting an apocalyptic view of all her images burning. However, soon after, Alex realizes that his enterprise is futile as the missing person posters are all over the streets. This episode is to be read as problematizing Binoche’s star image: her multiplied images are glued over the usual commercial billboards of the Parisian metro revealing again this uneasy cohabitation between an actress and a star image that, in turn, reflects the artistic- economic duality of the movie itself. Nevertheless, through the glimpses at Binoche’s star-face juxtaposed to that of her character Michèle in the movie, Carax also points to the fascination and adoration of images, be they Rembrandt’s self-portrait that Michèle admires at candlelight in an illicit night visit at the museum, or Binoche’s star photographs duplicated ad infinitum.

In conclusion, from Bardot to Binoche, star images are disclosed in different ways on-screen. Bardot as a star is put in the spotlight. In Deneuve’s case the cinematic narrative gravitates around her star image. And finally, when it comes to Binoche, her multiplied star images are lovingly set on fire in an ultimate attempt to resolve the ambivalent tension that inhabits them. At the same time, extra-cinematic discourses surrounding the three star couples – Vadim-Bardot, Truffaut-Deneuve and Carax-

Binoche – illustrate different ways in which an uninterrupted circuit of artistic creation flows between their protagonists, albeit in very different ways. Although Brigitte Bardot

43 was “busy saving the French cinema,” according to Truffaut, through her nonchalant performance achieving a Brechtian distanciation effect, she does so “without realizing it”

(qtd. in Crisp 364). The artistic agency increases in the case of Truffaut’s movie directing, as extra-cinematic discourses focusing on the artistic collaboration between

Deneuve and Truffaut underline both their contributions. Finally, Juliette Binoche, through the analysis of her deeply emotional and drastic physical performances, is constructed as a legitimate creator. In these Pygmalion models, the more established the star or the more paradoxical traits she negotiates, the more artistic legitimacy is emphasized in extra-cinematic texts. Consequently, when Cahiers du cinéma, a film magazine reputed for its ignorance of French stars and consistent interest in directors, consecrated the issue of July-August 2007 to Binoche, the authors explicitly titled the issue “Juliette Binoche: créature et créatrice.” As Binoche herself asserts, within films, the interaction between movie director and actress is one where they both reinvent themselves through the cinematic text: “Je n’en finis par tourner autour de cette relation réalisateur-acteur, qui me fascine. C’est un rapport créature/créature, il n’y a pas de créateur sans créature, mais la créature doit être créatrice. Sinon il n’y a pas d’incarnation” (Banier 14). French stardom continues therefore to be created in a distinctive manner at this fertile intersection between actresses and directors.

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1.4. French Privacy Laws and Artistic Labor

The typical Pygmalion model in French cinema is not only a consequence of the artisanal conditions of the national cinematic production, but also of another interrelated factor, the stringent French privacy laws that deflect extra-cinematic discourses from the private life of stars and orient them towards professional labor. In this way, the

Pygmalion structure marks a significant difference from the model of coupledom in

Hollywood cinema. The French newsmagazine Le Nouvel Observateur recounts the providential encounter between actress Juliette Binoche and director Leos Carax.

Evoking the surrealist tradition of André Breton’s Nadja, the article chronicles their initial meeting as follows:

Un soir, dans une rue de Grenoble, lors d’un festival de cinéma, un jeune homme inquiet aperçoit sa silhouette. Juliette est seule, il la regarde. Il s’appelle Leos Carax et il vient d’achever Boy meets Girl. Une autre histoire commence. Amoureuse et passionnée. En 1986, ils tourneront ensemble Mauvais Sang. Leos se tient derrière la caméra, Juliette joue Anna, un personnage que Leos a décrit comme une fille dans une chambre avec des fenêtres ouvertes et plein de courants d’air. La roue continue de tourner. (Géniès 60)

Using a similar story pattern, an article in Vanity Fair tells the beginning of the romance between one of Hollywood’s most emblematic couples of the 1990s, contemporary to Binoche and Carax, Tom Cruise and : ”They have been together ever since they met on the set of Days of Thunder. ‘I thought he was the sexiest man I’d ever seen in my life’, Kidman says. Even though she was just 23 when they got married in a Christmas Eve Ceremony in the snows of Telluride, she harbored no doubt.”

Now the couple has a nomadic and cosmopolitan life, as Kidman asserts: “I mean technically we live in L.A. and we have an apartment in New York and I just bought a

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house in Australia, and we have a place in Colorado, but we all the time” (Bennets

68).

These two examples clearly illustrate star coupledom constructed according to

two different logics. On one hand, the extra-cinematic media texts surrounding French

star couples focus on the dimension of artistic work and the public role of the pair. In this

sense, the French film festival in Grenoble is a fitting background for the cinematic and

romantic partnership between Binoche and Carax, fueled by creative passion. On the other hand, the Hollywood coupledom model targets the most visible commodities in the cinematic industry, the actors and their private lives, in terms of love and leisure. Their romances are consumed in private mansions and tell the myth of happiness through luxurious consumption. In Dyer’s terms, the French star coupledom is constructed as labor in contrast to the Hollywood star coupledom as leisure (1979: 39)

Besides some exceptions in Cahiers du Cinéma and Positif, stars in French cinema are more readily present in news, film and TV magazines rather than popular gossip such as Voici, mostly devoted to American stars or French TV reality stars.

This is a consequence of strict privacy laws that shift the focus from the stars’ private lives to their professional careers as actors, privileging at the same time the artistic creative text over the leisure and happiness text.

In terms of a diachronic history of French privacy laws, Brigitte Bardot invented them, Catherine Deneuve applied them, and Juliette Binoche retrospectively benefited from them. The French privacy law of 17 July 1970 was referred to as the law BB, named after Brigitte Bardot who was constantly tracked by paparazzi and had already taken numerous cases to court, accusing intrusions in her private life. Bardot argued against

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those who asserted that star’s public life is extended to every public appearance, and she

claimed to her image, a concept unique to the French juridical system. It basically states, that if a person does not perform a public duty, she or he cannot be photographed and the photography cannot be subsequently circulated (Trouille 200).

Isabelle Adjani, for instance, is a French star who carefully uses this law to control material and photographs related to her private life (Vincendeau 2000: 22). In a sense the star becomes part of the creative process of her extra-cinematographic image, channeling it towards professional discourses.

The privacy laws modified both the Criminal and Civil Code and emphasized concepts such as the right to one’s image, the delimitation of private place, as well as the inviolability of family and private relationships. They basically assert that sentimental relationships are “private and family life” matters as are images of a person in a private place (Trouille 204). Since 1970, the legislation is to be found in three different texts: the

Civil Code, the Criminal Code, and the European Convention on Human Rights. Further concepts such as the right to one’s image (“le droit à l’image”), private place, and the inviolability of family and private relationships (“l’inviolabilité des relations familiales et sentimentales”) are operating tools in these sets of laws (Trouille 204). These concepts are unique even in a European media setting and offer an important leverage to French stars in the construction of their extra-cinematic image. In addition to asserting stars’ rights to their own image, they also exclude the private sphere, in particular, sentimental affairs, from public discourses.

In terms of use of the privacy laws, Catherine Deneuve provides the primary example of a prolific defense of her private life. Writing in Le Monde, Catherine Simone

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and Nicole Vulser point out that since the end of the 1960s, Deneuve sued sixty-five

times even before the privacy law was adopted in July 1970. They also quote one

memorable episode in which Deneuve’s protection of her private life led her to take

juridical action against some passages published in a biography of François Truffaut by

Serge Toubiana and Antoine de Baeque in 1996. Based on Truffaut’s private letters

stored in the public archive of the Films du Carosse, the book mentions the affair between

Deneuve and Truffaut during the filming of La Sirène de Mississippi. Deneuve, however,

invoked intrusion in her private life and the court ruled in her favor (Simon and Vulser).

After her legal success, the artistic side of her relationship with Truffaut became a more attractive and safer media topic. In this context, it becomes understandable how the

personal relationship between Leos Carax and Juliette Binoche is vaguely suggested by

the article recounting their adventure in professional terms.

The same discretion applies in the case of consumption techniques related to

French stars. If the status of French actresses as artistic muses is not at all problematic for their contribution to the cultural life of the nation, their status as objects of consumption requires a clear differentiation from their Hollywood counterparts. French stars

participate in different ways in the economy of cinema. First, they can directly contribute

to its financial success. In recurrent discourses, the myth of Brigitte Bardot was

associated with the notion of an exportable product of French cinema, such as Monique

Pantel’s article for France Soir shows:

Non content d’être le film du metteur en scène Vadim, il fut celui qui fit de Brigitte Bardot un mythe et un symbole. La gentille Brigitte, qui avait joué plusieurs films sans grand intérêt à part deux comédies d’ailleurs écrites par Vadim Cette sacrée gamine et En effeuillant la marguerite devint du jour au lendemain le produit français le plus exporté.

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The female star image reconciles thus myth, symbol, and commercial product within the

discourse of cinematic consumption.

Second, French female stars also occupy official positions in the cinematic

industries and participate in the development of French cinema itself. For instance, the

Commission of the avances sur recette, one of the forms of governmental aid to French

cinema, was governed by actresses such as Danièle Delorme, Isabelle Adjani and Jeanne

Moreau (Gillian 259). French stars were presidents of the Cannes festival jury: Isabelle

Adjani in 1997, Jeanne Moreau – a unique exception in the Cannes festival – twice in

1995 and 1975, and Michèle Morgan in 1971. Other stars reinvest in cinema, either in the

position of directors, like Agnès Jaoui or , or of producers, as Isabelle

Adjani who owns a production company, Lilith Films.

However, outside the financial flow in the economy of cinema and other national

industries to be discussed in Chapter 4, French female stars are represented as remotely

acquainted with and distanced from excessive consumption. Isabelle Adjani, after starring

and producing the movie is described in in the following terms:

Ni déesse, ni modèle, ni marchandise. Adjani est une star différente, moderne, pour tout dire. D’où son énigme. « Ma vraie réussite, répète-t-elle, c’est d’être inclassable, de déconcentrer. » En effet. Nulle moins qu’elle n’est dupée des séductions du mythe de la star: la gloire, l’argent, elle prononce ses mots du bout des lèvres. Ses appartements somptueux? Elle n’y reste jamais, trop consciente « d’être de passage ». Son refus de la mondanité? Elle préfère ses amis, rêve d’une vie simple avec le fils qu’elle a eu de . (Ferrier 141)

The anti-star text is accompanied by a rhetoric of imperative dissociation from

consumption that becomes a constant in constructing French female stardom. Even in

Bardot’s case, after the great success of Et Dieu . . . créea la femme, Vadim carefully constructs her image as unaffected by her financial success. In an interview conducted by

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Pantel in France Soir, Vadim mentions that she still has modest tastes after achieving

stardom with Et Dieu . . . créea la femme and numbers her possessions: “un petit

apartement, une maison à Saint-Tropez, un petit chalet à Méribel.” Naturally, all her properties are in the interior of the hexagon.

The extra-cinematic discourses surrounding Catherine Deneuve are more enigmatic in matters of consumption. Although she commands one of the highest salaries for a star in France and has starred in over one hundred movies, Deneuve’s only declared possessions are her Parisian apartment and a domain in Normandy. In an interview cited in Le Monde, she identifies herself to be an “extravagant cricket,” citing La Fontaine’s

, and as completely lacking financial discipline (Simone and Vulser). Nevertheless,

Deneuve’s star image is so strongly associated with haute couture designer Yves Saint-

Laurent that the implicit part of these discourses give the reader a pretty good idea where

Deneuve’s money is spent. Besides cinema, the national industries of fashion, cosmetics,

and perfume become territories of permissible consumption for French actresses since

these fields do not diminish their cultural aura through excessive consumption, as I will

argue in Chapter 4.

Even within industry and consumption discourses, the artistic aura of French

female stars remains untouched by excessive consumption. This characteristic generates a

significant difference from Hollywood’s stardom. The myth of artistic creation, promoted in extra-cinematic discourses and strongly encouraged by severe privacy laws, equally

contributes to the difference. In this way, French directors and actresses in an interactive

Pygmalion model, construct a unique star coupledom model and have a vital role in

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circulating stardom, artistic creation, and consumption within the national institution of

French cinema.

1.5. A Cinematic History of Pygmalion Myth

From Brigitte Bardot’s star image scrutinized by New Wave directors to François

Ozon’s homage to eight French stars in 8 Femmes, female stars remain central also to on-

screen reflections about their role in the movies. Looking at Bardot’s case, Olivier

Assayas’s Irma Vep and Francois Ozon’s 8 Femmes, I show star images as constructing bridges through conversations between popular and art cinema while providing an insightful meta-commentary about the tensions between these two directions in French cinema.

Brigitte Bardot was an object of fascination for the auteurs of the New Wave, such as Louis Malle in La Vie privée (1962) and Jean-Luc Godard in Le Mépris (1963).

Henri-Georges Clouzot, directed Bardot in La Vérité (1960), but his movie is more

difficult to categorize because the director, as Mayne argues, renders problematic the

division between auteur and the ‘tradition of quality,’ films of the 1950s as his work

escapes both categories (2000: 57- 61). These three films equally reveal different reflections in terms of morality, private life, and cinema on Bardot’s image as a star.

In “Gender, Modernism and Mass Culture in the New Wave,” Geneviève Sellier sees the perpetuation of a romantic myth of auteur, the masculine creator, in films of the

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New Wave that, consequently, through a oppositional movement, defines women in

terms of contingency and reproduction (128). This dichotomy constructs a perspective

that frames the female subject from the outside in numerous New Wave films. However,

Sellier reads another dichotomy activated by this masculine-feminine tension between low-high culture, as mass culture is viewed as consumed and circulated by women in a relation of dependency whereas the artistic, “authentic” culture is generated by men in an autonomous posture (132). The division between art and popular cinema is thus to be read along gender lines, where feminine stars are relegated either to be objects of investigation in art cinema or subjects of consumption in popular culture.

Certainly, Bardot’s image can be read as an object of popular culture and the filmic reflections on her star persona reveal uneasiness in dealing with Bardot’s star image. Clouzot staged a completely de-glamorized version of Bardot in La Vérité.

Dominique Marceau, Bardot’s character, is an obvious condensation of her previous on- screen roles: amoral, idle, and lascivious, she is guided in life only by her instincts, love for lust and an irrepressible passion for dance. Dominique has a dubious reputation and wandering from man to man, she ends up stealing her sister’s lover, Gilbert Tellier (Sami

Frey). Their love is, however, impossible and their irreconcilable personalities trigger the downward spiral of Gilbert’s murder and Dominique’s first failed and finally successful suicide. The first time we see Brigitte’s character, she is in prison looking into a piece of a broken mirror that distorts her iconic image. In a circular manner, the last appearance of

Bardot in the movie, dying in a hospital bed, screens her profile in a close-up. Bardot’s star images are only present in flashbacks in the movie in a story of doomed love and they constitute the investigative trial material of an overwhelming male audience that

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tries to locate the truth of her persona through her representations. The movie thus shows the uneasy cohabitation of Bardot as a star and Bardot as a person as contemporary extra- cinematic discourses tried to fossilize her through moral discourses.

Jean-Luc Godard’s reflection on Brigitte Bardot’s star image, however, is more ambivalent. In the opening sequences of Le Mépris, Godard films Bardot’s naked body

since he was forced by the movie producer Joseph Levine to include some sexy images of

the star in the movie. Jacques Aumont revealingly describes the shot in the following

terms: “Godard added a long take of the naked star, but what might have been a

fetishistic reification of a body in box-office terms is instead an affectionate, almost

awestruck moment of contemplation” (176). The ambiguity of Bardot’s representation in

the movie is, as Sellier observed, reflected by the tension between the character of

Camille, a superficial image of femininity associated with commercial cinema, and

Bardot’s star image exploited visually by Godard as to achieve iconicity (Sellier 134-5).

Along these lines, the disenchantment at the level of the narrative – the death of cinema

and that of a sentimental relation – is interspersed with the fascination towards Bardot’s

star image always punctuated by the recurrent melancholic tune of George Delerue.

These shots are not so much representations of Bardot’s body for which high culture and

popular culture compete as Sellier argues (135), but rather they converge and point to the

possibility of re-enchantment in cinema through an iconic star image on which popular

and art texts are superimposed.

In 1996, launches again the conversation about inspiring

cinematic muses and the divide between popular and art cinema through Irma Vep

(1996). The story is that of a failed filmic project, a remake of Les Vampires, starring a

53 female star of Hong-Kong cinema, Maggie , playing herself, and René Vidal, interpreted by Jean-Pierre Léaud, a transparent allusion to the New Wave generation.

Maggie Cheung’s image can be read as reconciling the old and the new by foregrounding a “sense of temporal displacement” (Farmer 48) necessary for the production of the movie.

I look at Assayas’s film in the light of the divide between popular and art cinema and to examine how ’s and Irma Vep’s filmic representations function as reconciliatory images for this dichotomy. , the interpreter of Irma Vep, was a popular actress whose memory was perpetuated through art history as she became an inspirational image for Breton and his Surrealist group (Vincendeau 2000: 25). In a parallel manner, Maggie Cheung is a popular action movie star from Hong-Kong capable of incarnating a French high art icon. Two meta-texts in the movie problematize, however, this duality. First, Maggie Cheung is interviewed by a young French journalist highly critical of the tradition of French filmmaking. In this scene, Maggie Cheung’s close-up becomes the site of the journalists’ negative monologue coining French cinema as “artistic nombrilisme.” This unconstructive focus, thus, disables him to see actually the possibility of conceiving a novel French cinema centered on female movie stars. As such, he does not even listen to her answers and completely ignores her, reproducing the very self-centeredness he criticizes. In fact, Maggie Cheung is forgotten or displaced on numerous occasions in the movie and seems to function solely in the discussions with the movie director, René Vidal, and in dream-like sequences in which she assumes the role of

Irma Vep but which are rather hallucinations than reality. The second meta-text follows, as the failure of the filmic project is announced because of director René Vidal’s

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psychological problems. The new director, José Murano, decides that Irma Vep belongs

to the Parisian underworld and working class and he deems Laure, Maggie’s French stunt

double, perfect for the role. The trade-off between a cinema criticized as

“nombrilistique” and a popular cinema defined exclusively in national terms becomes

visible.

Through the end of the movie, Assayas makes, however, an ambiguous statement

showing Vidal’s takes starring Maggie Cheung as Irma Vep. Against the iconic Parisian

rooftops, Irma Vep’s image is projected again but altered through digital technology.

Serpent-like lines and rigged scratches come out of Irma Vep’s eyes and mouth,

illustrating the Medusa-like, impalpable seduction that her star image exerts. Sharp noises

and scratched images mark an attempt to either capture or efface her illusory and

charismatic essence as both sound and image question and assert the enduring fascination of Musidora and her contemporary alias, Maggie Cheung. Connotations of voyeurism, hypnotism, and powerlessness are brought together by her star image and they offer a brief glimpse of the (im)possible reconciliations of multiple dichotomies between national/international, popular/ high art, and old/new cinema.

With François Ozon’s 8 Femmes, the French star system becomes the central structure of the film. The star images of the eight French female stars of different generations control the film as it becomes a reflection on French female stardom and, more broadly, on cinema. Ozon’s cinephilia transgresses national boundaries as he incorporates elements from the Hollywood glamour era of the 1950s. For the looks of his stars, he employs thus iconic and pleasurable references: Catherine Deneuve is a

“mélange de glamour et vulnérabilité qui rend homage à et Marilyn

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Monroe,” Fanny Ardant’s look is inspired by Rita Hayworth and , Virginie

Ledoyen plays Audrey Hepburn’s gamine role in Sabrina, ’s muse is

Leslie Caron in because of “le pantalon, la coupe de cheveux et le coté garçon manqué,” Emmanuelle Béart’s costume is designed after Jeanne Moreau’s Le

Journal d’une femme de chambre, recalls Hattie Mc Daniel in Gone with the Wind. And finally, ’s star muse is Constance Bennett, Lana

Turner’s mother-in-law in Madame X by David Lowell Rich (Lavoignat 86-87). With the exception of Béart, the cinematic references are mainly targeted towards Hollywood, offering satisfying anchor points for international audiences. Nevertheless, these meta- cinematic references activate a nostalgic taste as they refer to the glamorous Hollywood era of the 1950s that was seen in 2001 as a contribution to the mythical iconicity of actresses.

The Hollywood references are set in a huis clos of a house where the eight women try to solve the mystery of the patriarch’s death. However, the death of the family father is only a pretense to trigger the narrative and to draw a web in between the most famous female stars in French cinema. In a snowy landscape resembling a boule de neige, the interactions between the stars are staged mainly through iconic close-ups. In addition, each star’s portrait is featured on the movie poster and all eight of them are offered a song in the movie, the spotlight allowing their particular star image to shine during the individual performance. Numerous filmic allusions included by

Ozon equally refer to their star images. Virgine Ledoyen’s pregnant ingénue part, for instance, recalls her role in La Cérémonie (1995) directed by Claude Chabrol in which she starred alongside Chabrol’s muse, Isabelle Huppert.

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The movie also ends with a backward-tracking shot to include all the actresses holding hands. The mise-en-scène, through the red carpet and the staircase behind the stars, as well as the lighting technique, reveals a breathtaking image of the French star system in its glamorous diversity of age, beauty, and type.

Figure 1.2. Final shot in 8 Femmes (2001).

Besides illustrating French female stardom, Ozon also channels desire and inspiration on a different path through conversations betweens stars’ images. In two particular scenes of the movie, he reveals a network of interdependence among his female muses. In the first shot, Emannuelle Béart’s character accidentally drops a photo of one of her former lovers. When Ozon cuts to the photograph, he uses ’s image as both she and subsequently Béart were ’s inspirational actresses.

In the second scene, Ozon chooses a line for Deneuve’s character “Te (Vous) regarder est une joie . . . c’est une joie et c’est une souffrance” that was uttered by both Belmondo in

La Sirène du Mississippi and Depardieu in Le Dernier Métro (Lavoignat 84). Ozon immediately cuts to a close-up of Fanny Ardant’s face, Truffaut’s lead for his last two

57 films and also his real-life partner. Through these conversations between the muses Béart

– Schneider for Sautet or Ardant – Deneuve for Truffaut, the director invites a new reflection. It would be productive, in this sense, to pursue this road and discuss how desire and artistic inspiration is circulated through an altered Pygmalion relation, constructed not between the cineaste and the star, but between two consecutive muses of one film director as the physical connection among the stars in the final shot of the movie illustrates.

Ozon’s film also raises the problematic of exposing iconicity exclusively through the feminine, in both cinematic and musical discourses. On this note, Jean Marc Lalanne noted in Cahiers du Cinéma that:

François Ozon a réalisé le film le plus délibérément méta du cinéma français. Et lorsqu’on quitte les de cinéphile c’est pour se retrouver au pays de la variété. A chaque comédienne est attribuée le standard d’une chanteuse célèbre (Nicoletta, , Sheila, Françoise Hardy), car la variété comme le cinéma se cristallise ici uniquement sur des figures féminines. Dans cette relecture personnelle des mythologies populaires de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle, la France ne serait pas le pays des pères sévères (comme pour Daney), mais celui des mères indignes, à la fois glamour, folles et perverses.

The national mythology is necessarily expressed in feminine terms, as they have the necessary flexibility to navigate between national and international references, between popular and auteur commentaries as well as between mythical stars and cinematic commodities.

As an homage to Roland Barthes’s Mythologies, Le Nouvel Observateur dedicated a special issue, subsequently published as a book, to the France’s new mythologies after 50 years, in 2007. Philippe Delerm wrote about the cellular phone,

Jean-Paul Dubois investigated sushi, Phillipe Sollers flipped the to analyze both its sides, and Marc Augé investigated the 20 heures news. Next to and Zidane,

58 only one new French film star dominates the contemporary mythologies: Emmanuelle

Béart. Photographed naked on the cover of the summer issue of Elle magazine,

Emmanuelle Béart’s star image is viewed by Jérôme Garcin as condensing a self-assured and mature seduction: “Et Dieu créa la femme de 37 ans . . . Photographiée à l’île

Maurice, sans maquillage ni retouches, Emmanuelle Béart, 1,67 mètre, 50 kilos, évoque la sauvage , la pulpeuse Brigitte Bardot mais aussi la vacancière ordinaire.

L’image tient du légendaire et du coutumier, du sacré en même temps que du profane”

(77-8).

The iconography of Elle’s cover plays on Béart’s two on-screen lead roles. On the one hand, Béart recalls the part that launched her career in Manon des sources (1986).

Claude Berri’s movie, representative of the popular French heritage tradition, adapts a story of land, legacy, vengeance, and family. Her seductive naturalness echoes Manon’s spring baths in the sunny landscape. Her nudity, however, also invites comparisons to her role as Marianne in (1991), Rivette’s intense meditation on the meaning of inspiration, art, relationships that places sacrifice at the heart of the creative act. Due to Béart’s stardom, Rivette’s four-hour-long film had a remarkable public success. Emmanuelle Béart’s star image, reconciling the divide between art and popular cinema, holds in tension both its mythical and ordinary quality.

In addition, both of her roles as Manon and Marianne – the names are transparent allusions to the nation – Elle magazine’s cover raise questions about place, French territory, and national iconicity, which is the topic of the next chapter.

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1 Between 1954 and 1958, René Coty was the last president of the Fourth Republic. In May 1958, President Coty stepped out of office to favor the necessary intervention of Charles de Gaulle in the political turmoil engendered by the Algerian crisis.

2 François Truffaut’s filmic career after the end of the New Wave movement followed a different path as he reconciled both auteur and commercial cinema. Prédal argued that since his death in 1984 the two tendencies that he closely connected in his films have been separated by an increasing gap. (1991: 395).

3 For a more comprehensive overview of Mitterand’s socialist government see: “Mitterand Years: Legacy and Evaluation”, edited by Mairi Maclean.

4 See Marc Fumaroli’s L’Etat Culturel for a critique of the state’s involvement in the French cultural life.

5 An illustrative example is Francis Courtade’s Les malédictions du cinéma franc ais: une histoire du cinéma franc ais parlant, 1928-1978, which is centered around the crisis of French cinema as it states from its very first line: “Ce livre est l’histoire des crises que le cinéma français a vécues depuis le début du parlant” (7).

6 A few exceptions are to be found in the movies of Agnès Varda and Isabelle Adjani’s heritage film Camille Claudel (1988) which, although directed by Bruno Nuytten, was Adjani’s project.

7 Richard Bernstein, reporting from the 1990 Sarasota French Film Festival in Florida for , reproduces in Daniel Toscan du Plantier’s words, who was the head of Unifrance at that time, a conversation with the United States Trade Representative, Carla Hill: “She told me: ‘Our movies are good, so we export them. Your movies are not as good and that's why you 't export them as well.' She said it was like cheese. ‘We eat your cheese,’ she said, ‘but you don't eat ours.’ I told her, ‘Our films are just as good as our cheese.’” This discussion summarizes perfectly the disagreements encapsulated by the cultural exception dispute between the clashing attitudes of the United States and France at the GATT negotiation round in Uruguay. While the US representatives argued that the force of the markets and the demand regulate film production, Jack Lang’s view distanced as much as possible the concepts of merchandise and cultural objects, arguing that they should not be treated as simple commodities in a global market.

8 See Unifrance for box office data.

9 Lynn Higgins in her study, New Novel, New Wave, New Politics: Fiction and the Representation of History in Postwar France, argues that the theatricality of the movie and the focus on private stories problematizes the relationship between fictional representation and reality (152). Leah D. Hewitt’s article “From War Films to Films on War: Gendered Scenarios of National Identity – The Case of ” reads the Occupation period represented in Truffaut’s movie using Burch and Sellier’s model of the “funny war of sexes in French cinema,” thus anchoring it in the social imaginary.

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10 See Graeme Hayes’s article “Representation, Masculinity, Nation: The Crises of Les Amants du “ for a Lacanian analysis of this loss as a crisis both in terms of the national and the masculine identity.

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CHAPTER 2

ICONS OF THE NATION: FEMALE STARS AND FRENCHNESS

Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve, and Laetitia Casta, all have incarnated the image of Marianne, symbol of the French Republic and of popular France. Integral parts of the French patrimony nowadays, these famous stars have been necessarily constructed

as national icons through their connection with

the institution of Marianne. This tradition of

associating Marianne and cinema actresses can

be traced to the beginning of the 1950s. Under

the headline “Marianne 1951,” Paris Match

portrayed twenty-three-year-old actress

Germaine Lefebvre as the incarnation of

Marianne on its front cover for the special

1 Figure 2.1. Germaine Lefebvre. report on the June 1951 elections. Her Marianne, 1951. youthful image wearing the as a symbol of liberty raises two important questions for our purposes. First, it addresses the connotation of youth in the image of Marianne. Second, it points to the unique link of

Marianne – the allegorical emblem of the Republic – to film stars as the epitomes of ideal womanhood.

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The journey of Marianne and of her various political representations has been

traced in detail by the celebrated French historian Maurice Agulhon in three volumes:

Marianne au combat: l'imagerie et la symbolique républicaines de 1789 à 1880 (1979),

Marianne au pouvoir: l'imagerie et la symbolique républicaines de 1880 à 1914 (1989),

and Les métamorphoses de Marianne: l'imagerie et la symbolique républicaines de 1914

à nos jours (2001). Through his work, the author connects the representations of the

French Republic to the collective imaginary of a specific epoch. In this sense, Agulhon

argues that the iconic images of Marianne are belligerent or traditional, effaced or on

display, wearing the Phrygian cap or not, incarnating the republic or popular France, according to the socio-political values of the national environment.

The author begins the story of Marianne, situating her origins in the aftermath of the , and I will retrace it according to his in-depth study.2 He remarks

that the statue of Liberty, as an allegorical representation, offered an incarnation vessel

for the newly found First Republic. During the Empire and the Restoration, Marianne

briefly exited the scene, only to appear as glamorous as ever, in the iconic Delacroix’s

painting La Liberté guidant le peuple (1830). The Second Republic, for the first time,

reproduced her image on stamps in 1849 . After a short eclipse during the Second

Empire, in the Third Republic, Marianne’s reproductions found their way into every town

hall in France and, for the first time, on coins. It is during this period that Marianne

became the most prominent depiction of the French Republic, providing Agulhon with an

important amount of research materials. The subsequent but antagonist

government effaced Marianne’s emblems and hid her busts in town hall attics and caves.

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Her comeback is marked by a shift in the Fourth and Fifth French , when she received a fresh makeover and was reinvented as a media icon of the nation.

Nowadays, she maintains the same high visibility. Since September 1999, the

Jospin government instituted, for the use of governmental institutions, a logo that bears the white profile of Marianne on a tri-colored flag.3 Another national institution, the

French Postal Services, regularly hosts popular contests for renewing the image of

Marianne on stamps, according to the shifts in its contemporary meanings. The most recent drawing, selected in 2004 by and highly publicized by the French

Postal Services, depicts the profile of a young Marianne protective of the environment and looking towards the skies in an ascendant movement consonant with the youthful hope her image connotes.4

In the postwar period, as Agulhon insightfully remarks, Marianne is less revered

as her status as the image of the

Republic shifts signification to a

more inclusive but also more

familiar notion of ,

in general. This transformation,

he argues, is made possible

through a consensual process of Figure 2.2. Busts of Marianne. symbolic retrogradation as

Marianne’s abstract features are inflected by the traits of popular stars (Agulhon 2001:

190). From this point on, Marianne was incarnated by movie stars such as Brigitte Bardot

(1969), Catherine Deneuve (1986), and Laetitia Casta (1999), but also music stars, such

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as (1978), and even television personalities, as the most recent

Marianne, Evelyne Thomas (2003) demonstrates. In their role as icons of the nation, female stars have to negotiate, yet again, between a familiar popularity, as Marianne represents the people of France, and an abstract incarnation of values. When the sculptor

Aslan challenged the solemnity of Marianne in 1969, reproducing her with Brigitte

Bardot’s features, Agulhon interrogates her symbolic aura of “joie de vivre,” , and feminine emancipation, but he remarks that she gains prestige through her contributions to the national cinematographic industry as well (2001: 186, 191). Bardot and also Deneuve are able to maintain the equilibrium between the artistic aura compatible with national iconicity and the modern French femininity associated with the familiar and popular discourses. According to this model, it follows that in 1999, when

Laetitia Casta became the new Marianne of the French Republic, she was required to negotiate between these two opposing tendencies. The face of L’Oréal and worldwide famous top model, Casta’s fashionable appeal was mainly constructed in the realm of the popular. Unsurprisingly, her career was inevitably redirected towards cinema as she played her first role as Falbala in Astérix et Obélix contre César (1999) the very same year of her election as Marianne. This cinematic adaptation draws on the highly successful comic book series by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, which has been a national phenomenon since it was first published in 1959. It corresponds thus to popular national quality, on the one side, and to cinematic national prestige, on the other.

Agulhon did not have time to document the last election of Marianne, but, as he wistfully predicted, the representation of Marianne witnessed a new symbolic degradation. In 2003, Evelyne Thomas, a celebrated television personality and hostess of

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a popular afternoon talk-show “C’est mon choix,” became the new face of Marianne.

Nevertheless, the contemporary Marianne has never achieved the success of her predecessors. Her appeal, too popular and not confirmed by a cinematic aura, has not

seduced the French population. As a result, , in a television afternoon news

broadcast titled “Nouvelle Marianne anonyme,” on November 22, 2005 announced the

novel tendency of returning to an abstract Marianne in French city halls.5

Besides this tension between the popular and the elite, which is ultimately reflective of class divides, Agulhon mentions also the multi-ethnic difference effaced in

Marianne through her homogenous image and he rhetorically inquires how Marianne can reflect a traditional Gallic type of beauty, “ blonde et rose,” without offending the immigrant population (2001: 203-4). The unexpected response came from the women’s association “Ni Putes, Ni Soumises.” Devoted to solving the problems of women living

in the immigrant suburbs, the association initiated an exhibit titled “Mariannes

d’aujourd’hui,” exposing portraits of ethnically diverse Mariannes on the façade of the

Bourbon Palace, the seat of the French , for Day in 2003. The

exhibit was set under the sign of diversity as one of the posters quoting one of its feminine models writes: “Marianne, j’espère qu’elle aura de plus en plus de visages

différents.” To this conversation between homogenous and diverse representations, in his

evaluation of British national cinema, Andrew Higson adds that: “the search for a stable

and coherent national identity can only be successful at the expense of repressing internal differences, tensions, and contradictions-differences of class, race, gender, region, etc.”

(62). In this view, French female stars as icons of the nation constantly problematize the trade-off between their construction as highly visible signs of a national and

66 the effacement of too diverse elements at the expense of a multicultural and inclusive representation of the nation.

2.1. The Feminine Star, Cinema and the Nation

Following this brief history of the Marianne phenomenon, I set out to analyze the national, cinematic, and gender intersections where all these representations occur. In doing so, I identify two types of femininity – the youthful gamine and the French woman

– that coexist and are alternatively foregrounded according to the historical and socio- cultural environment. In this context, I will look at Brigitte Bardot’s and Catherine

Deneuve’s star images and their construction as national icons. The interaction between the image of Marianne and the star body seems intimately interlocked as not only does the actress transform the features of the Marianne statuary, but also Marianne seeps into the filmic text, writing its narrative of the national star body. To this end, I will analyze two films that problematize the image of the star as national icon: Claude-Jacque’s

Babette s’en va-t-en guerre (1959) and Régis Wargnier’s Indochine (1992). Besides

Brigitte Bardot, as the central star of the movie, my first film choice is motivated by the fact that Claude-Jacque’s film belongs to French popular cinema. Vincendeau and Dyer noticed in European Popular Cinema a strong tendency to overlook nations’ popular cinematic at the expense of art films. This trend is for the most part meant to generate an opposition to Hollywood’s mass-culture and, at the same time, to attract international audiences (1-2).

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My second film choice belongs to the tradition of the French heritage movies and rests on the star image of Catherine Deneuve. Both actresses incarnated Marianne and the two films deal with problematic national historic events, the Occupation and the process of decolonization. My thread of analysis will, therefore, demythologize the homogenizing iconicity of the nation inscribed in Bardot and Deneuve’s images and, simultaneously, reveal the points in their images where problematic discourses of difference resurface. I integrate my analysis in what Hayward has termed as ‘framing’ national cinema, that is, reading national representation against the grain, “to delimit the structure of power and knowledge that work behind the scene to assemble its scattered and dissembling identities, its fractured subjectivities, and fragmented hegemonies which in their plurality stage the myth of a singular and unified national cinema” (2000b: 88). With these insights in mind, I analyze feminine star figures to reveal how their symbolic practices construct the iconic myth of the nation while simultaneously problematizing it.

As the previous chapter showed, France’s cinema is profoundly marked by its relation to the state and it becomes thus a favorite medium for articulating the myth of the national and for negotiating its different representations.6 In Susan Hayward’s words,

“the cinema speaks the nation and the nation speaks the cinema” (1993: x). She goes on to note one other important feature of national cinemas: “a ‘national’ cinema – is ineluctably ‘reduced’ to a series of enunciations that reverberate around two fundamental concepts: identity and difference” (Hayward 1993: x). French cinema is always torn, therefore, between these two drives. The first one relates to the establishment of a coherent identity through inner homogenizing practices. The second one institutes

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Frenchness as a marker of difference from other national cinemas, in particular,

Hollywood.

Among the typologies for the enunciation of the national in French cinema – narratives, genres, codes and conventions, gesturality and morphology, cinema of the center and cinema of the periphery, cinema as the mobilizer of the nation’s myth and the myth of the nation – Susan Hayward also includes stars as historical signs: “sign of the indigenous cultural codes, institutional metonymy and site of the class war in its national specificity, the signification of the star ‘naturally’ changes according to the social, economic and political environment” (1993: 12).

Hayward also argues in “Framing national cinemas” that the female body is closely identified with national discourses, especially in terms of motherhood and its function in the realm of the imaginary (2000b: 96-8, 2000c: 112). In this tradition, the feminine gender of the republic marks, according to Agulhon, a clean break from the

Ancien Régime and its royal lineage constructed on masculinities. In addition, the feminization of the republic is foremost a question of etymology that was perpetuated through a long-lasting allegorical lineage:

La Liberté, comme la France [ou bien comme la Justice, la Science, l’Agriculture . . . , ou bien comme la , la ou la Garonne] s’énonce au féminin en latin et en français et le genre grammatical entraîne naturellement le sexe de l’allégorie. A qui s’interroge donc sur la raison profonde de la féminité de la représentation qu’on baptisera Marianne, la réponse essentielle est que Marianne est féminine parce qu’elle signifie République ou France, issue de l’antiquité, les valeurs abstraites prennent le genre de leur nom. (Agulhon 1992: 14)

In addition to this allegorical tradition, France also has a heritage of female heroines inextricably linked to the myth of nation. Feminist critic Michèle Sardé notices the oscillation between allegories and specific historic female characters:

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Dans la représentation collective des Français, une Française mythique émerge comme figure emblématique de la France. A la fois gracieuse et guerrière, la France éternelle se coule dans un statuaire féminine : tantôt personne collective comme Marianne, et toutes les représentations de la Liberté, la Patrie, la Révolution, la République, la Civilisation, tantôt hommage à une héroïne particulière comme Jeanne d’Arc, Jeanne ou sainte Geneviève, qui toutes incarnent une idée patriotique de résistance et de combat. (Sardé 33)

But at the base structure of all these feminine representation lies, nevertheless, the idea of objectification, hence the easy association between women and nation. I find that Nina

Yuval-Davis’s take on this issue is an extremely useful tool to understand the interplay between femininity and nation. In her study Gender and Nation, she argues that, since culture and ethnicity are dynamic, authenticity comes into play as it supposes unchanging, essential and unitary constructs of cultures, identities and groupings. The critic moves on to assert that women are often required to carry this authenticity, “this burden of representation,” as they are constructed as the “symbolic bearers of the collectivity identity and honor, both personally and collectively” (45). It is precisely at the core of this tension French female stars as the icons of the nation function. They embody an abstract, homogenizing, eternal and reassuring image as icons of the nation, while, at the same time, they invoke notions of exclusion, heterogeneity and individuality through their star images anchored in a concrete reality.

I would like to return at this point to the connotation of youth in Marianne’s image. Agulhon recognizes two faces of Marianne, one “légaliste et l’autre combatant,” variants that can be read in relation to the social-political environment (1992: 22). In postwar history, I identify two other faces of Marianne, this time observing the age variation. First, there is the youthful gamine image, which I argue dominated the 1950s and 1960s, and found its perfect incarnation in Brigitte Bardot. Second, through the 1986

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election of Catherine Deneuve, a more established and mature femininity becomes the

representational core of Marianne. Her successor, top-model and actress Laetitia Casta

capitalizes on both images, through the playful association with the gamine in Jean-Paul

Goude’s advertising campaign for the Galeries Lafayette and her more established

cinematic roles, haute-couture shows, and image as the French ambassador of L’Oréal.

Both the gamine and the French woman belong to a category of filmic types that cluster Frenchness in an iconic manner. Ginette Vincendeau has insightfully pointed out

that the closeness of theatre and film had a marked influence on the performance of the

actors in the 1930s and since French theatrical performance was based on a strict

system of types or emplois (2000: 7-8). The issue of March 2002 of Positif dedicated to

French actresses reproduced the same observation: “Dans le cinéma français, peut-être en

raison d’une habitude issue du théâtre, les comédiennes ont longtemps répondu à des

emplois : l’ingénue, la garce, la femme fatale, la grande dame” (Ciment and Tobin 5). It

ensues that French feminine types gravitate around these highly conspicuous cinematic

emplois, whose visibility and recurrence is determined, in turn, by their function in the

socio-political context.

In this sense, Agulhon succinctly notes the difference between Bardot’s and

Deneuve’s femininity:

Chacun a pu observer qu’on peut lire sur le visage très type de BB (le dessin des lèvres en particulier) des expressions qui peuvent aller de la joie enfantine à une sorte de moue boudeuse. La beauté de Deneuve est plus classique, plus harmonieuse, sans être pourtant banale, facilement grave mais sans aller jusqu’au sévère – ce qui rejoignait en somme plus aisément les anciens critères de la sculpture allégorique. (2001: 197)

Both Bardot and Deneuve were established cinema stars when their election as Marianne

occurred. While Bardot’s gamine image was still preserved in the sculpture lines through

71 her pouting lips, Deneuve’s representation played on the classical perfection of her features. In the French cinematic imaginary, female stars as gamines and seductive

French women types are inextricably intertwined as some of them – including Catherine

Deneuve, , Isabelle Adjani, Juliette Binoche and currently Audrey

Tautou – age gracefully in front of the French public. Nevertheless, the cinematic spotlight can choose to emphasize one of these types, its choice being determined by the socio-political backdrop. I will discuss more at length the image of the gamine in the next chapter since, besides being a specific national type, it is also linked to Parisian urban iconicity. Here I read Bardot’s image as a gamine in its national dimension, as a product and reflection of the environment of the mid-1950s-1960s, connoting modern youth culture and mobilizing societal optimism. In this critical vein, Vincendeau has consecrated a chapter of her study to the subtext of youth that Bardot embodied, remarking that it resonated with the rhetoric of the new that dominated the political spheres of the Fifth Republic and also with the New Wave’s emphasis on rejuvenation in cinematic terms (2000: 85).

In Enfants Terribles. Youth and Femininity in the 1945-

1968, Susan Weiner analyzes the recurrent image of the teenage girl as enfant terrible in a wide range of materials, from magazines such as Elle and Mademoiselle to the celebrity images of Françoise Sagan and Brigitte Bardot. She finds that these representations exorcize societal anxieties such as the recent Nazi Occupation, the advent of consumerism, and the on-going war in . The structured polysemy, to employ

Dyer’s term, functions in different ways as the emancipation of young women found its reflection in these images of bad girls. The youth of the gamine, nevertheless, echoing

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that of the Fifth Republic, also connotes a certain fragility and vulnerability. To illustrate this, one of the posters for Charles de Gaulle’s presidential campaign of 1965 has the title

“Laissez-moi grandir, j’ai 7 ans,” implying

the young age of Marianne, and that of the

French Fifth Republic. De Gaulle is pictured

as the “Father” of the nation, whereas

Marianne, wearing the identifiable Phrygian

cap and the tri-color cockade, is a little girl

that needs to be guided on the right path in

order to grow up. The extra-cinematic

discourses circulated around Bardot’s

persona reinforce the two opposing Figure 2.3. Poster for Charles de Gaulle’s electoral campaign, 1965. dimensions of youth: the turbulent,

revolutionary gamine and the more ingénue side in need of guidance and protection.

Following the new fashion of the gamines, the December 5, 1959 issue of Paris

Match announced the new trend of the “femmes-enfants” in an article commenting upon

the famous Philippe Halsman's “Jump” series depicting leaps of stars such as Brigitte

Bardot, Martine Carole, Audrey Hepburn, : “Finie l’ère des vamps: sex

idoles sont les femmes-enfants. Genoux pliés pour Martine, Brigitte et Lollo, en

du saut à la corde. Jambes tendues pour Sophia et Audrey. Elles se rebellent contre les

leçons de maintien d’autrefois (toujours les jambes serrées), et s’affirment comme des

grandes personnes indépendantes” (111). The connotations of rebellion, emancipation,

73 and playfulness are reconciled across borders by the image of the gamine whose innocence serves to efface the recent memories of the Second World War.

By 1985, however, the Fifth Republic had already developed a reputable tradition and an honorable memory. And Catherine Deneuve, who succeeded as the second actress to embody Marianne, reciprocated, her star image being fully established in consonance with that of the Fifth Republic. In a synchronized movement, Deneuve’s bust, sculpted by

Marielle Polska, emphasizes her classical features and rebuilds harmonious ties with the more traditional representations of Marianne.

The dialogue with the past artistic legacy in Deneuve’s statue echoes a wider movement in French cinema – through the heritage genre – as well as an observable tendency at a wider scale in French society in general. The seven volumes of the Lieux de mémoire edited by Pierre Nora and published by Gallimard from 1984 to 1992 perfectly illustrate this trend. In Nora’s view the cultural identity of the French nation is clustered in the “lieux de mémoire.” As a result, various historians, scrutinizing their fields of expertise, analyze sites of memory as diverse as symbols of the Republic (the flag, the

Marseillaise), monuments (), historical figures (Jeanne d’Arc), writers

(Descartes), places (Reims, Versailles), museums (Le ) books (Marcel Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu).

This encyclopedic attempt is not unique when considering that since 1985, every two years, French sociologist Gérard Mermet has scrutinized the social changes in the

French society and compiled its main trends in Francoscopie. The study’s title reveals the intent of a comprehensive scan of French society in all of its facets: lifestyle, attitudes, values, opinions, and ways of thinking. It also does provide summaries of past decades

74 through sections labeled as “Rétroscopies.” Grouped in generic chapters such as the individual, family, society, work, money, the thorough study of the state of French society is based on empirical research supported by statistical data and surveys, revealing a persistent inward look of the French society in order to define and preserve itself.

Resonating with this trend, Catherine Deneuve, in her quality as one of the most well known French stars of all times, was appointed UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for the

Safeguarding of Film Heritage in 1994. Her work includes the restoration and preservation of film heritage in developing countries. Based on the idea that film reflects personal views but also the societal history, the international call for the preservation of filmic material is revealingly titled “21st Century Memory.” Deneuve’s star image as the grande dame of the French cinema, both through her reputable career and her numerous roles incarnating French literary and historic heroines, imposes the perfect iconic representation of history in general and of the history of the nation in particular.

2.2. Resistance and Decolonization: Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve

When discussing historic films in terms of gender representations, a frequently employed dichotomy comes immediately to mind: national identity tends to be celebrated through male active performances that establish actors as heroes of the narrative. Female movie stars however, due to their ability to incarnate ambiguous discourses, function as well as preferred narrative catalysts in controversial historical representations such as the

Occupation period or the wars of decolonization. Their impeccable beauty serves as a

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cathartic mechanism for restoring coherence at the level of the narrative, while at the

same time, incarnating conflicting significations. Both Bardot and Deneuve were

established stars when they made Babette s’en va-t-en guerre (1959) and Indochine

(1991), their star images enabling them to function as icons of the nation on- and off-

screen.

Brigitte Bardot’s Babette s’en va-t-en guerre opens with Bardot’s walking

impassibly next to her bicycle while war destruction surrounds her. The first movie scene

quotes Et Dieu . . . créea la femme where Bardot was also depicted with a bicycle in the

iconic scenery of the Riviera. In the movie credits, the title capitalizes the letter B and

spells “BaBette” thus reproducing Bardot’s initials as it renders more transparent the

intent of the movie to revolve, yet again, around Brigitte Bardot’s star image. Leah

Hewitt observes that Bardot’s woman-child image was appropriately used to exorcize the

ambiguities of the Occupation period:

The star’s expressly child like demeanor at the beginning of this film matches her initials (BB=bébé=baby), connoting the woman-child, and coincides with what was to become a tradition in the last half of the twentieth century of turning Marianne into a child. This ingénue’s down-to-earth resourcefulness (and stunning looks) allow her to successfully incarnate a fighting, resisting France, under the leadership of that major icon of the Fifth Republic, Charles de Gaulle. (2008: 20)

The action of the movie is set in June 1940. Babette, completely ignoring the

German invasion of her country, continues her daily routine. Looking for employment as

a cleaning , she gets trapped in an evacuation from to England. Now a war refugee, she resides at the Resistance headquarters in England and assumes the cleaning

and household chores. She soon changes careers and becomes a spy for the British

Intelligence because of her striking resemblance to a former mistress of General von

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Arenberg, a highly important official in the German plans to invade England. Sent back

to France, Babette gets separated from her mission partner and love-interest, Gérard de

Crécy, played by Jacques Charrier, and is captured by the Gestapo chief, Commandant

Schultz (). Accidentally, he also wants to do away with von Arenberg, as part of a larger paranoid plan of eliminating the military surrounding Hitler.

He also is aware of Babette’s resemblance to von Arenberg’s mistress and, therefore, decides to use her for his own purpose. But Babette has her own plan and with some innate expertise in strategies, many excellent theatrical skills and irresistible seduction talents, she attracts von Arenberg in a trap, steals the invasion plans, and gets

everybody safely back to England.

For international and domestic audiences, the movie marked a shift in Bardot’s

career and it was marketed as a change in her star persona. The United States poster, for

instance, pictures two identical photos of Brigitte Bardot under the tag-line: “Can You

See the Difference in the New Brigitte Bardot? You will When You See Her Brilliant

Comic Talent In the Hilarious New Film , Co-Starring Jacques

Charrier, Proud Papa of BB's New Baby!” Bardot is publicized as a serious actress

capable of endorsing comic roles while giving up her sex-bomb image and keeping her

clothes on. 7

The French poster is more complex and allows for multiple readings. It depicts an

over-sized iconic image of Bardot in a sensuous and pensive pose that reflects the

numerous close-ups of Bardot’s face throughout the comic action of the movie. A cartoon

provides a second representation of Bardot with a parachute and a cleaning broom.

Reading the movie in the context of resistance but also in the context of the on-going

77 process of Algerian decolonization, the connotations of impromptu rescue (the parachute) and of cleaning the national body (the broom) are associated with a chic image of Bardot

turning even a soldier into a fashionable

accessory.8 The third image reproduces a shot

from the movie, where Gérard de Crécy plans

the French mission. The scene is revealing as to

how a gender dynamic is constructed in the

movie. At the headquarters of the French

Resistance in England, Brigitte soon becomes

indispensable in terms of domestic cleaning and

chores. She even transgresses hierarchic ranks Figure 2.4. Poster for Babette s’en va-t-en guerre. (1959) by instituting an egalitarian system of cigarette distribution, stealing from the higher ranked officers and supplying regular soldiers.

While men constantly share the same frame with maps – de Crécy plots on a French map the houses of the , and captain Darcy is surrounded by maps in his office – Brigitte, while she is depicted with maps, is, rather, absorbed by her love games, trying to capture de Crécy’s attention. When she is about to be sent abroad for an important mission, de Crécy warns the British Intelligence officers that Babette: “C’est une toute petite tête, un tout petit pois.” The act of giving Babette agency and decision power is depicted as dangerous, arousing anxieties from the part of her male mission partners. Yet, it is her very naive charm and reckless attitude that ultimately offers her agency as she as she infiltrates the heart of the Gestapo, in the Continental, and devises the plan that leads to the capture of von Arenberg.

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The comic genre, combined with Bardot’s stardom, achieve this edificatory power where the national image, fissured and tormented, regains its imaginary homogeneity.

Under the spell of her icon, the haunting memory of the Vichy regime is effaced and replaced with an image of a France unified in its fight against the German invaders.

When Babette first arrives in Querck-sur-mer seeking employment, the Madame in charge of the brothel helps Babette to flee with the rest of prostitutes not because of her generosity but because of her nationality: ”Je ne suis pas gentile. Je suis française et je ne laisserais pas une autre Française aux mains des vainqueurs.” The Duchess de Crécy,

Gérard’s mother, expresses the reassuring solidarity between mother and son around the resisting family-nation: “Je fais de la Résistance parce que mon fils fait de la Résistance.”

Most importantly, Gérard de Crécy’s resistance is woven into the narrative in the shadow of Bardot’s star image. Crécy is not a typical war hero upon whom the movie is centered.

To the contrary, his masculine agency seeps discretely into the narrative as the boisterous

Babette gives orders to all males and steals the show during the mission. If Bardot’s image serves as a unifying center for achieving solidarity in terms of resistance, she also manages to reconcile class rifts across the nations. First, to seduce Ahrenberg, a sophisticated aristocrat with classical music tastes and a pronounced affinity for

Shakespeare, Babette has to force herself to memorize bits of elite culture. Her comic attitude, nevertheless, offers her the necessary distance from her part to protect her from ridicule. Struggling to learn good manners and Shakespeare, Babette self-mockingly asserts: “Je vais passer pour une enquiquineuse, moi.” The popular tone of her language, poking fun at the dully aristocratic conversations, serves as a rallying point for mass audiences.

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During her mission, therefore, we witness a sort of a literal mise-en-abyme where we watch Brigitte Bardot playing Babette, a cleaning girl from the lower classes, who, in turn, plays the role of an aristocratic young lady. This episode nevertheless points to the performance of the feminine stars, introducing concepts of the feminine and masquerade that expose the “very contradictions that the nations try to conceal” (Hayward 2000a:

111). In this sense, through this filmic meta-performance class divisions become

magically transgressed by Babette whereas they remain highly visible in terms of

masculinities. Babette navigates between the elitist Von Arenberg and the lower class

Gestapo chief Schultz and interacts with both of them with the same naturalness. On the

French side, she also infiltrates the aristocratic de Crécy family, pretending to be their

daughter while still remaining a devoted Resistance soldier and a simple housemaid.

Discourses threatening the homogenous image of the nation, repressed by

Bardot’s coherent image, emerge elsewhere in the filmic text. First, Babette’s profession

of a cleaning lady has, as previously mentioned, implications at the level of cleaning the

body of the nation. Second, the interaction between the Commandant Schulz is

constructed repetitively in terms of the dichotomy good/bad applied to the father and

daughter relationship. The source of comedy is situated thus at the intersection of the

ingénue attitudes of Babette and the perverted model of fatherhood represented by

commander of the Gestapo. Schultz daydreams about gigantic executions, has an

insatiable desire to shoot everybody and uses every occasion to do so. The uncovering of

plots against Hitler offers him, therefore, the opportunity to satisfy both his death drive

and paranoid fixations. When he thinks that Babette is a “good daughter” obeying his

orders, he overwhelms her with compliments as the “petit ange” serves his objectives.

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In the final scenes of the movie, however, just before the captive Babette manages

to escape, he also reveals his propensity for torture: “Chère petite Babette qui a voulu

faire de la peine à son bon vieux papa Schultz nous allons lui arracher les ongles, nous

allons lui brûler la langue, après nous lui cassons les dents. Et puis ensuite nous lui trouvons quelque chose de plus amusant.” The physical weight of the threats is quite

unsettling when it is juxtaposed to the impeccable beauty and reassuring iconicity of

Bardot’s image. And it is also difficult not to read Papa Schultz’s comments in relation to

the contemporary French accusations of torture in the . In a review of the

movie in France Observateur of 24 September 1959, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze ironically

identifies Babette as the Jeanne d’Arc of the Fifth Republic and reads the movie in light

of the contemporary decolonization struggles that France was facing:

Il est question de faire la première comédie conformiste de la Ve, . . . et de fournir au peuple un opium tricolore qui l’induise à croire que la bataille de la Résistance a été gagné comme on trousse un bien agencé et que donc il n’a pas de raison pour que la guerre d’Algérie ne se gagne avec des chansons et des Kermesses aux Etoiles.

The Paris Match issue of January, 17 1959 reveals the same coordinates of the

reading above. In between sections devoted to , to a visit of the Soviet

statesman Mikoyan to a United States supermarket, and to one of the prophets of the

Algerian insurrections and founder of the F. L. N., Messali Hadji, De Gaulle is

juxtaposed to Brigitte Bardot. The headline on the cover refers to the shift in power that

occurred due to the Algerian crisis: “Sur les Champs-Elysées la France dit ‘Merci

Monsieur Coty’ et crie: Vive de Gaulle!” and the corresponding article adopts an interrogative tone vis-à-vis the Republic: “Que vaut la France no 5 ?” On the next pages, to exorcise all contemporary anxieties, Brigitte Bardot is pictured in a close-up with her

81 blond locks flowing out of the soldier helmet, wearing her typical charcoal eye-make up, with a bright smile on her face, as captions recall her idyllic love story on and off-screen with her fellow acting partner, Jacques Charrier. This contiguity recalls, in addition, one of the most memorable comic scenes of the movie. Babette, as a clumsy telephone operator, connects incorrectly one of the officers and we hear him say to de Gaulle: “Est- ce que tu es libre pour dîner, ce soir, ma poulette?” Next to Bardot’s star image, De

Gaulle is recuperated from the serious political realm into the comic popular one.

Bardot’s star image thus enables a humorous mood that magically reconciles problematic histories of collaboration and resistance both in terms of the past Second World War and the present Algerian war.

Another story of decolonization, this time set in Indochina, is told through

Catherine Deneuve’s star image. After almost thirty years, the mature Fifth Republic finds its expression in the glamorous, established, and aesthetic perfection of Deneuve’s persona suitable for a grandiose epic mode. In the 1992 film Indochine, Deneuve’s character, Eliane Devries, is a transparent symbol of France. The backdrop of this ambitious epic is the of the 1930s in its historic journey until its separation from France during the Geneva Conference in 1954. A rich owner of a rubber plantation near Saigon, Eliane is the storyteller of the decolonization process in

Indochina, unfolding a personal story of family, love, and mourning. Devoted to the plantation and her father, Eliane has strong roots in Indochina, a country which she has never left. She adopts Camille (), the daughter of a deceased Indochinese couple, and raises her like her own French child. Eliane has a brief affair with a young

French soldier Jean-Baptiste Le Guen (Vincent Perez), but she returns to her daily duties

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as mother when Camille, her young girl, comes back home for an arranged marriage.

Caught in a street insurgency, Camille is saved by Jean-Baptiste and falls in love with

him, completing the triangle of desire. Camille escapes from home to rejoin her newly

found lover in the North and, because of the murder of a French officer, both she and

Jean-Baptiste become outcasts and find refuge with the marginalized Communists

insurgents. Soon after the birth of their son, the love story ends on a tragic note: Jean-

Baptiste is assassinated and Camille imprisoned. Eliane, as a devoted mother raises

Camille’s son Etienne who has equally been the listener of her unfolding story.

Vincendeau, in her review of the film, remarks that the movie is centered on the

notion of motherhood embodied flawlessly by Deneuve-Marianne:

Good , of course, is embodied by Eliane/Deneuve. The matrilineal vision of history offered by the film enables it to represent French imperialism as not only liberal, but natural. In the very obvious metaphor of the film Eliane - France adopts Camille-: she inherits Camille’s land through the convenient disappearance of her parents. (1993b: 48)

Certainly, the movie is to be read as a nostalgic heritage work reflecting upon the eminence of the French colonial rule in which the Deneuve’s beauty corresponds to the iconic beauty of the Vietnamese scenery.9 In Phantasmatic Indochina: French Colonial

Ideology in Architecture, Film, and Literature, Panivong Norindr focuses his critical

attention on how French colonial discourses circulated a mythical representation of

Indochina. Through his postcolonial theoretical lens, Norindr criticizes the problematic

use of Eliane as “colonial Marianne” (132). Norindr also remarks that the use of a female

protagonist leads to the screening of Indochina, the other culture, as feminized spectacle

(138). Lily V. Chin read the movie along similar critical lines, as perpetuating an

ideology of neo-colonialism through a dichotomy good/bad in terms of motherhood

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between Eliane and Camille, the monstrous mother (147). The focus of her reading,

however, becomes Camille as a subject, acquiring her own gaze and undermining the on-

screen Orientalist eroticized image through her performance (Chin141-143).

Up to this point, it is difficult not to the narrative collapsing into cliché

and Deneuve’s image into stereotype. It is precisely her star image, nevertheless, that

enables the narrative to function in a more complex ways, through her excellence in, as

Gaël Lépingle put it: “contenir les clivages, à les faire tenir ensemble sans les diminuer.”

The movie brings up this question of fissure right at the beginning: “C’est peut être ça la

jeunesse. Croire que le monde est fait des choses inséparables. Les hommes et les

femmes. Les montagnes et les plaines. Les humains et les dieux. L’Indochine et la

France.” Deneuve’s star image enables her to situate Eliane and the conjunction of these

oppositions, holding them together not through youthful hope but through mature

strength. By the time she filmed this movie, Deneuve was an established institution both

in terms of her role as elected Marianne but also as a celebrated actress with an

impressive career behind her. She played Marion in Truffaut’s Le Dernier Métro (1980),

an iconic role that linked her to the representation of French womanhood during the

Occupation. Leah D. Hewitt, looking at how wartime feminine identities become the catalyst of heroic narrative in heritage movies, argues that these screenings reflect contemporary societal contradictions, best embodied by “a strong female figure” as “the emblem of political ambivalence in the late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-

century France” (2002: 75). In a subsequent Deneuve movie, Place Vendôme (1998),

Nicole Garcia emphasizes the contradictions of the national text through the role of

Marianne Malivert. In a veritable tour de force that earned her the Award at

84 the Venice International Film Festival, Deneuve plays Marianne as the alcoholic and newly widow of a diamond merchant. The glamorous settings of Place Vendôme are impregnated with dark, deep undertones of past betrayals, dubious jewelry deals, and silenced sufferance, elements with converge, yet again, on the quintessential French icon that is Catherine Deneuve.

Recalling Greta Garbo’s and ’s star images, Deneuve’s beauty belongs to the classic tradition of the statuary which she also shares with Marianne. As

Marie-Françoise Leclerc remarks during an interview with Deneuve for Le Point :

“Curieusement, au premier regard, elle semble disparaître dans la perfection de sa beauté, dans la force du modèle de son visage, la régularité délicate des traits, la transparence du teint. Beauté privilège, beauté piège” (95). Deneuve’s classic iconic beauty fascinates and traps the sight. During the span of twenty-five years in which the epic unfolds, her beauty is ageless, remains coherent and intact despite the losses and unfortunate events that cloud her life. In this sense, Vincendeau remarked her “mask-like face and her understated performance style, her glamour and aloofness” (1993a: 44). These elements of her star image are however constantly undermined by a deep passion, profound loneliness and need of protection. They pleasurably reiterate the “fire and ice” dichotomy noted by Vincendeau in Deneuve’s star persona (2000: 210). These primordial elements are, nevertheless, constantly contained by her self-possessed image. Even when she is slapped by her lover Jean-Baptiste, she remains unruffled and utterly composed after he publicly disgraces her. Madly in love with Jean-Baptiste, Elaine humiliates herself by chasing him and seeks refuge and consolation in isolated opium houses. Yet, her filmic image is never altered by these traumatic experiences, as her statuesque features

85 constantly maintain their serenity. It is through these ambivalent qualities that Deneuve’s star persona is able to convey the story of a glorious but also shameful colonial past of the French Republic without falling either into cliché or into disgrace.

The filmic text reproduces this alternation as well. When Eliane is not represented in the scenes, her presence is marked through the narrative voice-over. She is, for instance, the traditional occidental narrator of Camille’s story. Her adoptive daughter, named the Red , became a living legend, as she followed her path to independence both in political terms (the independence of her country, Vietnam) and in personal terms (her love story with Jean-Baptiste). Alongside and in contrast to these conventional orientalist filmic representations, Wargnier accomplishes striking effects through juxtaposing Eliane’s point of view shots with iconic images of the Vietnamese scenery. As Eliane, for instance, walks with Jean-Baptiste for the first time on her plantation, the panning of the camera frames them in a typical exotic scenery. A sudden cut, however, introduces a very fluid point of view shot from Eliane’s perspective and we see two male workers looking directly in the camera. Consequently, the spectator, taking

Eliane’s place, becomes the object of their gaze. This unsettling shift problematizes both the spectator’s location as well as the feminine and the exotic body as objects of the gaze.

The tension between these elements is accompanied by a blurring of gender categories.

Eliane, wearing male clothes, is positioned as both object of the gaze and master of her coolies. Her star image is equally able to contain this gender , as the flattering yet strange remark of Gérard Depardieu shows: “Catherine Deneuve est l’homme que j’aurais aimé être” (Leclère 95). In fact not only does Eliane wear male clothes and glamorous hats and Yves Saint-Laurent dresses, she frequently wears the local attire and

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she shares the frame as much with her Vietnamese workers and friends as much as with

her French countrymen. As the political relations between France and Indochine, mother

(Eliane) and daughter (Camille), woman (Eliane) and lover (Jean-Baptiste), masculine and feminine, colonizer and colonized crumble, Deneuve’s image survives their collapse

through the very recycling of these antagonisms.

Indochine remains one of the few heritage films centered on a feminine

protagonist and on the filmic storytelling of decolonization. The heritage films staging

masculine protagonists illustrate a strong tendency of looking inward for inspiration and

recycling national literary or historic texts, such as Jean de la Florette (1986), Le

Hussard sur le toit (1995), and Germinal (2003). As Powrie has pointed out during the

1990s, the heritage tradition became more and more self-reflective, echoing

contemporary events and ultimately deconstructing itself (1999:3-5). The political

context also greatly changed reflecting anxieties aroused by the more evident processes

of globalization. In 2001, during the electoral process in France, a new filmic icon of

feminine Frenchness achieved prominence nationwide. It was a gamine, yet again, as the

socio-political environment circulated discourses about change and youth. Le Fabuleux

Destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001) was Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s stroke of genius as it reconciled

nostalgia with modernity, past traditions with optimist changes, high art-cinematic

tradition with popular comedy. And its heroine from , the lighthearted gamine

Amélie, is unmistakably French, as she became the most recent iconic urban emblem of

Parisian femininity.

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1 Germaine Lefebvre, later during her career, adopted the name of Capucine. She became famous for her roles in (1963) and What’s new Pussycat (1965) and for her friendship with Audrey Hepburn whom she met in the mid-1950s while working as a Givenchy model.

2 As Agulhon points out, the name of Marianne has obscure roots. It might have originated in an Occitan song “La Garisou de Marianno.” Nevertheless, the popularity of the two names Maria and Anne in the 18th century – bearing both popular and religious connotations – might have helped the establishment of the name. Another hypothesis traces the origins of Marianne in Mariamné a Jewish Princess persecuted by Herod. A highly popular tragedy during that time, written by Tristan l’Hermite, had Mariamné as a central character (1992:18-9).

3 See the French government portal : .

4 See the site of the French National Assembly for a brief history of the stamp representations of Marianne : .

5 For a more detailed analysis of Evelyne Thomas and the French press reactions to her election as a Marianne, see Christian Le Bart’s article, “Evelyne Thomas en Marianne: polémiques autour d’une incarnation” in La République en représentations. Autour de l’oeuvre de Maurice Agulhon.

6 It is highly difficult to address the notion of the nation without mentioning Benedict Anderson’s influential study. I adopt his notion of nations as “an imagined political community-and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign” (6). In his view, nationality, nation-ness and nationalism are cultural artifacts that were created towards the end of the 18th century. The cinematic contribution to the national imaginary is a prolific critical topic. Susan Hayward discusses it in terms of production and modes of enunciation in French National Cinema (2003) and Andrew Higson reconceptualizes the notion of national cinema by emphasizing the role of national audiences in its construction (2002). For the purposes of the present study, I limit my discussion of the national in the cinema to star images.

7 Sarah Leahy in “The Matter of Myth: Brigitte Bardot, Stardom and Sex” analyzes the role of maternity and sexuality in Bardot’s star persona as she argues that they constantly undermine her on-screen representations. Leahy reads Bardot’s body in Babette s’en va-t-en guerre as a surface, as a representation of “blankness,” “a pure surface eradicating the stains the war had left on the female body” (77). In her interpretation, Bardot’s on-screen body is rendered problematic by the off-screen discourses revealing her excessive sexuality and ambiguous attitudes towards maternity.

8 For an analysis of the role of cleaning products and hygiene discourses associated with the contemporary process of decolonization see Kristin Ross’s Fast Cars, Clean Bodies. Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture (1995).

9 See Michelle Bacholle’s article: “Camille et Mui ou du Vietnam dans Indochine et L’Odeur de la papaya verte.”

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CHAPTER 3

PARIS IS A MOVIE STAR: PARISIAN WOMEN AND ICONIC URBAN

FEMININITY

The link between French female stars and Paris is so strong that stars have become an integral and highly visible part of the urban landscape. In 2001, an advertising campaign titled “The Adventures of Laetitia Casta at the Galeries Lafayette,” created by photographer Jean Paul Goude, capitalized on Casta’s star image through highly

successful billboards for the famous French

department store. Over the next three years,

Goude imagined Laetitia Casta in more than

eighty representations marking both special sale

events and Parisian advertising space, from

metro walls to street-side billboards. Although

these posters had a limited existence in the

urban landscape, a Laetitia Casta advertisement

of the 2001 campaign is still preserved in the

city and on foldout Parisian tourist maps. The

name of Galeries Lafayette is inscribed on the

Figure 3.1. Laetitia Casta by Jean upper part of this advertisement and it has the Paul Goude for Galeries Lafayette, 2001.

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double T shaped like the Eiffel Tower to plot on the map the two most visited places in

the city: the temple of Parisian consumerism and the icon of tourism. The image portrays model and movie star Laetitia Casta wearing a black dress, emblematic of Parisian elegance and glamour. On her head, she wears a red, minuscule heart-shaped hat as a blatant reminder that Paris is also the city where both love and fashion desires come true.

From her stylish black-gloved hand a small gift box tied with a tricolor ribbon reminds

the viewers that cinema, fashion, and cosmetics are national affairs in France. In fact, not

only does the muse have strong ties with the national imaginary, but also the creator: Jean

Paul Goude, the director of this publicity campaign, was also the organizer of the parade for the National Bicentennial Celebration of the French Revolution (Agulhon 2001: 207-

8).With Casta, Goude contributes again to the national industries of culture as he

conjugates the star as a national symbol, cinematic icon, and object of consumption.

Additionally, the persistence of this representation and its proximity to maps raise

questions about how star images not only productively guide consumption but also

interact with the Parisian space.

Analyzing the cultural geography of French cinema, Allen J. Scott noted that the

French film industry is characterized by a profound “locational agglomeration” since

production companies, film studios, and the casting agencies are all concentrated in Paris

(99-100). It is therefore natural that the capital city should become both the preferred and

practical setting for most French movies. As a consequence of this concentration of the

cinematic industry in the Paris metropolitan area, female stars as both labor and

commodities are or necessarily become Parisian.

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Paris holds a special place in the history of cinema from the seventh art’s very

beginnings at the Grand Café, Boulevard des Capucines. To illustrate Paris’s cinematic

destiny, René Jeanne and Charles Ford published Paris vu par le cinema (1969) and argued that Paris has earned a place not only in the history of French cinema but of world cinema (9). The constant preoccupation with this cinematic city is shown even more recently, in 2006, when the city of Paris organized an exhibit at the Hôtel de Ville titled

“Paris au cinéma: La vie rêvée de la capitale de Méliès à Amélie Poulain” to celebrate the strong bond between Paris, cinema, and its stars.

This strong connection, however, leads to some short circuits as the highly visible cinematic Paris can be reinterpreted as modifying the city itself somewhat in Jean

Baudrillard’s tradition of going from the screen to the city. Baudrillard referred to the cinematic screen’s precedence over the city in Amérique: ”La ville américaine semble elle aussi issue vivante du cinéma. Il ne faut pas donc aller de la ville à l’écran, mais de l’écran à la ville pour en saisir le secret. C’est là où le cinéma ne revêt pas de forme exceptionnelle, mais où il investit la rue, la ville entière d’une ambiance mythique” (57).

The views of Paris seem equally tributary to the silver screen because of the city’s highly frequent and visible close-ups in movies.

This argument was also made by Charles Perraton in his essay “Le cinéma pour repenser la ville. Réinventer la ville en sortant du cinéma”:

Comment dans le contexte actuel de la mondialisation des villes, le cinéma peut-il contribuer à réinventer la ville? De manière générale, la perception et l’expérience sensible de la ville ne se sont-elles pas largement transformées sous l’influence du cinéma? De sorte qu’il ne faudrait pas tant aller de la ville à l’écran que faire l’inverse pour comprendre le poids des images et la portée des scénarios sur notre manière d’habiter le monde. Ne faudrait-il donc pas partir du cinéma (partir de là, mais en sortir ensuite) pour réinventer la ville? (32-3)

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Adopting Perraton’s proposed method, in this chapter I read French female star images in relation to the city of Paris and analyze their transformative impact on the Parisian landscape in both cinematic and extra-cinematic discourses.

French female stars have always had a privileged relationship to the city of Paris.

Extra-cinematic and cinematic discourses conflate the city and its women in the cultural

imaginary, in particular the condensed version of iconic femininity incarnated by the

movie star. Images of Jeanne Moreau and the Seine banks, Catherine Deneuve and Place

Vendôme, Juliette Binoche and the Pont-Neuf are strongly connected and illustrate the

of an urban feminine landscape. Truffaut captured this quality in Jules et

Jim (1962) when he filmed Catherine’s close-up (Jeanne Moreau) superimposed on the

idyllic Austrian landscape to illustrate the

simultaneous layers of emotions that render the star

close-up indivisible from the scenery. Parisian

female stars wear the text of their urban iconicity on

their image, and, in turn, representations of Paris are

impregnated with their star close-ups. In “Place

Vendôme,” photographer Willy Ronis captured this

Figure 3.2. Willy Ronnis. simultaneity of Parisian women and monument Place Vendôme, 1947. representations. In his picture, the Place Vendôme

Column is reflected in a puddle over which a woman crosses, the dynamism of her

movement being contrasted against the timeless and static quality of the monument.

Aesthetic beauty is thus the main coordinate on which a dual metonymical relation

between the city and its stars is constructed: the Parisiennes signify the architectural

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glory, fashionable elegance, and cultural heritage of the city. In return, Paris represents

the embodiment of feminine iconicity, modernity, and sophistication of its female stars.

This two-way path from stone to flesh is also facilitated by the image of Marianne

as a symbol of the nation. The easy substitution of the nation with its capital city triggers,

however, an indirectly proportional transfer. While the unique icon of the nation is

conceived through a condensation and uniformization process of national mythmaking,

the myth of the Parisienne shifts to a generous incorporation of all Parisian women, and, in particular, of highly visible female movie stars.

This chapter is structured as follows. First, I will first investigate the myth of the

Parisienne and I will argue that its place in Parisian screenscapes is situated at the intersection of two coordinates: mobility and modernity. At the core of this myth is the star type of the gamine who embodies the quintessential expression of mobility since

Eponine, ’s gamine from Les Misérables. Even though Eponine has literary

filiations, her popularity in an international context is mostly due to the music-hall. The

term “gamine” is first recorded in the Dictionnaire de L'Académie française, 8th Edition

(1932-5): “Gamin, ine. n. Petit garçon, petite fille. Il se dit en particulier des Enfants qui

passent leur temps à jouer dans les rues. Un gamin des rues. Il se dit familièrement d'un

Enfant espiègle et hardi, petit garçon ou petite fille. Quel gamin! Quelle gamine! Il

s'emploie souvent en mauvaise part. Méchant gamin! qui est-ce qui m'a donné un gamin

comme ça?” (1:589). The popular background of the term and its ludic connotation are

present from the origins.

The gamine fluctuates between strict categories. The gender opposition

masculine/feminine is rendered problematic both at the level of etymology since the

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gamine is derived from the masculine form, as well as the level of signification through

clothing, style, and performance. The iconic Gavroche cap, short haircuts, and a

mischievous playfulness connote this problematization of gender. In this sense, the gamine equally escapes the outward objectification of the Hollywood woman-child type embodied by Pickford. The gamine’s sexualization is never at the center of attention as it is displaced by the assertion of her fluid subjectivity in search of an identity mold. To this aim, the gamines reappropriate the public urban space to map different feminine identities and affective journeys while interacting with the landscape. They brush by their other feminine counterparts of the streets, the Parisian women, and through their subjective projections, they construct the space according to their inner structure through an iconic connotation of mobility and dynamism that avoids easy objectification.

Taking into account the image of the Parisian gamines and women at the crossroads of mobility and modernity, I will analyze how female stars negotiate Parisian space in both subjective and objective terms, how they create on- and off-screen maps that reflect their own inner dual structure and therefore construct Paris both as cultural and cinematic myth as well as merchandise. In doing so, I use Tom Conley’s critical lens of cartography in cinema. Conley’s Cartographic Cinema (2007) offers a close reading of a vast array of movies from the to recent Hollywood box-office hits in order to analyze the presence of maps in movies and to asses the relation between cartography and cinema. In Conley’s view the two-sidedness between cinema and cartography arises out of their similar projective mechanism of constructing space. The presence of maps in movies exposes the codes of deciphering and reading filmic sequences or even the movie holistically. In my analysis, I follow his approach and use

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maps as a way of reading cinema in order to illuminate how star images conflate with

screenscapes and how they map identities and consumption.

I will conclude on extra-cinematic discourses that highlight how Parisian women

recreate themselves constantly within the urban space. The process of becoming a

Parisienne has therefore become so codified that it can be applied to any woman with the

help of the popular “how to turn into a Parisienne” kits that reconcile the national and universal tension in the image of the Parisian woman. Through these processes, I argue, female stars promote Parisian identity as an urban iconic image of femininity.

3.1. The Myth of Parisian Women

The myth of the Parisian women has always had a reputable tradition and movies have staged the pleasurable visual representations of Parisian femininity reinventing them incessantly through the transitions from the boulevards to the stage and to the screen.

According to Alain Rustenholz, Parisian women had already acquired a mythical aura

under the rule of Louis XV due to their femininity on display during urban walks such as

the promenades of Longchamp (5). The Revolution only consolidated this female imaginary of the city: Marianne, the icon of the Republic, has perpetuated a tradition of feminine iconicity in representing national institutions. However, in the 19th century the destiny of Paris as an imagined city becomes inextricably linked to the image of its female inhabitants through both literary and artistic filiations of which Charles

Baudelaire’s poems and his contemporary Impressionist paintings of urban life are

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particularly representative. Susan Hayward, through a feminist lens, argued that the

representation of Paris during its Haussmannization was equated to the image of women since they were “the site/sight where the contradictions of modernity got played out”

(2000a: 24). This ambivalence of the feminine urban imaginary served as a displacement

of the fear that the modern city inspired onto the female Other. According to Hayward, recurrent images of and fear exemplify this ambivalent phenomenon: the city as

Marianne, as the promise of the future, and as prostitute, a threat to the health of the urban space (2000a: 24-5).

In 1953 still, critics were preoccupied with the feminine characteristics of the city and the charm of its female residents. Frédéric Hoffet, for instance, published La

Psychanalyse de Paris and devoted an entire chapter of his study to Parisian femininity.1

The author asserts that the feminine representation of Paris is due to the role that women played in the social life and in the history of the city, not only in salons but also in music halls, , all the “lieux de plaisirs.” Consequently, this omnipresent femininity pervaded the private space affecting interior decorations through the supple lines of the furniture and the omnipresence of mirrors. It also had a lasting impact on the Parisian society and its salons, on its male population that became feminized, and even on the city whose boulevards are pictured as boudoirs extended over kilometers (91).

To uphold the same tradition of the fascination for Parisian women, Pierre-Louis

Colin authored very recently a book titled Guide des jolies femmes de Paris (2008). In it,

Colin, speech-writer for the current French foreign minister , lists the best Parisian sites not for sightseeing but for admiring women. He contributes therefore to the Parisian women discourse through the recirculation of the flâneur / voyeur

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problematic – which I am going to address subsequently - as well as through the textual

construction of feminine beauty as one of the unique contemporary attractions of Paris.

The pure visual delight that Paris offers at each corner parallels the pleasures of

star gazing.2 In this sense, close-ups of Parisian iconic monuments, the shimmering Eiffel

Tower recalling the magic glitter of movie stars, and its omnipresence in the French

movies, made the City of Lights a legitimate movie star. The strong metonymical

relationship between Paris and its female

inhabitants is reflected at the level of stardom by

their mutual connections to an aesthetic tradition of

visual seduction through both their dual modernity

and ancient cultural heritage. The architectural

decoration of the city finds a natural correspondent

in the fashion adornment of its movie stars.

Figure 3.3. Jean Paul Goude Representations of city and women become blurred Galeries Lafayette Ad, 2001. and the meandering Seine transforms itself into a

scarf, the iron beams of the Eiffel tower into patterns of stockings and dresses, the

of the Moulin Rouge into hats. Moreover, Parisian monuments themselves become

feminine accessories. In this sense, the Eiffel Tower is a preferred ornament of Parisian

taste in the form of pieces of jewelry or even high-heeled shoes.3 Jean-Paul Goude

conceived an iconic advertisement in which his muse wears the Eiffel Tower, the symbol

of modernity, as a hat on her head, attached with a tricolor ribbon to illustrate again the proximity of fashion, tourism, and cinematic stardom.4

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From this perspective, Paris as a seems to obey the seduction

rules of a female star. Susan Hayward has noted that the fetishization of the corporeal city

through film makes it safe as the recognizable sights and sights represent of sum of

containable and reassuring elements (2000a: 25). Revelatory in this sense is the stage

performance of Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau in Viva Maria (1960). In this star

vehicle, Louis Malle stages the two famous French stars of the sixties in a performance of

their Parisian femininity through the song “Ah, les petites femmes de Paris.”

Figure 3.4. Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau in Viva Maria (1960)

During their stage act, miniatures of the Notre Dame cathedral and of the Eiffel

Tower are brought on the stage and share both spatially and symbolically the same space

of the spectacle. Metonymical representations of the city of Paris, the miniatures also

amplify the fetishizing gaze of the spectator that slides from the star-bodies undressed in

revealing can-can dresses to the iconic corporeal elements of the city. However, Malle

employs mirror games to multiply Bardot’s and Moreau’s images, uses dissolves to hide

them, and blurs the association of femininity with spectacle objectification, as men are also at the center of the stage performing a dance and Bardot is wearing men’s clothing in the grand finale. Therefore, we can safely assume that star and city can be read textually in other ways than through the voyeuristic and fetishization reading glass.5 And, most

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importantly, even placed in the Wild West, Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau are

unmistakably French.

3.2. Parisian Women: Representations and Difference

The connection of French feminine representations with the city of Paris on- and

off-screen is certainly unique and marks a distance from American cinema as they reveal

a privileged connection to urban space. Icons of the city, they are also flâneuses as they

stroll down Parisian streets, enter boutiques, antique shops, markets, and corner stores.

They seem to move freely throughout the city and its sweeping boulevards, lingering in

public spaces such as cafés and bistros, or touristy and historically charged sites.

The representations of the feminine in urban settings change significantly in

Hollywood cinema. Mona Domosh and Joni Seager in their study, Putting Women into

Place: Feminist Geographers make sense of the world, mention two recurrent filmic images of women in urban space in Hollywood cinema and television. The first strand of representations depicts the city as a site of constant threatening behavior especially for women and particularly at night – Law and Order illustrates it perfectly. The second depiction is a more recent one, exemplified by series such as Ally McBeal in which the city is an exciting and fulfilling place for women in newly gentrified zones (Domosh and

Seager 67). Nevertheless, in both strands, the American urban screenscape remains exterior to feminine identity when contrasted to French cinema in which Paris has a deep metonymical relation with its female inhabitants. The difference is less marked in

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European cinema, as Pierre Sorlin observes in “Urban Space in European Cinema” when he analyzes the specificity of European screenscapes. In contrast to other cinemas that depict cities as autonomous entities, usually confronting them with their inhabitants,

European screenscapes do not exist by themselves but are developed through the relation to their inhabitants (35). Even if this tight connection in European cinema between inhabitants and cities could serve as a basis for the metonymical relation between Paris and its female inhabitants, it cannot solely account for it, as the close relation between women and city is not specific to any other European city than Paris.

However, this omnipresence of images of femininity and Paris raises suspicions of objectification and of exclusion. Simone de Beauvoir noted this fact when looking at the imbalance of feminine allegorical statues in Paris and statues consecrated to real women:

Il est remarquable qu’à Paris, sur un millier de statues (si l’on excepte les reines qui forment pour une raison purement architecturale la corbeille du Luxembourg) il n’y a que dix élevés à des femmes. Trois sont consacrés à Jeanne d’Arc. Les autres sont Mme de Ségur, , Sarah Bernhardt, Mme Boucicaut et la baronne de Hirsh, Maria Deraismes, Rosa Bonheur. (1949: 221)

In the same critical framework, in an article titled “City as Narrative: Corporeal

Paris in Contemporary French Cinema (1950s-1990s),” Susan Hayward develops a compelling argument that Paris is misrepresented as a woman, as objectification and fetishization of the female and city body allow for both the control of the masculine order and the exclusion of other bodies. In the reading of Paris as a corporeal city, Hayward’s critique is that the idolatrization of Parisian women corresponds to a lack of their voice in the city as Parisian women are typified in the roles of excessive femininity.6

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Hayward reproduces at a cinematic level a boisterous dispute that originated in the literary realm. Through “The Invisible Flâneuse: Women and the Literature of

Modernity,” Janet Wolff launched the debate about the flâneuse. Scrutinizing the works

of Charles Baudelaire, Georg Simmel, Walter Benjamin, the author cannot find a

feminine counterpart for the flâneur roaming in the streets of Paris. She argued, therefore,

that the flâneuse does not have a voice in the public urban experience of the modern life.

In a critical response to Wolff’s article, Elizabeth Wilson noticed that the woman increasingly penetrated the public sphere in the 19th century and asks for incorporating

the female workers and shoppers as flâneuses as they were highly visible in department

stores, in cafés and on boulevards towards the end of the 19th century (1995:68). In

addition, Wilson argues, the flâneur himself is difficult to be read as part of the dominant

masculine patriarchic order, as he problematizes gender, “effaces himself, becomes

passive, feminine” and thus invisible (1995:75).

In The Sphinx in the City: Urban Life, the Control of Disorder, and Women,

Wilson looks at both the feminine and the masculine in the metropolitan setting as she

situates the gender tension at the very heart of the urban space. The city is “masculine in

its ‘triumphal scale” and feminine in its “threatening mane” and she concludes that in

terms of exorcizing fear “at the hear of the urban labyrinth lurked not the Minotaur, a

bull-like male monster, but the female Sphinx, the ‘strangling one’”(1992: 7). The critic

devotes one chapter to Paris, “The City of the Floating World: Paris,” and remarks that

the imaginary city was feminized and sexualized: ”Poets sometimes likened Paris to a

prostitute, but more often sang her praises as a queen. Either way, the city was

inescapably feminine” (1992: 47). To illustrate this gendering of the Parisian space

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Wilson notes a trend starting during the French Revolution through which women were

assigned “a representational or symbolic role, which placed them firmly within a realm of

pleasure for the most part devoid of real power,” thus representing them as “grandiose

abstractions” and as signs of “sheer lust and hedonism” (2005: 49).

As previously mentioned, Susan Hayward reengaged this discussion in terms of filmic representation and emphasized the dual objectification of Paris as a woman and of women in Paris, remarking that in French cinema there are only a few flâneuse films out of which only two come to mind immediately: Cléo de 5 à 7 and Ascenseur pour l’échafaud (2000a: 27). Nevertheless, the interaction between female stars and Parisian space can be read in more complex ways including subjective vision, but also the metonymical relation between stars and the city as well as stars’ cartographies of screenscapes in order to trace affective and consumption itineraries.

I start with an analysis of French female stars and their images to see how they interact with those of the Parisian screenscapes. Their metonymical relation with Paris enables them to project their subjectivities on filmic landscapes, mapping identity or sentimental journeys in the city. I will read the on-screen feminine roles using also the haptic framework of the voyageuse, in Giuliana Bruno’s terms. In her encyclopedic study, Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film, Bruno a theoretical shift from the optic to the haptic, from the objectifying gaze to the traveling emotion. In the passage from the optic to the haptic, the sight was replaced with site- seeing that enables the spectator to be “a voyageur, a passenger who traverses a haptic, emotive terrain” (15). The optical implies separation from the medium whereas the haptic allows for feeling the textures of film. Therefore, she advocates for a critical shift from

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“spectator-voyeur to a spectatrix-voyageuse,” dismantling equally the idea of an immobilized, passive spectator and proposing the concept of a voyageuse: “She is a physical entity, a moving spectator, a body making journeys in space” (157, 56). Central to Bruno’s argument is La Carte du pays de Tendre, a map conceived by Madeleine de

Scudéry for her novel Clélie (1654). Mlle Scudéry’s illustration maps emotion through movement. The cartographic journey is a sentimental voyage where towns, rivers, seas illustrate a rich and highly codified sentimental vocabulary in order to trace different affective journeys. Reading space in Bruno’s terms opens for a feminist strategy of the haptic in which on-screen feminine travelers transformed the female spectator into a traveler and implicitly into a flâneuse. Using her theoretical framework I adopt her haptic strategy of reading space from the position of a film voyageuse in some of the subsequent film readings concerning French female stars.

On-screen images of Parisian women have been constantly situated in a dialogue with objectified/subjective representations of the city corresponding to the divide between popular and art cinema. As popular cinema tended to portray an objectified

image of Parisian femininity in resonance with an iconic tourist city, the French art

cinema insisted on personal representations meant to reveal a more intimate and authentic

Paris. For instance, in 1957, in perfect opposition, Brigitte Bardot’s Une Parisienne and

Louis Malle’s Ascenseur pour l’Echafaud illustrate the conflicting star images of an

objectified and subjective Parisienne and her corresponding city. Four years later, Agnès

Varda employs these two images and illustrates the evolution from woman/Paris-as-an

image to woman/Paris-as-a subject through the inner journey of her protagonist in Cléo

de 5 à 7 (1962). Nevertheless, I will show that the appeal of the image of the Parisienne

103 resides in the collusion of these two categories in on-screen representations or even in extra-cinematic discourses where stars become flâneuses even as urban icons circulating visual desire for the city and its products. Central to these negotiations between objective image and subjective vision, between iconic and intimate Paris is the image of the gamine whose modernity and mobility crosses boundaries with the typical nonchalance of her age. Zazie dans le métro (1960), Chacun cherche son chat 1996), and Chaos (2001) illustrate the disrespect of the gamine for established categories. Finally, I conclude on the iconic image of Amélie Poulain, which, I argue, holds in perfect tension the iconic visibility of the Paris/Amélie as a star and the Paris/Amélie as a subject of vision.

3.3. On-Screen Representations: Icons, Flâneuses and Voyageuses

In the tradition of constructing and exporting Parisian femininity, in 1957, after the international success of And God Created Woman, Brigitte Bardot starred in Une

Parisienne. The poster for the film pictures Brigitte Bardot wearing a revealing nightgown and literally sitting on a Parisian map. The see-through negligee is an open invitation to the gaze of the spectator to look at Bardot’s body and at the Parisian map that surrounds it. Moreover, the fabric of her negligee naturally flows into the Parisian landscape marking a triple juxtaposition of flesh, stone, and cloth: the star female body,

Parisian architecture, and the fashion industry.

The map in the movie poster marks a significant departure from Michel-Etienne

Turgot’s famous 1739 Parisian map and its attempts at omniscient vision and control of

104 urban space; quite on the contrary, the buildings reproduce the lines of Bardot’s body and seem to surround her protectively.7 Moreover, cartographic conventions are sacrificed at the expense of iconicity. The buildings and streets are represented from multiple perspectives, reproducing cliché images such as those of Sacré-Coeur and Moulin-Rouge.

The map captures the viewer’s sight and the message is clearly one of photogenic quality that both star and city share as central features. However, the control imposed on city space visible in Turgot’s map slips in the fetishization of Bardot’s Parisian body. It ultimately foretells the extra-cinematic entrapment of her star body by paparazzi and

Bardot’s necessary evasion from the city to the secluded mansion at La Madrague in order to regain control of her own image.

The poster markets Bardot as a

highly sexualized French woman copying a

familiar pin-up posture. Unlike her American

model, Bardot is pouting, not smiling, in a

gesture that became one of the trademarks of

her sexualized image. At the same time, her

irreverent pout reveals another element of her

star image observed by François Truffaut

when he analyzed the movie and remarked

Figure 3.5. Poster for Une Parisienne. that Bardot delivered a blow to a predictable (1957) by her “lack of sophistication and refusal of conventions” (qtd. in Crisp, 1997: 364).

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In contrast to the immobility of the poster, the opening sequence of the movie

Une Parisienne shows Bardot speeding in a red convertible on the Champs-Elysées. Her

ingénue character is named Brigitte, a transparent equivalence, showing that the movie is more about Bardot and her star image than about a fictional daughter of the French prime minister. A police chase ensues since Brigitte is in a hurry, pursuing her future husband,

Michel Legrand, an ambitious aide to the Premier. In fact, the chase become a recurrent motif in the movie, as the camera pans and tracks Bardot’s body all through the movie while she runs after and hides from men.

In Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome, Simone de Beauvoir explains that the modernity of Bardot’s active sexuality was more suitable for the progressive tastes of

American men than for their French counterparts. Modernity and mobility are two coordinates of Bardot’s image that are shared with the city of Paris. The movie maps them carefully through mise-en-scene of modern cars and house interiors as well as tracking shots, pans, and fast editing techniques that emphasize the dynamic aura of the star.8 The on-screen image of Paris responds, in turn, as the opening sequence of modern

urban traffic on Champs-Elysées shows. In addition, airplanes and airports, in which

Brigitte spends a lot of her time, undermine the image of a technologically backwards

France.

Nevertheless, the modern representations of the Orly airport and urban traffic

alternate with traditional iconic views of Paris, such as the panoramic Parisian view

dominated by the silhouette of the Eiffel Tower, the picturesque banks of Seine, and the

Champs-Elysées guarded by the Arc of Triumph. Even if Brigitte’s private apartment is

essentially modern, most of the public interiors in which she moves as the daughter and

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wife of a diplomat are aesthetically representative of the French cultural and architectural

heritage. This duality at the level of Brigitte Bardot’s star persona is captured by Ginette

Vincendeau as she argues that Bardot’s image reconciled a new type of femininity of the

1950s with traditional values:

Her spectacular youthful looks, her insolent , her blatant promiscuous lifestyle and her outspokenness were unlike any other star of the time, in France or elsewhere. Yet, at the same time, her appeal depended on the ‘old’ values: on traditional myths of femininity and on the display of her body, though a body repackaged for : nude, more ‘natural’, on location, in color and Cinemascope. (2000: 84)

Brigitte illustrates accurately this reconciliation between a sexualized new

femininity and traditional values through the filmic narrative and its denouement.

Brigitte’s “modernity” and sexual desire have to be contained within the traditional form

of marriage. After achieving her goal of marrying Michel Legrand, a sort of French Don

Juan, Brigitte has to devise strategies to keep him faithful to her. In order to counter her

husband’s infidelity, she invents a fictional story of a “modern open marriage” she

conducts with her husband and she shares it with a royal guest of the French Republic,

Prince Charles, in order to keep Michel busy in jealousy. As the “slap in the face to bourgeois morality” (Vincendeau 97) is not defined in male terms anymore, Brigitte is literally slapped herself in the face when her husband finds out about her story.9 We

quickly learn with Brigitte that modernity as sexual freedom is strictly and definitely

gender coded.

Brigitte’s dynamism and modernity finally prevail as she exits from the

development of a stereotypical comedy in a tangent. The protagonist has to lie about her

whereabouts one afternoon only to confirm her husband’s narrative. In order to render her

husband jealous, she elopes to entertaining herself with the French royal guest

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Prince Charles, a Casanova himself. During her trip she discusses her life experiences, dances in public, participates in a bar fight, and charms royalty, while realizing her

committed love for her husband. Since Brigitte’s action and voice does not have a place in the fictional story, only the final clin d’oeil to the spectator – the close-up of her

fingers crossed while lying when she is summoned by her husband to tell the truth about

her whereabouts that afternoon – enables us to see her parallel narrative obscured by the

constant objectification of her body in the movie.

Released in the same year as Une Parisienne but situated in perfect contradictory

tension with it, Louis Malle’s Ascenseur Pour L’Echafaud (1957) tells the intertwined

and doomed stories of two couples. The main narrative draws on a love triangle: Julien

Tavernier () and Florence Carala (Jeanne Moreau) decide to kill

Florence’s husband and Julien’s boss, a shady and wealthy businessman. After having

committed the murder, Julien returns to clear an incriminating piece of evidence and, due

to an accident, he remains trapped in the elevator for the entire night. During this time,

Florence wanders in the streets of Paris looking for her lost lover while the Parisian urban

representations directly her inner journey. The very same night, two adolescent

lovers steal Julien’s car, kill two German tourists, and unwillingly incriminate him for

these other crimes. Nevertheless, both justice and fatality intersect the next morning.

Julien is delivered from the crimes he did not commit but, at the same time, he is unwillingly exposed by Florence through a lie meant to protect him, but which, in fact, lead the police to identify Julien as the criminal.

Analyzing Malle’s debut in France-Observateur, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze critiqued the movie for lacking stylistic unity, while acknowledging its brilliantly filmed

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but disconnected episodes. In the most famous one, Malle follows the sentimental

journey of his female protagonist throughout a nocturnal Paris. Florence enters bars, roams in the streets and steps from one frame into the next looking for Julien. In the beginning of Florence’s journey, the voice-off narration of the female protagonist is mixed with urban sounds, contributing to a visual space literally impregnated with her inner thoughts. In the latter scenes, the poignant music of Miles Davis accompanies sinuous tracking shots and jump cuts that disorient the spectators in order to capture

Florence’s subjective voyage into the maze of urban seclusion. In an interview with

Philip French, Malle stated that he wanted to capture the modernity of Paris:

Traditionnellement, c’est le Paris de René Clair qu’on voyait dans les films et j’ai tenu à montrer l’un des tout buildings modernes de Paris. J’ai inventé un – il n y en avait encore qu’un seul en France, et il n’était pas près de Paris, et nous avons donc dû le tourner en Normandie. J’ai montré non pas un Paris futuriste, mais tout au moins une ville moderne, dans un monde déjà déshumanisé. (1993: 144)

Louis Malle shot Jeanne Moreau without either make-up or artificial lights and, likewise, neither is the glamorous side of Paris portrayed. Recalling his work with Henri Decaë to film this scene, Malle describes the full shock and rebellion of his technicians who were horrified when seeing Jeanne Moreau without make-up and accused the director and cameraman of ruining her image (Malle, 1993: 12).

The night scenes illuminated by neon lights and store windows are a pure reflection of Florence’s subjective trajectory or an “atlas of emotions,” to borrow

Giuliana Bruno’s term. For Bruno, the undividable link between motion and emotion is to be found, as previously mentioned, in La Carte du pays de Tendre. Used by Malle in his next movie Les Amants (1958), the map asserts that movement entails emotion, which, in turn, contains motion (Bruno 6). When Florence mistakenly thinks she sees her lover in

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the street, it is her pure passion that makes the camera pan hastily in a veritable

“emotion,” as Bruno labels it (207). Florence’s subjectivity is at the center of this

nocturnal Parisian roving and it dictates the movements of the camera and the editing rhythm of the shots. It is precisely at this level that the constructed modernity of the city is reflected in one of the most refreshingly new Parisian models of femininity. However, her wanderings in Paris will also lead her straight to prison. At night, women walking in

the streets and women of the streets are easily confused and, therefore, Florence ends up

at the police station under suspicion of prostitution. The city of Paris in which Florence

traveled is seen through both movement and emotion and it established the coordinates

according to which Moreau’s status as iconic image of the New Wave will be

constructed: excessive passion and untamed mobility.

Agnès Varda’s Cléo de 5 à 7 (1961) takes a deeper look at modern feminine identity through the image of its star singer Cléo. The “cinq à sept” in the title is misleading: the director will not stage a banal adulterous affair but she will follow, from the first to the thirteenth arrondissements, the itinerary of a feminine protagonist who is

about to accomplish an inner journey. Cléo’s trajectory starts on the and

ends on a bench at the Hôpital de la Salpétrière, where she arrives to find out the medical

results of her diagnosed cancer. The itinerary of the protagonist is frequently read in

terms of a progression from an objectified to a subjective femininity. Sandy-Flitterman-

Lewis, for instance, retraces the itinerary of her protagonist as an empowered progression

from déesse (DS) or woman-as-image to idée (ID) or subject of vision (269) . The critic

uses a play of words, mentioned by Cléo and her friend Angèle in the movie, between

two Citroën models – Déesse and Idée – in order to account for this shift from vain self-

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absorption to self-discovery and the subsequent exploration of the city world. The critic

breaks down the film into two poles corresponding to the two Cléos. In the first part, she

notes the excessive narcissism present through the mise-en-scène emphasizing mirrors

and close-ups of Cléo. In the second part, through point-of-view shots from the

protagonist’s perspective, Cléo’s new subjectivity becomes manifest. Janice Mouton also

follows Varda’s protagonist from staging a feminine masquerade to becoming a flâneuse,

a female walker in urban Paris. She looks at the “cliché woman” represented by Cléo,

analyzes her as a decorative object, and follows her walks and human interactions, as she

becomes part of the city, a flâneuse in the tradition of Virginia Woolf and George Sand.

The card-reading sequence that opens the movie is to be read as Cléo’s attempt to

map her future. Her movements in the city are filmed through long takes at a slight high angle allowing for a concomitant presence of the city of Paris. Naturally, the city reciprocates her concerns, time and death, through symbolic store signs such as “Rivoli

Deuil,” “Bonne Santé,” or “L’Horlogerie du Pont Neuf.” Cléo also marks a journey from the right bank’s commercial side to the left bank in acquiring her subjective vision. As a consequence, the right bank with the Café “Ca va, ça vient” and the hat store “Chez

Francine” mark her narcissistic pauses in the city. Paris echoing Cléo is also spectacle on

the iconic Rue de Rivoli, through its street merchants, soldier parades, and windowed

shops. The journey on the Pont Neuf marks the transition in both Paris and Cléo from

the consumerist pleasures of Rue de Rivoli to the left bank. As Cléo’s social

consciousness increases, Paris loses its iconicity and is screened in terms of authenticity

through a documentary quality of the shots. Varda, through fluid camera movement and

long tracking shots, captures on-screen the social diversity of Parisians: shots of old

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retired women in rue Delambre, street performers, immigrant families and artists in Le

Dôme, the sailors in the Gare , and a talkative soldier in the Parc

Montsouris, to mention only a few.

The use of the tracking shots illustrates Cléo’s subjective views of Paris as she

starts to become an integral part of the urban space. Varda works precisely at that

interface where Cléo through her “emotion,” to employ Bruno’s term, both traverses and is traversed by Paris. Varda’s definition of cinécriture, or cinematic writing, is closely related to the idea of the voyageuse. The movie director emphasizes the strong connection between emotion and image in her cinema: “I have fought so much since I started, since

La Pointe Courte, for something that comes from emotion, from visual emotion, sound emotion, feeling, and finding a shape for that, and a shape which has to do with cinema and nothing else” (4). Consequently, Varda’s language of filmic shots illustrates the pure emotion of her protagonist. For instance, at the end of the movie, the camera suddenly leaves Cléo and Antoine in a fast backward- tracking shot, showing not only the alienation at the impact of the doctor’s news that confirmed Cléo’s illness, but also an emphasis on the open-ended quality of the final scene.

Another way of reading emotion in the filmic language is the contradiction between subjective and objective time throughout the movie. When Cléo descends the stairs from the card reader, Varda edited three identical and subsequent close-ups of her anguished face in what looks like a technical mistake at a first glance. Time might have stopped for Cléo, but as spectators we fear that the real projection time has stopped, too.

Likewise, when Cléo tries hats on in the store window or enters the sculpture atelier, tracking shots slow down and an eerie silence accompanies the sense of weight of time.

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Cléo’s cinematic story is perhaps one of the perfect illustrations of the voyageuse haptic

experience, to reemploy Bruno’s terms, as it corresponds to Varda’s programmatic will of

finding a filmic language for emotion.

These three movies – Une Parisienne, Ascenseur pour l’échafaud and Cléo de 5 à

7 – illustrate thus the strong metonymical link between Paris as a screenscape and its female stars. This particular relation has a strong impact on the filmic techniques and representations through its specific shifts from fetishizing objectification to subjective individuality in terms of both star and city.

3.4. Gamines and Maps of Paris

The gamines in Paris are travelers par excellence. They map their own journeys through the city that reflect their child-woman identities: Paris becomes a map they unfold and reinvent for their own : pleasurable games transform Paris to playgrounds or Cartes de Tendre that map their amorous searches. Through their mobility, they have a special place in the city: they run, play hide and seek games, construct sentimental labyrinths, turn the iconic image of Paris upside down, deconstruct it, and fall in love in and with its urban space. The camera movement is thus again one of

“emotion” as the camera tracks the gamines through the city.

For his third feature, Zazie dans le métro, Louis Malle employed a female protagonist and, yet again, portrayed her emotions and movements. This time, it is one of the most celebrated French gamine characters, Zazie, who takes Paris by storm, bursting with emotion and running compulsively through the city for the two days she spends

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there with her uncle Gabriel. What Zazie does in terms of breaking open language while using argot, Malle accomplishes with cinematographic techniques, demystifying an

iconic Paris. The camera follows Zazie’s childlike imagination and maps the city of Paris

as her immense playground. The movie is marked by numerous tracking shots as it

follows Zazie in Paris and rhymes with urban life in an uplifting and spontaneous flow.

The gamine is also closely linked to the Parisian space and to the idea of perpetual

movement in it. Uniquely Parisian, Louis Malle’s Zazie is significantly different than its

Hollywood counterpart, the child-woman. Malle himself defines Zazie as unique French

gamine, distinct from her corresponding types in American cinema:

she was a sort of anti-Shirley Temple […] She is so impossibly cute, whereas Zazie is really this tough-talking restless little girl who objects to everything she’s ordered to do. She terrorizes the adults, which is very funny. But the world she discovers is so chaotic, there’s no sense of order or meaning, every character is going through changes. So each time she thinks she understands what’s going on, something happens and she realizes it’s become something else. (28)

Zazie does not allow for her easy objectification as a woman-child. Through her mobility she maps Paris in liberating ways. She flounces through the arcades, the privileged spaces where the male flâneur of the nineteenth century would stroll at his leisure. A series of gags orchestrated by Zazie unfurl in Parisian streets and the banks of the Seine, constructing a refreshing and liberating perspective of Paris. More importantly, the movie medium itself becomes Zazie’s playing field as it is transposed back into its childhood age. The multiplication of is very reminiscent of the comic silent movies of the 1920s. In addition, Malle quotes and renders homage to two of the magicians of

French cinema: to Georges Méliès through the substitution splicing that simulates Zazie’s sudden appearances and disappearances and to Louis Feuillade’s Fantômas through an

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iconic Parisian roof chase. The fantasy of the chases, the visual gags and stunts,

the cartoon references, and the fast and slow motion shots reflect Zazie’s inner frantic and surrealistic view of the city.

The postcard objectification of Paris is critiqued by Louis Malle as soon as Zazie sets foot in the city. When uncle Gabriel picks her up at the train station and they ride home in a taxi, the church Saint-Vincent-de-Paul appears four times in four different shots that are supposed to capture a continuous shot of the taxi ride. The church is identified by uncle Gabriel as Le Panthéon, , La Madeleine in an obvious critique rejecting the cultural commodified images of a historical Paris. In “Zazie dans das Passagen-werk: Paris, the French Wave and the Cinematic City,” Thomas Kemper reads this episode as a subversion of centralized cultural politics: “As a designated emblem of official culture, the historical landmark stabilizes civil culture and identity:

Paris will always be ’s Tomb, the Eiffel Tower, and Notre Dame. Zazie turns literally such logic on its head as the camera turns the Eiffel Tower upside down, and mocks its linear rational engineering through fragmented editing” (162). The movie, however, on several occasions, while subverting the iconicity of Paris, falls in love with the city and constructs an alternate modality to look at it. A revealing example is the

Eiffel Tower episode that occurs during the second day of Zazie’s visit because of uncle

Gabriel’s compulsive desire to show the architectural wonder to his niece. She looks above and not one eye-line-match shot, but differing viewpoints show the Eiffel

Tower from a low-angle perspective consistent with Zazie’s gaze. The affectionate duplication of images recalls Zazie’s chaotic movement and her multiplications through the city and, at the same time, adoringly proliferates the image of its icon. Subjective

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representation and fetishizing objectification collide on the image of the Eiffel Tower.

The shots of the tower visually answer the question of Uncle Gabriel: “I always wondered why Paris is represented as a woman,” before he even asks it. The always

photogenic Eiffel Tower, and by extension Paris, can only be represented as feminine in

their iconic beauty. Nevertheless, the fact that the Eiffel Tower is shot from Zazie’s

perspective allows for writing feminine subjectivity on its iconic image.

That very evening, Zazie is wandering aimlessly in Place Pigalle by night. Zazie’s

roving in the chaotic city is marked by an accelerated speed of the projected images,

point-of-view shots from her perspective, and tracking shots following her in the frenzied

crowd. In these scenes through which Zazie re-imagines the city, Malle accomplished his

declared goal: “placer une petite fille droite et sereine, la seule qui ait toujours raison, qui ne se laisse pas entamer, qui soit un regard” (Prédal, 1989: 50). Flâneuse and traveling

soul, Zazie does not need a map to visit Paris. She plans the city according to her

subjectivity and the city, in return, changes her irremediably as she confesses through the

laconic “J’ai vieilli” in the train station upon her departure from Paris.

In 1996, the iconic side of Paris is portrayed, yet again, in Cédric Klapisch’s

Chacun cherche son chat. Klapisch’s third feature was a relative success of the year both

in France and abroad, although audiences read it differently. For the French audiences,

the obsession with the nostalgia of the past and its safe community finds its illustration in

the movie. Illustrating this recurrent trend of deploring the forced modernization of the

city, movie director Jean Claude Guiguet wrote:

Où sont les amoureux et que sont devenus les faubourgs de Paris aujourd’hui dans les années 80? Les lois cyniques du marché, la surenchère de la promotion immobilière sont à l’œuvre pour le coup de grâce. Bien sûr on ne touche pas à Notre Dame ou à la Place de Vosges, mais ce n’est pas une raison pour fermer les

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yeux sur ce qui se passe ailleurs . . . Les excavatrices ne respectent rien. Les bulldozers non plus. (43)

For foreign audiences, the movie screened an iconic representation of the Parisian spirit through the photogenic sites of the streets, traditional stores and markets, cafés, bistros, and rooftops.10

Set in the Bastille quarter, Klapisch’s film translates a vacillating and undecided

movement between modernity and tradition. The demolition of historic sites such as that

of the church Notre Dame de l’Esperance, as well as the process of gentrification that

drives older inhabitants out in favor of young professionals, owners of traditional stores

in favor of multinational businesses, and neighborhood bistros in favor of trendy tourist cafés illustrate a process of change, a tension between tradition and transformation. The main protagonist, Chloé, is lost in this transition, also torn between belonging to a young and hip generation and to a safe and traditional community. Certainly, this problematic opposition echoes others: communication versus non-communication, community versus alienation, creative art versus fashionable art, empathy versus superficiality.11

The narrative is centered on the idea of loss. Chloé entrusts her cat, Gris-gris, to

one of the old , Madame Renée, a reputable cat sitter in the eleventh

arrondissement, as none of her own friends is willing to help her. When she comes home,

the cat is missing and Madame Renée mobilizes an army of retired women in the

neighborhood to help Chloé find her cat. Chloé and one of her new aides, Madame Clavo,

look at a map after a day of searching. The neon-lit Parisian map is an emblem of

modernity, an iconic tourist map laying out the city’s historic and cultural objectives. In opposition to the use-value of the map, Madame Clavo and Chloé draw a personal strategy on it, identifying the houses of the people in the neighborhood who are

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participating in the search for the missing cat. As the tourist map marks space only

selectively in terms of objects of sightseeing, Madame Clavo maps her own

neighborhood in detailed terms enriching its space: “C’est une aiguille dans une botte de

foin. Mais il est là, il est là, il n’est pas loin, il est près de nous, j’en suis sûre. Il ne peut

pas aller ailleurs.” Life outside the neighborhood and the community, thus, is unthinkable

for the older generation and their place(s) become juxtaposed to the tourist objectives of

the Parisian map to show both the reverse side of tourism, the authenticity of the

neighborhood life, and, simultaneously, its commodification. In this sense, the map

exposes the very functional mechanism and its organizing principle of the movie, as

Conley claimed: a cinematic representation of the traditional neighborhood to be consumed by audiences worldwide.

Like Paris, Chloé does not quite know how to assume her modernity yet.

Attracted by modernity, as she is by the young musician in the area (Roman Duris), she is also subsequently deceived by his empty promises that echo the superficial and deceiving promises of urban modernization. Her attitude towards the helpful neighbor Djamel

(Zinedine Soulem) illustrates uneasiness and ambivalence, as Paris’s own attitude towards its diverse ethnic population. At the same time, the promise of a new romance,

Bel Canto (Joël Brisso), her neighbor the painter, moves out of the city at the end of the movie. While he leaves, the neighborhood community is in the bistro singing a song eternalizing the association of Paris with a blonde woman and the seductive charms of the

Parisiennes: “Tous ceux qui nous connaissent, grisées par nos caresses, s’en vont, mais reviennent toujours. Paris à nos amours. C’est ça Paris!” Chloé, however, starts running in the streets to the accompaniment of the non-diegetic soundtrack of Portishead’s “Glory

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Box.” The end of the movie illustrates yet again the uneasy cohabitation of tradition and

modernity: the Parisienne as a seductress in the old song and the Parisienne “sick of

being a temptress,” trying, however, to redefine herself through love and femininity (“I just want to be a woman”) in a modern tune and age.

The iconic objectification of Paris became a vocal debate in the French press in

2001 with the release of Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s

celebrated film and eponymous character. Amélie engendered a veritable phenomenon

and became an icon of Frenchness as she incarnated the typical Parisian gamine. Her

image is used on French textbook covers, clothing lines, and as a reference to French cinema in general.12 Its unexpected success took Jean-Pierre Jeunet by surprise and made

his creation one of the most iconic films of all times. French Film Guides, published by I.

B .Tauris, consecrated it an in-depth study by Isabelle Vanderschelden, and reputed film

scholars such as Ginette Vincendeau, Dudley Andrew, and Elizabeth Erza contributed to

the critical discourses reading of the movie as a commercial cliché or as an artistic

.13

In France Jeunet’s movie became quickly very controversial. An article in

Télérama titled “Amélie, Loana, Jean-Luc et moi” juxtaposes Jean-Luc Godard’s Eloge de l’amour (2001), Loana, the protagonist of a highly popular French TV reality show

Loft Story, and Jeunet’s popular icon. The attitudes of the critics were highly polarized: they either accused Jeunet of transforming Montmartre to Euro Disneyland or eulogized his attempts at reviving French cinema through the rich intertext of the movie and its quotations of Jean Renoir, Robert Doisneau, Jacques Prévert, and Marcel Carné.14

Nevertheless, one media dispute is central to the polemic: Serge Kaganski’s articles on Le

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fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain – “Amélie, pas jolie,” “Pourquoi je n’aime pas Le

Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain,” and “Comment je me suis disputé à propos d’Amélie

Poulain” – have fiercely criticized the movie in particular in terms of its artificiality

opposed to an artistic authenticity. In “Pourquoi je n’aime pas Le Fabuleux destin

d’Amélie Poulain,” Kaganski rejected the artificial sense of nostalgia in the movie and its

effacement of ethnic diversity: “Amélie Poulain est un film formellement clos et visé (à

mon sens, de l’anti-cinéma), esthétiquement réactionnaire, passablement ennuyeux,

totalement anecdotique dans son propos et profondément rance et vieillot (pour rester

poli) dans la vision de la France et des Français qu’il véhicule.”

One of the more bitter critiques of Serge Kaganski illustrates the problematic of

condensing Paris into an iconic image. In “Amélie pas jolie,” the critic contends that the

film has been ethnically, sexually cleansed: “le Paris de Jeunet est soigneusement

“nettoyé” de toute sa polysémie ethnique, sociale, sexuelle et culturelle.” In order to contrast this effacement, I will briefly refer to another movie that came out in 2001,

Chaos, which illustrates the problematic representation of the ethnic diversity in the city.

Directed by Colline Serreau, the movie begins with a car ride of a bourgeois couple, Paul

() and Hélène (). When at night in the ninth arrondissement a young prostitute tries to get into their car to escape three men that are chasing her, Paul locks the door of his car and removes himself from that outer world where the young woman is beaten into unconsciousness. Cynically, he cleans the blood splashes on his car with paper napkins and even goes to a car wash. As the credits of the movie start, the male protagonist washes the blood of the witnessed violent act away as well as its memory. However, his bourgeois wife does not want to “clean” her cowardly act and

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visits the abused girl Malika () in the hospital. An adventurous story of female friendship starts, as Hélène becomes more and more involved in her new friend’s life.

Serreau’s movie discusses the not so glamorous side of Paris in which the invisible traffic of exploited bodies in the city takes place. Malika’s is consigned to the

Parisian outer belt, to the banlieue apartments, and the dangerous nightlife in shady areas of the city. In order to create a place for her and her sister in Paris, the protagonist needs the help of Hélène, of middle-class Paris. The movie optimistically ends on the images of four generation of women – Hélène’s mother-in-law, Hélène, Malika, and her sister – illustrating the feminine reconciliations across age and ethnicity. In this sense, the last scene captures the diversity of France that Amélie effaced in her iconic image.

As for Amélie, she is perfectly synchronized with the on-screen representation of

Paris. Her retro image corresponds to the nostalgic evocation of Paris in the fifties. The ethnic non-representation of Montmartre on-screen is equally reflected in Amélie’s luminous white skin digitally enhanced by the director in post-production. In fact, in an interview with Jean-Marc Lalanne published in Libération, Jeunet admits that the Paris

he created is purely fictitious as he himself imagined it as a non-Parisian. Amélie

correspondingly daydreams silently and works creatively with fictional texts such as film

clips, photographs, and forged letters, exposing through a mise-en-abîme the very process

that Jeunet used to create his cinematic image of Paris.

The media phenomenon that Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s movie engendered raises

productive questions about the interaction of movies and identity maps in the Parisian

urban labyrinth. While still retaining the innocence and the playfulness of the gamine,

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Amélie initiates a game to direct her soul mate, Nino Quincampoix, to find her. Through

Amélie’s manipulations, the city of Paris becomes a huge labyrinth with complex

enigmas. For instance, in the episode at Sacré-Coeur, Amélie guides Nino to his lost

scrapbook through chalk markers drawn on the ground, a statue impersonator, and a

telescope to punctuate the proper order of discovery. The camera tracks Nino’s

movements from a low point close to the ground to high angle-shots reinforcing a strong

sensation of maze turns and movements.

The labyrinth as a sign is described by Wendy B. Faris in the following terms:

“Because the design of the labyrinth simultaneously represents a puzzle and a solution, a journey, and an arrival, it embodies the way in which urban texts can be seen as both

maps and routes, as descriptions and projects, portraits of streets and guides within them.

Fictional urban labyrinths, symbolic or iconic, duplicate man’s experience of the city as

diachronic wandering and synchronic mapping” (38). Consequently, she argues that a

paradox is highly visible in the pattern of the labyrinth: it symbolizes confusion and, at

the same time, is represented by a formalized visual pattern. Amélie, therefore, is no mere

city walker; she is a mapmaker on a love quest. Through the dual image of the labyrinth,

she articulates space and disseminates clues in the Parisian landscape so that she

transforms chaos into fate and contingency into destiny. When Amélie discovers Nino’s

photo album, the crane camera movement is very complex illustrating the duality of the

labyrinth as a sign: its contingency through the representation of street and its ordering

impulse through a high-angle shot. It starts from a very low-angle shot almost close to

the ground and through a forward tracking shot to Amélie sitting on the stairs and

flipping the pages of the album. Simultaneously, the camera, through a tilt, gains height,

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turns in a 180 degree movement, and ends with a bird’s eye shot of Amélie with Paris as

a labyrinth in front of her.

Figure 3.6. Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001).

We discover with Amélie that, as Tom Conley puts it, ontology is a function of

geography: “figures in a topographic field are as they are because geography is destiny or

else, inversely, their destiny, is limited to the cartography of the film” (3). In this view, it

makes sense that with the initial appearance of a map in the movie, Amélie meets Nino,

her predestined lover. In the metro stop of Abbesses, Amélie’s image, as a cartoon-like character, is visually superimposed on the map. In this moment, the iconic images of both Paris and Amélie and the existential journeys they tell are held simultaneously in tension.

If Amélie is examined through an “atlas of emotions” framework, the city reveals itself as concrete texture. Amélie herself is depicted as having a strong preference for tactile experiences (such as sticking her hand in a barrel of grain, cracking the sugar crust

on a crème brûlée or tossing stones on the canal Saint Martin). Relevant also is the

episode in which Amélie serves as a guide to the blind man in the rue Lamarck to the

double staircase of the metro stop Lamarck-Caulaincourt. Amélie becomes a flâneuse,

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describing to the blind men the sights of the rue Lamarck. She lists intimate and

affectionate details, such as the drum major’s widow who still wears her husband’s coat.

The gamine goes on to enumerate accidental and amusing elements, such as the missing

ear of horse statue in front of the horse butcher’s shop, the laughs of the passers-by, melon smells, visual delights of the boulanger, the ice-cream parlor, the cheese and the butcher’s shops, as well as the triangular desire between a child, a dog, and a roasted chicken. The dynamic movement of the hand-held camera follows her enumeration and, unsurprisingly, the blind man when left at the metro entrance has a complete haptic experience, translated by the image of a sun, both warmth and visual delight, surrounding him.

The movie, thus, is to be read in terms of both interiority and exteriority as

Amélie’s journey alternates the glorious objectification of iconic Parisian spaces, such as

Sacré-Coeur, Le , the cafés and cobblestone streets with imagined inner landscapes. Jeunet’s movie illustrates a very complex mode of creating desire through opposite movements where objectivity and subjectivity, the visual and tactile, cliché and inner screen-scapes are enmeshed in each other. Amélie, thus, holds in perfect tension the indefinable myth of the Parisienne and the invitation to its consumption.

3.5 Parisian Female Stars in Extra-Cinematographic Discourses

In 1900 the Exposition Universelle opened its gates to visitors in Paris showcasing industrial goods and cultural products from a wide array of countries from all

124 over the world. A massive sculpture dominated the entry gate: La Parisienne by Paul

Moreau-Vauthier represented as an ancient goddess, but wearing a haute couture gown

by Madame Paquin.15 At its feet, products of the

French fashion industry were on display. The

Parisienne, as emblem of the city, was irremediably

associated with its national fashion industry.

Subsequently, in the 1950s when female movie stars

became highly visible incarnations of the myth of

the Parisian woman, they equally became icons of

the national fashion industry.

Photographic albums such as Parisienne(s) Figure 3.7. Paul Moreau- Vauthier, Paris Welcoming in 2001 by Alain Rustenholz and Parisiennes: A Her Guests, 1900. Celebration of French Women, published in 2007

and containing articles written by among other Parisian celebrities,

illustrate this on-going fascination with Parisian women. On a regular basis, women’s

magazines such as Vogue, Paris Match, and run stories that feed into the

myth of the Parisienne as the epitome of modern and fashionable femininity. The

editorial of the French edition of Vogue of August 2006, “Le Point de vue de Vogue,”

illustrates this connection between the capital of fashion and its women:

Les grandes maisons ont transformé la capitale en plaque tournante de l’élégance renouent depuis quelque saisons avec un langage de mode qui est en phase avec l’air du temps. [...] tous rendent à la Parisienne son chic imbattable, son pimpant insolent, son petit « je ne sais quoi » désarmant de séduction. « La Parisienne est inspirante car elle mélange tout et sa créativité nourrit la notre », dit Karl Lagerferd […] Idéal de Parisienne, Gainsbourg l’est sans conteste: ligne javelot, charme foudroyant, caractère trempé, classe naturelle, fibre internationale. (48)

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The city and its women interact in a creative reciprocity concretized through

modernity in fashion and, as a regular pattern, a French female star is chosen, as to incarnate graciously these discourses, in this case, , a French actress and singer, daughter of famous French singer and of the British born but Parisian actress, .

Extra-cinematographic discourses surrounding French female stars construct the fabric of their daily lives as inextricably linked to the city of Paris. Contrasted to their

Hollywood counterparts who spend their lives in remote Hollywood mansions, French female stars live and spend their time in the city. Along these lines, Le Monde’s journalists Catherine Simone and Nicole Vulser observe that despite the excessive privacy surrounding Catherine Deneuve’s life, she resides in an apartment in the sixth arrondissement, and has her initials listed on the intercom.

Frequently, French stars match perfectly the Parisian life of their screen counterparts. In Télérama’s issue of March 2006, Frédéric Strauss comments that

Amélie’s star, Audrey Tautou, still lives in the Montmartre neighborhood paralleling her on-screen heroine. In Dyer’s terms, the perfect “star image-character” fit serves to

authenticate the natural correspondence between her on-screen character and her off-

screen image (1979: 129). In this way, the mythical connection between stars and the city

is perpetuated in off-screen space.

Recurrent discourses surrounding French stars also construct their reticence to

leave Paris for extended periods, especially to go work in Hollywood. In extreme cases,

French female stars refuse exorbitant Hollywood contracts since they find the separation

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from their city to be unbearable. According to Roger Vadim’s autobiography titled

Bardot. Deneuve. Fonda, Brigitte Bardot refused a unique opportunity of a Hollywood

contract, just because she did not want to leave Paris. In March 1958, Vadim convinced

Frank Sinatra to accept filming a musical with Bardot titled Paris by Night. The movie

would have been extremely beneficial to Bardot’s international career recently sparkled

by Et Dieu . . . créea la femme. However, the new star refused to go to Hollywood and

she ruined the project through her unrealistic demand that the film be exclusively shot on

location in Paris (Vadim 115).

Not only do extra-cinematic discourses reiterate this inseparable couple – Paris

and its female stars – they also offer ample opportunities for actresses to detail their wanderings for the City of Lights, as Catherine Deneuve illustrates it in an interview titled “Le Paris de Catherine Deneuve”:

C'est une si jolie ville... Plus je voyage et plus j'aime Paris. Je regarde toujours Paris avec des yeux pleins de surprise. Quand je passe sur les quais et que je regarde le , en fin de journée, quand le soleil vient taper dans cette grande verrière, c'est extraordinaire […] Ce sont des visions de Paris dont je ne me lasse pas. J'ai presque tous les jours un plaisir des yeux.

Female stars are also preferred flâneuses in the city as Catherine Deneuve’s testimony shows. Paris is not a mere background for echoing star beauty, it is the actress who frames her city under a feminine aegis of the pleasures of the visual.

Within advertising discourses, the consumption of stars entails a corresponding consumption of urban spaces or vice versa. In a 2007 advertising campaign titled

“Journeys,” employed Catherine Deneuve’s star image to both advertise its products and the city of Paris. Under the title “Sometimes home is just a feeling,”

Catherine Deneuve initiates a journey through her preferred places in Paris in eight

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chapters. The narrative movement is triggered by the words “J’aime” and the slideshow

of still photographs captures diverse images discussed by the actress. The immobility of

the pictures is contrasted against the richness of authentic sounds that accompany

Deneuve’s voice-over narration. The star images of Paris and Catherine Deneuve fashion and tourist consumption while keeping intact and exploiting the aura of cultural

authenticity for both actress and the city. The city of Paris and its female stars reconcile

hedonist and , iconic stardom with authenticity, and modernity with a

millennial heritage.

Linked to and necessary for modernity, a second coordinate on which the image

of the Parisienne is constructed is movement. As Rustenholtz puts it : “La Parisienne

n’est pas une beauté parfaite, mais un mouvement, pas une plastique, mais une

expression, pas un corps, une allure. La Parisienne est frémissante. Son charme, ce sont

des traits animés par l’esprit. Disons, pour faire formule, qu’elle est silhouettée d’un trait

d’esprit” (8). Goude’s campaign for the Galeries Lafayette also capitalized on the

mobility of its protagonist as Laetitia Casta was portrayed numerous times jumping,

running, and falling. The Parisian woman is modern and dynamic and her transformative

quality is inclusive but strictly codified and guided through consumption. Movement is

also intimately linked to space and the journeys of the Parisiennes become inextricably

linked to consumption as Giuliana Bruno explains: “As in all forms of journey, space is

filmically consumed as a vast commodity. In film, architectural space becomes framed

for view and offers itself for consumption as traveled space that is available for further

traveling. Attracted to vistas, the spectator turns into a visitor. The film viewer is a

practitioner of viewing space – a tourist“ (62). In this sense, Amélie has already marked

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the Parisian landscape through special tourist routes or local tourist office maps

(Vanderschelden 89) as well as La Môme (2007) the biopic about Edith Piaf.

It is enough to live, travel to or spend time in Paris to become Parisian. Further, it is enough to consume things Parisian in order to become a Parisienne. At the intersection of modernity and movement, the Parisian woman reinvents herself and shares a narrative space with the Pygmalion myth. Filmic texts certainly reiterate this capacity of Parisian metamorphoses democratically available to all women. ’s feature film, Ils

étaient neuf célibataires (1939), opens with a praise of the Parisian women. In a trendy

Parisian , a strikingly elegant woman, played by the Romanian actress Elvire

Popesco, makes her entrance in a frenetic movement. “Certainly, she is not French,”

Guitry’s companion remarks. He agrees, saying that she is “Polish, perhaps.

Nevertheless, Parisian.” 16 The process of becoming Parisian is, however, less democratic than it seems at a first glance as consumption in the fashion, cosmetics and perfume industries is heavily class coded through notions of Parisian exclusivity. Si Paris nous

était conté (1956) makes the same statement regarding Parisian women, while

emphasizing the importance of fashion in the creation of a Parisian feminine identity.

Madame Rose Bertin, one of the multiple characters in Guitry’s vignettes, was renowned

for transforming through fashion Marie-Antoinette into a French queen. She defines the

process of evolving into a Parisienne in the following terms: “être parisien ce n’est pas

être né à Paris, c’est y renaître. Être de Paris ce n’est pas fatalement y avoir vu le jour-

mais c’est y voir clair.” It becomes evident, therefore, that nationality becomes irrelevant,

as the process of becoming Parisian follows other norms dictated by fashion, aesthetic

pleasure, and coded behavior.

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A contemporary trend of popular books for female audiences continues this

tradition of creating maps to guide consumption so that one’s identity can be reinvented

as Parisian. A first category provides the reader with direct maps through an enumeration

of places of consumption as their indicate in a transparent manner, for instance,

Chic in Paris: Style Secrets and Best Addresses by Susan Tabak. The second order

derives more from the confessional autobiographical novel and is composed by

testimonies of successful transformations into a Parisienne and the mappings of these

journeys, which I will discuss at length in the next chapter.

In conclusion, the myth of the Parisienne reinvents itself on the glamorous surface

of female star images, understood as both artistic and mysterious, and yet attainable through certain consumption codes. Icons of urban Parisian femininity, these star images conjugate a metonymical relation to the city of Paris that allows them to map the city according to their structure. Sometimes flâneuses, they are essentially voyageuses in their city which responds with its on-screen iconic close-ups. Catherine Deneuve, Brigitte

Bardot, Jeanne Moreau, and Audrey Tautou are stars whose iconic images serve as anchoring points in mapping feminine but also cultural and national identity, cinematic desire, and consumption of both the city and its feminine stars.

Accordingly, when Time magazine declared French culture dead in November

2007, of the French Academy looked for answers in the image of a female movie star, in a counter-article published in . Time’s journalist Don

Morrison argued that despite vast state subsidies, French culture, in particular cinema, is in a deplorable state, not producing any new Godards or Truffauts. However, the French media agreed unanimously that French cinema does not look back nostalgically at the

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New Wave in order to define its contemporary identity, but at its new female star Marion

Cotillard, the protagonist of La Môme. Edith Piaf’s cinematographic biography, La

Môme, follows the tradition of the Parisienne, conjugating star image and the iconic streets of Montmartre in a naturalistic depiction recalling Zola’s novelistic world, and the authenticity of the French chanson. Piaf is addicted to Paris as her cinematic depiction on tour in New York shows how much she Paris. In fact, she is a môme, a gamine of the streets who incarnates popular Paris. certainly continues the tradition of French female stardom and will be yet another illustration of the successful exportation of the myth of the Parisian gamine.

1 The editor of the book, Bernard Grasset, harshly criticized it while publishing it. Although the psychoanalytical value of the book is doubtful and out of date, my analysis uses the reproduction of discourses surrounding Parisian femininity cited in his study.

2 Although I practice textual analysis, the choice of the term “star gazing” is meant to recall Jackie Stacie’s Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship not through the critical lens of audience studies but as a constant effort to regard visual pleasures not exclusively at the service of a patriarchic order.

3 Debra Olliver’s book, Entre Nous: a Woman’s Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl, illustrates this trend. Its cover pictures a woman wearing high heels in the form of the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower is a very versatile icon as it takes the shape of earrings, hats, necklace pendants and other female ornaments.

4 This Jean-Paul Goude advertisement had as much of an impact on urban space as the Laetitia Casta billboard poster discussed in the initial analysis. These two advertisements still map the consumption

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journey in the city from the very arrival at the Charles de Gaulle airport. The advertisement is still currently featured on the Galeries Lafayette’s website, www.galerieslafayette.fr.

5 I refer here to Laura Mulvey’s influential article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Reading cinema through a psychoanalytic lens, Mulvey argues that female screen characters are notably coded through the quality of “look-at-ness” that responds to a voyeuristic and a fetishistic gaze of the spectator positioned as male.

6 An oppositional critique of this sexual promiscuity of the Parisienne is illustrated by the adopted Parisian star Dalida’s duo with Alice Donna, La Parisienne, in 1985. Conceived as a conversation between the two singers, the song illustrates Dalida’s desire to become a Parisian femme fatale and its consequent impossibility: “Je ne suis pas nymphomane, ça me blâme, ça me blâme/Je ne suis pas travesti, ça me nuit, ça me nuit/ Je ne suis pas masochiste, ça existe, ça existe/ Pour réussir mon destin, je vais voir le médecin.” Finally, only after discovering a sexual obsession, she can become a real Parisienne: “Depuis je suis à la mode, je me rode, je me rends/Dans les nuits de St Germain, c’est divin, c’est divin !/Je fais partie de l’élite, ça va vite, ça va vite/Et je me donne avec joie en faisant du yoga.” The ironic play on the stereotype of the Parisienne illustrates also the constant preoccupation with new Parisian trends, such as psychoanalysis and yoga that combine the excessive sexuality with contemporary modernity.

7 Tom Conley mentions the Michel-Etienne Turgot’s great map of Paris as an epigraph for René Clair’s first short movie, Pairs qui dort (1923). The bird’s eye perspective and the lack of motion, present in both the map and Claire’s filmic representation of Paris, allow for an unobstructed and dominant gaze of the viewer. Jean-Paul Goude equally uses it in a perfume advertisement for Yves Saint-Laurent’s Paris.

8 Vanessa Schwartz remarks that the modernity of her home is exemplified by the streamlined furniture and wall-to-wall carpet (140). In addition to the red convertible car, modern airplanes and airports are equally reminders of a technologically advanced France in the 1950s.

9 This is the second time Brigitte is slapped in the movie. The first time, her father is the patriarch who puts his daugther in her place. After being discovered in Michel’s bed, Brigitte refuses to marry him, and her father, publicly compromised, restores the order through forcing them both into marriage. It is a reminder of the patriarchic order of the 1950s as an era where women were required to obey her husbands and fathers (Audé 1981: 30).

10 See Mazon’s article, “Space, Place, Community in Chacun cherche son chat,” where she argues that the success of the film in America was largely due to the fact that it corresponded to a notion of French life and cinema (97).

11 Elizabeth Erza’s study “Cats in the ': The Unspeakable Truth about “Chacun Cherche son chat” and Lucy Mazon’s article “Space, Place, Community in Chacun Cherche son chat” offer an insightful analysis of the dynamics of these oppositions and how they are developed in the movie.

12 In May 2003 designer Lancel introduced an Amélie clothing line (Vanderschelden 90).

13 See for instance, Ginette Vincendeau “Café Society,” Elizabeth Ezra “The Death of an Icon: Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain” and Dudley Andrew “Amélie, or Le Fabuleux Destin du Cinéma Français.”

14 In “Café Society,” Ginette Vincendeau mentions the influence of Jean Renoir’s French Can-Can (1955), Marcel Carné’s Hôtel du (1938), Robert Doisneau photographs, Poublot’s drawings and Raymond Peynet’s of lovers in Paris, the novels of Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec, Marcel Aymé and Philippe Delerm (22-4). Dudley Andrew adds Jacques Prévert’s poetry, Claude Maurier as ’s mother in the 400 Coups, and Serge Bourguignon’s Sundays and Cybèle (1962) (34-7).

15 See Shane Adler Davis’s article "Fine Cloths on the Altar”: The Commodification of Late-Nineteenth- Century France” for an in-depth analysis of consumption linked to the Universal Exhibits in Paris.

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16 The narrative of Ils étaient neuf célibataires (1939) is illustrative in this sense. Due to a recent law, all foreigners will be expulsed from France. Thus, taking advantage of the panic of the beautiful Parisiennes without papers, Jean Lécuyer (played by Sacha Guitry) organizes a hotel where the old French bachelors gather to marry foreign beauties in exchange for financial security. The same theme is encountered in the 1990 feature Green Card which stars Andie McDowel and Gerard Depardieu. This time, it is French masculinity that is attracted by the prospective of an American green card.

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CHAPTER 4

ICONS OF FEMININE CONSUMPTION: ON HOW TO BECOME A FRENCH

FEMALE STAR

When it comes to feminine consumption, Jean-Paul Goude’s publicity campaign for Galeries Lafayette offers, yet again, an illustrative example that nicely summarizes how feminine Frenchness is constructed and marketed for consumption.

Under the imperative “Métamorphosez,” Goude imagines Laetitia Casta as an

enigmatic Sphinx reinventing the zoomorphic figure in its Greek variation. The haute

couture symbols condense the idea of bird wings through the black stylish jacket and the

talon-alike black gloves. The lower part of the body

illustrates the gracious feline quality of the leopard

while recalling the exclusive taste of expensive furs. Its

pattern is equally echoed in the negative on the dotted

jacket that Casta wears. Casta as a “Sphinx in the City,”

to employ Wilson’s title, sits on a marble column as a

Figure 4.1. Laetitia Casta sign of a highly illustrious and consecrated tradition of by Jean-Paul Goude for Galeries Lafayette. 2001. . The juxtaposition of the warmth of the feline body to the coldness of the marble, the classic tradition and modern innovation, the seductive yet highly exclusive image of Casta,

134 familiar and enigmatic, show only a few of the many paradoxes that her image reconciles.

As the poster cleverly shows, the outer change entails an inner transformation, as fashion and identity are intimately linked. Goude also alludes to how femininity reaches a mythical level, connoting the realm of archetypes through the consumption of French products at the Galeries Lafayette. The message is straightforward: every woman who wants to undergo a similar makeover can do so by shopping at the Galeries Lafayette.

At the intersection of national and economic discourses, the advertisements of the fashion, perfume, and cosmetic industries are media texts that tell stories about how

French femininity is constructed. My purpose in this chapter is to analyze how French female stars function in the advertising discourses promoting national products. I demonstrate that the status of French female stars as icons of feminine consumption incarnates a living paradox since they have to reconcile a tension between the national and the universal. Stars sell national products in a global market and, in addition to their mythical Frenchness, they need to signify, a universal model of femininity acquirable through the consumption of French products.

I will turn to Judith Williamson’s Decoding Advertisements. Ideology and

Meaning in Advertising in order to elucidate how advertisements work. Although

Williamson refers mainly to American advertisements, she discusses at length a French star in her study, Catherine Deneuve, who was highly visible in American women’s magazines during a 1968-1978 campaign for Chanel No. 5. The critic looks closely at an ad from the campaign that simply juxtaposes Catherine Deneuve’s face to the perfume

Chanel No. 5 and makes an argument that the publicity uses a translation mechanism between two systems of meaning: the cinematic and the perfume industry. As a cinema

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icon, Catherine Deneuve signifies French beauty and glamour. Sharing the same frame with the French star, the product, Chanel No. 5, implicitly contributes to her qualities as

well, “so that perfume can be substituted for Catherine Deneuve’s face and can also be

made to signify glamour and beauty” (Williamson 25). The reading that Williams

performs is equivalent to the Barthesian demythology process: the photographic image

denotes Catherine Deneuve and she, in turn, connotes an idea of French beauty

engendering a “referent system,” equivalent to the Barthesian mythology (Williamson

20). In addition to this reading indebted to Barthes, Williams underlines two important

concepts for advertisement reading: active spectatorship and differentiation.

The critic points out that one of the most important functions of advertisements is

to render the product unique through differentiation. To illustrate this process,

Williamson compares two perfume commercials: Catherine Deneuve for Chanel No. 5 to

Margaux Hemingway for Babe. She argues that Margaux Hemingway signifies “novelty,

youth, and ‘Tomboy’ style, which has value only in relation to the more typically

‘feminine’ style usually connected with modeling” as represented by Deneuve (26). In a

reciprocal manner, Deneuve and Chanel, representing tradition, fame, and femininity,

exist because of a system opposing them to Hemingway and the perfume Babe.

When performing a reading of the Chanel ad, the critic notes that there is no

obvious connection between the two levels of significations. The photography denotes

Catherine Deneuve and she becomes the signifier in a second chain of signification,

connoting chic and glamour. However, the two chains of signification are not linked and

the spectator’s knowledge connects them in a comprehensive reading (100). This

interaction of the spectator with the publicity text is essential: “one of the peculiar

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features of advertising is that we are drawn in it to fill that gap so that we become both

listener and speaker, subject and object” (Williamson 14). This active process of

involvement on the spectator’s part is vital in linking the object to the individual.

Building on this premise, Williamson adds that “advertisements work by a process in

which we are completely enmeshed . . . and invite us freely ‘to create’ ourselves in

accordance with the way in which they have already created us” (44). This connection

between advertised product and consumer enables a differentiation process that shifts

from the merchandise to the shopper: “We differentiate ourselves from other people by what we buy . . . . In this process we become identified with the product that

differentiates us; and this is a kind of totemism” (46). In this perspective, by consuming

Chanel, the buyer expects to be distinct through the very glamour and beauty that

Catherine Deneuve connotes. Williamson concludes: “We are both product and consumer, we consume, buy the product, yet we are the product. Thus our lives become our own creations, through buying: an identikit of different images of ourselves, created by different products” (70).

I draw on this symbiosis between product and individual and I will use Deneuve’s example, to illustrate my argument. As Williamson mentions, Catherine Deneuve’s image connotes chic, glamour, and beauty but also Frenchness (25, 100). Through the consumption of Chanel No. 5, customers create a new identity reflective of these very qualities, including Frenchness. Therefore, a reconciliation between the particularistic national aspect and the universal consumption logic is essential. Encompassing notions of

glamour, beauty, chic, sophistication, and elegance, the myth of feminine Frenchness seeps through the consumption process and becomes part of the newly acquired feminine

137 identity of the consumer. The union of these contraries is revealed both through a rhetoric of feminine transformation – how to become French – and through discourses that emphasize a process of discovery where Frenchness is already interiorized in the form of an archetype.

4.1. On How To Become a French Woman

I will use two examples to illustrate these trends of becoming French, their titles speaking for themselves: Suzy Gershman’s autobiography C’est la Vie: An American

Conquers the City of Light, Begins a New Life, and Becomes Zut Alors!, Almost French and Debra Ollivier’s study Entre Nous: a Woman’s Guide to Finding Her Inner French

Girl. Gershman, the author of Frommer’s Born to Shop books series, centers her transformation narrative on a traumatic event, the death of her husband that triggers her moving to France. As her story unfolds, it accumulates scattered references to the practicalities of relocating to France: renting an apartment, buying furniture, and creating a community of friends. Her conversion to French femininity is gradual and presented in an implicit manner through the accumulation of events and French experiences. The book ends on her becoming “almost French,” as the author reflects upon her newly acquired inner peacefulness and self-sufficiency next to the glimmering lights of the Eiffel Tower.

Ollivier, on the other hand, is completely subjugated by the charm of the French woman and she takes pleasure in investigating all the different facets that construct her into an archetype:

She [the French woman] is a distillation of her culture’s complex and enduring predilections: She is an essence, a way of being, a mindset – and she exists in us

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all. She is that part of us that is free – and not bound up by the joyless strings of Puritan morality or guilt. She is more fundamentally that part of us that does not want to live according to what other think she should be. She is her own woman, entirely.

Transgressing national boundaries, the consumption of French femininity

becomes thus extremely inclusive and boundless while feminine travel narratives serve as

guides in the consumption process that offers the possibility of acquiring French

femininity.1

These transformative narratives codify feminine Frenchness according to some

recurrent connotations perpetuated in both cinematographic and extra-cinematographic

industries. Edith Wharton devotes a chapter to French women in French Ways and Their

Meaning (1919). She underlines two interlocked characteristics that distinguish French

women from their foreign counterparts: maturity and a different relation to the exterior

world. First, Wharton argues that the stereotype of excessive femininity associated with

Frenchness – “more ‘coquettish’, or more ‘feminine,’ or more excitable, or more

emotional, or more immoral – is not sufficient to explain their different quality” (100). 2

What really distinguishes French women is their maturity: “Compared with women of

France the average American woman is still in the kindergarten” (100-1). In order to support her assertion, Wharton argues that the social life of American women is organized like a Montessori class, which favors individual development in an isolated and artificial medium. Unlike her, the French woman conducts a “real living” process: “is a deep and complex and slowly-developed thing, the outcome of an old and rich social experience” (102).3 However, even in 2003, this myth of “self-possession” of the French

woman was still appealing to foreign female audiences as Debra Ollivier shows:

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She [the French girl] is entirely, unequivocally self-contained. She is focused on living her own full agenda and cultivating her actual self, rather than reinventing herself or pining away to be someone she’s not. Throughout her life, she invests herself in learning and experiencing, not to change who she is, but to become more fundamentally and more fully who she truly is. (4)

Contrasted to the pin-up models and the Cinderella stories prevalent in

Hollywood cinema, the French girl’s voyage, according to Ollivier, is an inner one of

self-discovery and not one of self-conversion to fit perfectly a heterosexual order.

Through this mature constant contact to the exterior world, French women develop a new

approach to life: “As life is an art in France, so woman is an artist. She does not teach man, she inspires him” (112). Popular feminine discourses thus equally construct an altered Pygmalion model that enables women to be artists and creators of their own lives,

through inspirational material practices. The concept of “le plaisir,” associated with the

French, including French women, due to their aesthetic affinities, offers them a different

way of relating to the world:

The French possess the quality and have always claimed the privilege. And from their freedom of view combined with their sensuous sensibility they have extracted the sensation they call “le plaisir” which is something so much more definite and more evocative than what we mean when we speak of pleasure. “Le plaisir” stands for the frankly permitted, the freely taken, the delight of the senses, the direct enjoyment of the fruit of the tree called golden. (Wharton 134)

Perpetuating this sensuality associated with Frenchness, Ollivier recalls a cinematic

example: “Remember Audrey Tautou in Amélie? She dips her hands into sacks of grain

just for the pleasure of how it feels. . . . Sensuality is so pervasive in her life that it is

almost transparent” (6). Bruno’s haptic voyageuse seems naturally welcomed by this type

of French femininity that finds tactile and sensual pleasures in mundane life. This quest

for pleasure imposes an additional selectiveness in terms of merchandise. It is here that

French women distance themselves from conspicuous consumption and definitely prefer

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(French) quality over mass quantity. So, excessive consumption is tempered as French women follow different consumption rules:

Less is truly more as long as it’s an expression of quality and authenticity. She [the French woman] resists the expendable, the disposable, the trendy, the faux . . . . She invariably buys one perfect high-quality dress and not several less satisfying on-sale ones. And she instinctively knows how to mix and match with natural creativity. When you shop like a French girl, you buy one of anything – and make sure it’s the best quality you can afford. (Ollivier 16-8)

Helena Frith Powell’s All You Need To Be Impossibly French. The Witty

Investigation Into the Lives, Lusts, and Little Secrets of French Women draws on the same idea of self-discovery in terms of Frenchness, but this time with more precise details in terms of fashion and cosmetics consumption. In all these feminine guides, stars such as Catherine Deneuve, Carole Bouquet, as well as Audrey Hepburn and Josephine

Baker, are illustrations of the French glamorous style.

One important dimension of stardom that Morin discusses at length in Les Stars is the paradoxical quality of stars that bridges their mythical aura and status as objects of consumption:

The star is a specific product of capitalist civilization: at the same time she satisfies profound anthropological needs which are expressed at the level of myth and religion. The admirable coincidence of myth and capital, of goddess and merchandise, is neither fortuitous nor contradictory. Star-goddess and star- merchandise are two faces of the same reality: the needs of man at the stage of the twentieth-century capitalist civilization. (141)

In French cinema, however, there is a felt tension between the status of French stars as icons of cinema and as icons of feminine consumption. In their attempt at differentiation from the Hollywood market, as discussed in Chapter 1, French stars have to distance themselves from the excessive consumption. The extra-cinematographic texts focusing on their works as stars and the restricted discourses surrounding their private life

141 function as a Poppaea’s veil, amplifying the seduction they exert. The feminine consumption discourses in which French female stars function are thus necessarily linked to the national industries of cinema, fashion, perfume, and cosmetics. If French female stars are associated with these industries, their role as national icons is reactivated and feminine consumption becomes both a favorable act for the nation and a necessarily distinguished practice that does not diminish the cinematic value of the actresses.

In terms of the cinematic aura, advertising discourses for fashion, perfumes and cosmetics attract French actresses and become a true exercise of style. The publicity field is somewhat hazardous, as the mythical cinematographic image of actresses must not be degraded by ordinary desires. Consequently, the national industries of cosmetics, fashion, and perfumes that share a creative and artistic dimension with the cinema are preferred spaces for French stars. The female stars’ presence in the minor genre of publicity reveals their capacity for seduction that allows for a harmonious coexistence of their artistic aura and their status as commercialized merchandise.

Advertisements have also an effect on stars and subsequently on cinema in financial terms. In March 2001, Sandrine Bonnaire in an interview for Paris Match highlighted the financial benefits of actresses who do advertisement work and remarked that due to these profits, female stars have a greater liberty in choosing the cinematic roles they prefer. When asked whether she had offers for product endorsements, Bonnaire reveals the trade-off between the cinematic aura and the free-fall into commercial discourse: “Oui, mais pour des produits pas très prestigieux. Du jambon par exemple. J’ai dit non [Rires]. Moi, présenter du jambon? Franchement, c’est pas possible. Mais pour du parfum ou du rouge à lèvres pas de problème” (Béglé 60). As long as the star image

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resonates with the artistic quality of the advertised products, the consumption of female

stars does not alter their cinematic aura.

4.2. Fashionable Mariannes: Stars and Cultural Products Industries

One of the central features of the star-system that Morin mentions is its inherent feminization because female stardom is more prone to objectification, fetishization, and abstraction:

This feminine preponderance gives the star system a feminine character. ‘Mythification’ is effected primarily upon female stars: they are the most ‘fabricated’, the most idealized, the least real and the most adored. In present-day social conditions, woman is more of a star than a man. That is why we have generally referred to the star as ‘she’. We have naturally feminized the star: in French the word star itself is feminine. (103)

Women were also linked to fashion through the social phenomenon of “the great masculine renunciation,” a term used by Flugel to explain a change in men’s fashion that occurred during the late 18th and 19th centuries. He attributes this shift to the French

revolution since during this period the exhibition of male luxurious consumption was associated with political corruption. Consequently, the signs of wealth were displaced on women’s attire (111-2).Malcolm Barnard argues that since then this association of women and fashion led to a confusion and a transfer of their characteristics through a metaphorical work, the result is that “they [fashion and clothing] either are worshiped unreasonably or dismissed as secondary” (209). According to this metaphorical shift between women and fashion, French female stars will necessarily reflect Frenchness through their association with the national industries of fashion and related commodities.

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French women also had an impact on the production of the manufactured goods through consumption practices. In “‘To Triumph before Feminine Taste’: Bourgeois

Women’s Consumption and Hand Methods of Production in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century

Paris,” Whitney Walton explains that during the Second Empire, French women had a direct impact on the production of hand manufactured goods because they demanded high quality, artistic talent, and refined merchandise. Through an examination of the feminine press, popular literature, iconography, and Parisian archives, the critic demonstrates that

“tasteful consumption” was part of bourgeois women’s attributions. Their roles as

“culture-bearers and arbiters of taste” within the family was sanctioned by philosopher

Paul Janet and art critic Léon de Laborde, who argued that the feminine taste is more prone to artistic sensibility (546, 549). More important for our purposes is that Walton establishes a causality link between French women’s demand of high-quality manufactured products and the international fame of French fashion exports. The author concludes that this role of the French woman as tasteful consumer became a staple of a national identity whereby she distinguished herself from other national counterparts

(Walton 561). Through upholding high standards of art and taste, consumption of French goods became a worthy enterprise for French women. The contiguity between the manufactured goods and French women enables another transfer through which the high artistic quality of the product is reflected upon its feminine consumer. French fashion becomes not only an exclusive economic affair but a national endeavor: “Le « savoir s’habiller » est une pièce maîtresse du savoir-vivre français. . . . L’élégance en milieu blanc américain n’a que des connotations sociales ou économiques. Elle ne véhicule pas de valeurs esthétiques ou surtout éthiques et morales comme en France” (Sardé 28-9).

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The fashion, perfume, and cosmetics industries are foremost national industries and they are marketed as such because of the Frenchness connotations of a tradition in sophistication, elegance, and aesthetic taste. Roger Vivier, the French shoemaker of the

stars, was recently remembered in The New York

Times by Horatio Silva. Vivier is most famous for

his invention of the stiletto heel and for the design

of the pilgrim-buckled shoes worn by Deneuve in

Belle de Jour. His collaborations with Christian

Dior and Yves Saint-Laurent made Vivier the

quintessential shoemaker of stars such as

Mistinguett, Joséphine Baker, Brigitte Bardot, and

Figure 4.2. Diane Vreeland. . To illustrate Vivier’s creations, Boots by Roger Vivier. the article Joie de Vivier displays a photograph portraying the infamous editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine, Diane Vreeland, wearing a pair of red python boots, an identifiable extravagance by Vivier. One has to wonder, however, why the sculpture of Marianne is present in the photograph. In this humorous mise-en-scène, the bust of Marianne is not on the pedestal but positioned on the red carpet and the designer’s audacious boots capture her gaze. Marianne is present next to

Vreeland to emphasize that Vivier’s artistic creations are foremost part of a national industry.

French female stars bear an important role as objects of cultural politics constructing, advertising and circulating Frenchness in the global market through various products. This association between a celebrity and a product originated in France during

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1880-1890. Sarah Bernhardt was the first celebrity to endorse not only cosmetics and

lingerie but also biscuits, candies, and alcohol (Lelieur and Badrolet 122-3). One of

Bernhardt’s most famous lithographic plates, by Jules Cheret, depicts the actress

promoting a cosmetic product, “La Diaphane, Poudre de Riz.” During the 1920s and

1930s celebrity dancers, writers, singers endorsed various products, such as writer Louise de Vilmorin for ’s Arpège. While cinema’s prestige increased over the twentieth century, female cinema stars were more in demand for various advertisements, as, for

instance, Danielle Darrieux, advertising the French hosiery Cornuel in 1939.

In an attempt to connect purposefully French stars to different national products,

Robert Cravenne, the former director of Unifrance, discusses some limited prints of

plaquettes, a luxurious variant of the brochures d’informations published by Unifrance in

the 1950s. While the latter were printed on a regular basis, mainly for informative purposes, the former resemble more an exclusive advertisement material for French cultural products. In one of them titled “Dix vedettes présentent la qualité française,”

Michèle Morgan presents fashion during the Givenchy fashion shows. As for Edwige

Feuillère, she displays the jewelry of René Sterlé. Fernandel advertises French wine in the historic background of the Château du Clos-Vougeot and Gérard Philipe, French literature. Additional stars promote other important French products: Martine Carol endorses perfumes, Daniel Gélin supports the arts, publicizes champagne,

Robert Lamoureux supports gastronomy and Françoise Arnoul presents Parisian social life (Cravenne 199). The gender divide is highly evident in this enumeration. While actors are linked to cultural and territorial products such as wine, literature, and gastronomy, actresses are associated with consumption of cultural products such as

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fashion, jewelry, perfumes, and, revealingly, with the gossip of Tout Paris.4 Vincendeau

also mentions another Unifrance document of April 24, 1953 that illustrates the role of

French stars, such as Michèle Morgan, Gérard Philippe, , as urban

ambassadors. In order to promote the film industry abroad, the short movie French stars

Introduce You to Paris invites viewers to a form of cultural tourism through which stars

introduce different parts of the capital city and its implicit cultural heritage (2000:30).5

French stars in these discourses reveal themselves as national commodities and gain prestige through their contributions to the cultural-economic life of the nation. They become French exportable items, enumerated alongside wine, tourism, and cultural products. To illustrate this view of the actress as exportable merchandise, in “Brigitte

Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome,” Simone de Beauvoir cites the comparison between

Bardot’s and Renault automobiles’ revenues: “Receipts in the U.S.A. have come to

$4,000,000, the equivalent of the sale of 2,500 Dauphines. B.B. now deserves to be

considered an export product as important as Renault automobiles” (32). Quoting Vanity

Fair, the French magazine Vogue named Deneuve a “trésor national français,” because of her contributions to the national industries of cinema, perfumes, and haute couture

(Azoulai 107). Another Marianne, Laetitia Casta, interviewed in Nouvel Observateur by

Alain Chouffan, reiterates her highly publicized discourse tracing a direct causal link between her feminine breasts and her native French region, when she declared that “Mes seins sont made in Normandie, nourris à la crème fraîche et au beurre.” Within this discourse, frequently associated with the image of Laetitia Casta, the body of the actress itself becomes a synonym of the nation and of its economic products. Contributing to these extra-cinematic texts, Télé Observateur published an article titled “Tautou in the

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USA. La comédienne française la plus ‘frenchie’ est aussi la plus exportable,” which

praised her performance in and presented her as a brilliant French cinematic product:

Elle est la french girl par excellence: charming pour les uns, delicious pour les autres, Audrey Tautou séduit les Américains. La dernière à leur avoir fait cet effet-là, c’est Brigitte Bardot. . . . A New York, Los Angeles ou Chicago, elle est désormais la plus exportable des actrices françaises. Elle figure en bonne place avec les symboles tricolores: la baguette, le béret, .

The above-mentioned texts illustrate the language of an international economy of desire. The female star becomes an exportable commodity whose exchange value gains prestige through the contribution to the economic life of the nation and of its cinematographic industry. This contiguity between the artistic and the commercial product resonates in the other national industries of fashion, cosmetics, and perfume. It is not surprising that French actresses appear as favorite muses of the national fashion creators. Actresses who incarnated Marianne are captivated by the French haute couture on- and off-screen and, most importantly, they remain faithful to only one designer.

Cinematic collaboration naturally overflows in extra-cinematic images of the stars, such as the illustrious example of the long-term partnership between Yves Saint-Laurent and

Catherine Deneuve since the famous bourgeois in Belle de Jour (1967). Jeanne

Moreau’s fidelity to and Brigitte Bardot’s to Louis Ferraud are remarkable collaborative examples as well. Through these partnerships, a new Pygmalion model is created, as film stars become inspiring muses not only for movie directors but also for fashion creators.

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Within the extra-cinematic discourse of fashion, French female stars function as

familiar points of reference, especially through modeling or their presence on the red

carpet and in fashion magazines6:

Stars give brands a well-defined personality for a minimum of effort, and bring with them a rich fantasy to which consumers aspire. In addition, consumers have a ‘history’ with stars. Even though they have seen them on screen or in the pages of the magazines, they form an ‘attachment ’to celebrities regarding them as friendly faces and reliable arbiters of taste. Models, with their distant gazes and alien bodies can’t compete (Tungate 120).

As Tungate points out, female stars are close to and familiar to the audiences. Because of

that, they enable fantasies of transformations into Frenchness according to the cinematic

roles that rendered them famous. In this sense, the red carpet at film festivals, such as

Cannes, proves to be the equivalent of a fashion parade. Women’s magazines equally amplify these types of discourses in their pages through detailed descriptions of the stars’ dresses and through the obligatory mentioning of the brand.7

In terms of haute couture fashion, a turning point was Christian ’s death in

1957. The creator of the New Look revitalized the French fashion industry after the

Second World War and claimed the supremacy of the Parisian fashion. He invented the

New Look for women, emphasizing their feminine silhouettes of “femmes-fleurs” (Steele

12). Dior’s style was criticized for imprisoning women, yet again, in corsets and in a

stereotyped vision of excessive femininity. As Elizabeth Wilson documents, Dior’s New

Look corresponded to a nostalgic romanticism echoed on screen:

The French in particular capitalized on the nineteenth century on a grand scale. and Edwige Feuillère, two of the best known stars of the French stage and screen, launched the period figure and style, clad in the gowns of Marcel Rochas and Pierre (along with Dior, the couturiers of the moment) both in life and in their films” (2003: 100).

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What Wilson alludes to is the Belle Époque movie genre that was transposed in

contemporary romanticized fashion. Even the rebellious Brigitte Bardot, before becoming

a star, illustrated the New Look fashion in Les Grandes Manoeuvres (1955).

The void on the fashion scene engendered by Dior’s death left enough room for

Brigitte Bardot’s new look in fashion initiated with Et Dieu . . . créa la femme where

Bardot wore tight but simple dresses, connoting, as Vincendeau remarked, naturalness

either through their fabric or Bardot’s lack of sophisticated accessories (2000: 100). In an

article dedicated to the analysis of the star’s style, Vincendeau places her “at the

epicenter of the modernization of fashion” as Bardot’s clothes, although made by fashion

designers, appeared cheap and therefore could have been easily reproduced by the young

girls of the late 1950s (2005: 143). Bardot preferred young couture creators such as Louis

Féraud and Jacques Estérel whose collections were more accessible than the established

haute couture ones. As Vincendeau puts it, “ her [Bardot’s] sartorial challenge, which

echoed the move from aristocratic haute couture to democratized prêt-a-porter, served

the interests of the capitalist economy, while she took full advantage of the developing

mass media” (2005: 144-5). Nevertheless, the mass consumption of Bardot’s fashion

occurred within the national boundaries since she made French gingham fashionable

again at the expense of American nylon fiber (Vincendeau 2005: 143). In resonance with

Bardot’s fashion modernization and popularization, the French couture industry

developed more accessible prêt-à-porter lines paralleling the couture tradition.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, reflecting the heritage tradition in cinema, a nostalgic retro trend is visible in haute couture fashion. The three important designers of the 1990s

era, , Jean-Paul Gaultier, and Viviane Westwood, look for inspiration in the

150 past, yet, at the same time, they modify the old according to a postmodern spirit of juxtaposing ”incongruous objects, images and materials” (Steele 152). Deneuve, both as

Marianne and one of the most important actresses of the decade, illustrates this fashionable trend as she was the embodiment of an famous artistic tradition of style.

Through Deneuve’s impressive fidelity on and off-screen to Yves Saint-Laurent, her star image is strongly anchored in the exclusive tradition of haute couture. In 1992, Deneuve signed a contract to launch Yves Saint Laurent’s new cosmetic line “Soins Yves Saint

Laurent.” The promotion film signed by Jean-Paul Mondiano is filmed as an interview with Deneuve and is strongly inflected by her star image that combines glacial beauty with ardent passions. The actress talks about her suicidal predispositions and even teaches the journalist a classical etymology lesson concerning the word “care,” which means “soin amoureux” in classical language. The fast editing, quick shot reverse shots, mirrored reflections, and a highly mobile camera, amplify in a paradoxical way the close- up of Deneuve’s star image up to the point of intimidation. The short publicity film ends with the journalist who is bitterly disappointed to have employed the anglicism “OK” while talking to the star. Certainly, in front of the impressive and mysterious aura of the grand actress, all anglicisms or other mass commercial reminders are effaced.

Deneuve herself carefully preserves her artistic aura in extra-cinematographic discourses. When Larry interviewed her on CNN in 2000, he asked the French star whether she endorsed any products and she serenely denied it. Confronted with the fact that she was the image of Chanel No. 5, Deneuve naturally asserted that perfume is not a product, as it is not very concrete and has to do more with imagination than with commerce.8

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In 2001, terms of both fashion and cosmetics, Laetitia Casta illustrates a

reconciliation of the French haute couture with the more affordable prêt-à-porter

collections. A favorite model of the collections of haute couture, Casta was also the

iconic image of the department store Galeries Lafayette and long-time ambassador for the

popular cosmetic group L’Oréal. Her star image accommodates both levels, French

luxury as well as accessible fashion and cosmetic brands, illustrating a contemporary

trend of combining high-end and mid-market products.9

L’Oréal, the world largest cosmetic group, is strongly linked to the French

cinematic industry as the official sponsor of the Cannes Festival. Serge Kaganski

critically remarked this strategic alliance of the cosmetic and perfume industries and the

seventh art in the documentary French Beauty:

Alors que la France est supposée être le pays de l’amour, de la romance, des femmes sophistiquées et glamour, tous ces clichés existent dans le cinéma français, mais ils viennent de l’extérieur du cinéma. Ils viennent des grands couturiers, des parfums, un peu comme un paquet : , , Cardin, Lanvin. Ce sont tous des symboles de la France.

Kaganski is symptomatic for an entire tradition of film critics who see this partnership between commercial products and artistic cinema as unnatural. Nevertheless, besides L’Oréal’s presence on the red carpet at Cannes, its advertisements constantly mark the back cover of illustrious cinema magazines such as Cahiers du Cinéma.

L’Oréal, on the other hand, names its spokeswomen “ambassadrices,” in order to recreate an appropriate cultural aura of Frenchness around its product. The selection of global ambassadors is done in terms of “talent, style, passion, engagement,” as its official website states. The most recent French ambassador is Rachida Brakni, the main protagonist of Coline Serreau’s Chaos, and the first woman of Algerian origins to

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represent L’Oréal. Her specialization is hair products and her motto is “Affichez vos

boucles.” It is difficult not to read the slogan as a reference to l’affaire du voile in France

and the laicity debate. In an interview posted on the L’Oréal website, Rachida tells the

story of becoming a muse for L’Oréal, tracing an integration story and a praise of diversity in terms of feminine locks:

Quand j’étais gamine je passais beaucoup de temps à les tirer, parce que c’était pas très apprécié finalement les cheveux bouclés. On a plutôt tendance à m’envier Pourquoi effacer quelque chose que beaucoup d’hommes et de femmes trouvent beau? Il y a une nouvelle matière de cheveux qui s’intègre aussi à toute une palette qui est déjà représentée.

New models of feminine Frenchness are therefore marketed by L’Oréal, committed to diversity not only on a global level through her ambassadors for all continents, but also on an internal scale. The L’Oréal famous jingle “Parce que je le vaux bien/Parce que vous le valez bien,” which was made an entry by Georges Vigarello in the

Nouvelles Mythologies, activates a mechanism of exclusive value, central to cosmetic advertisements, which include nowadays all diverse types of femininity.

The perfume and cosmetic industries are linked to cinema in other ways than through the financial circuit that links film stars to commercials. Next to the print advertisements, another set of efficient marketing strategies includes short publicity films. The advertising campaigns are preferred territory for either famous photographers or movie directors. The publicity film, lasting around 20-30 seconds, needs to capture the attention of the viewer in an immediate manner, and to have an immediate impact on the spectator. Chanel, in this sense, is famous for creating publicity films. Some illustrious examples come to mind, such as Catherine Deneuve’s famous commercials for Chanel

No. 5 emphasizing her mysterious aura,10 the Chanel No. 5 story “Le Loup”

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based on the Little Red Riding Hood theme, directed by and starring Estella

Warren, “Le Film”, the commercial directed by Moulin Rouge director Baz Luhrmann, starring Nicole Kidman.11 I would like to analyze two specific Chanel advertisements

that reveal first, the meta-cinematic discourse of the advertisements, and, second, the

tension between national-universal level and the cinematic glamour reappropriated by the

cosmetic industry.

Chanel launched a publicity campaign for Rouge Allure in 2007 with a short

commercial directed by famous photographer Bettina Rheims. Titled “Le rouge selon

Chanel,” the short publicity film is directly inspired by Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Mépris.

Brigitte Bardot’s role is played by Julie Ordon, model and actress. The mise-en-scène is

identical to that of the movie and the camera pans on Ordon’s naked body, in a similar

movement as Godard’s filmic technique. However, while Bardot was fragmenting her

body into parcels of desires, Ordon focuses only on the mouth, because of the product

promoted, and repeats only one of Bardot’s lines: “Et ma bouche, tu l’aimes, ma

bouche?” Rheims kept the haunting soundtrack of

Godard’s movie, orchestrated by ,

heavily impregnated with nostalgia in Godard’s

reflection upon the death of cinema.

The publicity film reveals the stunning

possibilities of artistic communication in between the

publicity film and the cinematic reference. The Figure 4.3. Le Rouge by Bettina Rheims. Chanel paradoxical charisma of the female star, Bardot, quoted Rouge Allure, 2007. in the publicity, succeeds in reenacting its own

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economy of desire reconciling dual object of consumption and of cinematic art. In the

previous scene in the movie, Godard quoted Bazin’s statement: “Le cinéma substitue à

notre regard un monde qui s'accorde à nos désirs.” Chanel, operating in a similar manner,

substitutes one of the most celebrated scenes in auteur cinema, to sparkle the magic of

cinematic desire, and through it, to circulate the seduction of Chanel products.

The second Chanel commercial I discuss here plays also on the mechanism of

desire and seduction. Released in 1994, it was directed by Jean-Paul Goude and stars

Carole Bouquet, face of Chanel since 1987. Bouquet is positioned as a cinema spectator,

eating popcorn, and watching black and white images of . From

Monroe’s image on the screen, Goude cuts to an identical reflection on Carole Bouquet’s

sunglasses. The abrupt cut and the identical framing traces the flow of desire between the two stars and, under this spell, Bouquet starts to metamorphose gradually into a colorful

Marilyn Monroe holding an oversized Chanel bottle in her arms instead of the popcorn bag. As Monroe, featured on the soundtrack, goes on singing “I want to be loved by you,” her image reverts to Carole Bouquet, now filled with color and holding the same bottle of

Chanel. The story is mainly told through iconic close-ups and the juxtaposition of black and white to color. Two fast zoom-outs to a high-angle shot offer, through the position of the camera, a glimpse of the position of a mythical narrator linking past and present.

This mythical subject position operates an important reconciliation for our

purposes: the unification between the national and the international, between France’s

Carole Bouquet and Hollywood’s Marilyn Monroe. However, I argue that a different

process than the transformational narratives discussed at the beginning of the chapter is at work. Marilyn Monroe is the quintessential embodiment of old Hollywood glamour,

155 beauty, and sophistication. The myth of old Hollywood glamour shares with the myth of

Frenchness a vast connotational field and, therefore, the metamorphosis between Bouquet and Monroe becomes possible. They convey the same cinematic glamour, perfect beauty, and classy elegance. 8 Femmes, François Ozon’s movie discussed in chapter 1, illustrates richly this correspondence between French actresses and Hollywood icons.12 And these shared connotations in cinematic terms enable, for instance, Audrey Hepburn, to be an iconic Hollywood star but also a glamorous French gamine. The next chapter is devoted therefore to Audrey Hepburn, a Hollywood gamine with a French twist.

1 Richard Stamelman revealingly describes the marketing techniques behind the perfume “Soir de Paris/ Evening in Paris.” Aimed at an American average middle-class female audience, the publicity of the product took into account that in the 1920s Parisian travel for American women was highly unlikely, thus, it reinforced a stereotypical image of Paris, more likely to arouse their interest. For instance, the author describes the perfume box: “Under a crescent moon and in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower a man and woman tango near a typical kiosk. Another couple dine at the café table, next to a violinist and a bassist who are placed besides the , while a painter stands at his easel painting a nude model. Here is commonplace, everyday Paris elevated to myth, the myth of Frenchness which Soir de Paris appropriates and intensifies for its stay-at-home American audience” (249). Thus, if traveling to Paris to experience its glamorous love tradition was impossible for American women, they can have a sparkle of that romantic and refined love story through the scent of the perfume.

2 French feminist Michèle Sardé reads the stereotypes that construct the French woman as archetypes as well in the sense that French women are presented as a variation of excessive femininity, hypersexualized: “Car, quelle que soient les formes que prennent les différents stéréotypes et lieux communs affectant l’image de la Française en France et hors de France, le trait dominant est immuable: petite chatte, femme enfant, femme fatale, prostituée, maîtresse, séduisante, élégante, expérimentée, sensuelle, sexy, amorale, soumise. La Française est perçue comme une créature souvent charmante mais aussi un peu méprisable. La métaphore de la femme en général”(24). This critical interpretation of the image of French women freezes it into stereotype and caricature. Ollivier’s, Wharton’s, Gershman’s and Frith Powell’s books show a different reading of French femininity in the popular realm, where the exacerbation of femininity led to a concomitant freedom through a paradoxical self-sufficiency. In their view, French femininity is ‘different’ not because of excessive and liberated sexuality, but because of a drastically different relation with reality that enables French women to highlight the importance of the mundane, of the domestic life, and of the material practices surrounding them.

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3 Wharton omits to mention that the rich social experience of French women, their omnipresence in the Parisian salons, for instance, obscures their lack of participation in political life as French women only acquired the right to vote after the Second World War.

4 The balance between the star image and advertisements is a very delicate one and there needs to be a continuity thread between the two. Sardé, for instance, recalls the example of Brigitte Bardot who participated in a publicity campaign for the Office National du Tourisme Français. Since the publicity targeted her cultural Frenchness and not her highly sexualized image prominent at the time, it proved to be unsuccessful (26).

5 After the Second World War, feminine consumption industries remain visibly codified in terms of Frenchness. However, as Christopher Pinet noted in “The French in American Television Commercials, Part Two: As French As Smokey the Bear and Uncle Sam,” other industries efface Frenchness in their marketing campaigns as the Michelin tire or Bic promotional ads. Masculine Frenchness does not resonate well with connotations of security and efficiency. Feminine Frenchness, on the other hand, is a privileged exportable product.

6 Magazines are essential in promoting products through print advertisements. Numerous magazines, such as Elle, Paris Match, Première, Photo, in their French and foreign editions, are owned by a branch of the French group Lagardère, Hachette Filipacchi Médias, the largest magazine publisher in the world.

7 For a analysis of fashion texts in women’s magazines, see Roland Barthes’s Le Système de la mode.

8 The CNN transcript of the conversation between Deneuve and King goes as follows: “K: And now you are a product -- do you still have products in your name? D: Products? K: Yes, did you ever have skin products or makeup products? D: No. K: But you did work for Chanel, right? D: No, no, I never. I never worked for Chanel. I just did the publicity, the ad for the perfume, you know. And in my opinion, perfume is not a product, you know. Perfume is the advantage of something very, very -- it is not concrete, you know, it is something. It has so much to do imagination, and it is not a product for me, a perfume.” The contradiction between star as a cinematic icon and as merchandise is highly visible in this conversation. King names Deneuve a product, a definition that she completely rejects.

9 Using the revealing chapter title “When haute couture meets high street,” Tungate discusses the partnership between the two divergent words of and haute couture. The critic mentions the successful collaboration between of the Chanel Fashion House with H&M, the Swedish inexpensive and popular clothes brand. This association only institutionalized a previous street trend of combining inexpensive and luxurious items (40-5).

10 For a detailed analysis of the Chanel advertisements starring Deneuve, see Christopher Pinet’s article "The French in American Television Commercials, Part One: Plus Ça Change."

11 For an in-depth analysis of several French perfume commercials, see Stamelman. Perfume: Joy, Obsession, Scandal, Sin: a Cultural History of Fragrance from 1750 to the Present.

12 To support my argument, the old Hollywood glamour image is recurrent in French cosmetic or perfume advertisements that use American stars. For instance, Nicole Kidman for Chanel, and for Dior, Scarlett Johanson for L’Oréal, are insightful examples that illustrate this particular use of Hollywood stars.

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CHAPTER 5

AUDREY HEPBURN: A GAMINE WITH A FRENCH TWIST

Celebrating Audrey Hepburn’s timeless appeal, clothing retailer GAP features an

innovative commercial campaign using in-store posters and original film footage from

the movie Funny face starring Audrey Hepburn in order to promote a new line of slim

black trousers. To introduce a contemporary flavor, the GAP promotional clip

manipulates Hepburn’s original movie dance using new

digital imaging technology, AC/DC’s song “Back in

black” and the tagline: “It's Back - The Skinny Black

Pant.” Audrey Hepburn’s star image in the GAP promotion

can be merely read as a commodified image of retro

chic; nevertheless, at every instant of it, Audrey Hepburn’s

energy, charm, and dazzling gamine chic irradiate through

Figure 5.1. Gap Ad, the advertisement that in return adoringly multiplies her 2006. dynamic representations in a kaleidoscopic mode. In a way this clip, while capitalizing on Hepburn’s star allure, also raises questions about the endurance of her fascination, about the link between her image and an atemporal notion of style and, I would add, about that French je ne sais quoi that is at the center of her star persona.

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Although Audrey Hepburn’s movies are concentrated in two decades – the

1950s and the 1960s – the appeal of her star image has proven to be timeless and

universal. Throughout her filmic career, she firmly established herself not only as a film

icon but also as an incarnation of quintessential style. Her gamine appeal, the lavish

Givenchy dresses, the simplicity of the Sabrina décolleté, the Parisian Left-Bank quality

of black turtlenecks, and her ageless slim black pants are unforgettable facets of a famous

“Audrey style.” Numerous biographers and film critics have investigated the allure of her

star persona, the filmic legacy she left, her representations as a beauty icon, and her

relationship to fashion.

Within this context, feminist film critic Molly Haskell situated Audrey Hepburn’s

appeal in her delicate and unique femininity: “as if she dropped out of the sky into the

fifties, half wood-nymph, half princess, and then disappeared . . . leaving no footprints . .

. a changeling of mysterious parentage, unidentifiable as to nationality or class” (248).

Richard Dyer remarks as well the difficulty in locating Hepburn’s image but argues that

her obscure origins mark her as a “displaced person, and yet she suffers no anguish from

this;” in his view, she is essentially “a serene misfit” (1993b: 59). Elizabeth Wilson notes

a more precise element, which anchors desire in her gamine figure, reminiscent of a style

“that seemed the embodiment of sophisticated, existentialist , as opposed to the

overripe artificiality of Hollywood” (37). Consequently, scholarship investigating

Hepburn’s star persona has followed this road and mainly focused on her European

image. For instance, Dina M. Smith looks at the Cinderella motif present in numerous

Hepburn’s movies in the light of contemporary foreign policy discourses. In her reading

of Sabrina, Post-War Europe is a portrayed as a Cinderella waiting to be saved by

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American assistance. Along the same lines, Fiona Handyside analyzes how competing

American and European institutions collaborated to create Hepburn’s European star

image in Sabrina and Funny Face.

Audrey Hepburn’s universal dimension lies in her roles as idealized types of

femininity, such as Cinderella, princess, dancer, and socialite. In extra-cinematic texts,

Hepburn’s noble origins reinforce these types of femininity, as magazine articles and

biographies constantly recall her descent from an ancient family of Dutch .1

However, her origins are more elusive as her father, Joseph Hepburn-Ruston, was an

Anglo-Irish businessman, and Audrey Hepburn van Heemstra Ruston was born in

Belgium. In addition, Hepburn chose as her home country and lived for extended periods in European countries. These multiple reference points serve to channel a more vague notion of “Europeaness” aura around Hepburn’s star persona. However, this notion of “Europeaness” in her screen image, after being exploited in Roman

Holiday, I argue, is consistently channeled through strong associations with a youthful breeze of French femininity.

With the notable exception of Roman set in Rome where Hepburn plays a princess of an unidentified European country, the actress starred in numerous films set partially or completely in France. Paris Match featured Hepburn on one of its covers in

September 1956, photographed by Willy Rizzo, officially stating a change in her star persona: “La nouvelle Audrey a renoncé à la coiffure qu’elle avait lancée dans Vacances

Romanes et elle s’est fait un visage de Parisienne.” Ever since, Hepburn remained

French.

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From the movie that prompted her discovery, Nous irons à Monte Carlo (1952) to

Sabrina (1954), Funny Face (1957) Love in the Afternoon (1957), Charade (1963), Paris

when it sizzles (1964), How to Steal a Million (1966) and Two for the Road (1967),

Audrey Hepburn’s characters are strongly associated with France. Sabrina and “Funny

Face” Jo Stockton are transformed into icons of fashion and femininity in Paris. Her

characters from Charade and Paris when it sizzles had moved to and lived in France, and

in Two for the Road, Joanna’s journeys through love and life always lead to the French

Riviera. Hepburn incarnates French women as well in Love in the Afternoon and How to

Steal a Million. Nevertheless, critical studies investigating Hepburn’s star appeal do not

specifically address her relationship to France and Frenchness, as they constantly

subsume it to the broader category of European allure.

Interestingly enough, descriptions of Audrey Hepburn’s physique and appeal

inevitably recalled the word “gamine” or “gamine charm.” An article titled “Hollywood

Innocent,” published in People magazine in 1993, asserts that: “Audrey's central role was

that of the gamine eternal, however many variations she came to play upon it. She

emerged trim and lovely in in 1953 and carved a splendid career that

effectively lasted for 15 years.” The impact of the gamine representation on Hepburn’s

star persona is specifically evident in a more mature stage of her career, when a thirty-six

year old Audrey Hepburn in How to steal a million continued to play this role. However,

her gamine image is a French invention that has less to do with Hollywood’s fascination

for child-women characters such as those embodied by and

than with the pleasures of multiple oppositions held in constant tension. It conveys not

only a paradoxical reconciliation between the masculine and the feminine – “gamine” is

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derived from the masculine gamin – but also a youthful rebellious mode of femininity born on the barricades of revolutionary Paris, as discussed more in detail in Chapter 3.

Consequently, I will put under a magnifying glass Hepburn’s European star image, and I

will consider the different ways in which her gamine image epitomizes a certain notion of

Frenchness. I will analyze Audrey Hepburn’s roles, performances, and costumes to see

how a certain French twist is constantly perpetuated in her films. I argue it is an oblique

perspective of Frenchness, from Hollywood’s decentered viewpoint, nevertheless

constantly present. It is a Hollywood approach to what effects Frenchness elicits and

what a French woman signifies, but its semiological role prompts a conversation about

fascinating national representations for international audiences. Although Audrey

Hepburn was a Hollywood star, her strong association with France invites a reading

employing the tri-partite model of French female stardom. As an icon of Hollywood cinema, Hepburn’s cinematic roles revolve around feminine Frenchness. Hepburn’s gamine image and her long-lasting collaboration with French haute couture designer

Hubert de Givenchy circulate Frenchness in the construction of her star image as an object of consumption. In addition, this oblique representation of French femininity through Hepburn’s star persona opens up a new horizon situated in between a universal dimension and a French difference, and I show that Hepburn’s appeal is situated precisely at the core of this tension. In a sense, captured this paradox when she described her short-story Gigi as telling “the story of a French gamine, and all of us” (American

Weekly 4).

It is perhaps , the famous costume designer and photographer, who summarized Audrey Hepburn’s Frenchness the best. In the Vogue issue of November

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1954, he described her as reincarnation of a “gamine,” an “urchin,” capturing the

changing essence of the after-war period. Although Beaton acknowledges her European

heritage (Dutch and Belgian), he specifically retraces her cultural lineage in the long line

of French revolutionary gamines, passing through Eponine of Les Misérables to the

existential young women of the Parisian Left bank:

No one can doubt that Audrey Hepburn’s appearance succeeds because it embodies the spirit of today. She had, if you like, her prototypes in France – Damina, Edith Piaf, or Juliette Gréco. But it took the rubble of , an English accent, and an American success to launch the striking personality that best exemplifies our new Zeitgeist. Nobody ever looked like her before World War II; it is doubtful if anybody ever did, unless it be those wild children of the French Revolution who stride in the foreground of romantic canvases. Yet, we recognize the rightness of this appearance in relation to our historical needs. And the proof is that thousand of imitations have appeared. The woods are full of emaciated young ladies with rat-nibbled hair and moon-pale faces. (127)

In an era weary of the long lasting effects of a destructive war, the gamine character gracefully arrives as a rejuvenating and uplifting figure, embodying a universal desire of a new inspirational start. Still an ingénue, this childlike figure does not remember the horrors of the two world wars; boyish, yet a girl, her playful approach to life can set into motion the rusted and meaningless mechanisms of existence, so ravaged by the burden of an irrational war. Nostalgically exploiting this feminine figure, Colette’s novel Gigi, published in 1945, but written during the Occupation, is essentially an escapist story of a gamine set in a Fin-de-siècle Paris. Following its instant success,

Jacqueline Audry’s movie Gigi (1948), starring Danièle Delorme, capitalized on this rebellious type of the gamine who resonated with an inner chord in the French public. It also inspired the idea of a stage version of Colette’s novel: had turned the novel into a play, and soon the search for a Broadway Gigi began. It proved to be a difficult task as Gilbert Miller, the producer of the play, asserts:

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With Loos I combed the roster of Equity for a young American actress who could meet the requirements – without result. We must have seen at least two hundred girls in New York. For a time we considered the Italian actress , but her accent seemed too high a hurdle to surmount. Briefly we pondered the potential of , but Miss Caron was too French. (Theatre Arts 50)

In order to find the perfect combination of a universal appeal and the right amount of

Frenchness, Colette took the matter in her own hands and found her Gigi when she encountered Audrey Hepburn on the set of Nous irons à Monte Carlo” (60). 2

Prior to Nous irons à Monte Carlo, Audrey Hepburn had starred in minor roles in various British productions. According to one of her biographers, Barry Paris, Hepburn asked her hairdresser for a different look in support of her first French role, and she complied: “I said: you have the kind of face that needs a gamine haircut. I would almost take the ends of your eyebrows off so that you have a quizzical look. You have the kind of face for it – a pixie face. Let’s make it a pixie. So we did the eyebrows and I gave her a gamine cut. It was that simple” (58). With this new French gamine look, Hepburn was easily spotted by Colette and recognized as the perfect embodiment of Gigi. She documented the episode of her now famous discovery of an unknown Audrey Hepburn as an impulsive yet so accurate inspiration: “What author ever expects to see one of his brain-children appear suddenly in the flesh? Not I, and yet, here it was! The young unknown woman, English, I guessed, was my own thoroughly French Gigi come alive.

That afternoon I offered her the part in the Broadway play” (The American Weekly 13).

The rest is history: Audrey Hepburn, the gamine, conquered Broadway and enchanted

American audiences with her “French” charm.

Hepburn’s other famous stage role on Broadway follows the same French literary heritage as she embodied on Broadway in 1954. ’s play was first

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staged at the Athénée theatre in Paris in 1939, but the beginning of the war abruptly

interrupted its success. Although inspired by a German fairy-tale written by Fréderic de la

Motte-Fouqué, (1811), the story of the water sprite Ondine who falls in love with a human, is closely linked to the Celtic myth of Mélusine and has therefore an important place in the French theatrical heritage. On the French stage, Ondine’s role launched

Isabelle Adjani’s career at the Comédie Française in 1974, and , casting the French Marianne Laetita Casta, restaged the play in 2004. The portrayal of Hepburn in the Broadway Playbill for Ondine is noteworthy: her face emerges only halfway from the darkness and the look of the viewer converges on her pixie-like eyes: she represents again both a universal mythological figure and a fragile, rebellious ingénue. While the

Gigi Broadway Playbill featured the name Gigi in quotation marks, advertising and

forwarding the name of the play associated with French writer Colette, Ondine is directly equated with Hepburn’s image, thus attesting to both her capacity to signify her new- found stardom and one of the most intriguing feminine characters in the French theatre.

In Ondine, her French potential is not signified après la lettre as in Gigi, but she became

its very embodiment.

In the article “Audrey Hepburn – the girl, the gamin, and the star,” published in

Photoplay in 1954, Radie Harris uncovers the secrets of the sudden and stunning fame of

a delicate new young actress. The content of the article, which investigates Hepburn’s

love interests and private life, is less interesting than its title, which separates her image

into three distinct categories: the girl, the gamin and the star. The ambiguity of

masculine/feminine is thus connoted by the ambivalence between the girl/the gamin in

Audrey’s persona. As a star, she belongs to Hollywood and to its universal public;

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however, as a gamin, Audrey Hepburn reminds one of that French je ne sais quoi

constantly portrayed in her movies:

At home sitting on the floor in beautifully tailored slacks, turtleneck sweater, no shoes, with her feet curled up under her, she has a gamin tomboy quality. In public, at a first night or on the dance floor she looks every inch the real counterpart of the reel princess in Roman Holiday. The key to her universal appeal is that she conforms to no set mold. (Harris 100)

According to Radie Harris, the gamin quality is relegated to the private space.

Conversely, in the public sphere Audrey Hepburn is a star, a princess, essentially an idealized type of femininity. Moreover, the girl and the star are perfect fits into a set

Hollywood mold. It is the gamin element that that renders Hepburn unique and distances her from the voluptuous stars of the 1950s. Love in the afternoon offers an explanation of

Hepburn’s marked difference from Hollywood somewhat along the same lines. Ariane

Chavasse, the ingénue daughter of a French detective Claude Chavasse, falls in love with

Frank Flannagan, an unstoppable seducer. Complimented on her perfection by Gary

Cooper as Mr. Flannagan, Hepburn’s character has some complaints about her physique

that is very different than the contemporary ideal of femininity: “I am too thin, my ears

stick out and my teeth are crooked and my neck is much too long.” Frank Flannagan does

not deny all these imperfections but acknowledges their national charm: “It is that

Parisian thing you got, that certain quelque chose, as they say on the Left Bank, that piquant soupçon of aperitif.” Moreover, Hepburn’s off-screen persona is constructed along the same lines, as her distinct non-conformist beauty constantly becomes an object of analysis as well as one of the identifiable sources of her appeal. Through his

photographer’s eye, Cecil Beaton captured her unique type of beauty: “She is like a

portrait by Modigliani where the various distortions are not only interesting but make a

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completely satisfying composition” (Vogue 129). And Modigliani’s women portraits

immortalized the fashionable beauties from Montmartre recalling a refined and enigmatic

French beauty.3

Accordingly, Audrey Hepburn’s star image is constructed around this tension between a Hollywood icon and a French gamine. Even if the plot lines of her movies follow the Hollywood pattern, the lives of her characters are irreversibly marked by a certain French twist. Frenchness becomes the horizon that attracts and alters Hepburn’s roles and subsequently her star persona. Her film parts are touched by it, irremediably transformed, carrying the “French” difference within them, and yet they remain familiar and follow established narrative paths, according to a rigorous Hollywood structure.

Nevertheless, within these strictly regimented courses, there are explosions of

Frenchness, be they manifest in a boyish action, a quick elfin-like trait, a strange way of

dancing, a gamine impish attitude, or a supreme feminine elegance. Moreover, the

contradictory appeal of Frenchness moves deeper than skin or fashion and crystallizes in

a breeze of fresh independence, where feminine intelligence and desire echo each other,

dreams come true naturally because life and love become finally limpid, and the gap

between a woman and the world ceases to exist as she is able to enjoy relentlessly the

world.

Inspired by a French film by , La Fête à Henriette (1952), Paris

when it sizzles perfectly illustrates Audrey Hepburn’s double status through its film-

within-the-film structure. She plays Gabrielle “Gaby” Simpson, a young lady working for

a typing bureau. Richard Benson (), a successful and alcoholic middle-

aged screenplay writer who has only three days left in Paris to write a script for his

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producer, hires her as a typist. As Benson begins to write, Gabrielle becomes also the

French heroine of his story “The Girl who stole the Eiffel Tower,” since she has the

requisite Frenchness and moved to Paris to enjoy life in a sort of perpetual hedonism.

First, her initiation to Frenchness begins by a “comprehensive study of depravity” through the exploration of the Parisian nightlife for the last two years. During , only the little pleasures matter, for they make the French nation, as Gabrielle confesses: “We start with breakfast at the same café we go to and then we are going to dance from one end of Paris to the other. The Opera at five, then to the gardens for the singing of the Marseillaise. Montmartre for the fireworks and then supper and champagne, you know . . . live!” When her jaded interlocutor is stunned by her enthusiasm for life, Gabrielle goes on: “Oh! Every morning when I wake up and I see there's a whole new other day, I just go absolutely ape!” Paris is equated with absolute

leisure time, where each minute creates a state of instant delight and people exist with the

sole purpose of enjoying life.

Paris, as the city of love, is a pretty worn filmic cliché that never ceased however to engender pleasurable representations. Hepburn’s characters always gravitate around this prerequisite of becoming French: live, love, and blossom into an exquisite model of

femininity in Paris. Love in the afternoon (1957) exploits this romantic potential of the

Parisian setting, establishing a Hollywood postcard perspective from the first scene. The

first shot is a window view of an unmistakable Parisian cityscape signaled by the Eiffel

Tower and the chaotic Parisian roofs in the background. The window framing anticipates

the idea of a postcard and subsequently, a tracking shot shows different post card pictures

of Parisian landmarks: the Eiffel Tour, the Arc de Triomphe, the Seine, and the

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Alexandre III bridge. Once the picturesque quality of Paris is established, the second

reason for which Paris is famous is didactically recalled as the camera pans, and we see a

couple kissing in the street while a voice-over narration specifies:

This is the city Paris, France. It is just like any other big city, , New York, Tokyo. Except for two little things: In Paris people eat better, and in Paris people make love, well, perhaps not better but certainly more often. They do it anytime, anyplace. On the Left Bank, on the Right Bank and in between. They do it by day and they do it by night. The butcher, the baker, and the friendly undertaker. They do it in motion, they do it absolutely still. Poodles do it, tourists do it, once in a while, even existentialists do it. There is young love, old love, married love, and illicit love . . .”

A suite of shots portraying couples in iconic Parisian settings accompanies this enumeration of inexhaustible types of love: Café de Flore, the , the Seine and both of its banks, museums, Parisian streets, the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de

Triomphe, all parade in front of the viewer exposing frenetically a multi-faceted representation of Paris as inextricably linked to love.

Funny Face, starring Audrey Hepburn and a seasoned towards the end of his career, also screens an initiatory trip to Paris. Fashion photographer Dick

Avery (Fred Astaire) and Maggie Prescott (Kay Thompson) take the Greenwich

bookworm Jo Stockton, played by Hepburn, to Paris to start a innovative fashion magazine while creating the necessary conditions for her femininity to bloom. When the trio, Dick, Maggie Prescott and Jo, arrives in Paris a Frenchman offering a guided tour of

Paris approaches them. Since they came to Paris to work, they all are appalled to be mistaken for those “tourists gaping around all day.” However, their resolution to work only lasts until the very next scene, where the three characters celebrate the outrageous claim of being a tourist in the song “Bonjour Paree.” The fetishization of urban Parisian

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space devoured by hungry tourist gazes recalls the fetishization and consumption of

French femininity.

Sabrina follows closely the Cinderella story but also adds a French twist to it: the

chauffeur’s daughter falls irremediably and hopelessly in love with David Larrabee, the

son of her father’s employer. Her concerned father sends her away to Paris for

two years to forget her impossible love, but she only comes back more determined to

follow her heart. As love has its own ways, Sabrina, in the seduction process, discovers

herself once again when she falls for David Larrabee’s older brother, Linus Larrabee,

played by . Before leaving Paris to return home, Sabrina writes a letter to her father trying to capture the essence of her Parisian experience. Through her window that frames a postcard décor, we get a glimpse of the illuminated Sacré-Coeur at night and hear a nostalgic accordion playing . In this magical setting,

Sabrina’s main Parisian lesson has less to do with haute cuisine than with a certain art de vivre, as her voice-over narration recounts:

I have learned so many things father, not just how to make vichyssoise, or calf’s head with sauce vinaigrette, but a much more important recipe. I have learned how to live; how to be in the world and of the world, and not just to stand aside and watch. I will never again run away from life or from love either. (71)

Significantly, the French experiences changes Sabrina’s relation to both love and life. Later in the film, she attributes the lack of romance in Linus Larrabee’s life to his short stay in Paris: “Paris is not for changing planes, it is for changing your outlook,” she insists. The City of Light thus activates the potential for love and genuine pleasures of life in both Sabrina’s and Funny Face Jo’s characters.

However, female characters need to have an appropriate dosage of Frenchness for a happy romance dénouement otherwise excessive passion or tragedy might ensue. The

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files of the French detective Claude Chavasse in Love in the afternoon prove it: the

majority of the love stories that this private investigator of illicit love examined turned

into catastrophic tragedies. The allusion to tragedy becomes blatant representation in

Funny Face. While Jo Stockton achieves the right balance of Frenchness, the parallel portrayal of other French women is quite unsettling. The photographer Dick Avery has a pretty good idea where Jo might be when she misses her first photo shot, as he starts searching the existentialist bars of Montmartre. A low angle camera tracks him in a long

shot as he walks on narrow streets at night, where couples kiss shamelessly in the streets,

blocking pedestrian traffic. A chaotic feeling is established through sudden movements

within this tracking shot such as a bicycle passing him by and a small French car coming

from the opposite direction honking and almost knocking him over. When he arrives at

the Café de trois puces, the camera follows his perspective as he stops and looks at a

French couple seated at an outside table. The first French woman in the movie is

portrayed in an oblique perspective and is an obvious caricature of the Left-Bank

existentialist women dressed in black clothes hiding their faces behind dark and

untrimmed hair. Seized by an unpredictable access of rage, she starts yelling at her

partner: “Salaud, déguelasse, je vous déteste.” His prompt answer is a slap in her face,

which paradoxically has a magic reconciliatory effect, as the unknown French woman

adoringly sighs “Oh, Chéri.” For the American photographer, this is a pretty good clue

that he is in the right place since Jo was looking for an authentic French experience.

After entering the café, he is constantly harassed by French women, first Gigi,

then who, according to the Rimbauldian principle “Je est un autre,” confuse him by

referring to themselves as a subject of desire in the third person while they address him:

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”Gigi wants to dance.” Interestingly enough, the only witty reply Dick Avery can find to this assertion of a feminine desire is a traditional model of domesticity, as he replies that he is only there to pick up his wife and kids. His reaction triggers Jo’s anger against

“Stone Age” outmoded conventions since she completely identifies with the progressive

French women. Consequently, transformed into a complete anti-Sabrina, who could not wait to go to the ball and dance, she follows: “Dance is a form of release. There is nothing cute or formal about it. As I matter a fact, I rather feel like expressing myself now and I could certainly use a release.” The release that follows is certainly one of the most celebrated episodes of female dancing on screen. Audrey Hepburn dressed in her black turtleneck, the slim black pants and white socks punctuating her movements, comically reinvents herself in a unique dance performance. The distinctiveness of this dance scene can be grasped as contrasted with Brigitte Bardot’s sensual mambo dance in

Et Dieu . . . créa la femme . Whereas Bardot incarnates an excessive French sexuality,

Hepburn’s dance scene reveals the unbalanced effect of one night’s too much

“existential” Frenchness. Although Jo connects with and identifies her inner feelings, as every good French girl does, the gamine is only a developmental stage in the Hollywood logic of iconic femininity. However, even though Sabrina and Jo, through their Paris trips, activate an inner feminine essence to assure a smooth transition into a more adult stage, the gamine figure is never effaced and subsists in tension with the joys of a more adult femininity.

If Audrey Hepburn’s dance is juxtaposed with a subsequent performance of a

French woman, one can see how they function differently in the movie. In her act, Jo is surrounded by Frenchmen, wearing striped shirts and punctuating an exterior Frenchness

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that obliquely influences her. This indirect reflection enables her character to have a

light-hearted approach to French and, at the same time, saves her from

ridicule by transposing her into a comic mode of representation. In contrast, in a different

episode when Dick Avery and the fashion magazine editor Maggie Prescott try to expose

Professor Flostre’s romantic interest in Jo and save her from his seductive pseudo-

intellectual spell, they see an eerie female performance in his existentialist private club.

The camera tracks the main characters and the performance is viewed obliquely when we

are introduced to it. A French woman, singing a tragic love song, is portrayed decentered

in a medium shot, wearing a black turtleneck and a gray dress, playing the guitar in a

dehumanized outburst next to another woman who sobs empathically, following the

tenants of the famous philosophical current initiated by Professor Flostre. The mocking

distance between the Americans and the French woman’s song is constantly expressed

through opposition. While the other spectators confirm the heart-breaking quality of the

song, the magazine editor qualifies it as a bundle of laughs. The sense of ridicule is reinforced at a visual level, through the juxtaposition of shots showing the magazine editor ironically translating the song intercut with images of the French woman’s performance. Maggie goes on explaining the meaning of the song: the French woman stabbed her lover, but now that he is dead, she realizes her love for him. As the song advances in intensity, the camera gets closer to her in a frontal close-up in which she insightfully screams “Je suis complètement dérangée,” sarcastically translated by the as “this kid is a little confused.” Unsurprisingly, in the line of this French pessimistic thought, only one remedy is left for this disturbed gamine: suicide. This existential angoisse is further mocked by the subsequent American dancing performance

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of Dick and Maggie, where practical issues (how to get to Flostre’s room to save Jo from

his completely un-intellectual intentions) and optimism (“Remember trouble must be

treated just like rebel send ‘em to the devil”) become main themes.

When one looks directly in her face, the French woman has Medusa like qualities.

Therfore, an oblique perspective on her Frenchness is more suitable for the light-hearted

tone of Hepburn’s Hollywood romances set in Paris. In this sense, Hepburn’s gamines on

screen are marked by a French twist but her representations never become completely

French. Her filmic roles are only situated within a horizon of French femininity, which

sheds a different light on them and marks her as a unique gamine.

Even though in Sabrina or Funny Face, the gamine element activated in Paris serves only to reveal a fundamental nature of the eternal feminine imagined to fit

Hollywood story patterns, it cannot be permanently effaced; it resurfaces, and cohabitates

with the icon of Hollywoodian femininity, constructing continuously Audrey’s appeal as

somewhat boyish, yet terribly feminine. This confusion is constantly illustrated on screen,

as, for instance, Mr. Flannegan identifies Ariane Chavasse as Adolphe, the thin girl. In

Funny Face, Paul Duval’s announces Jo’s stunning transformation from a lovely

caterpillar, not into a butterfly but a “bird of paradise,” from a waif, a gamine into a

fashion model. However, the conversion is incomplete, as Jo still manages to destroy completely the introducing her as the new face of the Quality fashion magazine to the world audience. Even Sabrina, after her Parisian remake, while in Linus

Larrabee’s office, spins into his director chair in her lovely black Givenchy dress, until she gets dizzy and throws herself on the conference table: she is still a gamine, nevertheless a very sophisticated one. The gamine figure never vanishes completely and

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it is precisely this coexistence between its rebellious boyish quality and an exquisite feminine elegance that creates a focus of Hepburn’s appeal.

Not only is the gamine charming, but she also has brains. Elizabeth Wilson, investigating Audrey Hepburn’s star persona, asserts that it reconciled two exclusive terms in Hollywood cinema, intelligence and beauty:

She was described as ‘gamine’, but for me her charm lay not in the androgyny of simple hair and a boyish figure, but in a style that seemed the embodiment of sophisticated, existentialist Europe as opposed to the overripe artificiality of Hollywood. She might look like Bambi, but her casual style signaled student, not starlet: she proved that a woman could have brains and still be attractive. (36-7)

Accordingly, Hepburn’s characters have well defined professions. In Charade,

Regina "Reggie" Lambert works as a French-English interpreter, Gaby is a typist, Nicole

Bonnet, besides occasionally stealing artworks in How to steal a million, is an art expert, and Ariane is a music student. Hepburn’s French native or naturalized characters work, live, and actively discover their desires and life passions.

In Funny face, when Maggie Prescott, the fashionable magazine editor looked for a woman who can be beautiful as well as intellectual for her “Think Pink” theme, she cannot find one since the two models who could both think and looked beautiful are unavailable: one is in jail, the other one on her . This shortage is certainly not flattering for New York models, especially since in Paris beautiful women wonder relentlessly in the cafés of the Left Bank. Consequently, in New York, photographer Dick

Avery has to descend into dark bookstores to find in between dusty shelves a female assistant whose femininity can only blossom in Paris.

Like Jo, who seduces her photographer through a stunning transformation from a dusty and faded book clerk into an impeccable and remarkable model, Hepburn’s

175 characters reinvent themselves, incorporating a French je ne sais quoi not only in love plots and fashion, but also in active storytelling as they become the engine and the center of the movie. In Paris when it sizzles, it is ultimately Gabrielle’s enthusiasm for the

Parisian way of life that sets Benson’s story in motion, as she becomes a fictional French character. Arianne Chavasse, as a modern-day Scheherazade, constantly reinvents herself using her father’s detective stories in order to conquer a cynical American gigolo. In addition, Hepburn’s dynamic multi-faceted characters in both Charade and How to steal a million change their personality as they change their Givenchy suits. They are outrageously out of control and can be barely contained by the final surprise denouement of the movie which rehabilitates their leading men.

A short, but relevant insight into Hepburn’s complex characters is Ariane’s room.

The first time we see her in Love in the afternoon she is playing the cello in her room and a black dress is hanging from the ceiling sharing the foreground with her. Soon afterwards, the camera tracks her character into the room, where books, flowers, a fish bowl, a couple of snow globes but also photos, statues, clothes, drawings, and finally a toilette cabinet filled with bottles, creams and perfumes create an enchanting universe.

The journey of self-discovery is situated at the intersection of the feminine, intellectual, and infantine dimensions, a superposed image from which Audrey Hepburn’s star persona acquires her unforgettable charm. In addition, another signifying element distances itself in Ariane’s room. The that shares the foreground with her: heavenly floating, hanging from the ceiling, it opens up another paramount dimension of Hepburn’s persona: her relationship to fashion and her construction as one of the persistent icons of beauty and style. Certainly, the same coordinates of feminine

176 beauty, gamine innocence, and dynamic intelligence influence Hepburn’s relation to fashion. 4

With Sabrina, Audrey Hepburn not only transformed the chauffeur’s daughter into a sophisticated and elegant girl, but also she established her star persona as a new style icon. This tremendous shift in her star image is in fact due to three pieces of clothing that Hepburn purchased for Sabrina from the young designer Hubert de

Givenchy in 1953. The association of Hepburn and Givenchy is central for understanding

Hepburn’s star appeal and her relation to fashion, as the fabulous Audrey Hepburn look is situated under the sign of a life-time collaboration on- and off-screen between the haute couture creator Givenchy and his celebrated muse. Givenchy even created and dedicated his first perfume to Audrey Hepburn in 1957. Unable to launch an advertisement campaign, he asked the actress to use her image to promote the perfume L’interdit, paving the way for other celebrated French actresses such as Catherine Deneuve, Carole

Bouquet, Juliette Binoche, and Sophie Marceau to appear in advertisements for couture perfumes. The name of the perfume L’interdit alluded to a note of exclusivity, contiguous to the association of haute couture to the uniqueness of art.5 The on-screen fashion collaboration accompanied by a real-life friendship between Givenchy and Hepburn, gradually constructed her along the same lines as an unique object of art, an embodiment of French chic and style.6 Nevertheless, Audrey’s appeal also lies in her “ballerina” outfits: the black turtleneck sweaters and the skinny pants. Within this context, Elizabeth

Wilson has read Hepburn’s appeal as a “gamine against the grain,” situated at the contradiction between student clothes (Left Bank sweater, flat ballet shoes, stovepipe pants) and haute couture, as the epitome of adult femininity. Through her analysis of the

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Cinderella story present in numerous Hepburn movies, Rachel Moseley adds another

critical layer and makes a strong argument that the transformation through clothes,

signifying both class transgression and limitation, plays an important part in Hepburn’s appeal. I will argue here that her clothes, besides connoting class and gender

transgressions, also signify Frenchness in at least two different ways: through the

Givenchy imprint of the Parisian haute couture but also through the Left-Bank fashion

trends that recall the existentialist muse of Saint Germain, the black-clad Juliette Gréco.

After Sabrina, Hepburn appealed to Givenchy to create the costumes for her films

that had a contemporary setting. With the exception of Two for the Road, the legendary

star wore Givenchy clothes in all the movies that feature a French setting. The three

Givenchy pieces from Sabrina mainly announce the developments that her wardrobe will

follow throughout her next films. The step from traditional movie costumes to French

haute couture was unconventional in Hollywood and it impacted the filmic structure

accordingly. Stella Bruzzi in Undressing Cinema, while analyzing the rapport between

fashion and identity in films, highlights the difference between traditional costumes –

which are meant to complement, color, and authenticate the filmic narrative – and haute

couture, which is a spectacle in itself, creating pauses in the narrative through visual

diversions. The haute couture costumes are iconic in a Barthesian sense because they carry an independent meaning that does not completely overlap with the purpose of the filmic narrative. As Bruzzi puts it: “The essence of iconic clothes is that they have an independent, prior meaning; they function as interjections or disruptions of the normative reality of the text” (17). Consequently, when Sabrina is clothed in a couture costume, her

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image signifies foremost Parisian elegance, Givenchy haute couture, and stylistic

difference.

Three clothing items present in Sabrina announce the main fashion developments

in all other Hepburn’s movies. First, there is the suit at the Glen Cove station. Sabrina

instructs her father beforehand: “If you should have any difficulty in recognizing your

daughter, I shall be the most sophisticated woman at the Glen Cove station.” As the dissolve ensues, the first shot presented is that of a poodle – Paris is known as the iconic city of love, haute couture and small dogs – with a jeweled collar, a prerequisite for

Parisian chic. As Rachel Moseley insightfully notices, the camera pans up an elegant suit, emphasizing the need to display the Parisian wardrobe first. Moreover, Sabrina’s movements are coded as a fashion parade, as she walks away from the camera and then returns in a movement, which according to Moseley, “offers the spectator a back view of the cut, the tiny slit in the rear hemline and the ‘kitten-heel shoes’” (47). Besides the

poodle, the other accessories – the gray turban, golden earrings, and the white gloves –

achieve an exquisite balance of exotic mystery, French with Ottoman influences, and

classic elegance. In the 1960s, Hepburn’s perfectly tailored Givenchy suits, following a

classic elegant style and accessorized with white gloves and stylish hats, will become

emblematic in movies such as Charade or How to steal a million.

The Sabrina white ball dress is, as Clark Keogh puts it, “one of the best

Cinderella moments in cinematic history” (24). This episode reveals the second instance in the movie when dress has more to do with fashion spectacle than with heterosexual desire.7 It also signifies the French haute couture as different and innovative. When

179 compared to the other dresses worn by women at the Larrabee party, the Parisian white organdy dress with black embroidery is the absolute center of attention.

The third Givenchy piece conforms to ’s commandments: the infamous “little black dress,” which brought in the “décolleté bateau” renamed “décolleté

Sabrina” due to its tremendous success. Since Chanel introduced it in 1926, the little black dress remains the personification of the ultimate French chic: simple, yet extremely elegant, Hepburn’s character Sabrina wore it with exquisite gamine elegance during her last date with Linus Larrabee.

It seems only natural that Audrey Hepburn’s next feature Funny Face directly addresses her relation to fashion. The book lover Jo Stockton blossoms into an haute couture fashion icon in Paris while modeling for a new line of clothes by the famous

French fashion designer, Paul Duval, an obvious on-screen substitute for Givenchy. The character of Dick Avery becomes a reference to , the real photographer who accompanied and Hepburn in Paris. Jo models in outdoor spaces, a transparent pretense to show more iconic images of Paris; thus fashion and the city are represented in the same frame in order to converge their signifying power where style meets the weight of cultural and historical heritage, fashion elegance finds its counterpoint in the architectural grace of the L’Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, color finds its echo in the flower market of the Ile de la Cité, the exclusive taste of haute couture in the elitist world of the Opera, and the artistry of fashion in the eternal treasures of the Louvre. Nevertheless, there is a strong sense of movement associated with each of these pictures, either through Hepburn’s movements or an element present in the picture.

To illustrate this dynamism, Jo releases a bouquet of balloons in front of the small Arc de

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Triomphe du Carrousel and she is surrounded by white doves in front of an illuminated

fountain in Paris by night. While modeling, she catches a fish in the Seine and is pictured

as a modern in a wool travel suit with a wicker travel case sharing the same frame with a train. In one shot Jo is pure movement, as she descends the beautiful ornate Opera staircase and the “grand escalier” of the Louvre, spreading her arms

Figure 5.2. Posters for Charade (1963) and How to Steal a Million (1966)

in an imitation of the Winged Victory of Samothrace and yelling at the photographer:

“Take the shot, take the shot.”

This dynamism in relation to both fashion and life seems to be prolonged into her

movies set in Paris during the 1960s. In the two detective stories Charade and How to

steal a million, her characters run, walk and hide a lot in their tailored daytime

ensembles. The opening scene of How to steal a million is unforgettable in this sense,

picturing Nicole Bonnet driving at full speed a red car in her extravagant all white

ensemble – suit, sunglasses, a futuristic hat, and shoes. Moreover, the Charade posters show the couple Hepburn and running or surrounded by a circular arrow accentuating both the thriller component, but also a dynamic element. Similarly, the poster for How to steal a million features an haute couture-clad Hepburn in a fashion

181 runaway posture, as she seems to walk out of the frame. This dynamism constructs her as independent, as if her active body constantly undermines the fetishizing power of clothes.

It also enables her in How to steal a million to “give Givenchy a ,” as Simon

Dermott, the enamored fake burglar says, while they prepare to steal the counterfeit

Cellini Venus and Nicole Bonnet has to change clothes to adopt a more down-to-earth style. This significant sense of movement present in Hepburn’s star persona is echoed by the gamine image that is recurrently represented as striding across barricades, almost floating, to lead the revolutionaries to their victory.

As Elizabeth Wilson recalls, in Funny Face Hepburn is also a “gamine against the grain,” a black-clad student recalling another dark French gamine, Juliette Gréco. Her

Left-bank style impact was equally relevant and also had a tremendous impact especially on women’s freedom of movement, as Moseley argues: ”Take the look with which she is often associated – the ‘dancer’s black’ of slim black trousers, flat ballet-style pumps and a fine black jersey as seen in Sabrina (1954) and Funny Face (1957). At that moment, trousers were still not widely considered appropriate everyday wear for women, but they did allow ease of movement” (87). She also popularized the gamine haircut, flat ballet shoes, the turtleneck, slim Capri pants, extravagant dark glasses, cinched waists, three- quarter sleeves and fitted shirts wrapped at the waist – clothing and fashion elements that liberated female bodies (Clark Keogh 15).

Through her collaboration with Givenchy, Hepburn’s name is strongly entrenched in the world of the French haute couture in a typical Pygmalion model constructed in the world of cinematic and extra-cinematic fashion. To the extent that a French issue of

Vogue investigating “La femme française” mentions Audrey Hepburn next to Catherine

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Deneuve, Juliette Binoche and Inès de la Fressange: “La beauté française type? Audrey

Hepburn aussi aurait très bien pu l’incarner. Ciel, une Américaine ? Pourquoi pas, si c’est l’égérie de Givenchy” (110). Fashion has an innovative and inclusive logic and therefore can creatively pinpoint the French feminine regardless of nationality.

However, it is not only Hepburn’s glamorous side that appeals to the French but her dancer look. In “Cinéma et Destin de Femmes,” Verena Aebischer and Sonia Dayan-

Herzbrun analyze the impact the stars had on the female French audience within the process of social change that France was undergoing at the beginning of the 1960s.

Among the feminine models of the 1950s, Audrey Hepburn is cited as an identity model for French girls and women along with Brigitte Bardot. As American stars seemed too remote, Hepburn’s “positive gamine” image functioned as an identification model for young French girls while still signifying Hollywood for French audiences (175).

Thirty years later in his homage to French female stars 8 Femmes, François Ozon modeled the image of the gamine Suzon, played by , after Audrey

Hebpurn’s image. The director did not choose any of the glamorous outfits Givenchy created for her. Instead, he uses ’s dress that Sabrina wore before her Paris transformation. However, there is one major difference: Sabrina’s character is a

Hollywood gamine while Ozon’s duplicated type is only a pretense for staging a more complex combination of innocence and perversity. French cinema equally reappropriates

Hepburn’s gamine image as being an epitome of French youthful femininity. Hepburn’s star persona is placed under the sign of a tremendous capacity for change at the level of her character’s subjectivity, nationality, and at the frivolous level of fashion. A nostalgic

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Roland Barthes observed it in passing while he was deploring the death of an icon, Greta

Garbo:

Le visage d’Audrey Hepburn, par exemple, est individualisé, non seulement par sa thématique particulière (femme-enfant, femme-chatte), mais aussi par sa personne, par une spécification à peu près unique du visage, qui n’a plus rien d’essentiel, mais est constitue par une complexité infinie des fonctions morphologiques. Comme langage, la singularité de Garbo était d’ordre conceptuel, celle d’Audrey Hepburn est d’ordre substantiel. Le visage de Garbo est Idée, celui de Hepburn est événement. (57)

Barthes associates Hepburn’s face with change in order to contrast it with the archetypical beauty of Greta Garbo. Unlike Garbo’s face, Hepburn’s face has lost the vertical correspondence with the platonic world of ideas. Garbo’s perfect mask face enabled a circulation of meaning from essential to existential, from archetype to a mortal figure. Instead, Hepburn incarnates a horizontal logic of charm: her movement within this network circulates identity and difference. The mobility of her star persona enables her to flow between different types of subjectivities on-screen: from a book loving clerk to a model, from the chauffeur’s daughter to a Parisian chic gamine, from a enamored adolescent to an experienced coquette, from a typist to a French heroine, from an

American women bored by provincial life to a French widow, or from the gamine to a thief. A French twist usually is the center and the facilitator of these transformations. As the identity of her character changes, a corresponding fashion transformation occurs and

Hepburn obliges, moving between a sophisticated icon of French haute couture and the youthful independent fashion composed of black turtlenecks and skinny black pants.

Hepburn’s stardom, thus, lends itself to a reading through the three-faceted star model. As icon of cinema, Audrey Hepburn benefited from the highest Hollywood visibility. As a French gamine, she created a distinct niche in Hollywood stardom. And,

184 finally, as an icon of consumption, she is the personification of Givenchy’s style. In the

French related performances, Hepburn is not a “serene misfit” as Dyer saw her in her

American roles, as she seems to have found her home revolving around a certain type of

French femininity, reconciling the national divergences through a dynamic star persona constructed as both a Hollywood icon and an eternal French gamine.

1 Audrey Hepburn’s noble heritage is a recurrent discourse associated with her image and constantly present in articles or in her biographies. Radie Harris asserts that Hepburn’s “patrician beauty” and natural grace is inherited from her mother, “the Baroness” (102). Ian Woodward in his biography even attempts to draw her aristocrat lineage starting with her great-grandfather the dignified van Heemstra, ex- Governor of Surinam and popular figure at the Court of Queen Wilhelmina (11-16). Pamela Clarke Keogh explains the popular occurrence of the adjective “regal” in Hepburn’s descriptions as natural, because of her aristocratic heritage (49).

2 This celebrated encounter between the writer Colette and her Gigi, Audrey Hepburn, constantly mentioned in her biographies, entails a discussion about the perfect fit between Hepburn’s on- and off- screen persona. Due to her aristocratic heritage, the Princess Ann role from Roman Holiday seems to perfectly fit her. Pamela Clark Keogh underlines it in the case of Funny Face: “the part was so close to Audrey that even her mother told screenwriter Leonard Gershe she could not believe it was written by someone who didn’t know her daughter” (90). Discourses around her off-screen persona emphasize the same qualities of her characters: fragile but strong, vulnerable and passionate, romantic but courageous. There is a perfect echo between Hepburn’s characters and off-screen persona. The roles seem to have been written for her and, reciprocally, the discourses about Hepburn’s life reflect her multiple screen alter-egos.

3 Cecil Beaton analyzes Audrey’s face in detailed photographic terms: “Audrey Hepburn has enormous heron’s eyes and dark eyebrows slanted towards the Far East. Her facial features show character rather than prettiness: the bridge of the nose seems almost too narrow to carry its length, which flares into a globular tip with nostrils startling like a duck’s bill. Her mouth is wide, with a cleft under the lower lip too deep for classical beauty, and the delicate chin appears even smaller by contrast with the exaggerated with of her jaw bones. . . . Beneath this child-like head (as compact as a coconut with its cropped hair and wispy monkey-fur fringe) is a long, incredibly slender and straight neck” (129). Evidently, Audrey’s beauty does not conform to the established canons of Hollywood beauty. Harris also remarks that Audrey is not beautiful by “the technical standards of perfect beauty”: “She once confessed to me that she used to be so self-conscious about the unevenness of her front teeth that she would rarely smile” (100). In an off-screen context, the biography of Sean Ferrer-Hepburn situates these imperfections under “what the French call wisely a certain je ne sais quoi and interprets them as a sincere reflection of Audrey Hepburn’s personality: “the speech of her heart and the inflection of pure intentions. She lived her life believing in the power of simplicity” (87).

4 Gaylyn Studlar argues that the gamine image corresponded to the introduction of a youthful feminine market for high fashion. In 1952 Vogue acknowledged this market of potential consumers through its “young idea feature,” aimed at readers seventeen to twenty-five years old (168). Thus, the commodified gamine image corresponded to a contemporary market trend.

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5 In her study of the Givenchy style, Françoise Mohrt underlines the playful caprice around this notion of exclusivity: “As the saying went: ‘Mais c’est mon parfum! C’est interdit!’ or in English: “But it’s my perfume! No one else can have it!” And so it went around the world, until now L’Interdit remains, even after all the subsequent new perfumes, a global success. A classic. In its cubic, typical 1950s flagon, issued in a limited and numbered series, L’Interdit carries the Hepburn touch in its stopper, a huge square cabochon straight out of Tiffany’s window” (88).

6 Sean Ferrer-Hepburn, besides underlining the extraordinary friendship between Givenchy and Audrey Hepburn, emphasizes their professional collaboration as mutual involvement: “Together they created her look, the externalization of her style. She saw the clothes he created as the beautiful vase that would enhance a simple filed flower, whereas he viewed them as the vase that is kept simple so that nothing will detract from the natural beauty of the flower itself” (152).

7 Stella Bruzzi analyzed this moment as one of pure spectacle where the gaze is captured by the dress and desire is deflected from the body to clothes: “Fetishism thus encroaches on this rapport between fashion and spectator as a contradictory impulse that de-eroticizes the body” (24).

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CONCLUSION

In 2007, the French film director Pascale Ferran started a collaborative initiative

to organize a document evaluating the well-being of French cinema. “Le rapport Ferran”

is one of the latest attempts to measure the pulse of French filmmaking. Among other

problematic trends in contemporary French cinema, Ferran observes the bipolarization in

financial terms between big-budget films and auteur cinema. The film director also

remarks the decisional weight that film distributors recently acquired as box-office success became a criterion for assigning value to a movie. Within this context, she critically notes: “On continue à vivre sur l’idée que le cinéma est à la fois un art et une industrie (puissance de la pensée de Malraux), alors qu’entre temps, il est devenu essentiellement un commerce.”

Contemporary cinema has become first and foremost a commercial enterprise.

Allen J. Scott remarks the fierce competition of cultural products in the global scene, arguing the necessity of collaboration through joint marketing efforts between the national cultural product industries in order to assure their viability in the global scene

(109). Fitting into Scott’s framework, the French female star system has already acquired a distinct characteristic in the global market. In terms of exports in the 1950s, Cravenne envisioned stardom’s popularity and his vision found its expression in Bardot’s image. In the late 1990s, Toscan du Plantier dreamed of it as an upmarket product capitalizing on its Frenchness. French female stars who constantly bridge the popular and the art sides of

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cinema are highly visible agents in exporting French cultural products, be they films,

clothes, cosmetics, or perfumes. In turn, they acquire a higher visibility and exposure

through all these various discourses reinforcing their paradoxical qualities.

In Chapter 1, I have shown that the dispute between popular and art cinema has

been perennial since the 1950s and that French female stars constantly cross this divide to the extent that there are two paradoxical extra-cinematic networks of texts that create a veritable star and anti-star system linked to their images. French female actresses transform themselves easily to stars with a pronounced predilection for the star text when it is time to shine in the global cinematic horizon against their Hollywood counterparts.

They are also anti-stars, mythical actresses, stars-as-labor who, in collaboration with movie directors, play an important role in the Pygmalion model central to French cinema and its stardom. Chapter 2 addressed the function of female stars as icons of the nation.

Female stars are preferred icons of Frenchness through their roles anchored in the historical and literary national imaginary as well as through to their incarnation of

Marianne. The national types of the gamine or of the established French woman are

foregrounded according to the socio-political backdrop of the epoch. Bardot’s gamine

image resonated with the national discourses of the beginnings of the Fifth Republic,

whereas Deneuve fit the tradition of heritage through her classical and mature aesthetic

beauty. In addition, not only do French female stars incarnate a long lineage of literary

and historic iconic characters, but they also reconcile ambivalent historic representations

through their iconic image.

In Chapter 3, I looked at on-screen representations that construct the city of Paris

as a woman and I have argued that reading them through the lens of objectification and

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fetishization reduces their capacity of signification. Jill Forbes, for instance, reads Cléo

de 5 à 7 as the story of a woman/city objectified as a prostitute. Cléo is, after all a demi-

mondaine, and through her walks in the streets, she recalls urban prostitutes. Further,

Forbes draws a comparison between Cléo’s illness and the related imaginary of

pathologized prostitution. These critical readings, however, only scratch the surface of

the iconic French and Parisian women. Closer scrutiny reveals that this interpretation,

besides ignoring the possibility of Cléo being a flâneuse, does not take into account her

interaction with the city of Paris. The ways in which feminine on-screen representations

resonate with the urban space allows for a reassessment of their place(s) in the city. On-

and off-screen women’s images map Parisian space according to their inner structure through a strong metonymical relation to the city, their feminine and urban cartographies

reinforcing each other in an iconic text. In addition, these representations are an open

invitation to travel for female spectators as voyageuses and a transgression of art-

commercial barriers through their functions in extra-cinematic discourses and practices

such as advertisements or movie tourism.

The paradoxical tension of French stars as national cultural icons and objects of consumption seems to reside candidly at the heart of their images, as I show in Chapter 4.

They became thus more prone to exportation due to their aura that reconciles a national- universal contradiction. Through short circuits in connotations, even the mythical

Hollywood cinematic aura becomes reconcilable with the aura of the French actress due to some overlaps in subtexts. The mythologies, however, are not static and changed from the 1950s to the 1990s. Barthes discussed Greta Garbo, opposing her to the new event,

Audrey Hepburn. In 2007, Garcin compared Béart to the mythical Deborah Kerr.

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Through this shift, the classical period of Hollywood cinema, including Kerr and

Hepburn, became mythical territory for the French cinema of the new millennium.

As a Hollywood icon, Hepburn benefited from its economies of scale, and the on-

going fascination that her stardom exerts corresponds to the tri-partite French model of

stardom. Her star image is constructed at the intersection of Hollywood iconicity, of a

Parisian gamine type, and an icon of feminine consumption stylized by Givenchy. Since

Hepburn fit a familiar model of female stardom, even the French adopted her.

Bearing a distinct resemblance to Hepburn, a new French gamine, Audrey Tautou

dominated French and international screens after the resounding success of Le Fabuleux

Destin d’Amélie Poulain. In “Amélie, Loana, Jean-Luc et moi,” François Gorin, film

critic for Télérama, bitterly attacks Amélie because of a new superior form of art craft it

implies: “Le film de Jeunet semblait alors propice de quelque union sacrée autour d’une

certaine idée du cinéma ni trop ci ni trop ça, superbe objet feignant d’oublier à la fois l’art

et le commerce au profit d’une forme supérieure d’artisanat.” The reception of the film in the 2001 electoral year rendered it highly problematic because of the “idéolgie du p’tit

bonheur,” as Gorin put it. Its effacement of ethnic diversity equally fed into the

difficulties of the French contemporary society dealing with its multi-cultural and multi-

ethnical facets. Trends of diversity incorporation into the image of the Republic became

noticeable in 2003 with the exhibit “Les Nouvelles Mariannes” and, more recently, with

the L’Oréal ambassador, Rachida Brakni. Female stars, as icons of Frenchness, have thus

a resourceful pool to reinvent themselves in order to reflect, in a metonymical manner,

the contemporary feminine population of France.

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At a polar opposite from Loana – the commodified and highly sexualized heroine of the popular TV show Loft Story that dominated French screens during 2001– and

Jeunet’s movie, is Jean-Luc Godard’s Eloge de l’amour. Godard, a lonely traveler in art cinema, reflects upon the role of narration in cinema and lingers on the problematic idea of feminine representation as his camera refuses to frame into close-ups the female lead character. Faithful to the auteur tradition, Godard distances himself from iconic stardom.

Jeunet, on the other hand, employs it, quoting high art cinema at the service of the popular comedy, and manages to create an iconic character and star Amélie-Audrey

Tautou. Moreover, the Montmartre girl is strongly anchored in the national imaginary through the type of the gamine. Her universal appeal, indicated by the tag-line of the movie “Elle va vous changer la vie,” lies in defining transformation as the central engine of the narrative, reconciling the universal-national tension through filmic and tourist consumption. Jeunet’s movie is therefore a perfect synchronic illustration of what French star images accomplish diachronically as the synergies of the three-faceted model of their stardom – icons of cinema, nation, and consumption – enable them to export and to perpetuate the glamorous French star system.

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