Simone Signoret @ 100: A love letter to a great actress
Friday, March 26, 2021 at 3:34PM 
This week, we've been celebrating Simone Signoret's centennial, an unlikely sex-symbol of the midcentury and an even more atypical Oscar champion. Previously, Daniel wrote about the French actress' brief appearance in La Ronde, and Eric paid tribute to what's probably her most excellent vehicle, Casque d'Or. Now that it's my turn to wax poetic about Madame Signoret, I find myself in a bit of a conundrum. You see, even before the centennial celebrations, the actress had been on my mind. Though, it wasn't because of a film she starred in or individual performance. Watching the animated film No. 7 Cherry Lane, I can't help but think that no one will ever be able to create a more beautiful homage to this star than director Yonfan…
ROOM AT THE TOP (1959) and NO. 7 CHERRY LANE (2019)
No. 7 Cherry Lane, which premiered in the Venice Film festival Main Competition of 2019 and was eligible this season in Animated Feature, is a work of animated cinema for an adult audience. It's an intoxicating poem about the passage of time and nostalgia, about getting old, feeling the prick of desire, lust for the flesh, and the projected image. Set in the Hong Kong of the 1960s, the story revolves around a handsome college student who becomes romantically involved with a young woman he tutors and her mother. The plot may sound like cheap pornography, but the result is both more complex and more sensual than that. For one, as much as the male figure is our entry point into the story, it's his older lover that ends up defining the perspective of the later acts.
Through her eyes, her imagination, we experience hypnotic fantasies, sorrowful meditations, as well as the cruel and wondrous magic that is to see oneself reflected on the silver screen. Many of No. 7 Cherry Lane's best passages focus on Simone Signoret's movies, specifically the ones that found the actress playing romantic partner to younger men. These flicks are some of her most famous titles while also feeling like an anachronistic artifact within the context of mid-century cinema. In her films, Signoret got to romance and share the screen with the likes of Yves Montand (her real-life husband), Alain Delon, Laurence Harvey, Oskar Werner, Jean-Louis Trintignant, and many more.
In solipsistic narration and many animated facsimiles of the great Signoret, Yonfan explores her particular allure, the cloud of melancholy which followed her in perpetuity, the odd mix of tragedy and eroticism she brought to her most famous films. Room at the Top, Famous Love Affairs, and Ship of Fools are heavily featured, but the cineaste's considerations apply to most Signoret movies. Hers was a face made for the camera, an angular monument crowned by a gold crown of silky hair, bejeweled by eyes which always looked despondent. She could be burning with fury or euphoric with glee, but Signoret's eyes always held a promise of tragedy.
SHIP OF FOOLS (1965)
The key to her magnetism, her sensuality, may be found in that promise. Love in Signoret's films never comes off as a permanent state of happiness, nor does it shine with the glint of simple joy. Every smile feels earned with pain, and each seduction carries with it the weight of a troubled past, a weary future. Like the pleasure of an orgasm, one feels that the cinematic loves of Signoret are temporary, as ephemerous as the passing seasons, and just as magnificent. While never overplaying her parts, Signoret drew the eye, captured the attention through this unspoken assurance that her world is one of passing delights, of fatalism and the sort of passion that leave one too exhausted to live.
None of this is meant to suggest Signoret was all star presence and no acting skill. Even as Yonfan evokes the measured gesture and mournful looks of his beloved star, the animation is incapable of capturing the subtlety of the actress' craft. Perusing her filmography, one finds a sprawling wealth of exquisite performances which require that the spectator pay attention, come closer. She never made a spectacle out of her roles, preferring to use little details, nuanced tonalities, to construct characterizations. I'm thinking of her measured expression in Diabolique, the stoic shame of The Witches of Salem, the averted gazes and nervous half-smiles that earned her an Oscar for Room at the Top, the bruised feeling she projects in Ship of Fools, the steely resolve of Army of Shadows, the vicious line readings of The Cat, Madame Rosa's faraway stares.
MADAME ROSA (1977)
Simone Signoret was both a star and a great actress, an icon too. Nearly 35 years after her passing, this titan of French cinema still inspires great artists like Yonfan, her legacy forever influencing those who care to watch her brilliant films and gaze at the marvel that was her screen presence. In life, she won an Oscar, an Emmy, three BAFTAs, prizes from Berlin and Cannes, a César, and some other golden accolades. In death, she has won cultural immortality, her filmography making her into a movie goddess like few others. As we celebrate her centennial, there's no better way to honor Signoret than watching her work, discussing her mastery, speaking our love for her. Are you as besotted with Simone Signoret as Yonfan, the characters of No. 7 Cherry Lane, and I?
Some of Signoret's best movies are available to stream. You can find La Ronde, Casque d'Or, and Diabolique on the Criterion Channel. In Kanopy, you can also find Room at the Top, Is Paris Burning?, Adua and Her Friends, and Death in the Garden.
Reader Comments (8)
They say that personally she wasn't pretty, she had a very wide face and very small eyes and that she avoided smiling because her eyes got smaller. And these same people also said that in moving images and photographs she was transformed into a dazzling presence. When she started, with small roles in the movies, everyone hoped that she would become famous for her talent, but she was more than a talented actress, she was also a star.
I think I came to Signoret the wrong way because her Oscar nominated performances were the first two I'd seen and while in both I think she has a magnetism that is undeniable and compelling, her actual delivery of dialogue felt stilted and "off' and the films themselves are...well not that great. I don't want to put it down to a language barrier, except that a mere three years from Ship of Fools she truly does seem at a loss in the Seagull and is occasionally incomprehensible. In that movie despite seemingly being well cast, she or Lumet seem to have settled on the most bizarrely garrish treatment of the role and it does neither the play nor the actress any favors.
Of course I love her in Diabolique but even there I think Madame Clouzet is kind of permitted to walk off with the film at a certain point and Signoret IMO is almost too willing to cede the spotlight and underplay her role. I admire that kind of understatement but I did feel like she could have afford to give just a *bit* more there. So it wasn't until La Ronde and Casque d'Or where I began to really see a subtle kind of vivacity and fully fleshed out character that immediately had me. I guess the jury is still kind of out for me in that I haven't seen enough. She's so compelling and is clearly not just coasting on presence but I do think she often seems a bit too closed off for me.
Claudio, have you (or anyone else) seen Therese. David Thomson singles that out in both his encyclopedia entry on her and in another book as her best work. But I can't track down the movie at all. It's an adaptation of a great Zola book and while I don't necessarily see her in the role when reading the book, I'm super curious as to how the film and her performance are.
A lovely tribute. So glad a spotlight is being shone on her. She was one of the greats.
Love her in Room at the Top. She's so modern in the way she approaches the character.
I really want to see her Madame Rosa
Beautiful and so well written that it doubles as a love letter to your talents on a meta level!
Kael, Ebert, Alves.
A beautiful article... What a wonderful actress she was. And , in my opinion, the most expressive eyes of the silver screen
Claudio : cosign with Maria. You should really collect your essays and publish them in book form. Just beautiful writing sir.
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