[entrevues]
FESTIVAL DU FILM BELFORT
Trajectoire: Coup de Chapeau à Stéphane Audran
‘I have not made a career; I have not given that much thought. When I first started, I just wanted to be a good actress. My voice was wrong; I could not move around, I tried to improve with lessons. Then I was lucky enough to meet Chabrol (1)…’
Thus characteristically summed up by Stéphane Audran, her first steps were made on stage in the late 1950s in drama school, with Charles Dullin and Michel Vitold. She appeared on stage a few times, a little on television too and then came the cinema. While she married filmmaker Claude Chabrol in 1964, she had made film debut earlier (especially with Les Bonnes Femmes in 1960, a surprising film, sad and cruel; and in 1962 with offbeat Oeil du malin). The great works of the enchanting duo, like the ‘Karina years’ of Jean-Luc Godard, were yet to come.
Some are justifiably famous, like Le Boucher of 1970, where Stéphane Audran portrayed a seemingly well-balanced but secretly neurotic character, next to monstrous Jean Yanne. Les Biches (1968), which earned her an acting award at the Berlin Festival, is as mysterious as a secret ceremony, a film of ‘vampires’ and possession that rhymes with the Stéphane Audran- Marie Trintignant pair in the wonderful film Betty (1991).
Other films still, over those fabulous times, are unfairly little known : Juste avant la nuit (1971) should be viewed again and again as a climax of Chabrol’s art. To be seen again and again too, La Rupture (1970) demonstrates how intensely Stéphane Audran has managed to embody every possible character through one single director (23 films altogether so far with Claude Chabrol!). In this case she was a ‘mother courage’, ever faultless and even strengthened by encounters with vile, hideous people.
Along with this fantastic work with Chabrol, Stéphane Audran very comfortably moved into the world of Bunuel (Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie, 1972). She worked in France at times and also abroad (Samuel Fuller, Ivan Passer, Gabriel Axel, etc…) and always unblinkingly switched from one part –one face, or mask- to another. She could be stern and glow inside as in Le Festin de Babette (Gabriel Axel, 198) or droll and cocky in Coup de Torchon (Bertrand Tavernier, 1981), or perverse in Le Sang des autres (Claude Chabrol, 1984), or a masochist in Mortelle Randonnée (Claude Miller, 1984): with her moving sensuality, Stéphane Audran has always best illustrated a strange paradox: that of a very popular artist, often funny or even burlesque, who never sheds her unforgettable allure, her elegant manners.
Betty (Claude Chabrol, France, 1991)
(1) Stéphane Audran, interview with Danièle Parra, la Revue du Cinéma, April 1988.
http://www.festival-entrevues.com/2003_uk/biographie_stephane_audran.htm
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this tidbit is from Camille Paglia's interview with Donna Mills:
Stephane Audran--director Claude Chabrol's wile and leading lady in the '60s and '70s. Audran prowled Parisian salons to find exactly the right handbag for a role. She'd say, "Until I have the clothing, I don't know who the character is."
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the following is from THE NEW YORK TIMES' article on Gabriel Axel and "Babette's Feast":
It is what the French call a "role in gold" for the French actress Stephane Audran, who is known to American film buffs for often playing the uptight French bourgeoise in the films of Claude Chabrol, her former husband. Her Babette is a portrait filled with poise, great dignity and an illuminating resonance as the solitary artist in exile who finally has the occasion to unveil her talents in the kitchen, to please her public, no matter how uncomprehending they be.
"You see her blossom in her craft, a craft she elevates into art," Ms. Audran said in an interview. "The two elderly sisters, they never lived, they slipped by their destinies. But Babette, she realized her destiny on this one night alone. It's a beautiful story. You just have to let your heart speak."
That was precisely the approach of Gabriel Axel. He kept close to the original story, and he turned to Karen Blixen's text when he needed help. Ms. Audran said his knowledge of both French and Danish cultures created a chemistry when she came onto the set in Denmark very much the way Babette came to the elderly sisters.
"Gabriel's enthusiastic, like an enchanted child, and that is very stimulating," she said. "There is no fear. He eases you into a state of total confidence. Actors, we're like children, you know. And he had such a love for this subject, there was necessarily a great joy in working with him to make Babette come alive."
Much to Ms. Audran's regret, Babette was a project no French producer wanted to touch, for many of the same reasons as the traditional Danes: no overt sex, no violence, no immediate box-office appeal for young cinemagoers.
"It's a shame, because this would have been a perfect co-production for the French," said Ms. Audran. "In France and elsewhere, there is a lot of talk about a crisis in the cinema. It is a crisis of producers and a crisis of quality. There can be no craft without love. It's a moral question."
Yes, and precisely the moral question so delicately probed by Karen Blixen and Gabriel Axel. At the end of the story, the sisters worry that Babette had spent so much money for their sake.
"For your sake?" replies Babette. "No. For my own. . . I am a great artist. . .A great artist, Mesdames, is never poor. We have something, Mesdames, of which other people know nothing."
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It's not bad. It's a good start. I have read MANY MANY MANY reviews on her, her husband, their films together, the films she did without him, etc. I liked these particular bits because of her actually speaking about acting. Not just a person telling you what they perceive of her. Words from her own mouth (albeit translated into English). I'd like to find an actual interview with just her. There are these clips on, ina rechercher, that I found. If only, I kept on with my French. Damn! (BUT, I will be starting French lessons with the mother of one of my best friends=)
Oh! And how she feels about handbags...I feel the same. Especially about shoes and other accessories. She's right. The right clothing is important.
