Jeanne Moreau

Interview, Sept, 1996 by Molly Haskell

That passion bubbles over again in next month's The Proprietor

Anglo-French by birth, yet French by temperament, Jeanne Moreau - actress, director, and legend - is one of France's great gifts to world cinema and to an era sadly lacking in female star luster. Symbolizing a heady mixture of ripe, wanton passion and sharp intelligence, she has come to occupy a special niche: No woman, French or American, can match her for the longevity of her allure or the stubbornness with which she refuses to retire as one of the screen's great sensualists.

From the beginning, she was the antithesis of the ingenue as she came into her own, way after the cupcake stage, playing characters who were valued for their worldliness rather than their innocence. She was almost thirty, after all, with a decade of film and stage work behind her, when she first won international fame as the heroine of Louis Malle's two sultry love stories, L'ascenseur pour l'echafaud (Elevator to the Gallows) and Les Amants (The Lovers) in 1957 and 1958, respectively.

Far from being a conventional screen beauty, Moreau, in repose, might look tired, haggard, almost witchlike, but when she smiled, she lost years and cares and became Circe the Enchantress, outdazzling the sun. She could he sullen, selfish, hungry, playful, and philosophical in films that coincided with the spirit of feminism. She played housewives alienated from traditional bourgeois roles as well as a new kind of modern, willful temptress.

Moreau's emotional candor and the way she was able to open up to the camera seemed to invite intimacy and may explain why, along with her delight in playing uninhibited sensual adventurers, she became a figure through whom a host of great directors - among them Malle, Francois Truffaut, Joseph Losey, Michelangelo Antonioni, Orson Welles, and Tony Richardson - explored their own feelings about women.

Born in 1928, the daughter of an English music-hall performer and a French father, she speaks perfect, or almost perfect, English with the occasional French locution thrown in. We met to talk in a New York City hotel.

MOLLY HASKELL: Just begin by telling me what you're doing here now.

JEANNE MOREAU: I'm on my way to Princeton University to start work on a screenplay with Joyce Carol Oates. It's based on her book Solstice, which [actress] Carole Bouquet gave me a couple of years ago, and I'm going to direct the film of it next year. It's about the relationship between two women, one a painter, the other a young teacher. I've also recorded some extra voice-over for The Proprietor, which was directed by Ismail Merchant and is about to open in the U.S. Getting to know Ismail has meant so much to me. He's a very special person. I had heard about him as a producer, of course, and then we met two-and-a-half years ago. I adored the film he directed, In Custody [1993], about Urdu, and as we got to know each other, we realized we would like to work together. That's how The Proprietor was born. I enjoyed every moment of the work we did together, because he's so full of zest and ideas, and so provocative. When something went wrong, he would use it in a positive way, and he'd say, "It was a blessing in disguise." I love that phrase. He's gleaming - rays of sunshine come out of him.

MH: What's The Proprietor about?

JM: It's an original idea Ismail had when we met. The proprietor, which is my character, is a famous French writer living in New York who's going through an unhappy phase in her life. She finds it difficult to write. And then she learns that the apartment house where she lived with her mother as a child in Paris is up for sale. It had been taken away from them by the Germans because her mother was Jewish - she died in the camps. Little by little, the daughter becomes obsessed with her mother and this apartment house. She has nightmares. She feels responsible for her mother's death and until she's able to know exactly what happened - who gave her mother to the Germans - she isn't able to go on. Finally, she sells everything she owns so she can buy the place back again and reconcile herself with her past.

MH: You mean with her Jewish self?

JM: Yes. And on the way, she meets lots of people she hadn't seen for a long time. She gets together again with her ex-husband and she starts a new life. And, of course, she starts writing again.

MH: I'd like to ask you: Was Louis Malle the first person who really brought out your talent on the screen?

JM: Maybe not, but our relationship was so extraordinary that we both brought out things in one another.

MH: What things? How did it work?

JM: I don't know. Just a chemistry. It's very mysterious. I'm very grateful for what he gave me, but I know there were things emanating from me, too. I was not aware of what attracted all these directors to me. I was very lucky to work with such extraordinary people as I did. Now that they're all gone, it gives me the impression that I am at a turning point in my life.

MH: That one life is over?

JM: Yes. And a new one has started.