Jeanne Moreau

Jeanne Moreau dies at 89.

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Jeanne Moreau with Jean-Marc Bory in Louis Malle’s 1958 drama The Lovers.
Credit Agence France-Presse

With her performances in Jules et Jim, The Elevator to the Scaffold, The Lovers, The Bride Wore Black and La Notte she wasn't only the queen of the French New Wave but a queen of European arthouse cinema.

I will never forget her in these roles, particularly Jules et Jim, but she continually appeared in films in her 80's, always with her signature gravelly voice and pouty panache. You might not like her, but you couldn't ignore her. Legendary, and very, very French - though her mother was actually British, a dancer at the Folies-Bergère!

Here is the obit in The New York Times

Part of what they Say about her on AlloCiné:

SA CARRIÈRE EN CHIFFRES [HER CAREER IN NUMBERS]
66
ANNÉES DE CARRIÈRE [YEARS OF CAREER]
7
RÉCOMPENSES[AWARDS]
146
FILMS
3
SÉRIES
11
NOMINATIONS
91,6 M
ENTRÉES CINÉ [TICKETS SOLD]

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A poster for Jules and Jim

Film Forum jumps in with a retrospective of Jeanne Moreau - starting with Elevator to the Scaffold/Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (1958)

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Opens Today!
HOMAGE TO JEANNE MOREAU
ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS

Through Thursday, August 10
12:30 4:30 8:30

In honor of the late Jeanne Moreau, who died Monday at age 89, the new restoration of Louis Malle’s Film Noir masterpiece, with Moreau in the role that catapulted her to international stardom. Featuring a lengendary score by Miles Davis. DCP.

"Moreau’s nocturnal wanderings are made unbearably poignant by an exquisite Miles Davis jazz score that became famous in its own right… The street scenes, the bizarre, anomalous adventures that Moreau has on her nighttime quest, the anarchic kids who just pick up and go—all this looks forward to the New Wave."
– David Denby, The New Yorker

"STYLISH SCREEN POETRY! An alchemic blend of Bressonian rigor, Hitchcockian suspense, and overall proto–Nouvelle Vague cool."
– Village Voice

The Criterion Collection on Filmstruck currently featuring ten of the best Jeanne Moreau films. See HERE.


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Moreau in The Lovers

CRITERION SAYS: No one walked across a screen with more passionate conviction than Jeanne Moreau. The radiant French icon, whom Orson Welles once called "the greatest actress in the world," passed away on Monday at the age of eighty-nine, leaving behind a six-decade filmography that showcases her beguiling mix of intelligence, sensuality, and emotional fearlessness. In 1958, the world fell in love with her as the complex heroine in Louis Malle’s atmospheric thriller Elevator to the Gallows, whose most famous scene features a sultry Moreau walking wordlessly down the Champs-Élysées to the strains of a Miles Davis score. This breakthrough was followed by a remarkably fruitful period in which she appeared in over thirty films, cementing her reputation not only as one of the great leading ladies of the French New Wave but also as a favorite collaborator of international masters like Welles, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. This week, we’ve gathered ten of her most memorable performances for a mini-retrospective on the Criterion Channel on FilmStruck. For a taste of all the supplemental features available to stream alongside the films, watch the below excerpt from an interview included on our edition of Elevator to the Gallows, in which Moreau discusses the representation of women and sexuality on-screen. -Criterion, "Remembering Jeanne Moreau."

Featured: Eleavator to the Gallows, The Lovers, La Notte, Eva, Jules and Jim, Bay of Angels, The Immortal Story, La Truite, Querelle and Chimes at Midnight.

Goodbye Jeanne.
ICON.