French actress Jeanne Moreau died last Monday at 89. Born in 1928 in Paris, she set her mind upon becoming an actress when she was a teenager. She first started acting for the stage, becoming quite successful, though her cinematic appearances were instead unremarkable until director Louis Malle spotted her in Peter Brook's production of Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof".
Moreau starred in Malle's Ascenseur pour l'Echafaud (Elevator to the Gallows, 1958) and Les Amants (The Lovers, 1958), the latter won two awards at the Venice Film Festival and contributed to make Moreau successful.
Roger Vadim's Les Liasons Dangereuses (1959), Michelangelo Antonioni's La Notte (The Night, 1961) followed, but Moreau became more celebrated after François Truffaut's seminal Nouvelle Vague film Jules et Jim (1962).
She began a successful secondary career as a singer while she continued acting, starring in Joseph Losey's film Eva (1962; we extensively wrote about it in this post) and Jacques Demy's La Baie des Anges (Bay of Angels, 1963).
In the '60s Moreau met fashion designer Pierre Cardin and they had a relationship that lasted around 5 years.
She became a muse and a model for him and Cardin turned into the designer behind many of her looks and costumes.
Moreau in the meantime appeared in Orson Welles' adaptation of Kafka's The Trial (1962), in Chimes at Midnight (1965) and in The Immortal Story (1968).
English language productions such as The Yellow Rolls Royce (1964) followed, and she starred also in Luis Bunuel's Diary of a Chambermaid (1964) and opposite Brigitte Bardot in Louis Malle's Viva Maria! (1965)
In Truffaut's La Mariée était en Noir (The Bride Wore Black, 1968) Moreau looked rather tired on the screen as she had by then ended her relationship with Pierre Cardin (even though she starred with him in the 1973 film Joanna Francesa).
Moreau appeared in smaller parts throughout the '70s, and directed her first film in 1975 (film Lumière), continuing with L'Adolescente (in 1979).
The actress made a high-profile comeback in 1982, playing the role of a brothel madam in German New Wave director Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Querelle de Brest.
In the '80s she appeared in Michelle Deville's Le Paltoquet (1986), a surrealist comedy, in Michel Drach's Lola (1986), and in Jean-Pierre Mocky's Le Miraculé (1987) and filmed a cameo role in Luc Besson's thriller Nikita.
Moreau embodied Parisian elegance: on screen she didn't just wear Cardin, but she was also a friend of Gabrielle Chanel and donned her designs in Roger Vadim's Dangerous Liaisons, while she was dressed by Hubert de Givenchy in Bay of Angels.
The Yellow Rolls-Royce may not be an incredibly remarkable film, but it is interesting since it is divided in three episodes that have one thing in common, a yellow Rolls Royce. In each episode the three main actresses wear different looks created by three costume designers (while George C. Scott as Paolo Maltese was dressed by costume designer Gene Coffin, and other costumes were designed by Anthony Mendleson).
Jeanne Moreau (who at the time of shooting the film had a Rolls Royce car herself and would drive to the set each day with her own chauffeur) was dressed by Pierre Cardin, while her hairtsyle was by the Carita sisters.
In the episode Moreau plays the role of Eloise, the French wife of an English aristocrat, who, feeling unloved, is having an affair behind his back. Cardin deviced in this case a classic wardrobe revolving around lace day dresses matched with grand hats covered in ostrich feathers or sequinned evening numbers, costumes that pointed at the wealth of the character played by Moreau, but also at her stifled sexuality hidden away under overembellished looks.
In the second episode Shirley MacLaine starred as Mae, the rather lonely American girlfriend of an Italian gangster. As they visit Italy Mae briefly opens her eyes on what it means to love and be loved thanks to handsome Stefano (Alain Delon).
Mae is an explosive pin-up, sensual and naive, and on screen she wears costumes by Edith Head (her hairstyle was created by Sydney Guilaroff). Head was very clever and came up with striking looks such as a stripy black and white top that creates on the screen a wonderful architectural and visual constrast between Mae and the tower of Pisa. The outfit also hints at her modern lifestyle and at the fact that she doesn't really care about the culture and the ancient monuments surrounding her.
In the third and last episode, Ingrid Bergman played Gerda, a wealthy American widow, impeccably dressed for the day and night by Antonio Castillo and hairstyled by Giorgio.
Bergman leaves behind her elegant dresses when she ends up playing an unlikely role, helping the Yugoslav partisans on the eve of the Nazi invasion and driving a young man (Omar Sharif) to Ljubljana. Gerda adopts indeed a more casual and dynamic attire when she helps the partisans, a change of outfit that metaphorically hints at a change of heart and at a newfound freedom.
In a way the real protagonist of this film is the 1930 Rolls-Royce Phantom II that has a static role since it remains the same, despite passing hands. But fashion and film fans and design students as well should try and concentrate on the looks and study how they help shaping the personalities of the characters and how they change them forever at the end of each episode.
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