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French postcard by St. Anne, Marseille. Photo: Sam Levin.

Legendary film star Jeanne Moreau (1928) is the personification of French womanhood and sensuality. She had a diverse career as a magnificent stage and film actress, a producer, screenwriter and film director, a successful singer with a substantial recording career, and a theatre and opera director. She combined off-kilter beauty with strong character in Nouveau Vague (New Wave) classics as Ascenseur pour l'echafaud (1958) and Les Amants (1959). Her role as the flamboyant, free-spirited Catherine with her devil-may-care sensuality, in Jules et Jim (1962) is one of the greatest performances in the history of the cinema. Throughout her long career with more than 130 films, Moreau continued to work with some of the most notable film directors.

Jeanne Moreau was born in 1928, Paris, France. Her father, Anatole-Desire Moreau, owned a restaurant in Monmartre, Paris. Her mother, Katherine (nee Buckley), was an English dancer who had come to the Folies Bergere with the Tiller Girls. She grew up living part of the time in Paris, and part of the time in Mazirat, her father s native village. During WW II Katherine and Jeanne were forced to stay in Paris; classified as alien enemies. She attended the Lycee Edgar Quinet in Paris, and began to discover her love of literature and the theatre. When her parents divorced in the late 1940’s and her mother returned to England, she remained with her father in Montmartre. Opposing her father's wishes, she decided to become an actress. She trained for the stage at the Paris Conservatoire, and made her theatrical debut in 1947 at the Avignon Festival. In 1948, when she was only 20 years old, she became the youngest full-time member in the history of the Comedie-Francaise, France's most prestigious theatrical company. Her first play was Ivan Turgenev's A Month in the Country, directed by Jean Meyer. She soon was one of the leading actresses of the troupe and was recognized as the prime stage actress of her generation. She left in 1951, finding it too restrictive and authoritarian, and joined the more experimental Theatre Nationale Populaire.She began playing small roles in films like Dernier amour/Last Love (1949, Jean Stelli) and appeared during the 1950’s in several mainstream films like the superb thriller Touchez pas au grisbi/Grisbi (1953, Jacques Becker) with Jean Gabin and the colourful drama La reine Margot/Queen Margot (1954, Jean Dreville).

Jeanne Moreau was almost 30 before her film career took off thanks to her work with first-time director Louis Malle. His murder mystery Ascenseur pour l'echafaud seemed to be in the same thriller genre as her earlier films, but after seeing the first week of dailies for Ascenseur the technicians at the film lab went to the producer and said: “You must not let Malle destroy Jeanne Moreau”. Louis Malle later explained: “She was lit only by the windows of the Champs Elysees. That had never been done. Cameramen would have forced her to wear a lot of make-up and they would put a lot of light on her, because, supposedly, her face was not photogenic”. This lack of artifice revealed Moreau's ‘essential qualities’: she could be almost ugly and then ten seconds later she would turn her face and would be incredibly attractive. But she would be herself.” Ascenseur pour l'echafaud/Elevator to the Gallows (1958, Louis Malle) was immediately followed by the controversial Les amants/The Lovers (1958, Louis Malle). Moreau starred as a provincial wife who abandons her family for a man she has just met. Her earthy, intelligent and subtle portrayal of the adulteress caused a scandal in France. The erotic scenes also caused censorship problems all over the world. The American gossip columnists tagged her as 'The New Bardot' and Moreau instantly became an international sex symbol. Malle and his star separated privately, but they would make several more films together, including the excellent Le feu follet/The Fire Within (1963).

Jeanne Moreau went on to work with many of the best known Nouveau Vague and avant-garde directors. Her most enduring role is the flamboyant and magnetic Catherine in Truffaut's explosive Jules et Jim/Jules and Jim (1962, Francois Truffaut). She co-produced Jules et Jim herself and also co-produced La baie des anges/Bay of Angels (1963, Jacques Demy) and Peau de banane/Banana Peel (1963, Marcel Ophuls). Her teaming with Brigitte Bardot in Viva Maria! (1965, Louis Malle) was one of the major media events of 1965. Thanks to the on-screen chemistry between the two top French female stars of the period, the film became an international hit. Five years after Jules et Jim, she worked again with Francois Truffaut, starring as an icy murderess in the popular Hitchcock homage La mariee etait en noir/The Bride Wore Black (1967). She also worked with such notable directors as Michelangelo Antonioni (La notte/The Night, 1961, and Beyond the

French postcard, no. 153.

French actress and film producer Daniele Delorme (1926) acted in more than seventy films and television productions since 1942. She is probably best remembered for her starring roles in the original French production of Gigi (1948) and in Minne (1950), both based on novels by Colette. In the 1970’s she played the female lead in the hit comedy Un elephant ca trompe enormement/An Elephant Can Be Extremely Deceptive (1976). She also co-produced several films directed by her husband, Yves Robert, and other directors.

Daniele Delorme was born Gabrielle Daniele Marguerite Andree Girard in 1926 in Levallois-Perret, France. Her parents were the painter and poster designer Andre Girard and his wife. She aspired a musical career and studied to be a concert pianist, but the war and the French occupation by the Nazis interfered. She fled to Cannes, where she got acting classes from Jean Wall. In 1942, En 1942, made her first stage appearances with the company of Claude Dauphin. She also made her film opposite Dauphin in La belle aventure/Twilight (1942, Marc Allegret) using her birth name, Daniele Girard. The film was banned in 1943 by the German Occupation authorities because Dauphin had by then joined the F.F.L. (French Liberation Forces). For her next film, Les petites du quai aux fleurs/The Girls of the Quai aux Fleurs (1944, Marc Allegret) Girard adopted the stage name Delorme. After the liberation she finished her studies in Paris with lessons by Rene Simon et Tania Balachova. She played opposite Michel Auclair in Alain Resnais early film, Ouvert pour cause d'inventaire/Open for Inventory Causes (1946, Alain Resnais). Sadly no copies of this film exist anymore. The following year she played a small part in Les jeux sont faits/Second Chance (1947, Jean Delannoy) starring Micheline Presle and based on an original scenario by the Jean-Paul Sartre. She also appeared in a supporting part in Maurice Tourneur’s last film, Impasse des Deux Anges/Dilemma of Two Angels (1948, Maurice Tourneur) starring Paul Meurisse and Simone Signoret. Then Delorme had her breakthrough in the title role of the original French production of Gigi (1949, Jacqueline Audry), a decade before Leslie Caron starred in the famous 1958 Hollywood adaptation of the Colette’s classic novel by Vincente Minelli. Reviewer Bensonj at IMDb writes: “This delightful film succeeds because of the talents of all who contributed to it, but mostly because of the fresh, light performance of Daniele Delorme in a role that could have been so much less. The young girl's mother and aunt expend extraordinary efforts to develop her into a high class mistress (without letting her in on the plan). This sordid idea is handled with a sure, light touch, succeeding because of the direction, writing and performances, especially that of Delorme, who is sweet but not too sweet, innocent but not too innocent, and above all bright, fresh and unaffected.”

Daniele Delorme starred opposite Louis Jouvet and Bourvil in the title role of famous French suspense director Henri-George Clouzot’s only comedy Miquette et sa mere/Miquette (1950, Henri-Georges Clouzot). The result was disappointing. JbduMonteil at IMDb writes: “There's nothing from his magic touch here. Reigning supreme over French suspense movies (Le corbeau, Les diaboliques, Le salaire de la peur), his art becomes ineffective when it comes to bittersweet albeit bland comedies like this one. The good cast (Louis ‘Quai des orfevres’ Jouvet, Bourvil and Danielle Delorme does not make up for this trite story of an ingenue and these light-hearted gallantries. Probably the only Clouzot movie which is not worth watching”. More successful was Minne, l'ingenue libertine/Minne (1950), again based on a Colette novel and directed by Jacqueline Audry, the first female director of the French sound cinema. Franck Vilard was again Delorme’s leading man. Among her next films is the experiment Traite de bave et d'eternite/Venom and Eternity (1951) in which Isidore Isou, the leader of the lettrist movement, lashes out at conventional cinema and offers a revolutionary form of film-making: through scratching and bleaching the film, through desynchronizing the soundtrack and the visual track, through deconstructing the story, he aims to renew the cinema the same way he tried to revolutionize the literary world. Delorme’s cooperation with Jacqueline Audrey and Colette continued with Olivia/The Pit of Loneliness (1953, Jacqueline Audry), which captures captures the awakening passions of an English adolescent (Marie-Claire Olivia) for her headmistress (Edwige Feuillere) at a small finishing school outside Paris. Delorme played an older student. She was also one of the many stars who appeared in Si Versailles m’etait conte/Affairs in Versailles (1954, Sacha Guitry), a history of the Versailles palace from its founding by Louis XIII to the present. In Italy she played the wife of Marcello Mast