Delphine Seyrig(1932-1990)
- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Delphine was born in Beirut on the 10th April 1932 into an intellectual
Protestant family. Her Alsatian father, Henri Seyrig, was the director
of the Archaeological Institute and later France's cultural attaché in
New York during World War Two. Her Swiss mother, Hermine De Saussure,
was an adept of Rousseau's theories, a female sailing pioneer and the
niece of the universally acclaimed linguist and semiologist, Ferdinand
De Saussure. Delphine also had a brother,
Francis Seyrig, who would go on to become
a successful composer. At the end of the war, the family relocated to
Paris, although Delphine's adolescence was to be spent between her
country, Greece and New York. Never a good student, she decided to quit
school at age 17 to pursue a stage career. Her father gave her his
approval on the condition that she would have done this with
seriousness and dedication. Delphine took courses of Dramatic Arts with
some illustrious teachers such as Roger Blin,
Pierre Bertin and
Tania Balachova. Some of her fellow
students included
Jean-Louis Trintignant,
Michael Lonsdale,
Laurent Terzieff,
Bernard Fresson,
Stéphane Audran,
Daniel Emilfork and
Antoine Vitez. Her stage debut came in
1952 in a production of Louis Ducreux's
musical "L'Amour en Papier", followed by roles in "Le Jardin du Roi"
(Pierre Devaux) and in Jean Giraudoux's
"Tessa, la nymphe au Coeur fidèle". Stage legend
Jean Dasté was the first director to offer
her a couple of parts that would truly showcase her talents: Ariel in
Shakespeare's "The Tempest" and Chérubin in Beaumarchais' "The Marriage
of Figaro". He also had her take the title role in a production of
Giraudoux's "Ondine" from Odile Versois,
who had gone to England to shoot an Ealing movie. Delphine's
performance was greeted with enormous critical approval. The young
actress stayed in Europe for a couple years more, starring in a
production of Oscar Wilde's "An Ideal
Husband" in Paris, making two guest appearances in
Sherlock Holmes (1954) (which
was entirely shot in France) and trying to enter the TNP (People's
National Theatre). She actually wasn't admitted because the poetic,
melodious voice that would become her signature mark was deemed too
strange. In 1956, Delphine decided to sail for America along with her
husband Jack Youngerman (a painter she had married in Paris) and son
Duncan.
Delphine tried to enter the Actor's studio, but, just like in the case
of many of Hollywood's finest actors, she failed the admittance test.
She would still spend three years as an observer (also attending
Lee Strasberg's classes) and this minor
mishap didn't prevent her from going on with her stage career anyway,
as she did theatre work in Connecticut and appeared in an off-Broadway
production of Pirandello's "Henry IV" opposite
Burgess Meredith and
Alida Valli. Legend wants that the show was
such a flop that the producer burned down the set designs. One year
later, a single meeting would change the young actress' life forever.
Delphine was starring in a production of
Henrik Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People"
when one very day she was approached by a very enthusiast spectator. It
was the great director Alain Resnais,
fresh of the huge personal triumph he had scored with his masterwork,
Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959).
Resnais was now trying to do a movie about the pulp magazine character
Harry Dickson (an American version of Sherlock Holmes) and thought that
Delphine could have played the role of the detective's nemesis,
Georgette Cuvelier/The Spider. The project would never see the light of
the day, but this meeting would soon lead to the genesis of an immortal
cinematic partnership. Delphine's first feature film was also done the
same year: it was the manifesto of the Beat Generation, the innovative
Pull My Daisy (1959). The 30
minutes film was written and narrated by
Jack Kerouac and featured an almost
entirely non-professional cast including poets
Allen Ginsberg,
Gregory Corso and
Peter Orlovsky along with painter
Larry Rivers. Delphine played
Rivers' wife in this well-done and interesting curio, an appropriate
starting point to a very intriguing and alternative career. In 1960 she
landed the role of Cara Williams
and Harry Morgan's French neighbour
in a new sitcom,
Pete and Gladys (1960).
Although she left the show after only three episodes, it is interesting
to see her interact with the likes of Williams, Morgan and
Cesar Romero, since they seem to
belong to such different worlds. This was going to be the end of
Delphine's journey in the States, although she would keep very fond
memories of this period, stating in 1969 that she didn't consider
herself "particularly French, but American in equal measure". In 1961
she would take her native France by storm.
Resnais had now been approached by writer
Alain Robbe-Grillet- one of the main
creators of the "Nouveau Roman" genre- to direct a movie based upon his
script "L'anneé dernière". Having been awed by the recent
Vertigo (1958), Robbe-Grillet was
nourishing the hope that Kim Novak
could have possibly played the mysterious female protagonist of the
upcoming adaptation of his novel. Luckily, Resnais had different plans.
Delphine was back in France for a holiday when the director offered her
the role of the enigmatic lady nicknamed A. in his latest movie,
Last Year at Marienbad (1961).
Delphine accepted and finally took her rightful place in film history.
The plot of the movie is apparently simple: in a baroque-looking
castle, X. (Giorgio Albertazzi) tries
to convince the reclusive A. that they had an affair the previous year.
The movie has been interpreted in many different ways: a ghost story, a
sci-fi story, an example of meta-theatre, a retelling of the myth of
Orpheus and Eurydice, a retelling of Pygmalion and the Statue and
plenty more. Resnais proved to be very partial to Delphine and didn't
want her to just stand there like a motionless mannequin like the
entire supporting cast did. As X. begins to instill or awake some
feelings and memories into A., Delphine subtly hints at a change
happening inside the character, managing to alternatively project an
image of innocence and desire in a brilliant way. With her stunning,
sphinx-like beauty being particularly highlighted by raven-black hair
(Resnais wanted her to look like
Louise Brooks in
Pandora's Box (1929))
and her warm, seductive voice completing the magical charm of the
character, Delphine made A. her most iconic-looking creation and got
immediately welcomed to the club of the greatest actresses of France.
The movie itself received the Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival and
remains Resnais' masterpiece, not to mention possibly the greatest son
of the French New Wave. The gothic organ music provided by Delphine's
brother Francis also played an important role in the success of
"Marienbad".
Like he had done a couple years before with
Emmanuelle Riva, Resnais had made
another invaluable gift to French cinema and one would have expected to
see Delphine immediately racking a dozen film projects after
"Marienbad", but for the time being she preferred to return to her
first love, the theatre. She always wished to avoid the perils of
celebrity and started a very turbulent relationship with reporters. She
made this statement on the subject: "There is nothing to say about an
actor or an actress. You just need to go and see them, that's all". She
also hated the fact that, after "Marienbad", many journalists had
paraphrased many of her statements in order to get meatier articles or
entirely made up stories about her. Her next film project came in 1963
when she was reunited with Resnais for the superb
Muriel (1963).
Wearing some makeup that made her look plainer and older, Delphine gave
a first sample of her chameleon-like abilities and one of her most
spectacular performances ever as Hélène Aughain, an apparently
absent-minded, but actually very tragic antique shop dealer who tries
to reshape her squalid present in order to get even with a past made of
shame and humiliation. Providing her character with a clumsy walk and
an odd behavior that looks amusing on the surface, she delegated her
subtlest facial expressions to hint at Hélène's grief and sense of
dissatisfaction, creating a very pathetic and moving figure in the
process. This incredible achievement was awarded with a Volpi cup at
Venice Film Festival. Delphine felt very proud for herself and for
Resnais. "Muriel" turned out to be one of the director's most divisive
works, with some people considering it his finest film and others
dismissing it as a product below his standard. The movie's American
reception was unfortunately disastrous: having been released in New
York disguised as an "even more mysterious sequel" to Marienbad, it
stayed in theaters for five days only. The same year, Delphine did a TV
movie called
Le troisième concerto (1963)
which marked her first collaboration with
Marcel Cravenne. Her performance as a
pianist who's seemingly losing her mind scored big with both critics
and audience and made her much more popular with the French public than
two rather inaccessible movies such as "Marienbad" and "Muriel" could
ever do. Delphine never considered herself a star though, stating that
"a star is like a racing horse a producer can place money on" and that
she wasn't anything like that. In the following years she kept doing
remarkable stage work. 1964 saw her first collaboration with
Samuel Beckett: she invited the great
author at her place in Place Des Vosges where she rehearsed for the
role of the Lover in the first French production of "Play" along with
Michael Lonsdale as the Husband and
Eléonore Hirt as the Wife. The three of
them would then bring the show to the stage and star in a film version
in 1966. Delphine would team up with Beckett on other occasions in the
future and even more frequently with Lonsdale, her co-star in several
films and stage productions. For two consecutive times she won the
"Prix Du Syndicat de la Critique" (the most ancient and illustrious
award given by French theatre critics) for Best Actress: in 1967
(1966/1967 season) for her performances in "Next Time I'll Sing to You"
and "To Find Oneself" and in 1969 (1968/1969 season) for her work in
L'Aide-mémoire. In 1966 she did a cameo in the surreal, Monty
Pythonesque
Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (1966),
which was written and directed by
William Klein (her friend of about
20 years) and starred Sami Frey, who would be
her partner for her entire life after her separation from Youngerman.
In 1967, she had a few exquisitely acted scenes (all shot in one day
and a half) with Dirk Bogarde in
Joseph Losey's excellent
Accident (1967). Her appearance as
Bogarde's old flame seemed to echo and pay homage to "Marienbad", from
the almost illusory touch of the whole sequence to the suggestive use
of music by the great John Dankworth.
Delphine totally enjoyed to work with Losey, although their
relationship would drastically change by the time of their next
adventure together. The same year would also see the release of the
spellbinding The Music (1967), her
first filmed collaboration with
Marguerite Duras. The author had always
worshiped Delphine for her exceptional screen presence and for
possessing the aura of a classic goddess of the Golden Age of
Hollywood. She said about her: "When Delphine Seyrig moves into the
camera's field, there's a flicker of Garbo and Clara Bow and we look to
see if Cary Grant is at her side". She also loved her sexy voice,
stating that she always sounded like "she had just sucked a sweet fruit
and her mouth was still moist" and would go on to call her "the
greatest actress in France and possibly in the entire world". "La
Musica" isn't the most remembered Seyrig-Duras collaboration, but
nevertheless occupies a special place in history as the beginning of a
beautiful friendship between two artists that would become strictly
associated with each other for eternity. Delphine's performance won her
the "Étoile de Cristal" (the top film award given in France by the
"Académie Française" between 1955 and 1975 and later replaced by the
César). The actress later made a glorious Hedda Gabler for French
television, although she never much enjoyed to do work for this kind of
medium. She often complained about the poverty of means and little
professionalism of French TV and declined on several occasions the
possibility to play the role of Mme De Mortsauf in an adaptation of
Balzac's "Le lys dans la vallée". In 1968 she found one of her most
famous and celebrated roles in
François Truffaut's latest installment
of the Antoine Doinel saga,
Stolen Kisses (1968), which overall
qualifies as one of her most "traditional" career choices. Delphine's
new divine creature was Fabienne Tabard, the breathtakingly beautiful
wife of an obnoxious shoe store owner (Michael Lonsdale) and the latest
object of Antoine's attention. It is very interesting that, in the
movie, Antoine reads a copy of "Le lys dans la vallée" and compares
Fabienne to the novel's heroine. At one point, Delphine had almost
agreed to appear in the TV production on the condition that
Jean-Pierre Léaud would have played
the leading male role. She later inquired with Truffaut if he knew
about this by the time he had written the script, but he swore that it
was just a coincidence. In 1969 she declined the leading female role in
The Swimming Pool (1969) because she didn't
see anything interesting about it; this despite strong soliciting from
her close friend Jean Rochefort (whom she
nicknamed "Mon petit Jeannot"). At the time, it was considered almost
inconceivable to decline the chance of appearing in an
Alain Delon movie, but Delphine really
valued the power of saying "no" and the part went to
Romy Schneider instead. It
consequently came of great surprise when, the same year, she accepted
the role of Marie-Madeleine in William Klein's rather dated, but
somewhat charming Mr. Freedom (1968),
where she played most of her scenes semi-naked. But Delphine, as usual,
had her valid reasons to appear in this strong satire of American
Imperialism. Klein's comic strip adaptation isn't without its enjoyable
moments (like a scene where the Americans use a map to indicate the
Latin dictatorships as the civilized, democratic world), but goes on
for too long and suffers every time Delphine disappears from the
screen. Still, it remains a must for Seyrig fans, as you'd never expect
to see the most intellectual of actresses having a martial arts fight
with the gigantic John Abbey and giving a
performance of pure comic genius in the tradition of
Kay Kendall. The same year she also had a
cameo as the Prostitute in Luis Buñuel's
masterful The Milky Way (1969).
Delphine read the entire script, but eventually regretted that she
hadn't watched Alain Cuny playing his scene,
because, in that case, she would have played her own very differently
and brought the movie to full circle, something she thought she hadn't
done. She promised Buñuel to do better on the next occasion they would
have worked together.
In 1970, Delphine eventually agreed to appear in
Le lys dans la vallée (1970)
under the direction of Marcel Cravenne, although the male protagonist
wasn't played by Léaud, but by
Richard Leduc. It turned out to be one of
the best ever adaptations of a French classic and her performance was
titanic. She then played the Lilac Fairy in
Jacques Demy's lovely musical
Donkey Skin (1970), which starred a
young Catherine Deneuve in
the title role, but boosted a superlative supporting cast including
Jacques Perrin,
Micheline Presle,
Sacha Pitoëff and
Jean Marais (who sort of provided a
link with Jean Cocteau's
Beauty and the Beast (1946)).
Despite all this profusion of talent, Delphine effortlessly stole the
movie with her sassy smile, impeccable comedic timing and multi-colored
wardrobe. Although she would go on to sing on future occasions, Demy
preferred to have her musical number dubbed by
Christiane Legrand. The following
year, she won a new multitude of male admirers when she arguably played
the sexiest and most memorable female vampire in film history in the
underrated psychological horror
Daughters of Darkness (1971). The
choice of a niche actress like Delphine to play the lesbian,
Dietrichesque Countess Bathory is considered one of the main factors
that sets Harry Kümel's movie apart from the
coeval products made by the likes of
Jesús Franco or
Jean Rollin. To see another horror movie
highlighted by the presence of an unforgettable female vampire in
Seyrig style, one will have to wait for the similar casting of the
splendid Nina Hoss in the auteur effort
We Are the Night (2010).
Cravenne's Tartuffe (1971) was
a delicious "Jeu à Deux" between Delphine and the immense
Michel Bouquet. In 1972, Delphine would
add another immortal title to her filmography, as she was cast in Luis
Buñuel's surrealist masterpiece,
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972).
As the adulterous Simone Thévenot, always wearing a sanctimoniously
polite smile, she managed to give the star turn in a flawless cast:
Fernando Rey made his Rafael Acosta
deliciously nasty behind his cover of unflappability,
Paul Frankeur was hilariously obtuse as
M.Thévenot, Jean-Pierre Cassel
suitably ambiguous as M.Sénéchal,
Julien Bertheau looked charmingly
sinister as Mons.Dufour, Bulle Ogier got to
show her formidable gifts for physical comedy as Florence and the role
of Alice Sénéchal, a woman who gets annoyed at not getting coffee while
a man has just confessed to have murdered his father, proved for once
the perfect fit for the coldest and least emotional of actresses,
Stéphane Audran. The movie won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language
Film. The next year, Delphine appeared in a couple of star-studded
productions: she gave a brief, but memorably moving performance in
Fred Zinnemann's
The Day of the Jackal (1973)
as a French woman who makes the fatal mistake of falling for
Edward Fox's ruthless killer.
People's memories of the movie are often associated with her scenes.
She also appeared in Losey's disappointing
A Doll's House (1973)
opposite a badly miscast Jane Fonda as Nora.
The two actresses didn't get along with the director as they both
thought his vision of the story to be deeply misogynist. Many key
dialogues were unskillfully butchered for the adaptation, diminishing
the depth of the characters and the end result was consequently cold,
although the movie has its redeeming features. The brilliant
David Warner arguably remains the
definitive screen Torvald and Delphine is typically impeccable in the
fine role of Kristine, although one can't help but think that an
accomplished Ibsenian actress like her should have played Nora in the
first place. Although Losey wasn't in speaking terms with her any
longer by the time the shooting ended, Delphine befriended Jane as they
shared a lot of ideals and causes. Delphine Seyrig was of course a
vocal feminist, although she didn't consider herself a militant: she
actually believed that women should have already known their rights by
then and that she didn't have to cause any consciousness raising in
them. She would go on to work with more and more female directors
shortly after, considering also that she had now begun to love cinema
as much as theatre. In 1974 she appeared in a stage production of "La
Cheuvachée sur le lac de Constance" because she dearly desired to act
opposite the wonderful Jeanne Moreau, but
from that moment on, most of her energies were saved for film work. She
also grew more and more radical in picking up her projects:
Le journal d'un suicidé (1972),
Dites-le avec des fleurs (1974)
and Der letzte Schrei (1975)
certainly qualify as some of her oddest features, not to mention the
most difficult to watch.
Le cri du coeur (1974), although
flawed by an inept performance by Stéphane Audran, was slightly more
interesting: the director capitalized on Delphine's Marienbad image
once again, casting her as a mysterious woman the crippled young
protagonist gets sexually obsessed with. She made another relatively
"ordinary" pick by playing villainous in
Don Siegel's remarkable spy thriller
The Black Windmill (1974)
alongside stellar performers like
Michael Caine,
Donald Pleasence,
John Vernon and
Janet Suzman.
The following year, Delphine had two first rate roles in
Le jardin qui bascule (1975)
and in Liliane de Kermadec's
Aloïse (1975) (where her younger self was
played, quite fittingly, by an already prodigious
Isabelle Huppert). But 1975 wasn't over
for Delphine as the thespian would round off the year with two of her
most amazing achievements. The Seyrig/Duras team did finally spring
into action again with the memorable
India Song (1975), another movie which
lived and died entirely on Delphine's intense face. Laure Adler wrote
these pertinent words in her biography of Duras: "In India Song we see
nothing of Calcutta, all we see is a woman dancing in the drawing room
of the French embassy and that is enough, for Delphine fills the
screen". Coming next was what many people consider the actress' most
monumental personal achievement:
Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975).
It has become a common saying that, when you have a great interest in
an actor, you could watch him/her reading the phone book. Seyrig fans
can experiment it almost literally in
Chantal Akerman's three hour minimalist
masterpiece, which meticulously follows the daily routine of widowed
housewife Jeanne. Akerman chose Delphine "because she brought with her
all the roles of mythical woman that she played until now. The woman in
Marienbad, The woman in India Song". The movie can be considered a
filmed example of "Nouveau Roman": every moment of Jeanne's day is
presented almost real-time -from the act of peeling potatoes or washing
dishes- and every gesture has a precise meaning, like Jeanne's
incapacity of putting her life together being expressed by her
inability of making a decent coffee or put buttons back on a shirt. The
movie is also of course a feminist declaration: Jeanne regularly
resorts to prostitution to make a living, which (according to Akerman)
symbolizes that, even after the death of her husband, she's still
dependant of him and always needs to have a male figure enter her life
in his place. Her declaration of independence is expressed at the end
of the movie through the murder of one of her clients. Delphine's
approach to the role was as natural as possible and she completely
disappeared into it, giving a hypnotic performance that keeps the
viewer glued to his chair and prevents him to feel the sense of boredom
every actress short of extraordinary would have induced. It's
considered one of the greatest examples of acting ever recorded by a
camera and possibly the definitive testament to Delphine's abilities.
By now she was being referred as France's greatest actress with the
same frequency Michel Piccoli was called
the greatest actor. 1976 saw the the Césars replacing the "Étoiles de
Cristal" and Delphine was nominated for "India Song", but she lost to
Romy Schneider for her work in
That Most Important Thing: Love (1975)
by Andrzej Zulawski. The same year also
saw her getting behind the camera as she directed
Scum Manifesto (1976), a short
where she read the Valerie Solanas text
by the same name. She also starred in Duras' new version of "India
Song",
Her Venetian Name in Deserted Calcutta (1976)
(where the setting was changed to the desert) and headlined the cast of
Mario Monicelli's
Caro Michele (1976). In 1977 she
traveled to the UK to shoot an episode of
BBC Play of the Month (1965).
She stated her great admiration for British TV as opposed to French TV,
congratulating BBC for its higher production values and for its major
respect for the material it used to produce. Thinking retrospectively
about the whole thing, these sentiments seem rather misplaced, since
BBC erased tons of programs from existence in order to make room in the
storage and for other reasons, but fortunately "The Ambassadors" wasn't
part of the slaughter. Like
Henry James's story, the cast
featured some veritable cultural ambassadors as three different nations
offered one of their most talented thespians ever:
Paul Scofield represented England,
Lee Remick represented United States and
Delphine represented France as Madame De Vionnet.
Baxter, Vera Baxter (1977)
marked her final and most forgettable film collaboration with Duras. In
Faces of Love (1977), she played the
drug-addicted ex-wife of a director (a typically outstanding Jean-Louis
Trintignant) who summons her along with two other actresses to shoot a
film version of "The Three Sisters". She was again nominated for a
César, but the sentimentality factor played in favor of
Simone Signoret's performance in
Moshé Mizrahi's award-friendly
Madame Rosa (1977), which
won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film two months later. Mizrahi
later cast both actresses in his subsequent feature,
I Sent a Letter to My Love (1980), also
starring Jean Rochefort. This bittersweet feature proved much better
than the director's previous work: Signoret and Rochefort gave great
performances, but, once again, Delphine was best in show as a naive,
hare-brained woman so much different from her usual characters and gave
another confirmation of her phenomenal range. She was nominated for
another César in the supporting actress category, but lost to
Nathalie Baye for
Every Man for Himself (1980).
It's ironic that, despite being considered the nation's top actress by
so many people, Delphine never won a César. One theory is that she had
alienated many voters (particularly the older ones) by often dismissing
50's French cinema and regularly comparing French actors unfavorably to American ones, just like many New Wave authors (Jean-Luc Godard,
Claude Chabrol,
Éric Rohmer,
Jacques Rivette) had done back in the
days when they worked as critics for the "Cahiérs Du Cinema" and none
of them ever won a César either (or at least not a competitive one).
This along with having made many enemies because of her vocally
feminist attitude of course. She once stated herself that many people
in France probably disliked her because she was always saying what she
thought.
In the 80's, Delphine appeared in three stage plays that were later
filmed: La Bête dans la Jungle (a Duras adaptation of the Henry James
novel), "Letters Home" (about the poet Sylvia Plath) and "Sarah et le
cri de la langouste" (where she played the legendary Sarah Bernhardt).
She scored a particular success with the latter and won the "Prix Du
Syndicat de la Critique" for a record third time, more than any other
actress (Michel Bouquet is her male counterpart with three Best Actor
wins). In 1981, she directed a feminist documentary,
Sois belle et tais-toi! (1981),
where she interviewed many actresses, including her friend Jane Fonda,
about their role (sometimes purely decorative) in the male-dominated
film industry. In 1982 she co-founded the
Simone De Beauvoir audiovisual centre
along with Carole Roussopoulos and
Ioana Wieder. A final collaboration with
Chantal Akerman, the innovative musical
Golden Eighties (1986), allowed
her to do what she couldn't do in "Peau d'âne" and give a very moving
rendition of a beautiful song. Avant-garde German director
Ulrike Ottinger provided Delphine with
some unforgettable and appropriately weird roles in three of her
features: multiple characters in
Freak Orlando (1981), the only
female incarnation of Dr.Mabuse in
Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press (1984)
(opposite
Veruschka von Lehndorff, playing
the title role 'en travesti') and Lady Windermere in
Joan of Arc of Mongolia (1989).
She gave a final, stunning TV performance in
Une saison de feuilles (1989)
as an actress suffering from Alzheimer's disease and won a 7 d'or (a
French Emmy) for it. Her mature turn as a woman who's reaching the end
of the line looks particularly poignant now, as it has the bitter taste
of a tear-eyed farewell. A woman of extraordinary courage, Delphine had
been secretly battling lung cancer (she had always been a chain smoker)
for a few years, but, because of her supreme professionalism, she had
never neglected a work commitment because of that. Only her closest
friends knew. It became evident that there was no hope left when, in
September 1990, she had do withdraw her participation from a production
of Peter Shaffer's "Lettice and Lovage"
with Jean-Louis Barrault and
Madeleine Renaud's theatre company. One
month later she tragically lost her battle with cancer and died in
hospital, leaving an unbridgeable void in the acting world and in the
lives of many. Tributes flew in torrents, with
Jean-Claude Brialy hosting a
particularly touching memorial where Jeanne Moreau read some very
heartfelt phrases come from the pen of Marguerite Duras to honour the
memory of her muse. In the decade following Delphine's death, many of
her features unfortunately didn't prove to have much staying power
-being so unique and destined to a very selected and elitist audience-
and plenty of people began to forget about the actress. Delphine's good
friend, director Jacqueline Veuve,
thought this unacceptable and she saw to do something about it,
shooting a documentary called
Delphine Seyrig, portrait d'une comète (2000),
which premiered at Locarno film festival. This partially helped to
renew the actress' cult and to expand it to several other followers.
Similar retrospectives at the Modern Art Museum in New York and at the
La Rochelle Film Festival hopefully served the same purpose as well.
One can also hope that the French Academy (Académie des arts et
techniques du cinéma) would start to make amends for past sins by
awarding Delphine a posthumous César: since the immortal
Jean Gabin received one in 1987, who could
possibly make a likelier pair with him?
Protestant family. Her Alsatian father, Henri Seyrig, was the director
of the Archaeological Institute and later France's cultural attaché in
New York during World War Two. Her Swiss mother, Hermine De Saussure,
was an adept of Rousseau's theories, a female sailing pioneer and the
niece of the universally acclaimed linguist and semiologist, Ferdinand
De Saussure. Delphine also had a brother,
Francis Seyrig, who would go on to become
a successful composer. At the end of the war, the family relocated to
Paris, although Delphine's adolescence was to be spent between her
country, Greece and New York. Never a good student, she decided to quit
school at age 17 to pursue a stage career. Her father gave her his
approval on the condition that she would have done this with
seriousness and dedication. Delphine took courses of Dramatic Arts with
some illustrious teachers such as Roger Blin,
Pierre Bertin and
Tania Balachova. Some of her fellow
students included
Jean-Louis Trintignant,
Michael Lonsdale,
Laurent Terzieff,
Bernard Fresson,
Stéphane Audran,
Daniel Emilfork and
Antoine Vitez. Her stage debut came in
1952 in a production of Louis Ducreux's
musical "L'Amour en Papier", followed by roles in "Le Jardin du Roi"
(Pierre Devaux) and in Jean Giraudoux's
"Tessa, la nymphe au Coeur fidèle". Stage legend
Jean Dasté was the first director to offer
her a couple of parts that would truly showcase her talents: Ariel in
Shakespeare's "The Tempest" and Chérubin in Beaumarchais' "The Marriage
of Figaro". He also had her take the title role in a production of
Giraudoux's "Ondine" from Odile Versois,
who had gone to England to shoot an Ealing movie. Delphine's
performance was greeted with enormous critical approval. The young
actress stayed in Europe for a couple years more, starring in a
production of Oscar Wilde's "An Ideal
Husband" in Paris, making two guest appearances in
Sherlock Holmes (1954) (which
was entirely shot in France) and trying to enter the TNP (People's
National Theatre). She actually wasn't admitted because the poetic,
melodious voice that would become her signature mark was deemed too
strange. In 1956, Delphine decided to sail for America along with her
husband Jack Youngerman (a painter she had married in Paris) and son
Duncan.
Delphine tried to enter the Actor's studio, but, just like in the case
of many of Hollywood's finest actors, she failed the admittance test.
She would still spend three years as an observer (also attending
Lee Strasberg's classes) and this minor
mishap didn't prevent her from going on with her stage career anyway,
as she did theatre work in Connecticut and appeared in an off-Broadway
production of Pirandello's "Henry IV" opposite
Burgess Meredith and
Alida Valli. Legend wants that the show was
such a flop that the producer burned down the set designs. One year
later, a single meeting would change the young actress' life forever.
Delphine was starring in a production of
Henrik Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People"
when one very day she was approached by a very enthusiast spectator. It
was the great director Alain Resnais,
fresh of the huge personal triumph he had scored with his masterwork,
Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959).
Resnais was now trying to do a movie about the pulp magazine character
Harry Dickson (an American version of Sherlock Holmes) and thought that
Delphine could have played the role of the detective's nemesis,
Georgette Cuvelier/The Spider. The project would never see the light of
the day, but this meeting would soon lead to the genesis of an immortal
cinematic partnership. Delphine's first feature film was also done the
same year: it was the manifesto of the Beat Generation, the innovative
Pull My Daisy (1959). The 30
minutes film was written and narrated by
Jack Kerouac and featured an almost
entirely non-professional cast including poets
Allen Ginsberg,
Gregory Corso and
Peter Orlovsky along with painter
Larry Rivers. Delphine played
Rivers' wife in this well-done and interesting curio, an appropriate
starting point to a very intriguing and alternative career. In 1960 she
landed the role of Cara Williams
and Harry Morgan's French neighbour
in a new sitcom,
Pete and Gladys (1960).
Although she left the show after only three episodes, it is interesting
to see her interact with the likes of Williams, Morgan and
Cesar Romero, since they seem to
belong to such different worlds. This was going to be the end of
Delphine's journey in the States, although she would keep very fond
memories of this period, stating in 1969 that she didn't consider
herself "particularly French, but American in equal measure". In 1961
she would take her native France by storm.
Resnais had now been approached by writer
Alain Robbe-Grillet- one of the main
creators of the "Nouveau Roman" genre- to direct a movie based upon his
script "L'anneé dernière". Having been awed by the recent
Vertigo (1958), Robbe-Grillet was
nourishing the hope that Kim Novak
could have possibly played the mysterious female protagonist of the
upcoming adaptation of his novel. Luckily, Resnais had different plans.
Delphine was back in France for a holiday when the director offered her
the role of the enigmatic lady nicknamed A. in his latest movie,
Last Year at Marienbad (1961).
Delphine accepted and finally took her rightful place in film history.
The plot of the movie is apparently simple: in a baroque-looking
castle, X. (Giorgio Albertazzi) tries
to convince the reclusive A. that they had an affair the previous year.
The movie has been interpreted in many different ways: a ghost story, a
sci-fi story, an example of meta-theatre, a retelling of the myth of
Orpheus and Eurydice, a retelling of Pygmalion and the Statue and
plenty more. Resnais proved to be very partial to Delphine and didn't
want her to just stand there like a motionless mannequin like the
entire supporting cast did. As X. begins to instill or awake some
feelings and memories into A., Delphine subtly hints at a change
happening inside the character, managing to alternatively project an
image of innocence and desire in a brilliant way. With her stunning,
sphinx-like beauty being particularly highlighted by raven-black hair
(Resnais wanted her to look like
Louise Brooks in
Pandora's Box (1929))
and her warm, seductive voice completing the magical charm of the
character, Delphine made A. her most iconic-looking creation and got
immediately welcomed to the club of the greatest actresses of France.
The movie itself received the Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival and
remains Resnais' masterpiece, not to mention possibly the greatest son
of the French New Wave. The gothic organ music provided by Delphine's
brother Francis also played an important role in the success of
"Marienbad".
Like he had done a couple years before with
Emmanuelle Riva, Resnais had made
another invaluable gift to French cinema and one would have expected to
see Delphine immediately racking a dozen film projects after
"Marienbad", but for the time being she preferred to return to her
first love, the theatre. She always wished to avoid the perils of
celebrity and started a very turbulent relationship with reporters. She
made this statement on the subject: "There is nothing to say about an
actor or an actress. You just need to go and see them, that's all". She
also hated the fact that, after "Marienbad", many journalists had
paraphrased many of her statements in order to get meatier articles or
entirely made up stories about her. Her next film project came in 1963
when she was reunited with Resnais for the superb
Muriel (1963).
Wearing some makeup that made her look plainer and older, Delphine gave
a first sample of her chameleon-like abilities and one of her most
spectacular performances ever as Hélène Aughain, an apparently
absent-minded, but actually very tragic antique shop dealer who tries
to reshape her squalid present in order to get even with a past made of
shame and humiliation. Providing her character with a clumsy walk and
an odd behavior that looks amusing on the surface, she delegated her
subtlest facial expressions to hint at Hélène's grief and sense of
dissatisfaction, creating a very pathetic and moving figure in the
process. This incredible achievement was awarded with a Volpi cup at
Venice Film Festival. Delphine felt very proud for herself and for
Resnais. "Muriel" turned out to be one of the director's most divisive
works, with some people considering it his finest film and others
dismissing it as a product below his standard. The movie's American
reception was unfortunately disastrous: having been released in New
York disguised as an "even more mysterious sequel" to Marienbad, it
stayed in theaters for five days only. The same year, Delphine did a TV
movie called
Le troisième concerto (1963)
which marked her first collaboration with
Marcel Cravenne. Her performance as a
pianist who's seemingly losing her mind scored big with both critics
and audience and made her much more popular with the French public than
two rather inaccessible movies such as "Marienbad" and "Muriel" could
ever do. Delphine never considered herself a star though, stating that
"a star is like a racing horse a producer can place money on" and that
she wasn't anything like that. In the following years she kept doing
remarkable stage work. 1964 saw her first collaboration with
Samuel Beckett: she invited the great
author at her place in Place Des Vosges where she rehearsed for the
role of the Lover in the first French production of "Play" along with
Michael Lonsdale as the Husband and
Eléonore Hirt as the Wife. The three of
them would then bring the show to the stage and star in a film version
in 1966. Delphine would team up with Beckett on other occasions in the
future and even more frequently with Lonsdale, her co-star in several
films and stage productions. For two consecutive times she won the
"Prix Du Syndicat de la Critique" (the most ancient and illustrious
award given by French theatre critics) for Best Actress: in 1967
(1966/1967 season) for her performances in "Next Time I'll Sing to You"
and "To Find Oneself" and in 1969 (1968/1969 season) for her work in
L'Aide-mémoire. In 1966 she did a cameo in the surreal, Monty
Pythonesque
Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (1966),
which was written and directed by
William Klein (her friend of about
20 years) and starred Sami Frey, who would be
her partner for her entire life after her separation from Youngerman.
In 1967, she had a few exquisitely acted scenes (all shot in one day
and a half) with Dirk Bogarde in
Joseph Losey's excellent
Accident (1967). Her appearance as
Bogarde's old flame seemed to echo and pay homage to "Marienbad", from
the almost illusory touch of the whole sequence to the suggestive use
of music by the great John Dankworth.
Delphine totally enjoyed to work with Losey, although their
relationship would drastically change by the time of their next
adventure together. The same year would also see the release of the
spellbinding The Music (1967), her
first filmed collaboration with
Marguerite Duras. The author had always
worshiped Delphine for her exceptional screen presence and for
possessing the aura of a classic goddess of the Golden Age of
Hollywood. She said about her: "When Delphine Seyrig moves into the
camera's field, there's a flicker of Garbo and Clara Bow and we look to
see if Cary Grant is at her side". She also loved her sexy voice,
stating that she always sounded like "she had just sucked a sweet fruit
and her mouth was still moist" and would go on to call her "the
greatest actress in France and possibly in the entire world". "La
Musica" isn't the most remembered Seyrig-Duras collaboration, but
nevertheless occupies a special place in history as the beginning of a
beautiful friendship between two artists that would become strictly
associated with each other for eternity. Delphine's performance won her
the "Étoile de Cristal" (the top film award given in France by the
"Académie Française" between 1955 and 1975 and later replaced by the
César). The actress later made a glorious Hedda Gabler for French
television, although she never much enjoyed to do work for this kind of
medium. She often complained about the poverty of means and little
professionalism of French TV and declined on several occasions the
possibility to play the role of Mme De Mortsauf in an adaptation of
Balzac's "Le lys dans la vallée". In 1968 she found one of her most
famous and celebrated roles in
François Truffaut's latest installment
of the Antoine Doinel saga,
Stolen Kisses (1968), which overall
qualifies as one of her most "traditional" career choices. Delphine's
new divine creature was Fabienne Tabard, the breathtakingly beautiful
wife of an obnoxious shoe store owner (Michael Lonsdale) and the latest
object of Antoine's attention. It is very interesting that, in the
movie, Antoine reads a copy of "Le lys dans la vallée" and compares
Fabienne to the novel's heroine. At one point, Delphine had almost
agreed to appear in the TV production on the condition that
Jean-Pierre Léaud would have played
the leading male role. She later inquired with Truffaut if he knew
about this by the time he had written the script, but he swore that it
was just a coincidence. In 1969 she declined the leading female role in
The Swimming Pool (1969) because she didn't
see anything interesting about it; this despite strong soliciting from
her close friend Jean Rochefort (whom she
nicknamed "Mon petit Jeannot"). At the time, it was considered almost
inconceivable to decline the chance of appearing in an
Alain Delon movie, but Delphine really
valued the power of saying "no" and the part went to
Romy Schneider instead. It
consequently came of great surprise when, the same year, she accepted
the role of Marie-Madeleine in William Klein's rather dated, but
somewhat charming Mr. Freedom (1968),
where she played most of her scenes semi-naked. But Delphine, as usual,
had her valid reasons to appear in this strong satire of American
Imperialism. Klein's comic strip adaptation isn't without its enjoyable
moments (like a scene where the Americans use a map to indicate the
Latin dictatorships as the civilized, democratic world), but goes on
for too long and suffers every time Delphine disappears from the
screen. Still, it remains a must for Seyrig fans, as you'd never expect
to see the most intellectual of actresses having a martial arts fight
with the gigantic John Abbey and giving a
performance of pure comic genius in the tradition of
Kay Kendall. The same year she also had a
cameo as the Prostitute in Luis Buñuel's
masterful The Milky Way (1969).
Delphine read the entire script, but eventually regretted that she
hadn't watched Alain Cuny playing his scene,
because, in that case, she would have played her own very differently
and brought the movie to full circle, something she thought she hadn't
done. She promised Buñuel to do better on the next occasion they would
have worked together.
In 1970, Delphine eventually agreed to appear in
Le lys dans la vallée (1970)
under the direction of Marcel Cravenne, although the male protagonist
wasn't played by Léaud, but by
Richard Leduc. It turned out to be one of
the best ever adaptations of a French classic and her performance was
titanic. She then played the Lilac Fairy in
Jacques Demy's lovely musical
Donkey Skin (1970), which starred a
young Catherine Deneuve in
the title role, but boosted a superlative supporting cast including
Jacques Perrin,
Micheline Presle,
Sacha Pitoëff and
Jean Marais (who sort of provided a
link with Jean Cocteau's
Beauty and the Beast (1946)).
Despite all this profusion of talent, Delphine effortlessly stole the
movie with her sassy smile, impeccable comedic timing and multi-colored
wardrobe. Although she would go on to sing on future occasions, Demy
preferred to have her musical number dubbed by
Christiane Legrand. The following
year, she won a new multitude of male admirers when she arguably played
the sexiest and most memorable female vampire in film history in the
underrated psychological horror
Daughters of Darkness (1971). The
choice of a niche actress like Delphine to play the lesbian,
Dietrichesque Countess Bathory is considered one of the main factors
that sets Harry Kümel's movie apart from the
coeval products made by the likes of
Jesús Franco or
Jean Rollin. To see another horror movie
highlighted by the presence of an unforgettable female vampire in
Seyrig style, one will have to wait for the similar casting of the
splendid Nina Hoss in the auteur effort
We Are the Night (2010).
Cravenne's Tartuffe (1971) was
a delicious "Jeu à Deux" between Delphine and the immense
Michel Bouquet. In 1972, Delphine would
add another immortal title to her filmography, as she was cast in Luis
Buñuel's surrealist masterpiece,
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972).
As the adulterous Simone Thévenot, always wearing a sanctimoniously
polite smile, she managed to give the star turn in a flawless cast:
Fernando Rey made his Rafael Acosta
deliciously nasty behind his cover of unflappability,
Paul Frankeur was hilariously obtuse as
M.Thévenot, Jean-Pierre Cassel
suitably ambiguous as M.Sénéchal,
Julien Bertheau looked charmingly
sinister as Mons.Dufour, Bulle Ogier got to
show her formidable gifts for physical comedy as Florence and the role
of Alice Sénéchal, a woman who gets annoyed at not getting coffee while
a man has just confessed to have murdered his father, proved for once
the perfect fit for the coldest and least emotional of actresses,
Stéphane Audran. The movie won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language
Film. The next year, Delphine appeared in a couple of star-studded
productions: she gave a brief, but memorably moving performance in
Fred Zinnemann's
The Day of the Jackal (1973)
as a French woman who makes the fatal mistake of falling for
Edward Fox's ruthless killer.
People's memories of the movie are often associated with her scenes.
She also appeared in Losey's disappointing
A Doll's House (1973)
opposite a badly miscast Jane Fonda as Nora.
The two actresses didn't get along with the director as they both
thought his vision of the story to be deeply misogynist. Many key
dialogues were unskillfully butchered for the adaptation, diminishing
the depth of the characters and the end result was consequently cold,
although the movie has its redeeming features. The brilliant
David Warner arguably remains the
definitive screen Torvald and Delphine is typically impeccable in the
fine role of Kristine, although one can't help but think that an
accomplished Ibsenian actress like her should have played Nora in the
first place. Although Losey wasn't in speaking terms with her any
longer by the time the shooting ended, Delphine befriended Jane as they
shared a lot of ideals and causes. Delphine Seyrig was of course a
vocal feminist, although she didn't consider herself a militant: she
actually believed that women should have already known their rights by
then and that she didn't have to cause any consciousness raising in
them. She would go on to work with more and more female directors
shortly after, considering also that she had now begun to love cinema
as much as theatre. In 1974 she appeared in a stage production of "La
Cheuvachée sur le lac de Constance" because she dearly desired to act
opposite the wonderful Jeanne Moreau, but
from that moment on, most of her energies were saved for film work. She
also grew more and more radical in picking up her projects:
Le journal d'un suicidé (1972),
Dites-le avec des fleurs (1974)
and Der letzte Schrei (1975)
certainly qualify as some of her oddest features, not to mention the
most difficult to watch.
Le cri du coeur (1974), although
flawed by an inept performance by Stéphane Audran, was slightly more
interesting: the director capitalized on Delphine's Marienbad image
once again, casting her as a mysterious woman the crippled young
protagonist gets sexually obsessed with. She made another relatively
"ordinary" pick by playing villainous in
Don Siegel's remarkable spy thriller
The Black Windmill (1974)
alongside stellar performers like
Michael Caine,
Donald Pleasence,
John Vernon and
Janet Suzman.
The following year, Delphine had two first rate roles in
Le jardin qui bascule (1975)
and in Liliane de Kermadec's
Aloïse (1975) (where her younger self was
played, quite fittingly, by an already prodigious
Isabelle Huppert). But 1975 wasn't over
for Delphine as the thespian would round off the year with two of her
most amazing achievements. The Seyrig/Duras team did finally spring
into action again with the memorable
India Song (1975), another movie which
lived and died entirely on Delphine's intense face. Laure Adler wrote
these pertinent words in her biography of Duras: "In India Song we see
nothing of Calcutta, all we see is a woman dancing in the drawing room
of the French embassy and that is enough, for Delphine fills the
screen". Coming next was what many people consider the actress' most
monumental personal achievement:
Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975).
It has become a common saying that, when you have a great interest in
an actor, you could watch him/her reading the phone book. Seyrig fans
can experiment it almost literally in
Chantal Akerman's three hour minimalist
masterpiece, which meticulously follows the daily routine of widowed
housewife Jeanne. Akerman chose Delphine "because she brought with her
all the roles of mythical woman that she played until now. The woman in
Marienbad, The woman in India Song". The movie can be considered a
filmed example of "Nouveau Roman": every moment of Jeanne's day is
presented almost real-time -from the act of peeling potatoes or washing
dishes- and every gesture has a precise meaning, like Jeanne's
incapacity of putting her life together being expressed by her
inability of making a decent coffee or put buttons back on a shirt. The
movie is also of course a feminist declaration: Jeanne regularly
resorts to prostitution to make a living, which (according to Akerman)
symbolizes that, even after the death of her husband, she's still
dependant of him and always needs to have a male figure enter her life
in his place. Her declaration of independence is expressed at the end
of the movie through the murder of one of her clients. Delphine's
approach to the role was as natural as possible and she completely
disappeared into it, giving a hypnotic performance that keeps the
viewer glued to his chair and prevents him to feel the sense of boredom
every actress short of extraordinary would have induced. It's
considered one of the greatest examples of acting ever recorded by a
camera and possibly the definitive testament to Delphine's abilities.
By now she was being referred as France's greatest actress with the
same frequency Michel Piccoli was called
the greatest actor. 1976 saw the the Césars replacing the "Étoiles de
Cristal" and Delphine was nominated for "India Song", but she lost to
Romy Schneider for her work in
That Most Important Thing: Love (1975)
by Andrzej Zulawski. The same year also
saw her getting behind the camera as she directed
Scum Manifesto (1976), a short
where she read the Valerie Solanas text
by the same name. She also starred in Duras' new version of "India
Song",
Her Venetian Name in Deserted Calcutta (1976)
(where the setting was changed to the desert) and headlined the cast of
Mario Monicelli's
Caro Michele (1976). In 1977 she
traveled to the UK to shoot an episode of
BBC Play of the Month (1965).
She stated her great admiration for British TV as opposed to French TV,
congratulating BBC for its higher production values and for its major
respect for the material it used to produce. Thinking retrospectively
about the whole thing, these sentiments seem rather misplaced, since
BBC erased tons of programs from existence in order to make room in the
storage and for other reasons, but fortunately "The Ambassadors" wasn't
part of the slaughter. Like
Henry James's story, the cast
featured some veritable cultural ambassadors as three different nations
offered one of their most talented thespians ever:
Paul Scofield represented England,
Lee Remick represented United States and
Delphine represented France as Madame De Vionnet.
Baxter, Vera Baxter (1977)
marked her final and most forgettable film collaboration with Duras. In
Faces of Love (1977), she played the
drug-addicted ex-wife of a director (a typically outstanding Jean-Louis
Trintignant) who summons her along with two other actresses to shoot a
film version of "The Three Sisters". She was again nominated for a
César, but the sentimentality factor played in favor of
Simone Signoret's performance in
Moshé Mizrahi's award-friendly
Madame Rosa (1977), which
won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film two months later. Mizrahi
later cast both actresses in his subsequent feature,
I Sent a Letter to My Love (1980), also
starring Jean Rochefort. This bittersweet feature proved much better
than the director's previous work: Signoret and Rochefort gave great
performances, but, once again, Delphine was best in show as a naive,
hare-brained woman so much different from her usual characters and gave
another confirmation of her phenomenal range. She was nominated for
another César in the supporting actress category, but lost to
Nathalie Baye for
Every Man for Himself (1980).
It's ironic that, despite being considered the nation's top actress by
so many people, Delphine never won a César. One theory is that she had
alienated many voters (particularly the older ones) by often dismissing
50's French cinema and regularly comparing French actors unfavorably to American ones, just like many New Wave authors (Jean-Luc Godard,
Claude Chabrol,
Éric Rohmer,
Jacques Rivette) had done back in the
days when they worked as critics for the "Cahiérs Du Cinema" and none
of them ever won a César either (or at least not a competitive one).
This along with having made many enemies because of her vocally
feminist attitude of course. She once stated herself that many people
in France probably disliked her because she was always saying what she
thought.
In the 80's, Delphine appeared in three stage plays that were later
filmed: La Bête dans la Jungle (a Duras adaptation of the Henry James
novel), "Letters Home" (about the poet Sylvia Plath) and "Sarah et le
cri de la langouste" (where she played the legendary Sarah Bernhardt).
She scored a particular success with the latter and won the "Prix Du
Syndicat de la Critique" for a record third time, more than any other
actress (Michel Bouquet is her male counterpart with three Best Actor
wins). In 1981, she directed a feminist documentary,
Sois belle et tais-toi! (1981),
where she interviewed many actresses, including her friend Jane Fonda,
about their role (sometimes purely decorative) in the male-dominated
film industry. In 1982 she co-founded the
Simone De Beauvoir audiovisual centre
along with Carole Roussopoulos and
Ioana Wieder. A final collaboration with
Chantal Akerman, the innovative musical
Golden Eighties (1986), allowed
her to do what she couldn't do in "Peau d'âne" and give a very moving
rendition of a beautiful song. Avant-garde German director
Ulrike Ottinger provided Delphine with
some unforgettable and appropriately weird roles in three of her
features: multiple characters in
Freak Orlando (1981), the only
female incarnation of Dr.Mabuse in
Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press (1984)
(opposite
Veruschka von Lehndorff, playing
the title role 'en travesti') and Lady Windermere in
Joan of Arc of Mongolia (1989).
She gave a final, stunning TV performance in
Une saison de feuilles (1989)
as an actress suffering from Alzheimer's disease and won a 7 d'or (a
French Emmy) for it. Her mature turn as a woman who's reaching the end
of the line looks particularly poignant now, as it has the bitter taste
of a tear-eyed farewell. A woman of extraordinary courage, Delphine had
been secretly battling lung cancer (she had always been a chain smoker)
for a few years, but, because of her supreme professionalism, she had
never neglected a work commitment because of that. Only her closest
friends knew. It became evident that there was no hope left when, in
September 1990, she had do withdraw her participation from a production
of Peter Shaffer's "Lettice and Lovage"
with Jean-Louis Barrault and
Madeleine Renaud's theatre company. One
month later she tragically lost her battle with cancer and died in
hospital, leaving an unbridgeable void in the acting world and in the
lives of many. Tributes flew in torrents, with
Jean-Claude Brialy hosting a
particularly touching memorial where Jeanne Moreau read some very
heartfelt phrases come from the pen of Marguerite Duras to honour the
memory of her muse. In the decade following Delphine's death, many of
her features unfortunately didn't prove to have much staying power
-being so unique and destined to a very selected and elitist audience-
and plenty of people began to forget about the actress. Delphine's good
friend, director Jacqueline Veuve,
thought this unacceptable and she saw to do something about it,
shooting a documentary called
Delphine Seyrig, portrait d'une comète (2000),
which premiered at Locarno film festival. This partially helped to
renew the actress' cult and to expand it to several other followers.
Similar retrospectives at the Modern Art Museum in New York and at the
La Rochelle Film Festival hopefully served the same purpose as well.
One can also hope that the French Academy (Académie des arts et
techniques du cinéma) would start to make amends for past sins by
awarding Delphine a posthumous César: since the immortal
Jean Gabin received one in 1987, who could
possibly make a likelier pair with him?