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| A smoking Seberg in Paris. Circa 1960. |
I'll be the first to admit it: sometime I am late catching on to certain films, directors and performers that should have captivated me the first time around. I may see a brief glimpse of a performer's filmography and casually dismiss them or view half a movie, with near indifference { always a bad thing when watching a movie }, until I inevitably leave the room. Or worse yet, ones I had been resisting due to lack of interest, laziness, stubborn ignorance - call it what you may - until I did indeed
see them. Such was the case with Jean Seberg.
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| What are you lookin' at? |
I had seen her in
Airport eons ago on the
ABC Sunday Night Movie back in the 70's and her found blonde beauty intriguing, though her performance and screen presence didn't bowl me over. I wondered why I hadn't seen or heard of her before. Curious, I got out one of my film reference books to look up her filmography only to find Jean didn't make a lot of films and when she did they were mostly European productions, consequently a fair portion of her output was hard to see when those films first saw the light of day; today some still are. I noticed she was in the big musical flop
Paint Your Wagon in 1969 and something called
Macho Callahan, a movie that tried to make a film star of David {
The Fugitive TV show } Jansen, that also didn't fare well with the critics and public. Seems Jean would often shuttle from the U.S. and France, the latter being the country that had embraced and recognized her talent, while the American critics found it lacking. Currently, I have seen just a smattering of her work. Some I have on disc yet have not viewed include 1966's
A Fine Madness, a quirky comedy with Sean Connery and Joanne Woodward and 1964's
Lilith directed by Robert {
The Hustler } Rossen , co-starring Warren Beatty. Her real claim to fame was to be for her appearance in Jean-Luc Godard's New Wave classic 1960's
Breathless, in which Seberg played the girlfriend of criminal Jean Paul Belmondo. Jean eventually had a sad, bitter end to her life. She died in 1979, officially a suicide, yet questions of foul play have never subsided. { For further details on her life and death, I recommend starting at her Wikipedia page }
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| Seberg, captured in the photographer's lens, 1957. Bonjour Tristesse |
Jean Seberg was a small town girl from Marshalltown, Iowa when, in 1956, she was plucked by Otto Preminger to star in his adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's
Saint Joan based on Shaw's play in which Jean, just 18, would play the title role. With a script by none other than Graham {
The Fallen Idol ;
The Third Man } Greene, Jean chosen from over 18,000 young women, was to be taken to England for filming with a stellar cast that included Richard Widmark, John Gielgud, Richard Todd and the magnificent Anton Walbrook. Quite a pedigree. The shoot was as difficult for Jean as possible. Preminger, never known on set for his soft touch, screamed, bullied and berated her constantly. During the dangerous Joan-at-the-stake moment, filmed during the last week of production, the fire got out of control. Thankfully an alert crew member reacted quickly and extinguished the flames. Jean offered to continue the filming but Preminger said no and dismissed the company for the day. For the rest of her life Seberg would have the scars on her stomach from where the fire had scorched her.
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| A frightening picture of Jean surrounded by fire, cast and crew. 1957, Saint Joan |
Preminger, who had Jean under personal contract, assigned her the role of Cecile in his adaptation of Francoise Sagan's overnight book sensation
Bonjour Tristesse { the title translates to Hello Sadness }
.Sagan's novella {she was only 19 at the time of publication}, was translated into twenty languages, was a big success, Preminger's film adaptation was not well received, with much criticism laid at Seberg's feet for her portrayal of the female protagonist. However, the role, and her presence in it, led to her being cast in Jean-Luc Godard's
Breathless, one of the first of the " La Nouvelle Vague" or"New Wave" of French filmmakers that would take America and the world by storm in the coming decade { the New Wave was to film what The Beatles were to music. }
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| Cellar-dweller Jean, from Bonjour Tristesse |
Bonjour Tristesse, excellently embodies the spirit of a teenage girl who is so threatened by the possibility of her widowed father Raymond { a happy-go-lucky David Niven } falling in love with Anne { Deborah Kerr } that she will concoct a scathing and ultimately successful plan to remove Anne from her father's life as well as Cecile's, with tragic results. The film was tepidly received when released, however, time has been kind to it and the film currently holds a 85% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 70% ranking on IMDB, with Seberg being singled out as particularly effective. Guess it goes to show how some things get better with age. Seen with fresh eyes, all the Seberg and
Saint Joan hype now forgotten,
Bonjour Tristesse appears modern and vibrant. The opening sequences are filmed in black and white, traditionally reserved for flashbacks but here giving the viewer a melancholy feeling that feeds the story perfectly. Perversely, the past flashback portions are filmed in color. Yet this makes perfect sense when taken from Cecile and Raymond's POV. The present is all going-through-the-motions and a strain, while the past, however recent, is all technicolor and wide screen, with beautiful vistas as far as the eye. In these scenes each moment is to be savored and anything is possible. Vacationing in the south of France with Raymond's girl-toy of the moment Elsa { a joyous, all but scene-stealing, vivacious turn by Mylene Demongeot}, incest between father and daughter is also implied, as Seberg and Niven seem uncommonly close.
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| Jean's delicate beauty shines best in Bonjour Tristesse |
Throughout the film Seberg brings a gamine quality to Cecile that is precious and hard to resist. Whether plotting against Deborah Kerr's Anne, flirting and losing her virginity to Geoffrey Horne or {not so ? } innocently playing Daddy's girl to Niven, Jean Seberg is never less than captivating. All my moviegoing life I had never given into the allure of the androgynous type before, mostly because androgyny for women meant trying to pass as a man a la Julie Andrews in
Victor/Victoria, Katharine Hepburn in 1935's very diverting
Sylvia Scarlett or the now-you-see-her-now-you-don't quality of Keira Knightly of the
Pirates of the Carribean movies. Seberg brought a half-way sexuality not seen since the days of Marlene Dietrich dressing in drag in
Morocco and it's ilk. The early B&W scenes show Jean/Cecile as a very sophisticated young woman -almost an Audrey Hepburn as Sabrina quality- who seems unusually detached from those around her, even Papa Niven/Raymond. As the movie unfolds the color flashback scenes show Jean/Cecile still a bit awkward, with a youthfulness that is in marked contrast to the B&W scenes. Watching this movie I could appreciate the growth of character Jean gives Cecile, never an easy task for an actor. By movie's end, Cecile is completely lost. Lacking anything better, Cecile and Raymond continue their endlessly futile lives.
Anyone wishing to view
Bonjour Tristesse can do so, the film is available on DVD and Blu-Ray, the film also shows up - uncut and letterboxed - from time to time on TCM. Highly recommended and good intro to Jean Seberg's work. I have been hooked on her ever since and plan to delve more into her life and work. I understand there are two good works about Jean I have not yet seen or read, they would be the 1995 film
From the Journals of Jean Seberg and the book
Played Out by David Richards, both are regarded as excellent sources of all things Jean.
Sources : Wikipedia page on Jean Seberg
The World and It's Double: The Life & Work of Otto Preminger by Chris Fujiwara
IMDB
Rotten Tomatoes
Turner Classic Movies
All images were pulled from the internet at random.
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