One could often run across Arletty in Auteuil,
on the arm of a lady who helped her, because she was after all ...
very handicapped by her almost complete blindness
which she managed very well to dissimulate.
One didn't realize that Arletty was blind.
So I saw her walk by, she was always very elegant [Frédéric Mitterand]
with her white hair.
She looked like an old lady, but at the same time she was perfectly recognizable.
She was ... how
how can I say, she was at the same time an old lady and a young girl
Stop tickling me.
Enough!
How is the weather today?
ARLETTY "Lady Paname"
Old lady, young girl, but always as coquettish,
Arletty didn't bother about age and wrinkles.
"Wrinkles? I've got only one, and I'm sitting on it."
Scene 62
Roll'em
Before she became Arletty, her name was Léonie.
She was also called "Lady Paname", the queen of Courbevoie.
Or the "atmosphere gal".
But the name she preferred was Garance.
Her character in "The Children of Paradise". ,
written for her by the great poet Jacques Prévert.
One speaks often of beauty, [Jacques Prévert]
but hers was different.
One can say she had ...
a chaste erotism.
When we were filming,
with her, she was,
half-nude,
wandering around the studio.
Nobody felt like making
fun of her
with a ribald joke.
She was...
She was beautiful.
She was...
Paris from the inside.
Paris from the outside.
Paradis - First take.
- Roll 'em - Don't misunderstand me, Miss.
I haven't told you any lie. I just offered you a shelter.
A shelter?
In 1945, with the Liberation,
"The Children of Paradise" is released in the Paris cinemas, delights the London public and triumphs in New York.
At all the openings the entire cast savours this immense success.
But there's one member missing at the curtain call: Arletty.
It's an extraordinary paradox that the film which is emblematic, of a certain artistic resistance, cultural, intellectual, French,
was personified by an actress
who was herself persecuted for complacency
with the occupying forces.
# It's the romance of Paris, at the corner of the streets of Fleury
# everybody gets captivated, that's the romance of Paris
In those troubled times the justice of the committees of purification oscillates between the random and the arbitrary.
For having performed at the German Embassy during the occupation,
Charles Trenet gets a professional ban of 10 months.
For the same offence Edith Piaf all gets away with no punishment.
As to Arletty, she's arrested on 20th October 1944.
She was unjustly imprisoned in Drancy. [Jean-Claude Brialy]
When the warden brought in her soup in the morning,
he asked her "So, Bathiat, how're you doing this morning?"
She answered:
"Not very resistant."
August 1944
And when General De Gaulle arrives in Paris as liberator,
her warden, still curious, asks her:
- Well, Arletty, Gaulliste? - No, Gauloise!
Who's hiding behind this façade of jokes?
And how could such a star find herself in such a situation?
One thing is important: she's after all part of the generation who knew the First World War.
And I think one always finds it hard to ...
to pass judgment on the people who stayed in Paris during WW-II,
without considering what the people remembered who'd witnessed WW-I.
Arletty belonged to that people's class
who provided the cannon fodder for WW-I
and who ...
had been literally branded with red-hot irons
by this experience,
and who, more than anything else,
wanted no more war.
August 1914
# You'll see it again, Paname
# Paname, Paname
# the grand boulevards, Nôtre Dame, the little girls,
# the bistro where you had your apéritif after work, how long ago that was.
# but you'll see it again
# in Paname
It always moves me, that song,
that period.
You once knew someone who didn't see Paname again.
Yes I did.
It's true.
How am I doing?
- How am I doing? - Very good.
It doesn't look too ...
emotional? - No, it's fine. - Arletty/15-1
So, who are you, Mme Arletty?
Lady in white or woman in black?
Who are you, Léonie Bathiat, alias Arletty,
whose first screams are heard on 15th May 1898 in Courbevoie.
Between your father, a mechanic and free-thinker,
and your mother, a laundress with a biting sense of humour,
you grow up like a weed among the cobblestones of Courbevoie.
I remember a pregnant woman who often visited us, her name was Justine
So I watched her becoming more and more swollen up, she was pregnant,
So I dared to ask my parents, when are you going to deflate her again?
My parents allowed me to talk like that.
And I don't think it's a bad thing to allow kids to talk like that.
A kind of freedom of speech which isn't bad.
Don't you agree?
In grammar school you devour La Fontaine's fables.
But the school you prefer, it's the school of the street
where you learn to boast and the slang of the suburbs.
Expert with the hoop, you adore to measure yourself against the boys on the ramparts.
Too much a tomboy, says her mother who wants to send her to a boarding school.
No way I'll join that scum, replies Léonie.
Sickened, her mother decides to inscribe her in the Collet Institute in Neuilly
which she leaves in tears because of the prohibitive fees.
Léonie won't go to school in Neuilly which she calls a necropolis for the rich.
In fact, I come from
from the people, and I say it proudly, that I come from the people
This is an honour for me, you see.
So when people say "her father was noting but a worker" etc., what does that mean? It's vilifying the workers.
It's disgusting.
I'm very proud to come from the working class.
It's easy to visit the place I was born, at 33 rue de Paris.
And the end of the hall, in a courtyard.
You can still see the house, they want to demolish it.
Well, I was happy in that place.
So, all those stories "mother was a lace-maker, father a mechanic, etc.", they mean nothing, they're an insult for the people.
With the inundations of 1910 Courbevoie transforms itself into an immense lake,
to the delight of Léonie who takes a barge to go to school.
Since the Bathiat family lives on the ground floor, everybody moves to a hotel, where Léonie enjoys the songs of the concièrge.
# nightingale of the grove
# who from night till morning
# is chirping under the shadowy leaves
# a tender and sweet refrain
On Sunday, 28th June 1914, Léonie turns 16.
She puts on her prettiest dress and goes toad-hopping to the fair of St. Cloud,
inaugurated, on a donkey's back, by the Mayor himself.
At the head of the procession going to the ball the fanfare of Courbevoie opens the march,
followed by the crowds who on this Sunday afternoon want to forget the threats of war looming over Europe.
Is Leonie sitting among those young girls?
Or is she already in the arms of a good-looking young man on the dancefloor?
Anyway, on that day, a handsome kid from La Défense attracts her attention.
The talkative Léonie is at a loss for words, fascinated by the eyes of her suitor.
The accordion makes their heart-beats dance
to the whirlwind rhythm of the swaying waltz that intoxicates them.
The young lovers leave the crowd for the waste grounds where they try out their first kiss.
Followed by a few weeks when the young lovers think they're alone on earth.
But on 3rd August 1914, war is declared and her lover,
whose nickname evokes more peace than war for her, is drafted.
He was my first love.
That's it ... Yes, his eyes...
They were of an extraordinary blue
That's right.
And that's the reason why
they called him "Sky", I wasn't the only one.
And that was right before the war?
He died on the first day of the war.
The first day of the war.
# you'll see it again, Paname
# Paname, Paname
After Sky's death, Léonie was never the same again.
She took an irrevocable decision.
She made an oath never to get married, so she'd never become a war widow.
And for her, it was out of the question to have a child, only to make a soldier out of him.
Much later, when being asked why she didn't have any children,
she often cited Voltaire:
a newly born is always a future death.
A few months after Sky's death her father is killed, crushed by a tram.
Then everything changed, we were
chased from our home,
avenue de la Défense, inside the factory.
And then, my mother and I,
my mother first, we started working in the munitions factory of Darrac.
- You rotated shells? - Yes. At the Darrac factory
First, my mother started, then I joined her.
The women at the factory, the men at the front, with some exceptions,
like her great friend Michel Simon, a Swiss citizen.
Arletty is a self-made woman. She worked in a factory, like I did.
We both knew work in the factory, and the hardship on the streets of Paris.
Some difficult debuts.
You don't fill your belly each day.
After having rotated shells Arletty is hired as a typist.
Her section boss made a comment she didn't like. She slams the door in his face.
Léonie Bathiat won't have the career of Odette Piau, the champion of the great international contest of typewriting.
I was always fond of adventure, looking out for an adventure.
I watched the workers when I was young, there was always one lagging behind,
who didn't want to go in at the siren's call, he didn't march with them, he turned round,
and I said to myself, that one surely will run away, he'll elope.
And I myself was such an eloper.
I was the one who runs off, all my life.
To hell with typing!
At 19 she escapes from Courbevoie, to Paris,
in the arms of a man of the world whom she calls Edelweiss.
Lunches at Bagatelle, tea dances in the Bois de Boulogne,
Léonie discovers luxury.
And lust.
I get into this bed as a virgin,
and I'll leave it as a woman.
With Edelweiss she makes her first steps into Parisian society.
Literally subjugated by the esprit of Sacha Guitry, about to divorce his first wife.
She was yawning* in my face [baillait]
I said to her "bye bye"
When Edelweiss tells her about it,
Léonie burst out laughing and rushes to attend Guitry's 2nd wedding.
"Monsieur Moi", as he's called, marries Yvonne Printemps,
being observed by Georges Feydeau and Sarah Bernhardt who hides her wooden leg under a long fur coat.
Even if Léonie appreciates this life of luxury, she feels imprisoned in a golden cage,
and she breaks off with Edelweiss.
Her Pygmalion who'd hoped to turn her into a woman of the world, is in tears.
His bird Léonie has flown off to the Madeleine
where the great couturier Paul Poiret, seduced by her slim figure, has hired her as a model.
# they find me a more than a pretty face, at least they tell me so, and this compliment delights me
# it seems I have a slight accent, nice, disturbing and worth a caressing look
# I seem to see life in pink even though I dream of other things
With her 1.70 m, 47 kg and her wasp waist, Léonie makes one fashion show after another.
Pardon, from now on she calls herself Arletty.
Léonie is too middle class, whereas Arletty sounds "English".
# loved one, I really want him to come to me
Not really happy in this milieu, she finds solace in compulsive shopping.
Within a few weeks she buys herself 30 pairs of shoes, only listening to the barometer of her caprices.
- Do I have enough rouge? - Yes. - Do I have enough powder? - Yes.
- I feel like wearing my pyjama dress, give it to me. - Yes.
Curious about Paris-by-Night, she forages all over the place.
Multiplying liaisons and experiences, she drowns herself in artificial paradises.
Coco, ether, opium, heroin.
After 6 months she looks at herself in the mirror:
"I looked 10 years older, but hadn't grown in intelligence. I understood."
Overnight she stopped everything without exactly knowing where her life was going.
I did nothing at all. I was unemployed.
And then I met on the boulevards Paul Guillaume
who'd been following me like a young walker, if you like.
In those days, men used to follow women a lot, you know.
He told me I should act on the stage
But most of all, he told me I should be a painter's model.
That's it, I should pose, my silhouette, I was slim and tall ...
I just laughed, told him I wasn't interested at all.
He said I should ... I should be a model.
I said no to everything.
No to the music-halls, I said no to everything.
Then he wanted to see if I had a bit of a voice.
I said, that's it ...
Since I didn't want to do it, one isn't afraid to do it.
I was indifferent to his offer.
You know, my singing is only so so.
I'd never sung in public. He said it made no difference, he was very nice. So I get up on the stage, there was the pianist,
an eccentric but
very nice guy. He plays a few notes, asks what I want to sing. Oh well, I've no idea ...
anything ...
So I tell him:
"It's a long way"
That's it! he says.
So I go "It's a long way to Tipperary, it's a long way ...
He stopped me at once and said, you're hired.
Among all the ingénues who try to rise the success ladder, the public appreciates the cheeky humour and the temperament of the young Arletty.
Any news?
- You're expecting someone. - I am.
Someone of quality?
I don't know. If he doesn't have quality, I'll get another.
Another one? Do you have several suitors?
A whole lot. All of Paris. I only have to pick and chose.
Really?
The Tout-Paris attends the Follies and appreciates her glibness.
Even the fat Tranème, the petulant specialist of the Venitian operetta.
# I'm disguising myself in a well-known costume
# I'm not just anybody, even if people say so
And to the public, she symbolizes the liberation of the woman,
an emancipated woman who acts like she talks, and who talks like she acts.
My heart goes on a mop.
Maybe. This doesn't keep me from having the soul of an ingénue.
Troubled, the pen of great writer, Colette, burns with passion :
"Broad shoulders, narrow hips,
this cold and fanciful artist does not lend herself to a ploy that she did not invent herself.
Unexpected burst of an indolent body,
Arletty is a well-known actress.
She has yet to become a legend."
A woman of legend? Her great friend Michel Simon doesn't deny it.
# she's a smashing little woman
# with a phenomenal grace
# supple as a reed, light as a bird
# albeit a bit shy and lacking in appeal
# she's very nice and doesn't displease me
# among all those who are there, there aren't two like her
Arletty and Michel Simon, a theatrical friendship which has never gone out.
Arletty's instinct was unique.
She was nobody's pupil, she didn't imitate anybody.
She creates something new each time, and each time it was admirable.
There was as much fantasy in her private life
as in her professional life.
True, Arletty doesn't like to close her door to her numerous admirers
who are languishing in the antechamber of her boudoir.
- A glass of Porto? - With pleasure.
How amusing it is to watch your hairstyle, your gestures, your voice.
You mean I'm a freak?
But you're very good-looking.
Before going to sleep, when I look at myself in the mirror, I feel amazed myself.
What's your profession?
I'm an artist.
Arletty was very mysterious.
I think she also had an eye for the ladies.
Not that it mattered, but she was very secretive about it.
She even made me laugh because she told me one day,
there was a very important lady, the Duchesse d'Harcourt,
who was crazy about her.
She showered her with gifts, with consideration.
She even bought a flat for her on the Isle St. Louis.
And Arletty, she was after all ... she liked the courtesan aspect,
being a free and independent woman ...
And one night, during a dinner, a man
with bad manners, who sat next to her,
he put pressure on her, because he found her beautiful,
and he said to her: it seems you're very close
to the Duchesse d'Harcourt. She looks at him and says:
I can't tell you anything, I'm a gentleman.
What more can I add? It's magnificent.
For the love games, besides the queen of hearts, Arletty gets herself a jack of hearts:
Jean Pierre - aka "Johnny chéri" -
a gambler who ruins her for the casinos and card games,
a stormy relationship where Arletty, at the roulette of amorous skirmishes, gets pregnant.
The knitting needle of a backstreet abortionist ends her pregnancy.
Thus, the vow she made after Sky's death of never having children, is respected.
If in her love life she rope-dances between the feminine and the masculine,
in friendship she's absolutely faithful,
especially to Sacha Guitry who just got married for the third time to the charming Jacqueline Delubac.
If Guitry looks annoyed, it's because he still hasn't swallowed
that Yvonne Printemps left him for Pierre Fresnay whose name he never mentions again.
In the beginning of the '30s, between revue shows and filming,
she poses regularly as a model for the painter Van Dongen,
when it isn't for Matisse, Kisling or Marie Laurencin.
If in the studios, the painters appreciate her plastic beauty,
in the Boulogne film studios, the DP's are enthusiastic about the face that captures light.
As to the producers, they'd never heard a voice like that.
Well, accent well formed,
the "S" a bit floating, braided,
crackling ...
- I beg your pardon? - I was only taking notes.
Madame, your nasals are very pretty.
- What was that? - A slight tendency for sensuality in your diphtongs,
and your "R's" are particular.
I'd really love to study your R's.
Yes, I do. Say "Raoul".
- Why? - Never mind, say Raoul. - Raoul.
- And "chéri". - Chéri.
- And now say, Raoul chéri. - Raoul chéri.
- Now faster. - Raoul chéri. Raoul chéri. Raoul chéri. - It becomes even more interesting,
because my name is Raoul.
In 1938, after having played bit parts in a string of B-movies,
she explodes in Hôtel du Nord,
where Henri Jeanson writes for her the most atmospheric response in all of French cinema.
You still think I've got the hots for Renée?
No!
- No-yes or no? - No-no.
Look at this.
I can't see anything with my left eye.
- I feel like I'm one-armed - Are you ready?
- Yes. - Yes-yes or yes-no?
Yes, shithead. I'd say more, but it's Sunday.
I could go alone to La Varenne.
All this fuss over fishing! I go hunting every night but I don't swank.
Going to La Varenne when we should be in Toulon...
Why don't we go to Toulon?
You're so stubborn, you'll come to a sticky end. - So what?
- You were never fatalitarian. - Fatalistic. - The result is the same.
Why do you have a crush on her? Aren't we happy? - No.
- Are you sure? - Yes.
- Don't you like our life? - Do you? - I have to, I got used to it.
Black and blue eye aside, you're a good guy. We may quarrel on the ground but we get along fine in bed,
and on the pillow we understand each other. So?
So nothing! I've had enough, I feel suffocated. Get it? I feel suffocated!
- In Toulon, with the sea air, you'd breathe better. - It'll smell rotten anywhere we go.
Then let's go abroad, to the colonies.
- With you? - It's only an idea.
It'll be the same everywhere. I need a change of atmosphere and you are my atmosphere.
I've never been called an atmosphere before.
If I'm an atmosphere, you're the back of beyond.
You guys pretend to be smart and brag about your past, one must get rid of them all.
Atmosphere? Atmosphere? Do I look like an atmosphere?
You can go on your own to La Varenne. Enjoy your fishing and your atmosphere!
The other day I was talking to a film critic [Henri Jeanson]
he said, of course,
you wanted to give her a witty remark, when writing "atmosphere, atmosphere"
I didn't write a witty remark for her, Arletty played a prostitute
and she said "atmosphere, do I look like an atmosphere", it was a ...
a character trait rather than a witty remark, wasn't it?
and the truth is that ...
the response hit home because it was delivered in a marvelous way by Arletty.
If another actress had said it,
it would never have made that effect, and people would never have talked about it.
By the way, if it weren't for Arletty, I wouldn't have written it.
A pity! Because of filming, Arletty couldn't attend Sacha Guitry's 4th wedding
who gets married for the first time in church, to the very young Geneviève de Séréville.
Generously the master forgives his dear friend Arletty who is filming at the time Le jour se lève,
her partner a young Jean Gabin whose eyes remind her of her first love, Sky.
What's the matter?
Nothing.
You should tell me something nice.
Something tender.
What do you want me to say?
That you're beautiful?
I can't tell with all that make-up.
My make-up?
I take it off before I go to bed.
It isn't every day that a woman is free
and suddenly meets a man she likes.
You've got blue eyes ...
It's calm, restful.
And you don't talk much.
- Do you want me to tell you that I love you? - Oh no.
I'm sick of men who talk of love.
It's true.
They talk so much about it, they forget to make love.
35 years later, the kid of the Boulevard Rochechouart and the gal of Courbevoie
take up the interrupted dialog during a dinner organized by Jean-Claude Brialy.
She was 78 and he 73.
She comes into the restaurant, he takes off his cap like a seigneur, and says
"My Arlette", and they fall into each others' arms.
We take our seats at the table, and I have to say that
the other customers were very discreet, very nice, no ...
"isn't that ..." nothing of that at all, we were left in peace.
And we had a lot of fun and suddenly
I saw Jean and Arletty sticking their heads together and laughing like kids.
One was 14, the other 15, so I lean over and say to them,
Jean, do let us in on your joke, tell us what you're laughing about.
Jean said, no, it's private.
I insist and Arletty says to Jean "you must tell them".
So I asked Jean to tell us and he said :
In Le jour se lève,
Madame was behind a folding screen, in the nude,
and I said to her:
"I feel like fooling around with you a bit."
She answered:
"I'd like to, but only on location."
And him: "we never filmed on location."
14th July 1939
National holiday, national feast of the unity of the French people
The 14th July marked the 150th anniversary of the revolution.
Paris is all joy, delight, songs.
The artists most beloved by the public bring their contributions to the general joy and jubilation.
Maurice Chevalier
# in a garrison town he sends them in season
# doing a bit of training, he has class and flair - yop la boum
Prosper
Marlene Dietrich
# and my pretty dove, sings day and night
# singing for girls who have no husbands
# next to my blond lass, it feels good
# next to my blond lass, it feels good to sleep
Beneath the festivities Paris feels the anguish of war.
Watching British troops march next to the French army,
the crowds still want to believe that the Munich Agreement hasn't gone down in the rubbish bins of history and that war is evitable.
Did Arletty the actress realize the situation?
And Arletty the citizen, was she interested in politics?
I'm not political.
Napoleon said, politics is destiny, well, it ain't mine,
that's for sure.
- You think so? - Certainly.
You don't want to add something?
On politics?
No! I don't even vote!
I won't take the responsibility.
In fact, Arletty belonged to ...
through her origins, her education,
through a mixture of things,
to a populist movement of the Right
which exists.
And since she was extremely loyal,
she remained
faithful
to that mentality.
That populist Right is rather hard to define
because it unites
people who are capable of great follies,
of horrors even,
and others who are libertarian anarchists
and who, in fact ...
are partisans of a sort of apolitical attitude.
In a few weeks the Blitzkrieg (lightning war) smashes up the allies and is unleashed on Paris,
before Parisians who applaud
or shed tears.
Like many Parisians Arletty left her home for the South of France
where Mistinguette plays at being a peasant
and Maurice Chevalier plants beans.
Striking images of the famous "Titi Parisien" who's exchanged his boater for a Tyrolean hat.
Behind the bean field the sound man imitating bird calls evokes a France that's eternal, pastoral and Pétainiste.
After a few weeks in the country Arletty returns to Paris.
When I saw the swastika flag in the rue de Rivoli, it gave me a shock, I had to have a glass of wine.
And yet, very fast she resumes her ties with Parisian life which has now donned the field-grey hues from beyond the Rhine.
The occupants occupy, but they are also busy*. [s'occupent]
Slumming at night at the Tabarin,
one eye on the champagne bottle, the other on the nude bodies of the Parisian Lorelei,
supposed to cause a swelling of the Soldaten pants' flies with a Hitlerian salute.
There was a sort of futility, frivolity, egoism
which reigned
in the artistic circles of Paris.
And Arletty was part of that world,
you can't deny it. [Marika Rökk]
If, participating in that Parisian life,
at the same time active, because theaters were packed and artists worked a lot,
at the same time active and frivolous,
culturally interesting,
lunching with Giraudoux and Paul Valéry,
when one participates at all that, and at the same time
one is part of that populist Right,
the former movement,
obviously one runs a lot of risks
to find oneself in compromising situations.
Intimate friend of Josée Laval, daughter of Pierre Laval, head of Pétain's government,
Arletty frequents the soirées
where high ranks of the Wehrmacht and the Tout-Paris of the collaboration mix at the sound of uniformed violinists.
At such a concert she meets a young German officer,
Hans-Jürgen Soehring.
Subjugated by his steely glance Arletty succumbs to his charm.
Soehring is 10 years younger, he clicks his heels before her beauty.
The Tout-Paris of the Occupation whispers about this liaison
between the gal from Courbevoie and the handsome saturnian of the Luftwaffe.
The two lovers don't hide themselves.
She calls him: my faun.
He calls her: my doe.
It's certain that she loved a German.
It's certain that she met a lot of Germans,
that she laughed, at Maxim's, at the jokes of this or that
francophile sympathetic German.
There she made a mistake:
she permitted to be photographed,
or she attended official dinners with men of the Gestapo.
You mustn't forget that the Germans were very shrewd,
the Germans of Paris, the Germans who were in contact
with that Parisian society.
All spoke perfect French,
were all francophile
and explained
ceaselessly, you know, all that will be arranged,
in fact, it's you who won the war,
Athens once conquered, has conquered Rome,
and well, as to that hectic guy in Berlin, all that will be arranged, etc.
So there was a kind of talk
with which a certain Parisian frivolity could come to an understanding.
Despite the leaden weight of the occupation
and the dreaded scissors of German censor,
the trio Carné, Prévert, Trauner
create masterpieces, starring Arletty:
Les visiteurs du soir, and Les enfants du paradis.
shot 476-2
roll 'em
Everybody knew that 1/3 of the crew
consisted of technicians and set designers like Trauner,
working under false names.
Not for one second,
I'm sure that not for one second
could they have reason to fear
anything at all from the star of the film.
476-3
And what's also certain is that,
considering Arletty's character
and that nobility of the people she also had
firmly instilled in her,
one can be certain that Arletty never harmed anybody.
I cannot imagine
Arletty as a squealer.
I cannot imagine Arletty closing her door to someone in difficulties.
On the set of Enfants du paradis, between Trauner, Prévert and Arletty,
it's a pact for life and death.
She saves the Jew Trauner from deportation,
while still being in love with her German officer.
And she is well aware that Prévert is active in the Résistance.
What she perhaps didn't know, was that the scriptwriter-poet slipped into Jean-Louis Barrault's lines words he would have loved to tell her.
You're trembling. You feel cold?
I'm trembling because I'm happy.
I'm happy because you're here,
close to me.
I love you.
And you, Garance?
Do you love me?
You talk like a child.
In books you love like that, in dreams.
But in life ...
Dreams, life ... it's the same,
or life wouldn't be worth living.
And what do I care about life?
It's not life I love, but you!
You're the nicest young man I've ever met.
I too won't forget this night.
I like you.
I love you.
Garance
Love is so easy.
Arletty ...
she's
a sunflower
the sun
of Courbevoie
where she was born.
I was born
not far from it,
in Neuilly,
within a year.
We are the same age.
We might have met when we were kids.
We met very late.
But it was very good like this.
He's the one who loved her,
an unrequited love,
like in the 18th century, he was in love,
and till the end of her life, anyway, till the end of her problems, he was always close to her,
with discretion and passion.
And she had a great weakness for him.
Arletty - Prévert, an invisible thread,
dancing between the strings of Harpo Marx.
End of August 1944
Paris, liberated, celebrates the victory on all the street corners.
At the Gare Montparnasse, the Military Governor of Groß-Paris,
Von Choltitz, arrested by General Leclerc, wonders if he should get out or stay seated,
just like he hesitated when ordered by the Führer to destroy Paris.
Soehring himself didn't stay.
After having entreated Arletty to follow him, he disappeared to regain Berlin.
In a Paris where people were being arrested with a vengeance,
where often justice is rough, Sacha Guitry is arrested at dawn,
dressed in pyjamas by Lanvin and court shoes.
He only had the time to cover himself with his Panama.
If with Guitry, comedy is always at the rendez-vous,
at other street corners women get their heads shaved for having had relations with Germans.
And Arletty? Where is she?
It is rumored that after shaving her head, they cut off her breasts.
She'd been in prison, they wanted to shave her head.
So she invented the turban, thinking she was going to get her head shaved.
So she wore a turban and it launched the turban fashion.
But she wasn't ready to let them bring her down.
And then there was her intelligence and humour
which saved her.
There's a story that, when the presiding judge of the tribunal says to her,
after all, Mme Arletty, you have nothing to say in your defense?
So she had so say something.
And Jeanson wrote this reply for her.
She got up and she said:
my heart is French but my arse is international.
She dared to say such a thing, and to do it.
Placed under house arrest in Normandy,
right next to a pond where GI's are cavorting,
she finds it hard to bear her isolation.
To the bedlam of soldiers who she observes from her room,
she opposes a desperate silence.
She, usually so talkative, stays silent for hours.
Sacha Guitry, recently released, visits her
and in theatrical tones, due to the adversity of the times, offers to marry her.
She categorically refuses.
No way I'm going to be the 5th Mme Guitry.
While Arletty languishes in Normandy Marlene Dietrich celebrates victory on her return to Paris in an orgy of kisses.
Marlene, a soldier's girl? Not at all!
Marlene thinks only of one man: Jean Gabin
which causes Arletty to say:
Gabinos, he's had his Prussian mistress.
I've had my Prussian lover.
After being confined to her home for 18 months
and a professional ban of 3 years,
Arletty turns over the page of that period of her life she didn't like to dwell on later.
Becoming, developing, this is much more than
getting emotional, things of the past.
But becoming, this is solid.
The present, and becoming.
You lose time if you look backwards.
Even at my age
you must look at what's before you.
Because what's before you is difficult? - I don't know.
But there's what's before you. It's over, finished, in the can, like the film roll.
There's nothing to add to the past.
211 - 2
you start moving ... over there
pick-up - let's go
After the dark years, Arletty finds her way back into the studios
where she only plays minor parts, like here with Jean-Pierre Cassel.
On the stage, the established comedian becomes a great tragedienne in plays by Tennessee Williams, Jean Paul Sartre and Jean Cocteau.
And among all her successes the Madonna of the suburbs, the great devotee of love
continues a long loving friendship with Soehring.
1966, after several operations
she loses her eyesight.
But her look on the world and the others isn't extinguished.
Life has ups and downs. I prefer the ups, she said.
For 26 years she lived in the dark.
Each day she walked along the Seine, on the arms of her "souteneur", [supporter/pimp]
as she called the persons who accompanied her.
Until the 23 July 1992.
On that day the sun shone on Courbevoie
and the Sky was blue.
# they find me a more than pretty face
# at least they tell me so, and this compliment delights me
# it seems I have a slight accent
# nice, disturbing and worth a caressing look
# I seem to see life in pink
# even though I dream of other things
# to love
# sincerely from my tender heart
# the one who could understand me
# and if necessary to defend me
# to love ah, I very much want him to come
# the one who will relieve
# the pain from my Parisian heart [Engl. subs: Serdar202 & Aloysius @KG2019]