Jeanne Moreau: Enduring Allure

November 3, 2011 - December 11, 2011

“I write my own rules day by day,” Jeanne Moreau once said, and few actresses of her generation can claim to have rewritten the rules of film stardom with as much conviction. After her provocative performance in Louis Malle’s The Lovers (1958), Moreau (b. 1928) was touted as the next Brigitte Bardot, but she was always something more than an object of desire. Whether cool and cunning or frank and free-spirited, each of her characters projects a worldly intelligence; behind her heavily shadowed eyes are depths of private knowledge. As she has said, “Beyond the beauty, the sex, the titillation, the surface, there is a human being. And that has to emerge.”

An accomplished stage performer who had appeared in a few B movies, Moreau was nearly thirty when Malle persuaded her to star in his first feature, Elevator to the Gallows (1958). “It was,” she later said, “the decisive moment for the rest of my life.” By the time she played the captivating Catherine in François Truffaut’s Jules and Jim (1961), she was at the crest of the New Wave. Moreau’s talent drew the attention of many major directors: Michelangelo Antonioni, Luis Buñuel, Jacques Demy, Orson Welles. All of these artists are indebted to a woman whom Welles, with his usual combination of hyperbole and insight, called “the greatest actress in the world.”

Juliet Clark

Thursday, November 3, 2011
7:00 p.m. Bay of Angels
Jacques Demy (France, 1962). Jeanne Moreau is a faded gambler ready for one last spin along the Riviera, accompanied by a puppyish bank clerk. "An exhibition of cinematic personality reminiscent of Dietrich's best" (New York Times). (85 mins)

Friday, November 4, 2011
7:00 p.m. Elevator to the Gallows
Louis Malle (France, 1958). A restored print of Louis Malle's first feature, an elegant thriller featuring an iconic performance by Jeanne Moreau and a celebrated Miles Davis jazz score. "A consistently engaging, atmospheric noir. . . . Elevator to the Gallows remains worth treasuring" (Time Out N.Y.) (88 mins)

Friday, November 4, 2011
8:50 p.m. The Lovers
Louis Malle (France, 1958). An aimless provincial wife finds excitement in the arms of a new lover in Louis Malle’s controversial works, one of the first successes of the Nouvelle Vague. Moreau’s love scenes made her an international sex symbol. (88 mins)

Saturday, November 12, 2011
8:00 p.m. Jules and Jim
François Truffaut (France, 1961). Truffaut's portrayal of an early-twentieth-century love triangle with Jeanne Moreau at its apex is "full of wit and radiance" (Pauline Kael). "I wish I'd made it" (Jean Renoir). (104 mins)

Sunday, November 13, 2011
4:50 p.m. Touchez pas au grisbi
Jacques Becker (France/Italy, 1953). French legend Jean Gabin is a Montmartre gangster looking to hide—and later find—his loot, with Jeanne Moreau as his tough-as-nails lover. A masterpiece of hard-boiled film noir, French-style. (93 mins)

Saturday, November 26, 2011
8:10 p.m. La notte
Michelangelo Antonioni (Italy/France, 1961). In Milan, novelist Marcello Mastroianni and his wife Jeanne Moreau play out a drama of marital disillusionment, set against Antonioni’s rigorous sense of place and architecture. (117 mins)

Sunday, November 27, 2011
6:00 p.m. Diary of a Chambermaid
Luis Buñuel (France/Italy, 1964). Jeanne Moreau is a chambermaid in a household of perfectly ordinary bourgeois perverts in this darkly funny update of a Mirbeau novel, the first film in the long collaboration between Luis Buñuel and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière. (95 mins)

Wednesday, December 7, 2011
7:00 p.m. The Trial
Orson Welles (France/Italy/W. Germany/Yugoslavia, 1962). Anthony Perkins endures bureaucratic torments in Welles’s take on Kafka, “a film of infernal brilliance”(Time). (118 mins)

Thursday, December 8, 2011
7:00 p.m. The Fire Within
Louis Malle (France, 1964). The influence of Louis Malle's mentor Robert Bresson can be seen in this stylish early masterpiece that follows the last days of a disaffected playboy as he searches Paris society for a reason to live. Only his friend Jeanne Moreau offers hope. "A small gem, polished to perfection"(Time Out). (107 mins)

Saturday, December 10, 2011
6:30 p.m. Mademoiselle
Tony Richardson (U.K./France, 1966). Infamous French writer Jean Genet's unsettling ménages—of sexual repression, power, and criminality; of vulgarity and saintliness—are evident in this tale of a small French village, and the mayor, chief of police, and “professional virgin” (Jeanne Moreau) who vie for control. (103 mins)

Saturday, December 10, 2011
8:35 p.m. The Bride Wore Black
François Truffaut (France, 1968). Jeanne Moreau is a bride widowed on her wedding day, who takes vengeance on those responsible for her groom’s death, in Truffaut’s Hitchockian thriller. Based on a novel by Cornell Woolrich. (107 mins)

Sunday, December 11, 2011
3:00 p.m. Chimes at Midnight
Orson Welles (France/Spain/Switzerland, 1966). Welles embodies Shakespeare’s Falstaff, aided by a fierce and lusty Jeanne Moreau as Doll Tearsheet, in “a dark masterpiece, shot through with slapstick and sorrow”(Time Out). (113 mins).

Series curated by Susan Oxtoby. We wish to thank the following individuals and institutions for their assistance with this retrospective: Institut Français, Paris; Delphine Selles, French Cultural Service, New York; Denis Bisson, French Cultural Service, San Francisco; Rosaria Folcarelli, Cinecittà Luce S.p.A.; Patrizia Gambarotta, Istituto Italiano di Cultura, San Francisco; Brian Belovarac, Janus Films; Eric Di Bernardo, Rialto Pictures; Jacob Perlin, The Film Desk; Alliance Française de San Francisco; and Kent Youngblood, MGM.