Postcard Friendship Friday - Simone Signoret

Today it's Postcard Friendship Friday again. An excellent day to visit some of the best postcard blogs. This Friday EFSP salutes one of our favorite French actresses. Simone Signoret (1921-1985) was given the ‘star build-up’ in the postwar years, and in the following decades she developed into one of the grand legends of the French cinema. Signoret won three times a BAFTA Award, an Oscar, an Emmy, a Silver Bear at the Berlin Festival, the Golden Palm at the Cannes Festival, and many, many more awards.


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, nr. 195. Publicity card for Les carbones Korès. Photo: Sam Levin.

Unlucky-in-love
Simone Signoret was born in 1921, in Wiesbaden, Germany, to French parents, and she was raised in Paris. Her father, André Kaminker (1888-1961), was a Polish linguist. He and his French wife Georgette Signoret, had also two younger sons, Alain and Jean-Pierre. Signoret, her mother's maiden name, was chosen for films in 1942 to raise fewer questions with the Nazi authorities than her real jewish surname would do. Simone Signoret had a long film apprenticeship during World War II, mostly as an extra and occasionally getting to speak a single line. Through the auspices of her first husband, director Yves Allégret, Signoret was given the ‘star build-up’ in the postwar years. He directed her in Dédée d'Anvers/Woman of Antwerp (1948), as Dédée, a prostitute who finds true love. One of the best of her unlucky-in-love characterizations was in Casque d'or/Golden Marie (1952, Jacques Becker), for which she won a BAFTA Film Award. A Signoret film that is shown often on tv is the thriller Les diaboliques/The Devils (1955, Henri-Georges Clouzot). The chilly character Signoret plays was proof of her acting ability.


Trailer of Les diaboliques (1955).

Yves Montand
Hollywood beckoned throughout the 1950's, but both Simone Signoret and her second husband, Yves Montand, were refused visas to enter the United States. Their progressive political activities did not sit well with the McCarthy-era mentality in the USA at the time. Her breakthrough to international stardom came at the age of 38 with the British film Room at the Top (1959, Jack Clayton). She won an Academy Award for her Alice Aisgill, an unhappily married woman who hopes she has found true love. She radiated real warmth in all of her scenes.


German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, nr. 820.

Plump and Bewitching
Maturing into a plump but still bewitching character actress, Simone Signoret continued appearing in choice film roles until 1982. Her later films include the thriller Compartiment tueurs/The Sleeping Car Murders (1965, Costa Gravas), the war drama L'armée des ombres/Army of the Shadows (1969, Jean-Pierre Melville), the crime drama La chair de l'orchidée/The Flesh of the Orchid (1975, Patrice Chéreau), and La vie devant soi/Madame Rosa (1977, Moshe Mizrahi) in which she played a jewish, retired prostitute and Auschwitz survivor, who is a foster mom to children of other prostitutes. This beautiful drama was awarded with the Academy Award for the Best Non-English Film. Simone Signoret also wrote books, among them the witty, melancholy memoirs La nostalgie n'est plus ce qu'elle était/Nostalgia Isn't What It Used To Be (1978) and the novel Adieu Volodya, published in 1985, the year of her death. Her daughter, Catherine Allégret, and grandson, Benjamin Castaldi, are also actors.


Simone Signoret in Dédée d'Anvers (1948).

Sources: The New York Times.com, IMDb and Wikipedia.