Anouk Aimée 1932-2024 | Eternal elegance

At the end of the film, after the usual ovation and loud applause, the audience spontaneously sang “dabadabada”, the famous refrain ofA man and a woman by Claude Lelouch. Alongside a diminished Jean-Louis Trintignant, Anouk Aimée hid her smile behind her hand, undoubtedly moved, but also clearly embarrassed by so much attention.

It was five years ago, at the Grand Théâtre Lumière at the Cannes Film Festival, where Claude Lelouch had just presented The best years of a lifesequel to his 1966 masterpiece, Palme d’Or, Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and Oscar for Best Screenplay, which earned Anouk Aimée an Oscar nomination for Best Actress (won by Elizabeth Taylor).

I was sitting a few rows in front of the film crew, at an angle, and I remember thinking that this cinema icon, who passed away on Tuesday at the age of 92, had the same grace, the same elegance, and the aura of mystery of the greatest characters she has played in 70 years of career.

Starting with Anne Gauthier, a young widow who falls in love with a racing driver (Trintignant), between Paris and Deauville. Claude Lelouch, with whom Anouk Aimée has filmed eight times, filmed one of the most captivating love stories in cinema at just 28 years old, creating a legendary cinema couple.

Thanks to A man and a woman, Anouk Aimée won the Golden Globe for best actress and met her third husband, the co-author and singer of the film’s title song, Pierre Barouh. At the time, at the age of 34, she was already one of the biggest stars of international cinema. She has appeared in 35 films, including two Palmes d’Or.

The French actress undoubtedly found the role of her life in Jacques Demy’s first feature film, the splendid and melancholic Lola (1961). She plays the title role, a cabaret dancer, mother of a young boy, who hopes for the return of his father. Her play with nuance and restraint, her seductive languor – as well as her fishnet stockings – leave an impression.

She will find Jacques Demy and the role of Lola ten years later in Model Shopcamped in Los Angeles.

One year before LolaAnouk Aimée is revealed on an international scale thanks to The good life, by Federico Fellini (who won the Palme d’Or), whom she returned to in the Eternal City in 1963 for Eight and a half (Oscar for best foreign language film), always in the company of Marcello Mastroianni, his “cinema brother”.

“She belongs to the great mask of cinema with this face which has the same intriguing sensuality as that of Garbo, Dietrich and Crawford, these great mysterious queens,” says Fellini of her. “Meeting Fellini, I started to love cinema. Until then, cinema had chosen me, but not me,” the actress confided to the French daily in 2022. Release.

She toured a lot in Italy, where she settled in the 1960s with her daughter, the actress Manuella Papatakis, born from her union at 19 with the filmmaker Nico Papatakis. Vittorio De Sica, Dino Risi, Sergio Corbucci call on her. In 1980, she won the Best Actress Prize at Cannes for The jump into the void, by Marco Bellocchio, then will tour with Bernardo Bertolucci.

In 1979, she was nominated for a César for My first love, of Élie Chouraqui, with whom she shares her life. This is her big return to cinema after a hiatus of half a dozen years where she devoted most of her daily life to being the wife, in London, of her fourth husband, the actor Albert Finney.

Born Nicole Françoise Florence Dreyfus in Paris on April 27, 1932, Anouk Aimée called herself Nicole or Françoise Durand during the Second World War, to escape German roundups. Daughter of separated actors, at the age of 13 she borrowed the first name of the character from her first film, The house under the sea, by Henri Calef (1947). On the set of his second film, the unfinished The flower of age, by Marcel Carné, Jacques Prévert suggested adding the surname “Aimée”, “because everyone loves her”.

It was mainly in cinema that she made her career. In 2002, she received an honorary César, in 2003 a Golden Bear in Berlin for all of her work and in 2006, a new tribute from the Cannes Film Festival.

She has done little theater, opposite different actors (Trintignant, Philippe Noiret, Alain Delon, Gérard Depardieu) in the same play, Love Letters, by Albert Ramsdell Gurney, over a period of 25 years. We have also seen little of her on television, notably in the miniseries Napoleon, by Quebecer Yves Simoneau.

Anouk Aimée has appeared in 74 films, in France, Italy, but also in the United States, notably with Sidney Lumet (The Appointment), George Cukor (Justine) and Robert Altman (Ready to wear). “As soon as you make a successful film, all of a sudden all doors open. I received scripts from all over the world,” she confided to the magazine in 2016. She.

Muse of the 60s, incarnation of French feminine elegance, Anouk Aimée will remain, thanks to cinema, eternal.

Anouk Aimée in three films

A man and a woman (Claude Lelouch, 1966)

A rally driver (Jean-Louis Trintignant) follows by car on the road from Deauville to Paris the train of a young woman (Anouk Aimée) who has just left him. Trying everything, he waits for her on the platform of Saint-Lazare station. The lovers embrace. The film won the Palme d’Or and Anouk Aimée won the Golden Globe for best actress.

Available on Apple TV+

The good life (Federico Fellini, 1960)

Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) is strolling Via Veneto in the Cadillac of Maddalena (Anouk Aimée), a Roman bourgeois girl in need of thrills. They will become lovers from the first chapter of The good lifea sketch film which won Federico Fellini the Palme d’Or at Cannes and made Anouk Aimée an international star.

Available on YouTube, Google Play and The Criterion Channel

Lola (Jacques Demy, 1961)

Cécile (Anouk Aimée) is a singer and dancer in a Nantes cabaret frequented by sailors, under the stage name Lola. She is raising a 7-year-old boy whose father, Michel, who died at his birth, she is awaiting the return of. All of Jacques Demy’s future work is outlined in this bittersweet first film.

Available on The Criterion Channel