Forty years after his death, Lucie Cariès and Clémentine Deroudille pay tribute to the icon Romy Schneider in a documentary on France 3.
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Premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, Romy, free woman says the woman who was hiding behind the star. From his beginnings at age 15 in white lilacs to his latest film The Sans-Souci passerby this film by Lucie Cariès and Clémentine Deroudille (also curator of the retrospective devoted to the actress at the Cinémathèque française) retraces an extraordinary journey.
We discover Romy Schneider’s passion for cinema from an early age: “She has a very high opinion of her profession. She is first and foremost an actress. She always comes back to it, it’s in her. She is obviously part of a line because her parents were both comedians. But on the paternal side, it goes back several generations. His grandmother was the Sarah Bernhardt of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It’s really something that she carries with her. And she will notably seek roles with her teeth, literally” explains Lucie Caries.
“There are roles she wants. And she will fight to get them and this will that she has is something that is said very little.”
Lucie Carieson franceinfo
It was her colleague Clémentine Deroudille who had the idea for the angle of the documentary, she wanted to highlight Romy Schneider’s need for freedom and independence: “Many times, continues Lucie Caries, she is going to leave countries, leave men and start all over again elsewhere. She has absolutely insane courage. When she left Germany at 20 to join Delon, she turned the whole country against her because it was Sissi’s ultimate betrayal. Already, she did not want to do the fourth part of the saga, but in addition she will join a Frenchman! She is an extremely courageous and determined woman. She will return to Germany for the man she loves, Harry Meyen, who will be the father of her son. She’s paying for her divorce because he’s married. She appears as the home wrecker. Another scandal. So she pretty much falls into line. She settles down, she has a child, but she leaves anyway. It’s stronger than her.”