Actresses: Making the Most of Love

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Jeanne left the Comédie Française in 1952. "Everyone thought I was mad to leave," she recalls, "but it had become a prison for me. I was disgusted by the immorality of the Comédie. Everyone had been very sweet to me because I was the youngest one there, but the situation there was terrible. The established actors would take roles they didn't want just to keep others from having them." For a year she played at the prestigious Théâtre National Populaire, where her roles placed her opposite such celebrated actors as Gérard Philipe and Robert Hirsch. Then, on Philipe's advice, she took a role in a boulevard production of The Dazzling Hour. On her second night, the show's star fell ill and Jeanne was asked to play her role. Jeanne learned the new part overnight, and the next evening, since the two characters were never onstage at the same moment, she appeared in both roles, alternating between "an honest woman who feels like a street walker and a streetwalker who feels like an honest woman." It was a tour de force, and Paris discovered her.

Moreau stayed in The Dazzling Hour for two years, then moved on to other shows—Cocteau's La Machine Infernale (in which she appeared with her hair dusted with silver powder, her hands in clawed gloves, and her body covered with a flesh-colored net) and, for two years, Shaw's Pygmalion. She had already begun taking parts in small films, shooting all day, then racing to the theater for the show at night. The word was that Moreau was completely unphotogenic—the nose and ears too small, the mouth too thick, the body nothing special. By the time Director Louis Malle saw her in the Paris stage production of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and asked her to star in his first film, Moreau had 20 forgettable films behind her. "Nine years of bad films—it was a cinematic adolescence," she says. "I never felt at ease on the screen because I was aware that I was far from beautiful. People who wanted to be nice about my looks would say, 'You remind me so much of Bette Davis.' Very nice, except I can't stand Bette Davis."

The Ultimate. In L'Ascenseur pour I'Echafaud (U.S. title: Frantic], Malle put Moreau under an honest light and wisely let his camera linger. The film was nothing special, but it did accomplish one thing: it proposed a new ideal of cinematic realism, a new way to look at a woman. All the drama in the story was in Moreau's face—the face that had been hidden behind cosmetics and flattering lights in all her earlier films. When Malle made The Lovers the following year, it was obvious who his woman would be. For one thing, he had discovered her, and for another, they were in love.