DANIELLE DARRIEUX

Written by Michael Darvell
 

(1 May 1917 - 17 October 2017)

Danielle Darrieux

The French actress and singer Danielle Darrieux, who has died aged 100, was a mere 14 years old when she won her first film role in Le Bal in 1931, after which she worked continuously. Of the forty or so films she made before World War II, the outstanding ones were Mayerling (she played Maria Vetsera opposite Charles Boyer), Club des femmes, which caused a storm in New York with its risqué setting of a women-only hotel, Ruy Blas with Jean Marais, and Occupe-toi d’Amélie..!, Claude Autant-Lara’s Feydeau comedy adaptation. Later on she also did Rouge et noir for Autant-Lara, based on Stendhal’s novel. In the 1950s she worked with Max Ophuls on La Ronde, from the Arthur Schnitzler play, as well as Le plaisir and Madame de… Darrieux had a taste of Hollywood in 1938 in The Rage of Paris with Douglas Fairbanks Jr but then went back to France during the Occupation. She returned to Hollywood in the fifties for the MGM musical Rich, Young and Pretty, starred with James Mason in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 5 Fingers, and figured in Robert Rossen’s dull epic of Alexander the Great with Richard Burton. However, for the most part, Darrieux continued working extensively in French cinema and TV until Pièce montée in 2010, with an occasional outing for The Greengage Summer (1961), shot in France and the UK with Kenneth More. She contributed a delightful performance for Jacques Demy in Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967), and was also in his musical melodrama Une chambre en ville. Darrieux did some theatre work in Paris, and also on Broadway in the musical of Coco (taking over from Katharine Hepburn). In London and New York she was in Ambassador, a musical with Howard Keel. Among her last films was François Ozon’s 8 Women (2002) which earned her a Silver Bear at Berlin, and she voiced the Grandmother in the animated film Persepolis (2007). She was married three times: to director Henri Decoin, diplomat Porfirio Rubirosa and then scriptwriter Georges Mitsinkidès, who died in 1991. Darrieux received an honorary César award in 1985.

MICHAEL DARVELL

 
Michael Darvell

Michael Darvell trained as a librarian at Watford and in Surrey before joining Ealing Libraries where he became Music Librarian for the borough. He edited Masthead, the magazine of the University of North London School of Librarianship, The Surrealist, the staff magazine of Surrey County Library, and contributed to the Assistant Librarian and London Librarian professional journals. A freelance film reviewer since 1970, he has written for Film, Films Illustrated, Film Review, Movie Maker and Radio Times, as well as editing Montage, the London film societies magazine, for ten years. A change of career saw him joining What’s On in London as Features Editor and he eventually stepped into the shoes of the late F. Maurice Speed (founding father of Film Review annual) as the magazine’s Editor. From 2007 to 2015, he was co-editor of the Film Review annual with Mansel Stimpson. As well as writing about films, Michael has reviewed theatre for The Stage newspaper, and has written about music theatre and cabaret for the Classical Source and Musical Theatre Review websites. He is also a former restaurant critic for the ViewLondon website. Michael has been a member of the London Film Critics’ Circle since 2005.

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