Jeanne Moreau: The cinema icon who defined French cool

She was the woman who lived as passionately on screen as off it, who once said of her work: ‘Making films is no longer a way of acting, it is a way of life’

Jolie-laide. Beautiful-ugly. That’s the odd term I’ll always remember an old French teacher using almost obsessively to describe Jeanne Moreau, soaring cinematic talent and icon of the French New Wave movement, who has passed away aged 89.

I never understood it. That phrase. As we gathered around the classroom’s dusty old television set while Francois Truffaut’s Jules et Jim (1962) began to play, I saw only what looked to me like a queen of old; so defiant, so self-assured, so breathtakingly beautiful when she’d gaze wryly at both lovers and acquaintances.

In fact, it seemed of so little coincidence to me that one of her most famous roles was playing renowned Russian royalty in George Bernard Shaw’s adaptation Great Catherine (1968), for she walked always with just a touch of royal bearing.

Perhaps, jolie-laide was meant only as a simple admittance that Moreau lived in defiance of expectation, both as a woman of her own time, and as an internationally renowned movie actress.

Born in Paris to a French restaurateur and an English dancer at the Folies Bergere, she chose to stay in France after her parents’ divorce, and it’s evident why.

Moreau was the true embodiment of French cool – or, at least, the version I’d quietly internalised and venerated in an effort to understand what being half-French actually meant – both languid and fiery at the very same time, with a sharp intellectual air. When French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to her, he stated simply that she’d “always rebelled against the established order”.

Her screen presence in itself was unique, utterly authentic and mysterious at the same time. Her philosophy came to be, as she told Cahiers du cinema in 1965, that “making films is no longer a way of acting, it is a way of life.”

In the minds of many, she’ll always be the woman who walked through the streets of the Champs-Élysées in Louis Malle’s 1958 film Ascenseur pour l’échafaud (Lift to the Scaffold), all as Miles Davis’ improvised score cooed softly in the background.

The scene sees her silently wondering whether her lover has actually carried out their plan to murder her wealthy husband so that they may be free, but her face contains an entire storm: fear, lust, anger, but resilience too. Always, that resilience.

Moreau’s face was beloved by directors – Orson Welles once declared her “the greatest actress in the world” – because it was such a pliable tool of expression for her. A thousand words could be said in a raised eyebrow, in her downturned mouth and deep-set eyes seemed to lie a wisdom that even a hundred lifetimes could never obtain.

That’s perhaps why Truffaut chose, in Jules et Jim, to pause his film to present simply a series of snapshots of her face: re-enacting the joyless life she led before she met her two life-long lovers, and the giddy existence she now believes to have found herself in.

In 1958, Louis Malle’s Les amants led to huge scandal, resulting in the film being banned in several US states; its frank depiction of a married woman leaving her family for a younger man was too much for some, especially since Moreau’s depiction presented a woman absolutely real, empathetic, and with nothing to apologise for.

She had a vast intellect, too; forging friendships with some of the most prominent writers of the time including Jean Cocteau, Henry Miller, and Marguerite Duras. She often fostered talent, working with young director Bertrand Blier in 1974’s Going Places, while also creating her own work: she directed, starred, and wrote 1976’s Lumiere.

Her lovers were plucked from the creative stratosphere: she was married to actor Jean-Louis Richard, then Exorcist director William Friedkin. She had affairs with Tony Richardson, Louis Malle, Francois Truffaut, Pierre Cardin, and Miles Davis.

Yet, Moreau was never self-serious either. She danced through the frames of Malle’s 1965 Viva Maria! with utter delight, sharing the screen with Brigitte Bardot in the story of an anarchist and a circus singer who team up, inventing striptease and becoming Central American revolutionaries in the process.

To mourn her death is to mourn a figure who so came to define French cinema, French life, and French attitude. That said, the irony of it all is that Moreau would have hated all these tributes and remembrances. She was one who lived always in the moment, and despised the constant romanticising and elevation of the French New Wave era.

“Nostalgia is when you want things to say the same,” she told The Guardian in 2001. “I know so many people staying in the same place. And I think, my God, look at them! They’re death before they die. That’s a terrible risk. Living is risking.”

And it was a life, indeed, she was determined to live with a love for danger and without guilt. In another 2001 interview, she stated to The New York Times: “The cliché is that life is a mountain. You go up, reach the top and then go down. To me, life is going up until you are burned by flames.”

It’s that attitude that Pierre Lescure, president of the Cannes Film Festival, acknowledged when he tweeted his tribute to Moreau, writing simply: “She was strong and she didn’t like to see people pour their hearts out. Sorry, Jeanne, but this is beyond us. We are crying.”