What makes a great star a legend? In the era Jessica Chastain and from Margot Robbie it is quite legitimate to wonder why defining them as “mythical” sounds strange, or why – even here with difficulty – this definition may be awkward for Robert DeNirobut this definitely doesn’t fit Brad Pitt or already mature George Clooney. They may be sex symbols, they may fill teenagers’ rooms with posters, but they fight unsuccessfully for the “mythical” category.
The topic is back in the news as the film world celebrates Catherine Deneuve is 80 years old.née Catherine Fabienne Dorleac, born in Paris on October 22, 1943. We define it as “mythical”, as in Greta Garbobecause Deneuve is certainly perceived as a deity placed in the empyrean, which makes her a genuine living “diva” of European cinema, just like Sophia Loren and perhaps no one else.
The category was invented by the seventh art marketing. from the very beginning, during Francesca Bertini (in Italy) or Theda Bara (in America). But it was the Americans who built the mythology of cinema, drawing on figures who came from Europe when they realized that audiences were looking for the exoticism of divinity, characteristics that even such great figures as Lillian Gish lacked at home.
What is needed to create this model? Essentially unusual, exotic, unattainable, a mixed charm of attraction and fear. Obviously starting from a base of distant and intriguing beauty. It was not by chance that Theda Bara built her image (as Louise Brooks) starting with the personification of a vampire. And the same fate later befell him Marlene Dietrich.
Garbo and Dietrich are two categories that need to be juggled in the search for myth. The first is a cold, distant beauty, significant because she differs from every American model (both as a silent film queen and when she begins to speak) precisely in her accent and privacy. Dietrich, on the other hand, has the same characteristics (beautiful, exotic, distant), but carries within himself the degree of danger and sinful sensuality that will allow him to reveal Dark ladies of all the film noir it has brought with it since its inception Blue angelfilmed in Germany.
Garbo is an untouchable queen, a goddess similar to Athena; Marlene Aphrodite, the dangerous daughter of her time, a seductress who penetrates the unconscious, awakening the charm of seduction. For her, her personal life also remains a taboo, barely touched by gossip, which nevertheless increases her charm as a sorceress. What both divas have in common is an alarming androgyny for that time and the personification of an unattainable desire. Hollywood will try to repeat this pattern endlessly, at least until the name of the actor becomes more important than the name of the director.
Compared to this idea of the star system, the career of Catherine Deneuve (the daughter of actors and voice actors) is very evaluated in Paris immediately after the war) represents a significant difference, but is capable of producing the same result. They will be his forbidden love (until Roger Vadim with whom she went to live at a very young age, then her only husband Robert Naleyphotographer who brings himself Mick Jagger as best man at a wedding, then an important series of stories from the set, among Roman Polanski, Francois Truffaut, Gerard Depardieubut most of all Marcellus Mastroianni), her independence in choosing partners and producers, her versatility as an actress, her inaccessibility and indescribable sensuality make her the Diva we have known since the 60s.
Catherine discovers cinema against her will: first her father forced her to dub Hollywood prodigies, and then she was dragged onto the set by her older sister Françoise Dorléac, who for a short time (she died in a car accident in 1967) seemed like a revelation of a new generation of actresses. simultaneously a naive nymphet and an unprincipled woman. What makes Katherine a popular character is Jacques Demy Between Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964)e Beauties de Rochefort (’67). I’m the one who makes her an anxious Diva Roman Polanski (Virgin Killer from Repulsion) e Luis Buñuel (bored girl leading a double life in Beautiful during the day), made almost simultaneously films of his Pygmalion Demy.
Deneuve owes a lot over the years talk about himself: accompany interpretations that he considered his own, encourage young directors, protect himself from gossip, but he always preferred to hide behind the inaccessible curtain of the screen. Proof of this is that only in full maturity did he accept – albeit without happiness – the challenge of the theater and direct contact with his audience. But he felt that times were changing, and the need to give new meaning to the meaning of fame. Thus, she built herself an ivory tower that sometimes even sounded arrogant, but which also made her unique when it came to defending her personal and public choices.
She overturned the stereotype of the Diva, while maintaining its basic principles: beauty, distance, underground fire and external coldness. Because of this Alfred Hitchcock he dreamed (and she with him) to make her his ideal translator later Ingrid Bergman AND Grace Kelly.
Think of the two-faced Tristana from Buñuel’s film of the same name: the first defenseless virgin forced to discover Don Lope’s morbidity; then a merciless executioner of his elderly guardian/husband and object of affection, despite the wooden leg and black clothes of Francoist Spain. Since then, in 1970, Catherine Deneuve has become an intellectual muse and a sophisticated charmer of her time.
The polar opposite of other modern divas (including Ingrid Bergman, who is increasingly attracted to the “humanized” dimension, and Sophia Loren, the opposite symbol of the Mediterranean mother who becomes an untouchable queen), is a modern woman who holds her destiny in her hands.
For this reason, like Garbo many years ago –“Garbo Laughs” – having reached the pinnacle of her career, she dares to turn her image around, immerses herself in comedy and expresses her unattainability in a modern way. The brunette who was always a platinum blonde on screen (“Men prefer blondes… but marry brunettes”), a woman who had many loves but always remained a virgin, a warrior and a loner, an industry captain who went from being a producer to an icon for young independent filmmakers, then managed to remain a diva by putting aside her past.
Before her stroke in 2019, she smoked “like a fireman,” shied away from Hollywood’s flattery, mocked convention (her attack on excess in “Me Too”), defended her men (Polanski) and artists (Woody Allen), she became a chameleon in choosing roles. And yet she remained a queen always and everywhere. In the era of today’s actresses, having reached the age of 80, she decided to become “normal” like them. And yet it remains a myth.