Moreau was a new kind of heroine, whose glamour had no gloss, whose elegance had no airs, who seemed to burst fussy constraints with every word she spoke, every glance she shot, every step she took.
Postscript: Jeanne Moreau, a Grande Dame of the French New Wave
By Richard Brody
July 31, 2017
July 31, 2017
The idea of Jeanne Moreau is as great as the onscreen presence of Jeanne Moreau because, in her performances, she embodied ideas in motion, and, for that matter, one big idea: Moreau, who died on Monday at the age of eighty-nine, was a grande dame without haughtiness or prejudice. Her grandeur didn’t erect walls around her; it widened her vistas, increased her curiosity, enabled her adventures, overcame narrow boundaries. She was a queen of intellect—but an intellect that was no cloistered bookishness but an idea and an ideal of culture that enriched experience, envisioned progress, looked ardently at the times.
Someone once wrote that Cary Grant looks like a person who’s thinking; I’d say he’s rather lost in thought, whereas Moreau seems at home in thought, standing on a solid foundation of knowledge that makes her searching focussed, precise, intention-sharp. If Alfred Hitchcock had known how to film heroic women, Moreau would have been the most Hitchcockian of active and intrepid women—and François Truffaut, who was among the most faithful and profound of Hitchcockians, recognized that trait when he cast her in “The Bride Wore Black,” one of his most conspicuously Hitchcockian films.