Tomorrow, Catherine Deneuve celebrates her 80th birthday or rather, judging by her projects, her daily life, her intellectual and physical form, her 20th birthday and four times rather than once. She probably did not imagine the dimension and duration of her journey when, in 1961, she answered questions from a journalist Claude Le Gac for the first time. This black and white report that you can discover or rediscover on Madelen was produced at the time of the release of the sketch film, Les Parisiennes.
As shy as she is smiling, she talks about her first major role: thirty minutes entitled Sophie, directed by Marc Allégret. The dialogues were written by a screenwriter whom she says she knows well, and for good reason: his name is Roger Vadim and she has a particularly discreet romance with him. At the time, the paparazzi were not yet interested in his private life. His story with the 7th art began four years ago, with an appearance in Les Collégiennes, directed by André Hunebelle. Her name is still Catherine Dorléac. Her name does not appear in the credits, and if she agreed to be part of a group of young girls who are rowdy in a boarding school, it is to follow Sylvie, one of her sisters who plays a little girl of around ten of years.
Also read: The life of Catherine Deneuve is the mystery of her game
Unlike Françoise Dorléac, her other sister, her goal is absolutely not to become an actress. His parents, Maurice Dorléac and Renée Simonot, work in this world, but it doesn’t matter to him. And yet, in 1959, she starred in Little Cats, a film whose extremely strict censorship prevented its release. Why ? She ignores it because, at that time, she did not dare to ask what had happened. No one would have said anything to him anyway.
This feature film nevertheless remains a symbolic turning point in its history. It was on this occasion that she decided to choose her mother’s birth name as a pseudonym. Her presence on screen became a little more important, in 1960, in The Doors Slam, where she played a role that she knew well, that of Françoise Dorléac’s little sister. The same year, she took up the game even more by playing opposite Mel Ferrer and Danielle Darrieux in The Ladies’ Man. In 1963, she became the sulphurous Justine in Vice and Virtue, on a screenplay by Roger Vailland freely adapted from the works of the Marquis de Sade, directed by Roger Vadim. Critics are screaming scandal. Others, on the other hand, salute the instinctive talent of the young actress, and begin to bet on her future. Some even say that she will be the new Brigitte Bardot, and not only because from the filming of Les Parisiennes, the brunette that she was chose to become a blonde. A press that we don’t yet call people also compares her to BB, then at the height of her glory. Catherine Deneuve firmly rejects this comparison and defends her singularity. “Could she appear undressed on screen?”, Claude le Gac nevertheless asks her in this first interview. She responds, half-heartedly, that if a great director like, for example, Elia Kazan, asked her, she would accept without a doubt. ask questions.
She will never meet him but will work with many others, equally illustrious, starting with Luis Bunuel. In 1967, after the triumph of Les Parapluies de Cherbourg and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, being Séverine, venal and fragile, in Belle de jour definitively ensured her global glory. Americans nicknamed her “The most beautiful woman in the world”. A beauty that was not fatal to him, quite the contrary.
