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Stéphane Audran is one of those women who aged really well. What I mean is that no woman probably looked better at 40 than she did in Luis Buñuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. 
So, yes, she was born in 1932. November 2. Which makes her a Scorpio, like me. Sometimes it all makes sense. Like, I believe that she and I are similar that way. But then, I don't really believe in astrology at all. She was born Colette Suzanne Dacheville in Versailles, France. She's French, most of you don't know her. I guess the American that comes to mind to equate her with would be Faye Dunaway. You probably don't even know who Faye Dunaway is, do you? Tsk, tsk. I made Stéphane Audran person of the week this week, because Buñuel's Discreet Charm of is coming into re-release. The Castro will have it soon. Stéphane made 24 films for her then-husband Claude Chabrol. Chabrol, along with Godard and Truffaut was one of the leaders of French New Wave Cinema in the late 50s and 60s. 
As usual, I will now give you a relatively short list of her best films. But first a plea. If you haven't seen her in Chabrol's The Butcher (Le Boucher) go rent it tonight. It is French and from the late 60's. It's in color. It's a quiet thriller. It's an unbelievably great film. And it's not at all dated. It is subtitled, but if you can handle that, you will love it. I defy you not to enjoy this great classic. Write it down. Write down the title now. Put that piece of paper in your pocket. Then rent it. It'll be in the foreign film section. Some of the more important works of Stéphane Audran: Les Cousins (1959) 
From David Thomson's A Biographical Dictionary of Film, Third Edition, 1994: "Stéphane Audran (Colette Suzanne Jeannine Dacheville), b. Versailles, France, 1932 
It is characteristic of Chabrol's enigmatic work that one might not deduce from it that Stéphane Audran was his wife. Counting the black comedy of the episode from Paris Vu Par... (64), she has made twenty-one films with her husband. At first her parts were small, but after a brief appearance in Les Cousins (59), she was one of the Les Bonnes Femmes (59), in Les Godelureaux (61), and one of Landru's victims (63). L'Oeil du Malin (62) was her first starred part. In Paris Vu Par... she was the quarrelsome mother whose son puts cotton wool in his ears so that he never hears her cry for help in an emergency. That seemed a sardonic, marital joke from Chabrol, and even in La Ligne de Démarcation (66) and The Champagne Murders (67), there was no hint that he regarded her as anything more than a conventionally beautiful fashion plate. It was Les Biches (68) that properly discovered her as an actress. In one sense, her acutely made-up beauty needed very little heightening to suggest lesbianism, but the eventual sexual reversal of the film allowed her a new poignancy that was an advance for both actress and director. From that point, the note of thoughtfulness beneath such mannequin elegance has become central to Chabrol's work. It is difficult not to attribute the tenderness and growing human commitment of La Femme Infidèle (69), La Rupture (70), and Le Boucher (70) to her presence, even if he continued to photograph her in a strangely detached manner. Or is it that there is a glossy coldness in the woman herself that makes her attractive to Chabrol? One thinks of the way her Dordogne teacher in Le Boucher wears false eyelashes throughout, and of her remote calm in the yoga sequence. She is herself exquisitely uncommitted, although it is her playing of the woods sequence in Le Boucher on which the insecure humanity of the film is based. It remains impossible to see her as a major actress, as if Chabrol's ultimate reticence had affected her too. She made a few films for other directors -- Le Signe du Lion (59, Eric Rohmer); La Peau de Torpedo (70, Jean Delannoy); and she fitted admirably into The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (72, Luis Buñuel), smiling through every disaster as if it were glass and urgently hauling her husband into the rhododendrons for a quick one before lunch. Her vapid glossiness suited comedy of manners and may have lured Chabrol away from character studies to the absurd games of people as much corrupted by pretense as their situations are by B pictures. She is so much an image, so little a person: Juste Avant la Nuit (71); Les Noces Rouges (72); Folies Bourgeoises (76); and Blood Relatives (78). At the same time, she worked outside France, but with no more warmth: B. Must Die (73, José Luis Borau); And Then There Were None (74, Peter Collinson); The Black Bird (75, David Giler); Silver Bears (77, Ivan Passer); and Eagle's Wing (78, Anthony Harvey). But she was revealed as a bitter middle-aged woman, dowdy beside Isabelle Huppert in Violette Nozière (78). Since then, generally as a supporting actress, she has made Le Gagnant (79, Christian Gion); Le Soleil en Face (79, Pierre Kast); The Big Red One (80, Samuel Fuller); Il Etait une Fois des Gens Heureux... les Plouffe (80, Gilles Carle); Coup de Torchon (81, Bertrand Tavernier); Brideshead Revisited (81, Charles Sturridge); Le Beau Monde (81, Michel Polac); Le Marteau Pique (81, Charles Bitsch); Le Choc (82, Robin Davis); Boulevard des Assassins (82, Boramy Tioulong); Les Affinites Electives (82, Chabrol); Le Paradis pour Tous (82, Alain Jessua); Mortelle Randonnée (83, Claude Miller); La Scaralyine (83, Gabriel Aghion); Thieves After Dark (83, Fuller); Le Sang des Autres (84, Chabrol); El Viajero de las Quatro Estaciones (84, Miguel Littin); Mistral's Daughter (84, Douglas Hickox and Kevin Connor); The Sun Also Rises (84, James Goldstone); Poulet au Vinaigre (85, Chabrol); Night Magic (85, Lewis Furey); La Cage aux Folles III (85, Georges Lautner); Le Gitane (85 Philippe de Broca); Suivez Mon Regard (86, Jean Curtelin); Un'isola (86, Carlo Lizzani); as Babette in Babette's Feast (87, Gabriel Axel); Les Saisons du Plaisir (87, Jean-Pierre Mocky); Poor Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton Story (87, Charles Jarrott); Sons (89, Alexandre Rockwell); and Betty (93, Chabrol). Here's her biography from All Movie Guide -- In film from 1958, French actress Stéphane Audran has most often been seen in the films directed by her second husband, Claude Chabrol. Conveying an icy sensuality in her screen appearances, Audran won France's Cesar Award for her against-type portrayal of a drab, unhappy woman in Chabrol's Violette Noziere (1978); three years earlier, she was honored with the British Film Academy award for Just Before Nightfall (1975). She has also appeared in the works of Eric Rohmer (Signe du Lion), Jean Delannoy (La Peau de Torpedo), Gabriel Axel (Babette's Feast), and Bertrand Tavernier (Coup de Touchon). The most celebrated of her non-Chabrol films was Luis Bunuel's Oscar-winning The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972). Also active in English-language productions, Audran seemed a bit lost in such American misfires as The Black Bird (1975), but was poise personified in the made-for-TV projects Brideshead Revisited (1982), Mistral's Daughter (1984) and The Sun Also Rises (1984). Prior to her 1964 marriage to Chabrol, Stéphane Audran had been the wife of actor Jean-Louis Trintignant. ~ Hal Erickson. Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia: Aristocratic, coolly beautiful French blonde best known for her work in the films of ex-husband Claude Chabrol, starting with a small role in The Cousins (1959). She was Ginette, the shopgirl who wanted success on the stage in Les Bonnes Femmes (1960), the mistress of the killer Landru in Bluebeard (1962), and also appeared in Les Godelureaux (1960), The Tiger Likes Fresh Blood (1964), Marie-Chantal contre le docteur Kha (1965) and La Ligne de Demarcation (1966). It was her performance in Les Biches (1968) as a rich lesbian who becomes involved in a ménage ê trois that first gained her real critical notice, and the fire that burned underneath her exquisitely serene surface was fully developed in La Femme infidele (1968), Le Boucher (1969, marvelous as a school teacher who falls in love with a murdering butcher), Just Before Nightfall (1971) and the very sensual Wedding in Blood (1973). Her work for others includes Buñuel's Academy Award-winning masterpiece, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), Vincent, Francois, Paul and the Others (1974), the British remake of Ten Little Indians (1975), The Silver Bears (1978), Bertrand Tavernier's Coup de torchon (1981), and most impressively, her performance as the mysterious cook in the Danish Oscar-winner Babette's Feast (1987). Audran continued to work with Chabrol in Violette (1978), Cop au vin (1984), Quiet Days in Clichy (1990) and most recently, Betty (1993). She was also briefly married to actor , Jean-Louis Trintignant. Awards: BAFTA Awards
Berlin International Film Festival
César Awards, France
Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists
London Critics Circle Film Awards
Robert Festival
San Sebastián International Film Festival
Audran at the Claude Chabrol Project. |
