With her smoldering magnetism and fierce intelligence (likened by Patti Smith to “a barbed-wire fence on fire”), French screen siren Jeanne Moreau breathed unforgettable life into some of the most complex women in all of twentieth-century cinema. Already a successful stage actor when she came to international attention for her turn in Louis Malle’s moody thriller ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS, Moreau soon went on to cement her status as an icon of the French New Wave with her role as the mercurial free spirit at the center of François Truffaut’s JULES AND JIM. Throughout her six-decade career, Moreau delivered fearless performances for some of the leading auteurs of her time, including Michelangelo Antonioni (LA NOTTE), Jacques Demy (BAY OF ANGELS), and Orson Welles (CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT), who proclaimed her “the greatest actress in the world.”
In this in-depth interview, first aired on January 30, 1972, Jeanne Moreau reflects on her long career in French cinema and her work with some of the country’s greatest directors, sharing her thoughts on aging, acting, and character development.
Directed by Louis Malle • 1958 • France
Starring Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet, Georges Poujouly
For his feature debut, twenty-four-year-old Louis Malle brought together a mesmerizing performance by Jeanne Moreau, evocative cinematography by Henri Decaë, and a now legendary jazz score by Miles Da...
Directed by Louis Malle • 1958 • France
Starring Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Marc Bory
Louis Malle unveiled the natural beauty of Jeanne Moreau in his breakthrough, ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS. With his follow-up, the scandalous smash THE LOVERS (LES AMANTS), he made her a star once and for all. A deeply fe...
Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni • 1961 • Italy
Starring Marcello Mastroianni, Jeanne Moreau, Monica Vitti
This psychologically acute, visually striking modernist work was director Michelangelo Antonioni’s follow-up to the epochal L’AVVENTURA. Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau star as a n...
Directed by François Truffaut • 1962 • France
Starring Jeanne Moreau, Oskar Werner, Henri Serre
Hailed as one of the finest films ever made, JULES AND JIM charts, over twenty-five years, the relationship between two friends and the object of their mutual obsession. The legendary François Truffau...
Directed by Jacques Demy • 1963 • France
Starring Jeanne Moreau, Claude Mann
This precisely wrought, emotionally penetrating romantic drama from Jacques Demy, set largely in the casinos of Nice, is a visually lovely but darkly realistic investigation into love and obsession. A bottle-blonde Jean...
Directed by Orson Welles • 1966 • Spain, Switzerland
Starring Orson Welles, Keith Baxter, Jeanne Moreau
The crowning achievement of Orson Welles’s extraordinary cinematic career, CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT was the culmination of the filmmaker’s lifelong obsession with Shakespeare’s ultimate rapscallion,...
Directed by Orson Welles • 1968 • France
Starring Jeanne Moreau, Orson Welles, Roger Coggio
Orson Welles' first color film and final completed fictional feature, THE IMMORTAL STORY is a moving and wistful adaptation of a tale by Isak Dinesen. Welles stars as a wealthy merchant in nineteenth-cent...
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1982 • Germany
Starring Brad Davis, Franco Nero, Jeanne Moreau
Director Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final film is a deliriously stylized tale of hothouse lust and simmering violence. Set amid an expressionistic soundstage vision of a French sea port, this da...
