Romy Schneider on ARTE: Why does his voice change depending on the film?

Why doesn’t Romy Schneider have the same voice in Sissy’s films and in Christine, which will be broadcast tonight on Arte, as in La Piscine or Claude Saute’s films? The reason is simple, the German actor did not know a word of French when filming began in France.

It’s 1958, and she’s the star of Christine, a tragic love story that’s also her first French feature. The 19-year-old actress chooses who will be her male partner in the photo: a certain Alain Delon, a 22-year-old young man who is just starting out and has yet to make a major film.

But Romy Schneider doesn’t speak French and plays his lines in German, a language that Alain Delon doesn’t understand. This will not prevent them from turning an “arranged” professional meeting into a personal love story. On the other hand, for director Pierre Gaspard-Huyt, it’s time to find a French voice for Rome.

Luckily for him, the actor already has a recurring dubbing actor, Gilbert Aubrey. The latter followed him from 1954 and his third feature: The Queen’s Young Years, in which Romy Schneider played the imperious Queen Victoria!

In France, Aubrey’s voice is also Schneider’s voice in three Sissy films, so he is very recognizable by the public. It would remain in her French voice until the release of Éva or The Secret Notebook of a Young Girl in 1959, when Schneider would be able to play in French.

Except for Christine in the movie, there’s a problem: Romy’s character has to sing like a soprano, and Gilbert Aubrey can’t deliver on that particular requirement.

Mathé Alter is finally chosen to be the French singing voice of Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. A lyricist, he provides the song Four cent loversInterpretation by Christine in the last third of the film, which allows Rome to pass for a prominent singer.

FYI, Christine is a remake of Max Ophuls’s A Love Story, a 1932 film worn by Rome’s mother, a very famous actress in Germany. Romy had long since turned down the role, but the success of The Sissi – films he hated – finally got him to do it.

The Schneider-Delon relationship would lead to their engagement and the filming of Plein soleil (1960). It would end three years later, but the former couple would meet again on screen in L’Amour à la mer (1965), The Assassination of Trotsky by Joseph Lose (1971) and of course La Piscine by Jacques Deray, which attracted 2.3 million viewers.