An unforgettable role that of Simone Signoret
On the evening of February 4, 1978, the French actress Simone Signoret went on stage at the Salle Pleyel to receive the award César for best actress for the role of Madame Rosa in Life ahead of you by Moshe Mizrahi. A final recognition – with the David di Donatello for the same film – which could be considered belated, since Simone Signoret is already a widely recognized actress, awarded among other things the BAFTA, the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival of 1959, and of the Oscar for best actress in 1960 for The Paths of the Upper Town.
In this film, a success with critics and audiences in France and abroad, the actress and wife of Yves Montand plays Madame Rosa. She is a former Jewish prostitute and Holocaust survivor, raising the children of other prostitutes in Belleville. She is particularly close to Momo, a boy of Algerian origin, who will help her when she is struck by the disease.
An impressive transformation
For Life ahead of youthe actress was then 56 years old at the time of filming, physically transformed. A transformation that Yves Montand didn’t like, suggesting that she would get older and fatter, and a role devoid of “glamour” that he advised her to refuse. For a year Simone Signoret opposed Moshe Mizrahi, the film’s screenwriter and director. But she ends up accepting. She explained in June 1978 to the magazine People why she would blame herself for not doing so:
A role like this only comes along every 20 years. It’s a gift. (Madame Rosa) is everything: liar, sincere, greedy, poor, stupid, intelligent, loving and evil. And then she dies. If I had said “no” and another woman played with it, I would have felt bad.
To embody this woman, magnificently written by Émile Ajar (pseudonym of Romain Gary) in the novel of which the film is the adaptation, Simone Signoret therefore gains weight and ages 10 years. Her wrinkles are accentuated by makeup, his cheeks are thickened with cotton and his legs are also padded with bandages. The appearance of her character is essential to telling this great story of humanity on the screen, which is why the actress agrees to be filmed from unflattering angles to emphasize her ugliness.
A new consecration
Life ahead of you, a hymn to humanity and solidarity, brings to the foreground the brotherhood between the Jewish and Arab populations, with the vivid memory of the Holocaust in the background. Born in the cinema at times that the war between Israel and the Arab countries was the object of intense negotiations to tell a story about the country – which was signed in 1979 -, the resonance is strong and the film was filmed in April 1978 L’Oscar for best foreign language film. As for his individual reward, declared Simone Signoret to Michel Drucker :
When we are dealing with an extraordinary cake like the one Madame Rosa was in “La Vie avant soi”, I find that perhaps it is a little unfair to put her in competition with other roles. Roles like that, you find one or more in a career. They are also found at my age. So there is perhaps a small disproportion between this gift that was given to me, and the roles that the other girls had to play. (…) They are all young girls, at least much younger than me, who also had to defend important things, but not of this importance. In my opinion there is a small inequality. Having said that, I don’t want to appear falsely modest, or demagogic, my position is very embarrassing…
Source: Cine Serie
Ray Ortiz is a journalist at Gossipify, known for his coverage of trending news and current events. He is committed to providing readers with accurate and unbiased reporting, and is respected for his ability to keep readers informed on the latest news and issues.
