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“Actors must also possess the intelligence, imagination, sensitivity, and insight into human nature necessary to fully understand the characters they play—their inner thoughts, motivations, and emotions. Furthermore, actors must have the ability to express these things convincingly through voice, body movements, gestures, or facial expressions, so the qualities seem true to the characters portrayed and to the situation in which the characters find themselves.” (Petrie and Boggs in The Art of Watching Films)After studying the course content assigned for this Module, explain the ideas presented in the paragraph above discussing Marion Cotillard’s acting performance in La Vie En Rose (2007), and answering the following questions:What was Cotillard’s process in creating her acting performance?How does she use her voice, body movements, gestures and facial expressions to tell the film story?In this assignment, the students ought to develop on the topic proposed showing knowledge and familiarity with the course materials, the ability to discuss and analyze such content, and demonstrating an appreciation of the film experience. To develop and support ideas, the students are encouraged to reference and cite information from the textbook and the Module Content.The post has a minimum of 300 words. The students are also required to reply to the posts of at least two other students, these replies have a minimum of 100 words and should present a substantive contribution to the discussion, engaging on a conversation about the ideas proposed (avoid short non-substantive comments such as, “great post”, “I agree with you”, etc.).
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Fall of the sparrow
Roger Ebert June 14, 2007
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/la-vie-en-rose-2007
Marion Cotillard (right, with Sylvie Testud) gives an extraordinary performance in “La
Vie en Rose” as Edith Piaf, the famous French singer whose life was a blend of joy and
tragedy, but whose music lives on 50 years after her death.
She was the daughter of a street singer and a circus acrobat. She was dumped by her
mother with her father, who dumped her with his mother, who ran a brothel. In
childhood, diseases rendered her temporarily blind and deaf. She claimed she was
cured by St. Therese, whose shrine the prostitutes took her to. One of the prostitutes
adopted her, until her father returned, snatched her away, and put her to work in his act.
From her mother and the prostitute she heard many songs, and one day when his
sidewalk act was doing badly, her father commanded her, “Do something.” She sang
“La Marseilles.” And Edith Piaf was born.
Piaf. The French word for “sparrow.” She was named by her first impresario, Louis
Leplee. He was found shot dead not long after — possibly by a pimp who considered her
his property. She stood 4 feet, 8 inches tall, and so became “the Little Sparrow.” She
was the most famous and beloved French singer of her time — of the century, in fact -and her lovers included Yves Montand (who she discovered) and the middleweight
champion Marcel Cerdan. She drank too much, all the time. She became addicted to
morphine, and required ten injections a day. She grew old and prematurely stooped,
and died at 47.
Olivier Dahan’s “La Vie en Rose,” one of the best biopics I’ve seen, tells Piaf’s life story
through the extraordinary performance of Marion Cotillard, who looks like the singer.
The title, which translates loosely as “life through rose-colored glasses,” is from one of
Piaf’s most famous songs, which she wrote herself. She is known for countless other
songs perhaps most poignantly for “Non je ne regrette rien” (“No, I regret nothing”),
which is seen in the film as her final song; if it wasn’t, it should have been.
How do you tell a life story to chaotic, jumbled and open to chance as Piaf’s? Her life did
not have an arc but a trajectory. Joy and tragedy seemed simultaneous. Her loves were
heartfelt but doomed; after she begged the boxer Cerdan to fly to her in New York, he
was killed in the crash of his flight from Paris. Her stage triumphs alternated with her
stage collapses. If her life resembled in some ways Judy Garland’s, there is this
difference: Garland lived for the adulation of the audience, and Piaf lived to do her duty
as a singer. From her earliest days, from the prostitutes, her father and her managers,
she learned that when you’re paid, you perform.
Oh, but what a performer she was. Her voice was loud and clear, reflecting her early
years as a street singer. Such a big voice for such a little woman. At first she sang
mechanically, but was tutored to improve her diction and express the meaning of her
words. She did that so well that if you know what the words “Non je ne regrette rien”
mean, you can essentially feel the meaning of every other word in the song.
Dahan and his co-writer, Isabelle Sobelman, move freely through the pages of Piaf’s
life. A chronology would have missed the point. She didn’t start here and go there; she
was always, at every age, even before she had the name, the little sparrow. The action
moves back and forth from childhood to final illness, from applause to desperation, from
joy to heartbreak (particularly in the handling of Cerdan’s last visit to her).
This mosaic storytelling style has been criticized in some quarters as obscuring facts
(quick: how many times was she married?). But think of it this way: Since there are, in
fact, no wedding scenes in the movie, isn’t it more accurate to see husbands, lovers,
friends, admirers, employees and everyone else as whirling around her small, still
center? Nothing in her early life taught her to count on permanence or loyalty. What she
counted on was singing, champagne, infatuation and morphine.
Many biopics break down in depicting their subjects in old age, and Piaf, at 47, looked
old. Gene Siskel once referred to an actor’s old-age makeup as making him look like a
turtle. In “La Vie en Rose” there is never a moment’s doubt. Even the hair is right; her
frizzled, dyed, thinning hair in the final scenes matches the real Piaf in the videos I cite
below. The only detail I can question is her resiliency after all-night drinking sessions. I
once knew an alcoholic who said, “If I wasn’t a drinker and I woke up with one of these
hangovers, I’d check myself into the emergency room.”
Then there are the songs, a lot of them. I gather from the credits that some are dubbed
by other singers, some are sung by Piaf herself, and some, in parts at least, by
Cotillard. In the video clips you can see how Piaf choreographed her hands and fingers,
and Cotillard has that right, too. If a singer has been dead 50 years and sang in another
language, she must have been pretty great to make it onto so many saloon jukeboxes,
which is how I first heard her. Now, of course, she’s on my iPod, and I’m listening to her
right now.
Pour moi toute seule.
Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he
won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.
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