‘I have not made
a career; I have not given that much thought. When I first started,
I just wanted to be a good actress. My voice was wrong ; I could
not move around, I tried to improve with lessons. Then I was lucky
enough to meet Chabrol1…’
Thus characteristically summed up by Stéphane
Audran, her first steps were made on stage in the late 1950s in
drama school, with Charles Dullin and Michel Vitold. She appeared
on stage a few times, a little on television too and then came the
cinema. While she married filmmaker Claude Chabrol in 1964, she
had made film debut earlier (especially with Les Bonnes Femmes
in 1960, a surprising film, sad and cruel; and in 1962 with offbeat
Oeil du malin). The great works of the enchanting duo,
like the ‘Karina years’ of Jean-Luc Godard, were yet
to come.
Some are justifiably famous, like Le Boucher of 1970, where
Stéphane Audran portrayed a seemingly well-balanced but secretly
neurotic character, next to monstrous Jean Yanne. Les Biches
(1968), which earned her an acting award at the Berlin Festival,
is as mysterious as a secret ceremony, a film of ‘vampires’
and possession that rhymes with the Stéphane Audran- Marie
Trintignant pair in the wonderful film Betty (1991).
Other films still, over those fabulous times, are unfairly little
known : Juste avant la nuit (1971) should be viewed again
and again as a climax of Chabrol’s art. To be seen again and
again too, La Rupture (1970) demonstrates how intensely
Stephane Audran has managed to embody every possible character through
one single director (23 films altogether so far with Claude Chabrol!).
In this case she was a ‘mother courage’, ever faultless
and even strengthened by encounters with vile, hideous people.
Along with this fantastic work with Chabrol, Stéphane
Audran very comfortably moved into the world of Bunuel (Le Charme
discret de la bourgeoisie, 1972). She worked in France at times
and also abroad (Samuel Fuller, Ivan Passer, Gabriel Axel, etc…)
and always unblinkingly switched from one part –one face,
or mask- to another. She could be stern and glow inside as in Le
Festin de Babette (Gabriel Axel, 198) or droll and cocky in
Coup de Torchon (Bertrand Tavernier, 1981), or perverse
in Le Sang des autres (Claude Chabrol, 1984), or a masochist in
Mortelle Randonnée (Claude Miller, 1984): with her
moving sensuality, Stéphane Audran has always best illustrated
a strange paradox: that of a very popular artist, often funny or
even burlesque, who never sheds her unforgettable allure, her elegant
manners.
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Biography
