Simone Signoret – Alain Delon: their two meetings at the top
A look back at the two films bringing them together as headliners: La Veuve Couderc – to be seen this evening on Arte – and Les Granges brûlées.
The Widow Couderc by Pierre Granier-Deferre (1971)
They had already shared the poster ofLoves famous by Michel Boisrond in 1961 and Is Paris burning? by René Clément in 1966 but this adaptation of the eponymous novel by Georges Simenon marks the first real meeting on the big screen of Simone Signoret and Alain Delon. Signoret has just filmed another Simenon adaptation for Granier-Deferre: Cat facing Jean Gabin. And it is also her interpretation in this film which made the director want to immediately join her again for a new adventure. Delon, for his part, has just followed up one after another The Red Circle by Jean-Pierre Melville and Borsalino by Jacques Deray. On screen, they play the owner of a farm and a former convict who gets hired there after leaving five years of incarceration. Their purely sexual relationship will turn into dangerous jealousy at home when the young employee falls under the spell of their attractive neighbor… This is one of the last times that Delon will play the young seducer in the cinema, disturbingly sensual. At 35, he necessarily considers it inevitable to move on to other jobs. This adaptation by Pascal Jardin, accompanied by the music of Philippe Sarde, will meet with tremendous public success with more than 2 million admissions. Enough to encourage its producer Raymond Danon to very quickly re-associate the Signoret-Delon duo on screen
The Burnt Barns by Jean Chapot (1973)
Two years later The Widow Couderc, producer Raymond Danon therefore brings together for the second and last time Simone Signoret and Alain Delon as headliners. At Granier-Deferre, they loved and tore each other apart. There they face each other and oppose each other. Delon plays an investigating judge who investigates a crime committed in an isolated corner of Haut-Doubs and suspects one of the members of a family whose head – Signoret – will rise up against him. This story is strongly inspired by a very famous news item, the Dominici affair: the murder of three Englishmen in the French countryside in 52 remained unsolved even though a local guy, Gaston Dominici, was arrested and imprisoned before being pardoned by the President of the Republic René Coty then released. This affair had just been brought to the screen in The Dominici Affair a few months before the release of Burnt barns. With in the role of the patriarch, Jean Gabin. The scenario of Les Granges brûlées therefore imagined a woman in this strong character and the natural authority of Simone Signoret works wonders. At the helm, we find Jean Chapot, winner a year earlier of the Grand Prix for short film at the Cannes festival with The Sniper Rifle. For the occasion, he reunited with Simone Signoret, whom he had worked with 20 years earlier, on The Witches of Salem by Raymond Rouleau, for whom he was an assistant. It will be the last of her three feature films for the cinema but one of the first significant roles of a small debutante, Miou-Miou, a year before her career took off with The Valseuses. Alain Delon continues in this year 73 where he finds himself in quick succession in four films in addition to the Burnt barns : The Great Guns by Duccio Tessari, Scorpio by Michael Winner, Shock treatment by Alain Jessua and Two men in the city by José Giovanni opposite Jean Gabin, whose daughter Florence Moncorgé plays the small role of his wife in The Burnt Barns. A film whose soundtrack is signed by a young 25-year-old composer at the beginning of his career. Jean Michel Jarre. Three years later, he would experience a global triumph with his album Equinox. And to date he has only reworked three times for the big screen.
The Cheetah: Alain Delon at the height of elegance