Director: Marcel Blistene
Year: 1946
Country: France
Rating: 7.0
Aka - Étoile sans lumière
It is Piaf. The Little Sparrow. Perhaps
the greatest female singer of the 20th century. She could make a cactus cry.
Brought up for the first decade of her life in her grandmother's brothel
and then her father brought her into his street act as an acrobat and singer.
Later an agent heard her singing on a street corner and signed her to appear
in a cabaret and soon to the world. My father had many of her albums and
passed them on to me. Not an attractive woman at 4 feet 8 inches, she had
a series of famous lovers, drank too much, became addicted to morphine after
a car accident and passed away in 1963 at the age of 47. She sang till near
the end when liver cancer took her away. Such emotion in her voice. I don't
speak a word of Franch beyond mercy and croissant, but her music just gets
to me. Watching her in this film feels like a treasure. She didn't appear
in many films so nice to come across this one. It is a bit downcast but that
fit Piaf. Her songs were about love, rejection, despair and regretting nothing.
Here she plays a hotel maid in a small town
with a boyfriend played by Yves Montand - who in real life was her lover
at the time. Seeing them side by side is amusing - he towers over her like
Godzilla. The film is set in 1929 as the French film industry is converting
to sound and actors with poor voices are being pushed out. Stella Dora (Mila
Parely) is one of those actors worried about her future - in particular her
inability to sing. That must have been the craze in France at the beginning
of talkies as it was in Hollywood. Piaf is a simple girl with no ambitions
and loves to sing as she works in the hotel. The agent and lover of Stella
comes up with an idea - can Piaf sing for Stella and keep it secret. Hmmm.
Sounds familiar but this was five years before Singing in the Rain. And while
Singing in the Rain was joyous this has a dark cloud always overhead.
I loved the scene of the sound men bringing
in Piaf to sing and shaking their heads, who is the small insignificant girl.
And then she sings. It is a pirate movie with songs - a huge success - Dora
is acclaimed for her voice - the toast of the town - while Piaf has to stay
silent and in the shadows. Think of Marnie Nixon who sang for Deborah Kerr
in The King and I, Natalie Wood in Westside Story, Monroe for Diamond's are
a Girl's Best Friend and Hepburn in My Fair Lady. At this point, one might
be expecting a joyous Singing in the Rain ending but not the damn French.
Time to put on a Piaf album and suffer.
