Yves Montand - A man , a singer, an actor, an icon

MENU

HOME

In 1929, the family obtained French citizenship. As a boy, Ivo works at the port: unloader. He has a great love for music and in '37, sixteen, takes a bit 'of singing lessons. Two years later, timidly, it overlooks the small town stages. He has a beautiful voice, an equally beautiful figure, the expression of a nice rogue. And a name that "intrigues" ... Yves Montand. Yves? Montand? The young man is awake, has imagination and is witty: he looks for a French name that resembles his own Ivo and plays with the verb "to mount" ... When he was a kid and spent his days on the street with his peers, at lunchtime mother Giuseppina faced the window and he called him: "Ivo, monta!" (Ivio, come back home!)

Initially, in the repertoire, he has the songs of the two major French stars: Charles Trenet and Maurice Chevalier, Fernandel's imitations and dancing the tap as Fred Astaire ... He likes. And it is hired by more important theaters; not infrequently it is also called in Nice, in Toulon, in the province. War breaks out, France is occupied by the Germans and Marshal Petain, as a novel Quisling offers his services to Hitler. The resistance has not yet taken hold, so for now no one is shooting, the general climate allows a living as-if-nothing-was. Yves takes the road to Paris. He manages to avoid deportation to Germany and has no trouble sneaking into the "big" show business, where Edith Piaf falls madly in love with him (the feeling is paid ... but not madly). "Le moineau" ("the sparrow", the nickname of the great French singer) therefore, introduces him into the circle of his collaborators: musicians, entrepreneurs, in short, insiders such as Loulou Gustè, Jean Guigo, Philippe-Gerard, Marguerite Monnot. We are in 1944, now the war has also arrived in "douce France", but this dramatic situation is favorable to him, in the sense that the field of the show in Paris shrinks, there is room only for the "elect" and he stays together with them...

The actual debut between the "bigs", no longer only as a guest with one or two appearances or in some duets with Piaf, took place in October 1945: Edith imposed it at the Theater de l'Etoile. And he gets sold out for six weeks. The Paris that can afford some entertainment does not disdain to demonstrate its fascination for this "dude" of twenty-four years, lover of the "girlfriend of France", or rather of the French Star number one.

The year after Yves starred in his first film: Le port de la nuit (While Paris is sleeping) by Marcel Carné and Jacques Prevert. The film is very awaited; the protagonists should have been Jean Gabin and Marlene Dietrich, but the former finest European couple in Hollywood had ceased to be so. In their place there is him and Nathalie Nattier, a young debutante. The success is immediate: for the film and for Montand, who also plays Prevert poetry, in music by Joseph Kosma, "Les feuilles mortes", his first classic.

According to the most malicious gossipers, Edith Piaf truncates their relationship at this point, because the lightning and growing notoriety of Yves would be beginning to make shade. The truth is much more prosaic and sad: fearing to be betrayed and abandoned she decides to do it herself, this painful step.

The definitive consecration came in 1953, with the film by Henri-Georges Clouzot, Le Salaire de la peur (The Wages Of Fear, Grand Prix in Cannes.

In 1949, Prevert introduced him to the splendid and intelligent Simone Signoret: it was love at first sight. She divorced from the director Yves Allegret and two years later they married, bringing her daughter Catherine as a dowry. From their union - thirty-three years of marriage - no children will be born. (Montand will have one, Valentin, from the last companion of his life, Carole Amiel, December 31, 88: father at sixty-seven years. There has been also those who tried to pass for illegitimate daughter, so in 1997 Montand's body was exhumed for DNA testing, but the outcome was negative).

In 1954, the new star of Paris "politically" unveils itself: signing the appeal against the atomic bomb and attending "comrades of the Communists" Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Serge Reggiani, Pierre Brasseur, Luis Buñuel, Jorge Semprún. He enrolled then in the PCF (The French Communist Party), but when in 1956, after the Soviet tank invasion of Hungary, he held a concert in Moscow, he asked to speak with Nikita Khrushchev: he wanted to ask the Russian leader the reasons for this act. The gesture makes him acquire new fans, but he loses some of the old ones.

While continuing to publish many records of music, intensifies above all the relationship with the cinema. Over the course of his career he will shoot eighty films.

In 1959, the American impresario Norman Granz organized him three weeks at Broadway. At the debut, in the audience there are Montgomery Clift, Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Marilyn Monroe. It is a triumph, which is repeated in Hollywood and San Francisco.
(He will return to sing in the States in 1961 and in 1963).
Appears in the popular NBC show, conducted by Dinah Shore ... There is little to say, the "rogue" has conquered America as and more than the old divas of the past. It was from the time of Chevalier that a French artist did not breach the hearts of the Yankees. And in 1960, he is called by Hollywood: George Cukor directs him in Let's make love (The millionaire). Alongside is Marilyn Monroe, for whom he loses his head (obviously! half the world is madly in love with her, including the husband Henry Miller), but he "finds" the head almost immediately. All in all Simone is another thing.

In the Sixties, he plays in the films of Resnais, Clément, Lelouch, de Broca, Melville, Oury, Godard, Frankenheimer ... And with Costa-Gavras, with which he directs his attention to political cinema. The first film, dated 1965, is however a police movie (Compartiment tueurs); but the other three are of commitment and denunciation: Z of 1969; L'aveu (1970) and Etat de siège (1973).

We remembered the political militancy of Montand. During the May 1968 events in France he is on the side of the students, of course. And when Prague, in August 1968, suffers the invasion of Moscow, Yves slams the door of the French Communist Party. But the struggle continues: we will mention only two moments. In 1974, after six years that he did not perform in public, he organized a memorable concert at the Olimpya: the proceeds (very high: the cost of the ticket was elevate) were for the Chilean political refugees, welcomed in France. In 1981, on the other hand, he supported the Solidarity syndicate, the Polish workers' union, helping to mobilize the large part of left-wing public opinion, but skeptical about the Walesa movement, due to the influence of the pro-Soviet Communist party of France.

The real discography began in the 60s with the new LP format, for which were published a series of collections, plus some live albums taken from his shows. The albums above are basically all those to be considered for a basic discography, you can add eventually some other live performances. They are mostly listenable on the main streaming services.

A selection of images dedicated to the French actor and singer thanks to the photos of Jacques Gomot (see the following note) on the holidays in St. Paul De Vence of Montand and other personalities of the show and culture,
First line: In these first two photos, he is having lunch in a trattoria with his wife, Serge Reggiani and the actress Françoise Arnoul.
Second line: Pastimes at St. Paul in the mild summer of Provence, bowls, cards, criquet.
Third line: Still with his wife and friends, including Alain Delon and Romy Schneider. In the table also Christiane Allegret (alongside Delon) and Georges-Henri Clouzot (next to Schneider).
Fourth line: Engaged in a game of bowls with Lino Ventura and in a dance for two (after a dinner in a trattoria, suppose) with his beloved wife.

© Sandro Damiani for Musica & Memoria and Music-Graffiti - March 2014 / Reproduction, even partial prohibited / Note: The article was published by Sandro Damiani in a similar form also in the newspaper "La Voce del Popolo" of Fiume (Croatian Rep.)

CONTACT

HOME