Nostalgia Isn't What It Used to Be

by Simone Signoret

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060139862
• ISBN13: 9780060139865
• Release Date: January 1978
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 403 Pages
• Weight: 1.81 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The Life of La Signoret

In an article entitled "In Praise of Older Women," "Time" magazine once remarked that Simone Signoret was "everywoman's Bogart, in a trenchcoat, dangling a cigarette, in "Room At The Top." Should you find yourself saying some modern equivalent of "Right on, sister,"at this, you might want to find this autobiography. Signoret (born, Wiesbaden, Germany, March 25,1921; died, High Jura, France, September 30,1985 ) might seem typically French middle-class at first glance. In fact,she was raised in Neuilly, a suburb of Paris, in an intellectual atmosphere. She studied English in school, took a teachers degree, and tutored in English and Latin. She spoke English, German, and French. But her father, an officer in the French army and a linguist who later worked at the United Nations, was descended from Polish Jews. He barely made it out of France ahead of the German Occupation of World War II: he fled to England, where he served with French General Charles de Gaulle. This left Signoret, as a young woman, to shoulder the burden of supporting her mother and two younger brothers. She first went to work at a collaborationist newspaper, "Le Nouveau Temps," so collaborationist that her boss Jean Luchaire, faced a firing squad at war's end. However, she herself discovered the Cafe Flore, home of France's intelligentsia these many years, and decided she wanted to act. Through the Occupation of France, she continued, by working constantly in the film industry, always as an extra or perhaps with just one line,to support mother and brothers. She lacked proper papers, owing to her father; used her mother's maiden name, Signoret, rather than her father's name, Kaminker; and had to keep a low low profile. But all wars eventually end, even World War II, and her career began to build. Along the way to "Casque d'or, " her first major French picture, she loved, lived with, had a girl Catherine by, and eventually married French film director Yves Allegret. Then in a dramatic, wrenching emotional upheaval, she met French cabaret star Yves Montand. They eventually married, and she even managed to talk him into making a few movies, such as "Wages of Fear," "Z", and "State of Siege." The couple were outspoken left-wingers, and though Hollywood began to flirt in the 1950's, they couldn't get visas to enter this country. Mind you, they had minds of their own. Previous commitments required them to tour the Soviet Union shortly after its brutal repression of the Polish Uprising of 1956. One evening the Politburo came to late supper, and the pair told then-leader Nikita Khrushchev just what they thought of his methods. At any rate, in 1959, at age 38, Signoret became an international star with the English-made "Room at the Top." She and her husband were finally able to get visas into the States: she was able to be in Los Angeles in 1960 to collect her Best Leading Actress Oscar for "Room." She was the first woman to win the Best Actress award in a non-American made f

Simone's Nostalgia

It rarely happens that a great movie actress also manages to be a great writer. Signoret tells her life story in a lively, literary prose. She makes no excuses for the mistakes she made. She is a master in evoking the atmosphere of a meeting, a conversation or a movie set. Her description of the people she meets on her travels are rivetting.