Yves Montand - A man , a singer, an actor, an icon |
If you
were to go to Monsummano Terme (in Tuscany), knowing something about
the town, you would expect that one of the "houses" of art and
culture, for example the municipal theater, would bear the name of
the Risorgimento poet Giuseppe Giusti or the writer, former
post-crisis minister and co-founder of the Italian Encyclopedia,
Ferdinando Martini. Of course not! The theater is named after Yves
Montand, the unforgettable "French" chansonnier. |
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. 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. |
His return to the Olympia takes place in 1981. He
sings thirty-six songs, the audience is delirious. The result is a double album,
perhaps the most beautiful of his entire career. In 1985, sixty-four years old,
Simone Signoret died. The blow is tremendous. For a year, Montand is in a state
of prostration. It resumes and with a tour de force, made of cinema, records and
concerts. |
Professionally speaking, Yves Montand did not miss anything:
discs, films, concerts, world tours and, on time,
success; and on the human and civil level he gave his best. Let's say that, on
the contrary, the musical and cinematographic establishment has instead been
mean with him. On the other hand, who goes against the current, what else can he
expect?
He dedicated
two songs
to his homeland, interpreting them in Italian, which he had never forgotten: one
from the
popular tradition - "Amor dammi quel fazzolettino" (My love
give me that handkerchief)and the
other to the partisan memory: the anthem known worldwile "Bella
ciao". |
1960 |
1962 |
1964 |
1964 |
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Let's Make Love | Le Paris de..Montand | Chante Prevert | En balade |
1968 |
1968 |
1968 |
1974 |
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Je vous etes | La bicyclette | A l'Olympia | Montand de mons temps |
1981 |
1988 |
1994 |
1998 |
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Olympia '81 extracts |
Montand d'hier
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Recital |
One Man Show |
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. |
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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, |
Images © Jacques Gomot reproduced for information purposes only and in thumbnail format. The full size images are available from the rights holder. It 'also disabled the ability to download these thumbnails from this site. / Images © Jacques Gomot reproduit seulement et en format miniature des fins d'information. Les images en taille sont disponibles auprès du détenteur des droits. C'est également désactivé la possibilité de télécharger les vignettes de ce site. |
Notes |
The other images of this page are taken by Internet and they appear without copyright declared, in case, it is possible to contact the webmaster of this site). |
© 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.) |
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This work is published under a Creative Commons License. |