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Jean Seberg Dvds @ amazon.com (direct link)
Jean Seberg Biography Books @ amazon.com (direct link)
There was an endearing small-town common
sense about Jean Seberg that stood up to the
powerful attentions of several discoverers and
that, on occasion, brought a deliberate naturalism to good films. Although at the time she
was treated contemptuously by the critics, her
Saint Joan (57, Otto Preminger) is a shrewd
and touching fusion of provincial America,
rural France, and Shaw's notion of a fustian
saint picking logic with kings and bishops. She
was chosen for that film, by Preminger, after
an exhaustive search; even cropped and in
armour she looked pretty and robust, and managed through her very disavowal of spirituality
to bring odd conviction to the claims that she
had heard voices.
Preminger persisted, despite critics, and
won a marvelous performance from her as the
spoilt adolescent in Bonjour Tristesse (58). It
was apparent by now that unlike most discoveries who had previously only done local
stock, she was self-possessed and mature.
Beauty, the conventional asset of the newcomer, had been restricted by the hairstyles of
her first two films. Perhaps it was in reaction
against the bad reviews, and as an emotional
gesture toward American cinema, that—after
The Mouse That Roared (59, Jack Arnold) and
Let No Man Write My Epitaph (59, Philip
Leacock)—Jean-Luc Godard got her to play
Patricia, the American girl in Paris in Breathless (59).
At first, she rather rebelled against his conception of a treacherous escapee from some
film noir, but in the end was credibly degeulgasse, the more so for not knowing what the
word meant. She then became the first
notable American actress to work in France.
Learning the language quickly, she was given
a wig for Infidelity (61, Philippe de Broca)
and matched Micheline Presle for sexiness.
Here again, the Iowa girl proved surprisindy worldly. She married Frenchman Francois
Moreuil and he directed her rather limply in
Playtime (62). She divorced him and married novelist Romain Gary, and then played in In
the French Style (63, Robert Parrish) and the "Grand Escroc" episode from Les Plus Belles
Escroqueries du Monde (63, Godard), a Patricia Leacock blithely subjecting all around her to cinema verite.
In 1963, despite the fact that Yvette Mimieux had recommended Lilith to him, Robert Rossen chose Seberg for that part. As with Joan, she brought an earthiness to a
mythological character. The film is ambitious
beyond its directors talent, but her playing
throughout has a proper rapture and it is
Seberg's most evident proof of poetic imagination.
After that she worked in France and America, but never in really testing parts: Un Milliard dans un Billiard (65, Nicholas Gessner);
Moment to Moment (65, Mervyn Le Roy); A
Fine Madness (66, Irvin Kershner); La Ligne
de Demarcation (66, Claude Chabrol); Estouffade à la Caraïbe (66, Jacques Besnard); Les
Oiseaux Vont Mourir au Perou (68, Gary)—
wildly pretentious and arty; Pendulum (68,
George Schaefer); Paint Your Wagon (69,
Joshua Logan); Airport (70, George Seaton);
Macho Callahan (70, Bernard Kowalsld); Kill
(71, Gary); L'Attentat (72, Yves Boisset); La
Corrupcion de Chris Miller (72, Juan Antonio
Bardem); and Cat and Mouse (74, Daniel Petrie).
She married Dennis Berry, son of John Berry, and appeared in his Le Grand Delire
(75). She directed a short film, Ballad of the
Kid (74), and acted in Die Wildente (76, Hans Geissendorfer).
On September 8, 1979, two policemen
looked into a white Renault that had been
parked ten days on a quiet street in Paris.
They found the decomposing body of Jean Seberg, with a bottle of barbiturates. She had
been involved with black activists. The FBI
had hounded and harassed her. A child of hers
had died. The hideous story is well told in
David Richards's Played Out, but Seberg's
tragedy has been attempted on stage, and it
lingers.
Rumours flew that Seberg's's suicide was masterminded by the FBI but it was never proven. Buried in the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris, France, her funeral was attended by such notables as Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
Jean Seberg Dvds @ amazon.com (direct link)
Jean Seberg Biography Books @ amazon.com (direct link)
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