Jeanne Moreau

Jeanne Moreau earned lasting renown as a leading figure in French cinema while also enjoying notable success as a singer throughout the 1960s. She entered the world on January 23, 1928, in Paris and made her first significant inroads in film during the 1950s, gaining particular attention for her roles in the two Louis Malle productions Ascenseur Pour l'Échafaud and Les Amants, both from 1958. After those early triumphs, she collaborated with an array of distinguished filmmakers, among them François Truffaut, who cast her memorably in Jules et Jim (1962); Jean-Luc Godard in A Woman Is a Woman (1961); Michelangelo Antonioni in La Notte (1961); Orson Welles in The Trial (1962); Luis Buñuel in Diary of a Chambermaid (1964); Rainer Werner Fassbinder in Querelle (1982); and Wim Wenders in Until the End of the World (1991).

Her venture into recording began with the striking rendition of “Le Tourbillon” featured in Jules et Jim. Philips issued that track as a 45-rpm single in 1962, with the song credited to Cyrus Bassiak, the adopted name of Serge Rezvani. The album Jeanne Moreau followed in 1963 on Disques Jacques Canetti, presenting twelve compositions by Rezvani. Additional noteworthy vocal moments on screen included the Bassiak piece “Embrasse-Moi,” heard in Peau de Banane (1963), and the duet “Ah les P'tites Femmes de Paris” performed with Brigitte Bardot for Viva Maria (1965). A second collection, 12 Chansons, appeared on the same Canetti label in 1966.

The British imprint Él later gathered the two studio albums on the 2008 retrospective The Immortal Jeanne Moreau. Over the ensuing decades, assorted compilations continued to surface, many of them pairing soundtrack excerpts such as “Le Tourbillon” with selections drawn from her original long-players.