Word: montand
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...unfortunate Proctor, Yves Montand suffers and grimaces with commendable vigor, but he never manages to convey the internal conflict that threatens to destroy him. Perhaps this is not his fault, for Sartre has created a John Proctor who is more of a symbol than a tragic hero. At any rate, acting laurels must go to Simone Signoret, who plays Proctor's wife with a combination of puritan pigheadedness and feminine warmth that makes her the only completely convincing character in the film. Director Rouleau's portrayal of Deputy Governor Danforth, the prosecutor, is so blunt that even in his moments...
...lean, craggy face peering with a squinty smile into the spotlight had rarely been seen by U.S. audiences, although a few first-nighters might remember it as belonging to the guttily amoral Corsican truck driver in the film Wages of Fear. At 37. Singer Yves Montand is France's highest paid entertainer, the hottest music-hall performer to hit the scene since the end of World War II. Last week, appearing in the open-necked brown shirt and slacks that are his trademark, Yves (pronounced Eve) Montand made his first U.S. appearance at Manhattan's Henry Miller Theater...
Backed by a seven-man jazz combo, Singer Montand could demolish the hipster with a shuddering shimmy in Le Fanatique de Jazz or evoke the world of the provincial music hall in Un Garcon Dansait with a frozen smile and agitated feet. The display of vocal and athletic virtuosity lasted through 20 numbers (during which Montand sweated off two pounds), and at the end the audience was shouting for more...
Mesmeric Effect. Singer Montand was born Yvo Livi, the son of an Italian broommaker. Fleeing Mussolini's Blackshirts, the family settled in the harbor district of Marseille, where Yves quit school to become successively a waiter, bartender, factory worker and hairdresser. His evenings he spent at the movies watching his idols-Fred Astaire, Maurice Chevalier, Charles Trenet; by the time he was 18, he was doing imitations of all three in suburban flea pits. The transition from provincial hoofer to Parisian headliner began in 1944 when Montand, newly arrived in Paris, happened to appear on a theater bill with...
Miller's ideas were caught. The camera, moreover, has let some fresh air and country scenery into a drama that often seemed stuffy and stage-bound, and the actors-principally Yves Montand as the hero and Mylene Demongeot as the leading witch-seem to play with more freedom and expressiveness than the original cast did. But Sartre, like Miller, has failed to extricate the essential lesson, the inmost horror of the episode...