Word: piaf
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Shoot the Piano Player. Charles Aznavour is the male Edith Piaf of France. Like Piaf, he is slight, darkly sad-eyed, and sings and looks as if he were in mourning for his life. In this movie, Aznavour sings nary a note. He plays Charlie Koller, a shy honky-tonk piano tinkler in a demimonde bistro, who has a great deal to be mournful about...
...drowns out roaring sergeants with soaring cellos, beats jungle drums during bayonet drill, concludes with Beethoven's Grand Fugue. That kind of startling contrast has become the trademark of the many-talented, Paris-born moviemaker whose first creative work was collaborating on songs, some of them for Edith Piaf. In 1947 he visited the U.S., fell "crazy in love with that country," stayed on for five years as a consultant to art museums...
...Piaf, 44, went on. And because she was Piaf, French newspapers followed her through every symptom. They had long since told the chronicle of her sorrows: the childhood blindness, the unhappy love affairs, the near-fatal auto accidents. They had recorded her illness in Paris in 1954, the collapse in Stockholm in 1958, last year's major surgery (for a gastric ulcer) in New York. Now the headline writers seemed engaged in a macabre watch. "Piaf suffers and refuses to capitulate," cried Paris-Journal. "Piaf falling like Moliere on the planks of the provincial coliseum*-that was worth...
Last week the Piaf endurance test that the papers had begun to call "The Defiance Tour" or "The Suicide Tour" was finally halted. The sad singer was taken to hospital for a rest cure-some 20 hours a day of drug-induced sleep. "Everything becomes a great white silence," explained France-Soir. L'Aurore printed a picture of the clinic, the name (Bellevue) showing clearly to attract the curious public, and an arrow pointing to Piaf's room...
...inhuman to have to sing about love, always love, with a heart completely empty, and so many memories," crooned France-Soir. But between the white silences, Edith Piaf insists that she intends to live a little longer with those memories. She promises to appear in Marseille next month, in Paris in February...