Jeanne Moreau - The Criterion Channel
Jeanne Moreau

Jeanne Moreau

14 Episodes

With her smoldering magnetism and fierce intelligence (likened by Patti Smith to “a barbed-wire fence on fire”), French screen siren Jeanne Moreau breathed unforgettable life into some of the most complex women in all of twentieth-century cinema. Already a successful stage actor when she came to international attention for her turn in Louis Malle’s moody thriller ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS, Moreau soon went on to cement her status as an icon of the French New Wave with her role as the mercurial free spirit at the center of François Truffaut’s JULES AND JIM. Throughout her six-decade career, Moreau delivered fearless performances for some of the leading auteurs of her time, including Michelangelo Antonioni (LA NOTTE), Jacques Demy (BAY OF ANGELS), and Orson Welles (CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT), who proclaimed her “the greatest actress in the world.”

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Jeanne Moreau
  • Jeanne Moreau, 1972

    Episode 1

    In this in-depth interview, first aired on January 30, 1972, Jeanne Moreau reflects on her long career in French cinema and her work with some of the country’s greatest directors, sharing her thoughts on aging, acting, and character development.

  • Elevator to the Gallows

    Episode 2

    Directed by Louis Malle • 1958 • France
    Starring Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet, Georges Poujouly

    For his feature debut, twenty-four-year-old Louis Malle brought together a mesmerizing performance by Jeanne Moreau, evocative cinematography by Henri Decaë, and a now legendary jazz score by Miles Da...

  • The Lovers

    Episode 3

    Directed by Louis Malle • 1958 • France
    Starring Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Marc Bory

    Louis Malle unveiled the natural beauty of Jeanne Moreau in his breakthrough, ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS. With his follow-up, the scandalous smash THE LOVERS (LES AMANTS), he made her a star once and for all. A deeply fe...

  • La notte

    Episode 4

    Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni • 1961 • Italy
    Starring Marcello Mastroianni, Jeanne Moreau, Monica Vitti

    This psychologically acute, visually striking modernist work was director Michelangelo Antonioni’s follow-up to the epochal L’AVVENTURA. Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau star as a n...

  • Jules and Jim

    Episode 5

    Directed by François Truffaut • 1962 • France
    Starring Jeanne Moreau, Oskar Werner, Henri Serre

    Hailed as one of the finest films ever made, JULES AND JIM charts, over twenty-five years, the relationship between two friends and the object of their mutual obsession. The legendary François Truffau...

  • Eva

    Episode 6

    Directed by Joseph Losey • 1962 • France, Italy
    Starring Jeanne Moreau, Stanley Baker, Virna Lisi

    Blacklisted ex-Hollywood director Joseph Losey’s reinvention as a voice of coolly stylized European art-house cinema in many ways began with this Venice-set tale of romantic obsession, gorgeously ph...

  • The Fire Within

    Episode 7

    Directed by Louis Malle • 1963 • France
    Starring Maurice Ronet, Léna Skerla, Jeanne Moreau

    After garnering international acclaim for such seminal crowd-pleasers as THE LOVERS and ZAZIE DANS LE MÉTRO, Louis Malle gave his fans a shock with THE FIRE WITHIN (LE FEU FOLLET), a penetrating study of i...

  • Bay of Angels

    Episode 8

    Directed by Jacques Demy • 1963 • France
    Starring Jeanne Moreau, Claude Mann

    This precisely wrought, emotionally penetrating romantic drama from Jacques Demy, set largely in the casinos of Nice, is a visually lovely but darkly realistic investigation into love and obsession. A bottle-blonde Jean...

  • Chimes at Midnight

    Episode 9

    Directed by Orson Welles • 1966 • Spain, Switzerland
    Starring Orson Welles, Keith Baxter, Jeanne Moreau

    The crowning achievement of Orson Welles’s extraordinary cinematic career, CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT was the culmination of the filmmaker’s lifelong obsession with Shakespeare’s ultimate rapscallion,...

  • The Immortal Story

    Episode 10

    Directed by Orson Welles • 1968 • France
    Starring Jeanne Moreau, Orson Welles, Roger Coggio

    Orson Welles' first color film and final completed fictional feature, THE IMMORTAL STORY is a moving and wistful adaptation of a tale by Isak Dinesen. Welles stars as a wealthy merchant in nineteenth-cent...

  • Mr. Klein

    Episode 11

    Directed by Joseph Losey • 1976 • France
    Starring Alain Delon, Jeanne Moreau, Francine Bergé

    Neglected for decades, this chilling existentialist mystery has reemerged as one of director Joseph Losey’s most virtuosic works. In perhaps the finest performance of his career, Alain Delon stars as the...

  • Querelle

    Episode 12

    Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1982 • Germany
    Starring Brad Davis, Franco Nero, Jeanne Moreau

    Conjured from the unholy meeting of two iconoclastic queer artists, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final film audaciously raises Jean Genet’s controversial novel to the level of myth. In an expressi...

  • La truite

    Episode 13

    Directed by Joseph Losey • 1982 • France
    Starring Isabelle Huppert, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Jeanne Moreau

    “Nowadays, homosexuality and heterosexuality mean nothing. You’re sexual or you’re not.” The penultimate film by iconoclastic director Joseph Losey, LA TRUITE (“The Trout”) is a shrewd study of ...

  • Until the End of the World

    Episode 14

    Directed by Wim Wenders • 1991 • Germany, France, Australia
    Starring William Hurt, Solveig Dommartin, Sam Neill

    Conceived as the ultimate road movie, this decades-in-the-making science-fiction epic from Wim Wenders follows the restless Claire Tourneur (Solveig Dommartin) across continents as she...