Variations on an Enigma:
The Billy Rose Tribute to Delphine Seyrig
October 18–November 21, 2002
A cinematic icon for forty years, Delphine Seyrig (1932-1990) was admired for her cerebral stage and screen performances, her fierce defense of women's rights, and her daring collaborations with independent filmmakers in offbeat productions now considered classic. An actress of extraordinary range and possessing elegance and a mellifluous voice, Seyrig worked from the inside out, meticulously creating fully realized yet mysterious, thoroughly modern female characters.
Seyrig's defining roles were in Alain Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad (1961) and Muriel (1963), and she also worked with Joseph Losey, François Truffaut, Luis Buñuel, and the photographers-filmmakers Robert Frank and William Klein. Her seminal work was with female directors such as Marguerite Duras (in India Song, 1975), and Chantal Akerman and Ulrike Ottinger. Combining politics and cinema, she directed a documentary on sexism in the entertainment industry, Sois belle et tais-toi (Look Beautiful and Keep Your Mouth Shut, 1977).
Organized by Mary Lea Bandy, Chief Curator, Jytte Jensen, Associate Curator, and Helena M. Robinson, Research Assistant, Department of Film and Media, with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, New York. Made possible by a grant from The Billy Rose Foundation.
1963. France/Italy. Directed by Alain Resnais. Screenplay by Jean
Cayrol. With Delphine Seyrig, Jean-Pierre Kérien, Nita Klein.
Resnais collaborated with Cayrol to portray four people haunted
by their pasts, including Seyrig as a widowed art dealer, and her
son, who cannot forget a girl whose death he witnessed years before
in Algeria. A highly absorbing blend of fantasy, beauty, and drama,
the film reveals Seyrig at her best: a tantalizing enigma. In French
with English subtitles. With special introductions. 115 min.
1975. France. Written and directed by Guy Gilles. With Delphine
Seyrig, Sami Frey, Jeanne Moreau. A radiant Seyrig becomes the target
of a young hit man. Aware of his intentions, she sets a trap with
her irresistible charms, and his mission turns into a deadly obsession.
In French with English subtitles. 80 min.
1967. Great Britain. Directed by Joseph Losey. Screenplay by Harold
Pinter. With Delphine Seyrig, Dirk Bogarde, Stanley Baker, Michael
York. Seyrig's limited screen time only enhances the impact and
poignancy of her scenes. She and Bogarde play ex-lovers trying to
rekindle a former passion. The extended flashback exploring their
relationship is shot through with a poetic rhythm, offsetting the
harshness implicit in the film's themes of deception and complicity.
105 min.
1968.
France. Directed by Franççois Truffaut. Screenplay by Truffaut,
Claude de Givray, Bernard Revon. With Delphine Seyrig, Jean-Pierre
Léaud, Claude Jade, Michael Lonsdale. Seyrig is a seductress
in the third of Truffaut's films featuring Léaud as the Antoine
Doinel character. Working undercover as a private detective at a
shoe store, Doinel is immediately taken with the owner's beautiful
wife (Seyrig). Print courtesy Wellspring Media. In French with English
subtitles. 90 min.
1969. France. Written and directed by William Klein. With Delphine
Seyrig, Donald Pleasance, Philippe Noiret, Yves Montand, Sami Frey.
Seyrig plays a Soviet agent masquerading as a vampish French spy
in this political charade. Outraged and irreverent, Klein weaves
his own documentary footage with broad satire to mock the United
States' defense of "freedom," taking potshots, too, at the governments
of France, Russia, and China of the late 1960s. Print courtesy Walker
Art Center and William Klein. In English and French. 95 min.
1984. Germany. Written, directed, and photographed by Ulrike Ottinger.
With Delphine Seyrig, Veruschka von Lehndorff, Irm Hermann. Seyrig
is gloriously bitchy as Frau Dr. Mabuse, the wacky, power-wielding
mogul of a newspaper conglomerate. In order to make circulation
soar she compels a chosen creature, Dorian Gray, to generate scandals,
in this freewheeling, multilayered fantasy. Print courtesy Women
Make Movies. In German with English subtitles. 150 min.
1961. France. Directed by Alain Resnais. Screenplay by Resnais,
Alain Robbe-Grillet. With Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi, Sacha
Pitoeff. A mysterious stranger at an elegant vacation spa tries
to convince a married woman that they had an affair the previous
year. As the camera follows the ethereal Seyrig through the baroque
palace and gardens, the imagined past blurs with the present. Seyrig's
second film, in which she creates one of her defining roles. Courtesy
Rialto Pictures. In French with English subtitles. 94 min.
1973. Great Britain. Directed by Joseph Losey. Screenplay by David
Mercer, based on the play by Henrik Ibsen. With Delphine Seyrig,
Jane Fonda, David Warner, Trevor Howard. The shooting of A Doll's
House took place in northern Norway during what is called Lapland
Fever, indicating an Ibsenian mood of darkness and backstabbing.
The volatile combination of Ibsen's play, Fonda's Nora, and Seyrig's
Mrs. Linde occasioned many rewrites and "suggestions" by the two
politically active actresses to their exasperated director. 103
min.
1971. Belgium.
Directed by Harry Kümel. Screenplay by Kümel, Pierre Drouot,
Jean Ferry. With Delphine Seyrig, Danielle Ouimet, John Karlen.
Seyrig demonstrates her extraordinary range in an unforgettable
camp performance as the vampiric Elisabeth Balthory, Hungary's "Bloody
Countess." A young couple's honeymoon turns into a nightmare when
they encounter the sexually ambiguous Countess at a deserted hotel.
In French with English subtitles. Introduced by the director. 100
min.
Moderated by critic and curator B. Ruby
Rich, this symposium brings together an intimate circle of Delphine
Seyrig's collaborators and admirers to reminisce about her life
and career. Featuring surprise guests and screen clips illustrating
Seyrig's distinctive acting style.
1958. USA. Directed by Robert Frank
and Alfred Leslie. With Delphine Seyrig, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory
Corso, Larry Rivers, Jack Kerouac (narrator). This suite of scenes,
played out in bohemian New York, includes Seyrig in her first screen
role. Set to the beat of jazz and the voice of Kerouac. 30 min.
1976. France. Written and directed by Marguerite Duras. With Delphine
Seyrig, Nicole Hiss, Sylvie Nuytten. Approx. 15 min.
Total program time approx. 120 min.
1975. Belgium. Written and directed by Chantal Akerman. With Delphine
Seyrig, Jan Decorte, Henri Storck. Akerman's mesmerizing masterpiece
follows the tedious daily routine of a widowed housewife: cleaning,
cooking, shopping, and taking in male clients to support herself
and her son. Made with an all-woman crew, Jeanne Dielman
became a feminist statement and marked a turning point in Seyrig's
career toward films centered around and directed by women. Print
courtesy New Yorker Films. In French with English subtitles. 198
min.
1975. France. Written and directed by Marguerite Duras. With Delphine
Seyrig, Michael Lonsdale, Claude Mann. Sophisticated and aloof,
Seyrig plays the dead wife of the French Consul in Calcutta, in
her first collaboration with Duras. Her story unfolds through a
poetic voice-over of gossip and reminiscences, reflections about
the country, and thoughts of loneliness and suicide. The exquisite
rhythms and disembodied voices are perfectly in tune with the dreamlike
atmosphere of rarified civilization on its deathbed. In French with
English subtitles. 120 min.
1974. Great Britain. Directed by Don Siegel. Screenplay by Leigh
Vance. With Delphine Seyrig, Michael Caine, Donald Pleasance. Caine's
espionage agent meets Seyrig's seductress, loyal and hardworking
(on behalf of her own man), but ever so eager to tease and please
if that's what the job requires. Caine is no match for the clever
Seyrig, whose professional standards let nothing stand in her way.
106 min.
1975. France. Directed by Liliane de Kermadec. Screenplay by Kermadec
and André Téchiné. With Delphine Seyrig, Isabelle
Huppert, Hans Werner. The troubled existence of Swiss painter Aloïse
Corbaz (1886-1964) is brought to life by two formidable actresses.
Huppert plays the adolescent girl striving to find an outlet for
her dissociated feelings; the young woman who returns from Germany
at the outbreak of World War I and spends the remainder of her life
in an asylum is played by the breathtakingly convincing Seyrig.
In French and German with English subtitles. 115 min.
1972.
France/Spain. Directed by Luis Buñuel. Screenplay by Buñuel,
Jean-Claude Carrière. With Delphine Seyrig, Fernando Rey, Stéphane
Audran, Bulle Ogier. Seyrig and her costars gleefully carry out
Buñuel's brilliantly mischievous masquerade, their deadpan
interpretations and exquisite timing creating a delicious variant
on the drawing-room comedy. In French with English subtitles. Print
courtesy Rialto Pictures. 106 min.
1988. Germany/France. Written, directed, and photographed by Ulrike
Ottinger. With Delphine Seyrig, Gillian Scalici, Inés Sastre.
In Ottinger's visually sumptuous semi-musical, Seyrig plays a cultivated
anthropologist on an adventurous trip through the wild Caucasus
who is kidnapped by a tribe of Mongolian warriors. Print courtesy
Women Make Movies. In German with English subtitles. 165 min.
1973. Great Britain/France. Directed by Fred Zinnemann. Screenplay
by Kenneth Ross, based on the novel by Frederick Forsyth. With Delphine
Seyrig, Edward Fox, Michael Lonsdale. Colette (Seyrig), a beautiful
and wealthy baroness, becomes attracted to the stylish Jackal (Fox),
an expert assassin in cold-blooded pursuit of a lucrative contract
to rid the world of the French President Charles de Gaulle. 141
min.
1979. Hungary/Poland. Directed by Márta
Mészáros. Screenplay by Mészáros, Jan Nowicki,
Marek Piwowski. With Delphine Seyrig, Nowicki. Mészáros's
insightful combination of politics and memory centers on a woman
of Polish descent (Seyrig) whose family life in Hungary becomes
upset by the brutal death of a friend. In Hungarian with English
subtitles. 104 min.
1986. France/Belgium. Directed by Chantal
Akerman. Screenplay by Akerman, Leora Barish, Henry Bean, Pascal
Bonitzer, Jean Gruault. With Delphine Seyrig, Myriam Boyer, Fanny
Cottençon. An exuberant musical set in an underground Paris
shopping mall, where the protagonists and a Greek chorus of shoppers
and hairdressers contemplate the film's two love triangles. In French
with English subtitles. 96 min.
1958. USA. Directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie. With Delphine
Seyrig, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Larry Rivers, Jack Kerouac
(narrator). This suite of scenes, played out in bohemian New York,
includes Seyrig in her first screen role. Set to the beat of jazz
and the voice of Kerouac. 30 min.
1977.
France. Directed by Delphine Seyrig. With Jane Fonda, Shirley MacLaine,
Romy Schneider, Viva. Seyrig interviewed twenty-four actresses in
Hollywood and Paris in 1975 and 1976, posing questions about their
careers. The result provides a revealing look at the cinema industry
of the time. In French and English. 115 min.
1986.
Directed by Chantal Akerman. Adapted from the play by Rose Leiman
Goldenberg. Staged by Françoise Merle. With Delphine Seyrig,
Coralie Seyrig. Letters Home is a reading of the letters
exchanged between the poet Sylvia Plath and her mother, Aurelia–an
interchange of lost dreams and illusions eloquently framed and edited
by Akerman. In French. 104 min.
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