Laughter is the star's own.
The smile too.
Magnetic, iconic, emblematic, some smiles imprint themselves on our minds and end up becoming mythical.
It is the film actress who has made her smile her trademark.
Or the Kennedy-like politician who makes him his best ally in his election campaign.
Or the spontaneous smile of the athlete crossing the finish line to applause.
All these smiles from cinema, sport, art, advertising, literature or pop culture constitute a common heritage, a reservoir of fleeting or fixed smiles which, beyond marketing, give us to see suddenly the clarity of a face.
And which illuminate a world that hardly smiles.
Read alsoHow our smile changes with age
Mona
Lisa
If there are, according to the work of an American psychologist, 19 forms of smile expressing 44 different emotions, what can that of the Mona Lisa mean?
An enigma at one or two billion euros, the estimate of the most expensive work of art in the world!
For a long time, the identity of the beautiful
signora
painted by Leonardo da Vinci was as mysterious as her indecipherable smile.
But since the name of the Mona Lisa was confirmed in the early 2000s – no, it is not a prostitute or a transvestite, but Lisa Gherardini, wife of the wealthy Florentine cloth merchant Francesco Del Giocondo – his
smile
has lost none of its universal aura.
It reminds us that life flies by as stealthily as a smile.
In video, eight cult laughs of women in the cinema
Julia Roberts
In Hollywood, since the pin-up era, the smile has been eroticized.
Marilyn Monroe made it a weapon of massive seduction.
That of Julia Roberts is perhaps less explicit, but it is metaphor and hypertrophy.
Extramagnetic, extracontagious, extrafamous.
This XXL (smile) laugh and the perfect alignment of immaculate teeth contributed to the universal success of Pretty Woman.
Thirty-two later, it has lost none of its bite.
A certain smile,
by Françoise Sagan
It is the one worn by Dominique, the heroine of Françoise Sagan's second novel, published in 1956, following the immense success (and scandal) of
Bonjour Tristesse
.
Happy to live her life as she sees fit, a student in love with a man older than her and married, she has that "certain rebellious smile" that heralds revolutions.
An American film was made from it in 1958.
The Laughing Cow
Like Tintin, we love him from 7 to 77 years old, this hilarious cow that adorns the round box of industrial cheeses from our childhood.
Coquette, she wears earrings in the shape of Laughing Cow boxes, in a dizzying mise en abyme that makes you dizzy.
Sympathetic if not totally believable (according to scientists, cattle communicate with each other more by their posture than by their laughter), this advertising star is famous throughout the world.
As a diva, she takes her name from an opera by Richard Wagner –
what else?
– since the first drawing by Benjamin Rabier was called
La Wachkyrie
, a subtle allusion to
La Chevauchée des Valkyries
, famous air of the German composer.
To ruminate on before attacking your next portion of melted cheese...
The Joker
There are crazy or carnivorous smiles that freeze the blood.
The smile of the Joker, Batman's evil double and his sworn enemy in DC Comics, is one of them.
Inspired by a very real torture that the character would have undergone in his youth - the "Glasgow smile" or "smile of the angel", which consists in enlarging the smile of his victim to the ears using 'a bladed weapon – it turns into a sardonic grimace or a mad grin when it's Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger or Joaquin Phoenix who play the role of the psychopathic clown in the cinema.
Beware of the man who laughs: his smile sometimes means harm to us.
Tom Cruise
Full screen
Tom Cruise at the 75th Cannes Film Festival.
(May 18, 2022.) Abaca
A smile sometimes speaks louder than a long speech.
As proof, Tom Cruise's Ultra Brite-style toothy smile, jumping for joy on Oprah Winfrey's sofa, in 2005, to announce his crush on Katie Holmes is a textbook case, that of the Actors Studio in this case.
An ecstatic smile, illuminated,
too much
, which almost cost him his career but which made a date in Hollywood.
Vanessa Paradis
At Vanessa Paradis, it is emblematic.
Happy teeth, frank smile: pure French charm.
One signature.
The Smiley
It celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.
Imperturbable, the little yellow face, embellished with two black ovals for the eyes and a radiant arc for the mouth, is the world icon of good humor and joie de vivre.
It was imagined in 1972 by a journalist from
France Soir
, Franklin Loufrani, to illustrate a section devoted to good news on the front page of the newspaper.
Clever, he filed his drawing with the National Institute of Intellectual Property (INPI) and quickly made his work bear fruit by having it printed on millions of stickers or T-shirts.
The success of the Smiley, which is as immediate as the smile it brings to the person who discovers it, makes its fortune.
Diverted from the album covers of Talking Heads or Nirvana, it became much more sulphurous in the 1990s: a symbol of house and nascent raves, it stamped, in spite of itself, ecstasy pills... But the little yellow man is not at the end of his metamorphoses.
Nicolas Loufrani, Franklin's son who took over the reins of the flourishing company,
launches a dictionary of symbols from the Smiley, inspired by emoticons then found online.
It will quickly be overtaken by tech giants like Apple, who are developing their own emojis.
There remains fashion, which has taken a liking to the nice little face with an infectious smile.
Reinterpreted in 2008 by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, in 2009 by Ora-Ito, in 2015 by AMI at Colette, the famous logo also inspires Justin Bieber for his clothing brand, Drew.
Pop and shock, the Smiley begins its fifth life with the banana.
Reinterpreted in 2008 by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, in 2009 by Ora-Ito, in 2015 by AMI at Colette, the famous logo also inspires Justin Bieber for his clothing brand, Drew.
Pop and shock, the Smiley begins its fifth life with the banana.
Reinterpreted in 2008 by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, in 2009 by Ora-Ito, in 2015 by AMI at Colette, the famous logo also inspires Justin Bieber for his clothing brand, Drew.
Pop and shock, the Smiley begins its fifth life with the banana.
Mick Jagger
Full screen
Mick Jagger.
(Prague, July 27, 2003.) Abaca
Although the artist is approaching his eighties, his Dionysian and devouring smile has not aged a bit.
The “Big Red Mouth” logo, and its famous sticking out tongue, created in 1971, seems to have been modeled on the huge mouth of Sir Mick Jagger.
He has become the universal symbol of the Rolling Stones.
When rock rhymes with zygomatics.
The Cheshire Cat
In
Alice in Wonderland
, Lewis Carroll's masterpiece, the little girl remarks: "I have often seen a cat without a smile, but never a smile without a cat."
The smirk of the Cheshire cat – a dandy feline, a bit nihilistic, who philosophizes at all costs – indeed floats alone in space.
We have never seen a cat!
The Anonymous
Moustache, goatee and broad smile on a pale face: that of Guy Fawkes, historical figure, taken up in the form of a mask by Anonymous.
When the smile becomes political to defend freedom of expression...
Sister smile
Can a smile travel the world and be nominated four times for the Grammy Awards?
“Yes, I can”, replied (in French) Sister Sourire, the stage name of Sister Luc-Gabriel, a Belgian Dominican nun who stormed the charts with her faith and her guitar slung over her shoulder.
Number 1 in sales in the United States in 1963, his hit
Dominique
and its chorus ("Dominique, nique, nique, s'en va tout tout simply") may be laughable, but no one has yet surpassed his sales records. of French-language albums in the United States.
The smile, a weapon of mass union?
Usain Bolt
The smile to destabilize the opponent?
During a semi-final of the 100 meters at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio (Brazil), the Jamaican sprinter, in full effort, takes the time to smile frankly at the photographers… before winning!
The insolent laughter of the true champion.
Yue Minjun
Eyes narrowed, mouth wide open, the portraits of Yue Minjun destabilize us to the point of uneasiness.
For the Chinese artist, it is a smile of combat and resistance to political power.
Let's smile, the fight continues!