Talented, beautiful to damn a saint, impulsive, Mylène Demongeot has written a superb filmography without ever really taking herself seriously.
When we spoke to her about cinema, she often preferred to divert the conversation to literature.
She admired Jean Cocteau, Pierre Lazareff, Céline and then of course Simenon, whose eldest son she had married;
she was inexhaustible when she evoked the narrative genius of the Belgian novelist.
The actress of
Fantômas,
The Three Musketeers
and
Camping
died Thursday at the age of 87.
Back on his most beautiful roles.
Read alsoActress Mylène Demongeot died at 87
The Witches of Salem
by Raymond Rouleau in 1957, Screenplay Jean-Paul Sartre, with Simone Signoret, Yves Montand, Mylène Demongeot....
It is perhaps unconsciously this instinctive attraction towards the beautiful verb which will make her first major role in the cinema was
The Witches of Salem,
a very hard allegory of McCarthyism, scripted, and it is not a coincidence, by Jean- Paul Sartre.
In this surprisingly hard film, she faced at 17 two sacred monsters of cinema: Simone Signoret and Yves Montand.
Spicy at will, perverse as it was necessary, from this almost film Mylène Demongeot burst the screen.
Be beautiful and stop talking
by Marc Allegret in 1958, with Henri Vidal, Darry Cowl, Alain Delon, Jean-Paul Belmondo...
Alain Delon affectionately called him “
Tylene
”.
She was a bit of his confidante before he became famous.
One day he whispered this fascinating confession to her, for a young actor who was still only a beginner: "
You know Tylène, I can't not succeed, it's impossible, I'll do anything, I can do anything for that !
".
The title of the film is a snub, Mylène has always been a beauty who was not silent.
The plot isn't worth much, but there's this damn cast: Belmondo, Delon, Demongeot, handsome as gods and ready to devour everything.
The actress will never forget this meeting of cinema.
Of Bébel, also almost unknown at that time, she would say later: “
On the set, I saw a young actor arrive, just hired to play a small role as a seller of feather dusters.
The second we exchanged our lines, I was blown away.
»
The three Musketeers
by Bernard Borderie in 1961, with Gérard Barray, Mylène Demongeot, Jacques Toja...
Playing with delight and mastery the worst criminal, Milady de Winter, after the witch of Salem, such will have been Mylène Demongeot's beautiful destiny as an actress.
Again, her acute, almost disturbing beauty had been almost like drawing to embody the one who will want to assassinate d'Artagnan after having his fiancée Constance Bonacieux.
Revisiting this adaptation of Dumas' great novel is above all worthwhile for its diabolical interpretation of Richelieu's polymorphic spy.
Ghosts
by André Hunebelle in 1964, with Louis de Funès, Jean Marais, Mylène Demongeot...
She admired Louis de Funès.
In
Souvenirs et Portraits
, she summons the truculence of Michel Galabru to express what she owes to the genius of comedy: "
We who were his partners are splashed by his glory, and thanks to de Funès, this unique actor, we we still exist and for a long time in the eyes of little children who have seen all the Gendarmes and all the Fantômas for years and years
”.
Nothing can be added to this much-deserved praise.
Camping
by Fabien Onteniente in 2006, with Franck Dubosc, Gérard Lanvin, Mathilde Seigner, Claude Brasseur, Mylène Demongeot...
“Camping
is the magic of cinema.
I'm almost 80 years old, I thought I was forgotten but in the street the kids call me, with infinite kindness in their eyes, Mrs. Pic
”.
Mylène Demongeot liked this comedy which suddenly made her famous again, she who had once been Brigitte Bardot's only rival.
This eternal cinematographic youth amused him in the same way as
The Witches of Salem
had made him shiver sixty years earlier.
She thus showed that she possessed the soul of a true mountebank.