Yves Montand: The Passionate Voice

by Joseph Harriss

Overview

Once described by the New York Times as "the quintessential French Romantic, half adventurer, half-intellectual," actor, singer, and political activist Yves Montand won the hearts of audiences around the world with a charisma and talent that transcended physical and linguistic borders.

Born in Italy as Ivo Livi, Montand achieved international recognition for his singing and performances in films such as Salaire de la Peur (1952) and Let's Make Love (1960) with Marilyn Monroe, with whom he had a passionate but short-lived affair. An Oscar and BAFTA Award winner who was also twice nominated for a César Award for best actor, Montand's success was not limited to his work in film. Discovered and mentored by Edith Piaf, his interpretations of French songs were intense and intoxicating. His mellow baritone voice led to Broadway stardom and sent him on tour, making him one of the best-known entertainers of his day.

Yves Montand: The Passionate Voice profiles Montand's complex, dynamic, and extraordinary life. From his birth in an Italian village near Florence in 1921 to his "accidental" immigration to France, his international success as an actor, singer, and activist to his sudden death from a heart attack in 1991, Joseph Harriss covers every aspect of Montand's life and career. Drawing on foreign-language biographies, Montand's autobiography, specialized studies, interviews, and other archival materials, Yves Montand is a riveting and multidimensional account of Montand's story and legacy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781985900950
Publisher:	University Press of Kentucky
Publication date:	01/09/2024
Series:	Screen Classics
Pages:	310
Sales rank:	521,424
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

Joseph Harriss is a University of Notre Dame graduate who studied international relations and French at the Sorbonne and the Paris Institute of Political Studies. Afterward, Harriss joined the Paris bureau of Time magazine, where he covered French affairs from politics and economics to fashion and cuisine. He has written articles for a variety of publications such as the New York Times, the Dallas Morning News, Smithsonian magazine, and The American Spectator. He lives in Paris.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. The Blackshirts Come
2. Amateur Night
3. "I Discover My Career"
4. Edith
5. First Films
6. Simone
7. Activist
8. Star
9. Salem
10. Moscow
11. New York
12. Hollywood
13. Marilyn
14. Three More For Fox
15. Mixing Stage and Screen
16. Sixties
17. Political Thriller
18. The Other Political Films
19. From Music Hall to Met
20. Montand President?
Epilogue
Filmography
Bibliography
Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

How did the young, dirt poor Italian peasant Ivo Levi become the singer, dancer, actor, political activist with his wife Simone Signoret, activist and international matinée idol Yves Montand. As with his biography of Jean Gabin, Joseph Harriss has dug deep to present a long overdue and complete look at the life of Yves Montand.

Terrance Gelenter

11/27/2023

This vivid if uncritical biography by journalist Harriss (Jean Gabin) chronicles the life of French actor and singer Yves Montand (1921–1991), who spent his early years in a “hardscrabble hilltop hamlet” in northern Italy before Mussolini’s fascist regime drove his parents, who were vocal communists, to flee with their family to Marseilles, France, when Montand was three. He began singing in his late teens and was soon booking small tours. In 1941, he caught the eye of Édith Piaf’s agent, who signed Montand and introduced him to Piaf, whom Montand dated for several years, during which time “she polished his stage manner, his education, and his repertory” while raising his profile. Harriss provides a detailed account of Montand’s singing and film career—which included starring roles in Z and Jean de Florette—as well as his vocal political activism. (Montand was a die-hard leftist until Soviet repression during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution disillusioned him about communism.) Unfortunately, Harriss glosses over the less flattering aspects of Montand’s life, brushing past his would-be first film role in a movie funded by the Nazi regime during its occupation of France (the director destroyed the project before it was released) and his stepdaughter’s allegations of sexual abuse. This pulls its punches, but cinephiles will enjoy the studious treatment of one of France’s most celebrated actors. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

In fast-paced prose, Joseph Harriss tells the many sided life story of the great Yves Montand, an Italian peasant who became the quintessential Frenchman....Other men wanted to be Yves Montand but no one came close.

Michael Johnson

An Italian broom-maker's son who became France's international superstar, Yves Montand was an idealist who became a realist, his songs and movies capturing and captivating the incendiary twentieth century and reflecting it back onto us. Joseph Harriss writes for casual Montand fans who might know him only from his performances in Z and State of Siege to completists who are familiar with the length and breadth of his astonishing musical catalog. A compulsively readable masterwork.

Charles Zigman