On the white-tiled walls of Paris
metro stations there used to be large billboards showing three downcast ladies
wearing red bonnets, white blouses, and blue skirts; one lady already half off
the billboard, the others walking behind her in the same direction. The caption
read: REPUBLICS PASS, BUT RIPOLIN PAINT REMAINS.
The ladies were Marianne,
stalwart symbol of five republics. That France should have a woman to embody its form of government is paradoxical, since under the Napoleonic code, women
were second-class citizens, and they were not granted the right to vote until
1944. Only since 1965 has a married Frenchwoman been able to open a bank
account without the permission of her husband, and only since 1975 have
abortions been legal. And yet Marianne is neither a comic figure, like John
Bull, nor a senior citizen, like Uncle Sam. She is eternally young and
purposeful. As Jules Michelet, the greatest of all French historians, explained
it, France had to be a woman because of the menstrual cycle. Woman, like the
nation, was ever changing and bound up with time. Woman, like the people, was a
creature of instinct, close to the land and elements. Only a woman could
portray France as a country with a mission to civilize the world.
With the rise of
the actor in public life, Marianne was given the recognizable features of
France's best-known movie stars, starting with Brigitte Bardot.
But when Bardot retired a new face was needed, and in 1985 a radio station asked its
listeners to pick a Marianne from the eight most famous and desirable women in
France. The winner was Catherine
Deneuve, who came in ahead of Isabelle Adjani by a narrow margin to lend her
classic features to the plaster busts that decorate France's thirty-six
thousand town halls. It's not a bad concession, but Madame Deneuve donated her
royalties to Amnesty International, not wanting to mix civic duty and profit. It seemed to me that Deneuve was a
right choice and my personal favorite. She has what her former husband, David
Bailey described as, "witty legs." Marianne is, after all, a type, a
composite meant to exemplify those traits particular to French women, and in
this respect Deneuve fit the bill.
She is that "woman of iron
and velvet," able to strike the right balance between emotion and reason.
She has that practical, concrete side that comes down in direct line from
Madame de Sevigne, who wrote: "We make love like animals, but a bit
better." She seems a direct
descendant of Colette and Coco Chanel, with whom she shares a highly
disciplined professional life combined with an unconventional personal life,
and of the magisterial caissieres, those agate-eyed, impassive women who sit
behind the cash registers in French shops and restaurants, presiding over the
flow of money.
Yes, here indeed was a fitting
Marianne, rising above her own circumstances to proclaim the three main virtues
of the Republic, travail, famille, patrie
(work, family, nation). When the owner comes to collect his car at the
garage after repairs he's told "it's been remedied, sir." And that's
the overall impression that Catherine Deneuve conveys a woman who has
"remedied" herself, who has constantly worked on herself, developing
from the "passive love-prone" young girl on the screen to a strong and
independent woman, decisive and stubborn, achieving self-control perhaps at the cost of
some spontaneity.
The Republics may pass, but like Ripolin paint, Catherine
Deneuve will remain.
