Gabrielle Chanel herself was who saved Romy Schneider from the long shadow of sissi. This is how the actress told it, an idol of the masses since she played the Austrian empress, a character who had become suffocating and who she kept her as an eternal child in the eyes of the other. Her biographers say that when she visited Spain in the 1960s, she was very disturbed that people hailed her by that name – "Sissi, Sissi!" The sensual interpreter of The pool she couldn't reconcile herself to that candid image.
Romy Schneider in Paris in 1962.
The retrospective inaugurated this week at the Cinémathèque Française in Paris, Romy Schneider, which will be open until July 31, 2022, deals with the career and life of a sublime actress who regretted too much having played a role that the public assimilated forever with her person.
Schneider always said that there were three people who played a decisive role in her life and work as an actress: Alain Delon (her love and her co-star), Luchino Visconti (thanks to whose talent she shone on the big screen)… and Gabrielle Chanel.
The exhibition reflects how the iconic designer helped her find a new silhouette – that had nothing to do with the 'pastelada' of the Bavarian princess. It was precisely Luchino Visconti who introduced Gabrielle Chanel to dress her for her short film, Le travail, part of the collective film Boccace 70.
Romy Schneider and Gabrielle Chanel in the designer's apartment at 31 rue Cambon in Paris, in 1965.
“Chanel taught me everything without ever giving me advice. Chanel is not a designer like the others… Because it is a coherent, logical, 'ordered' whole: like the Doric order or the Corinthian order, there is a 'Chanel order', with its reasons, its rules, its rigors. It is an elegance that satisfies the mind even more than the eyes”, confessed the actress on one occasion.
For the first time, and thanks to this friendship between women, who was a great seductress and passionate about reading, she was no longer naive, not even when facing the gallery. She lived in an apartment similar to Mademoiselle Coco's in rue cambon. The same shelves, the same beige sofas, the same wing chairs. Since then, the actress wore the brand both on screen – in Le combat dans l'île by Alain Cavalier, released in 1962– as if outside of it.
Romy Schneider and Gabrielle Chanel during a 'fitting' in 1963.
A DIFFERENT LOOK AT THE MYTH
As the main patron of the Cinémathèque Française since 2021, the firm Chanel has collaborated on this exhibition: specifically, the house lent a marbled tweed suit from the 1961/62 Autumn-Winter Haute Couture collection, similar to the one worn by Schneider at Boccace 70, as well as five photographs taken between 1961 and 1965 by Shahrokh Hatami and George Michalke.
Through the figure of the actress (born in Vienna, 1938, and died in Paris, in 1982), the exhibition delves into what could be the construction of a modern woman. Her career had begun in Germany and continued in France; Romy had become a star She is very loved by the public, but as much as she tried to find herself, most of her today only remembers the tragedy of her finale.
Romy Schneider in 1962 wearing a Chanel look.
"It always sells better to present a woman as a bundle of neuroses, prone to melancholy and desperate to the bone. Especially if she was incredibly beautiful and one of the best actresses in the history of cinema”, says Clémentine Deroudille, exhibition curator.
“With Romy we just wanted to focus on that: the tragedy of a life too short that she had to hide other dramas, other pains that her films allowed to exorcise, transcend. As if she had to pay forever the price of her beauty, her extravagant love for Alain Delon, her movies, her youth and her freedom. Trying to find every little clue that would lead to the fatal outcome, it was written, it could only happen like this. The United States had had her Marilyn, she had us dream as much ”, Deroudille adds in the description of an exhibition that precisely wants to flee from simplism.
Suit from Chanel's Haute Couture o/i 1961-62 collection, similar to the one worn by Romy Schneider in one of her films.
Romy was, above all, an exceptional actress who made millions of viewers dream, inspired great directors and, with his grace in front of the camera, invented a style of performance that we still admire and honor. “In her attempt to break the porcelain image of the Austrian princess that elevated her at just 16 years old, Romy took the reins of her destiny as an actress and she knew, throughout her career, to arrive where we least expected her, always surprise, reinvent herself and surround herself with the greatest”, adds the curator.
Alain Cavalier, Claude Sautet, Luchino Visconti, Orson Welles, everyone agrees to talk about her genius. The exhibition collects personal objects of the artist, to whom she tries to return her own voice, leaving aside speculations and stories of those who built a tragic and simplistic myth.
Poster for the exhibition 'Romy Schneider' at the Cinémathèque française.
Via her personal papers, her texts, her radio and television interviews, her diary, the making of of the filming and even her wardrobe, we can approach it again with another less reductionist look. This time, she fairer.