Celebrity Biographies
Emmanuelle Riva
She embodied on screen the French woman with intellectual concerns who became the role model in the late 1950s. Emmanuelle Riva spent more than six decades working hard, and although most of her filmography made little noise, she starred in several titles round, including two Palmes d’Or at Cannes. The actress has died in Paris after not being able to overcome the cancer that she had been facing for four years.
Nothing presaged that Emmanuelle Riva would become one of the greats of French cinema. Born on February 24, 1927 in Cheniménil, a town in the Lorraine region, Paulette Riva (her real name) came from a modest working-class family. She soon had to start working as a dressmaker to financially support her family, but she immediately realized that her job was not fulfilling for her.
Fond of reading theatrical texts since she was little, she ended up joining a small group of fans who prepared small productions of various works. Her classmates realized her undeniable aptitudes, and they convinced her to take the tests at the Higher National School of Arts and Theater Techniques in Paris, familiarly known as the White Street School. She impresses the selection committee so much that it decides to award her a scholarship, so she enrolls, despite strong opposition from her parents.
Later, she would have wanted to enter the Superior National Conservatory of Dramatic Art, also in the French capital, but she was not admitted because she exceeded the maximum age. Despite her disappointment, she manages to be recruited for a major production of “The Hero and the Soldier,” George Bernard Shaw ‘s classic play .
Although he appeared briefly in a television series, and was an extra in a movie, at first he devoted himself exclusively to the tables. The image of him on the promotional poster for “The Scarecrow”, a work by Dominique Rolin, impresses the director Alain Resnais , who despite his practically non-existent experience in cinema, decides to give him the leading role in Hiroshima, mon amour . The director had been hired to shoot a documentary about the launch of the first atomic bomb. But he was not entirely convinced with the project. Thus, Resnais joked with the producer telling him that it could not be done without the participation of Marguerite Duras ., already by then consecrated as one of the great French writers. She hired the author, and the film ended up becoming a fictional story. Emmanuelle Riva played a woman whose name is unknown to viewers, who when she travels to Hiroshima to shoot a film about peace, she is attracted to a Japanese architect who reminds her of the German soldier she loved in last.
Hiroshima, mon amour won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and was highly influential in the Nouvelle Vague for its innovative use of flashback. It was a great international success, for which Emmanuelle Riva became a star. In the Japanese city, the actress took some photos that she made public in a collective exhibition.
He then intervenes in Kapo , by Gillo Pontecorvo , which at the time gave rise to talk due to its positive vision of a Nazi guardian who helps a Jewish woman. Léon Morin, prêtre , by Jean-Pierre Melville , was also controversial , as he starkly portrays the relationship between the character of Riva, a communist widow declared an agnostic, and a priest. With Intimate Story , by Georges Franju , she won the prize for female interpretation in Venice, for her portrayal of a woman jaded by a gray provincial life with a husband who does not pay much attention to her.
Despite the fact that it started off strongly on the big screen, later the films of Emmanuelle Riva –who alternated shooting in France and Italy– had a lesser impact. She participated in numerous titles, such as Thomas the impostor , again directed by Georges Franju, the surreal I’ll go like a crazy horse , by Fernando Arrabal or the Italian comedy Las horas del amor , by Luciano Salce . During the 1970s and 1980s she specialized almost entirely in telefilms.
In the 90s he participated again in a hugely successful film, Three Colors: Blue , by Krzysztof Kieslowski , where he played the mother of Juliette Binoche , who for her part embroidered a devastated woman after the accidental death of her composer husband and his daughter. She later participated in Venus, Beauty Salon , by Tonie Marshall , and was the grandmother of the hyperprotective boy in My Son , by Martial Fougeron .
But the title that once again raised Emmanuelle Riva to the top was Love , by Michael Haneke , another Palme d’Or at Cannes. In this powerful film about suffering and the arrival of old age, she played an octogenarian music teacher, who enjoys her retirement with her husband, played by Jean-Louis Trintignant , another legend of French cinema, until she is beaten by the illness.
Apart from her intense cinematographic activity, Emmanuelle Riva had time to dedicate herself to writing. She was the author of three books of poems. Jealous of her private life, it is difficult to find data about her.