Arletty was born outside of Paris in 1898. She began her career on the Paris stage and made her first film in 1930. Her most famous movie was”Les Enfants du paradis” in 1945. Her last film was “The Longest Day” .
Her “Independent” obituary by Gilbert Adair:
In her native France the statuesquely tall, dark and minxish Arletty was known and cherished above all for her gouaille – a colloquialism defying any too precise translation but corresponding more or less to ‘backtalk’, lip or ‘sauce’. This gouaille was her fortune, and one would not have been too astonished to discover that, like Betty Grable’s legs, it had been insured by Lloyd’s at some colossal premium. For even if British moviegoers continue to associate her almost exclusively with the role of Garance, the elegant, worldly courtesan of Marcel Carne’s classic melodrama of 1945, Les Enfants du Paradis (where she is pursued by Pierre Brasseur, Marcel Herrand and Jean-Louis Barrault before being engulfed by a carnivalesque crowd of boulevardiers at the film’s climax), she projected a rather less diaphanous image to her own countrymen, who found her both ethereal and earthy, inaccessibly lovely and eminently beddable.
Arletty was no sissy (women too, after all, can be sissies, as witness such genteel and insipid actresses as Greer Garson and Norma Shearer). She more than held her own amid satirical male banter and tended to play the kind of heroine who would succeed in keeping her feet on the ground throughout a film until either teased or forced on to tiptoe for a climactic embrace. Sex came naturally to her – or rather, she met it halfway. Her sexuality, which was healthy, extrovert and ineradicable, she wore so lightly that both she and her public appeared to take it for granted. In 1941 she played the title-role in the best of the umpteen film versions of Sardou’s play Madame Sans-Gene, as the Marseillais laundress whom Napoleon takes as his mistress, and Madame Sans-Gene (or ‘devil-may-care’) she would remain throughout her long life.
Her birth, as Leonie Bathiat, in Courbevoie, a working-class suburb of Paris, preceded by two years that of the century. At the age of 16 she had left school and gone to work in a local factory. If by nothing else, however, her ultimate vocation would seem to have been predetermined by her already exceptional beauty, and she soon gravitated to the cinema via modelling and music-hall experience. (It was for the latter that she adopted her bizarre stage-name.) Though her film career started in 1931, in a forgettable potboiler entitled Un chien qui rapporte, her first notable appearance would be in Jacques Feyder’s Pension Mimosas (1935, starring the director’s wife, Francoise Rosay); and she can also be glimpsed in a pair of feathery entertainments by Sacha Guitry: Faisons un reve (‘Let’s Dream Together’, 1936), a lovingly chiselled soap-bubble of a comedy, and the exact French equivalent of Coward’s Private Lives, Les Perles de la couronne (The Pearls of the Crown, 1937), a trilingual toast to the Entente Cordiale in which she was deliciously improbable as a dusky Abyssinian snake-charmer.
Since, unfortunately, both Feyder and Guitry had already made Galateas out of the women they married (respectively, Rosay and Jacqueline Delubac), it was not until Arletty met Carne that she was able to claim a Pygmalion of her very own. The five films on which they collaborated between 1938 and 1954 – Hotel du Nord (1938, with Annabella, Louis Jouvet and Jean-Pierre Aumont), Le Jour se leve (1939, with Jean Gabin as a sympathetic killer holed up in an attic while the police implacably close in on him), Les Visiteurs du Soir (1942, a stilted cod-medieval fantasy with Jules Berry as a Mephistophelian Devil), Les Enfants du Paradis and the belated, relatively minor, and now forgotten L’Air de Paris (1954) – have retained most of their capacity to enchant precisely because of Arletty’s sexy nonchalance.
Like a breath of air, the air, indeed, of Paris, she contrived to dispel much of the cobwebby filigree of pessimism and despair peculiar to what was then called ‘poetic realism’. And even though it was pronounced at the very height of their critical and public popularity, her unforgettably husky disgusted cri de coeur, ‘Atmosphere, atmosphere . . .’, addressed to Jouvet on the meticulously studio-reconstructed Canal St Martin bridge in Hotel du Nord, may with hindsight have sounded the joyful if premature death-knell of those often sententiously doomy melodramas in which Carne and his regular scenarist, the poet Jacques Prevert, were for so long to specialise.
A very different highlight of her pre-war period was Claude Autant-Lara’s extremely funny Fric-Frac (1930, based on the popular Boulevard comedy by Edouard Bourdet), a film whose impenetrably slangy dialogue is such that, since it cannot be translated into English, the English spectator must somehow endeavour to translate himself into French. By contrast with the icon of idealised femininity that Carne had made of her in Les Enfants du Paradis, the Arletty of Fric-Frac is an impudent, bawdy street-urchin, her gouaille very much to the fore.
Aside from a curious performance as the Lesbian in Jacqueline Audry’s sombre, self- consciously ‘existentialist’ adaptation of Sartre’s Huis Clos (No Exit, 1954) and a brief cameo in The Longest Day (1962) – her sole venture into English-language cinema – Arletty achieved little of note after the war. If she continued to be newsworthy, it was primarily by virtue of her eventful private life. An indiscreet liaison with a high-ranking officer of the Wehrmacht had tarnished her reputation during the Occupation and resulted in her serving a two-month prison sentence in the early days of the Liberation. Later, a serious accident gradually caused her to go blind.
Writing the obituary of a great film-star is ultimately as foolish and futile an exercise as writing the obituary of Lazarus. The cinema remains, and absolutely nothing in the celluloid image of Arletty, the only one most of us have ever known of her, will have been altered by her death. She is still, as she always was, one of the medium’s most ravishing, most vital, most human ghosts.
The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Arletty (born Léonie Bathiat, 1898–1992) was the definitive face of French “Poetic Realism.” If Terry Kilburn represented the innocent heart of the studio system and Barbara Everest its reliable moral anchor, Arletty was its sophisticated, street-wise soul—a woman who famously declared, “My heart is French, but my ass is international.”
Career Overview
The Music Hall and “La Femme Moderne” (1920–1935)
Arletty began as a factory worker and a fashion model before finding her footing in Parisian cabarets and music halls. Her early career was defined by a specific “modern woman” persona: independent, intellectually curious, and sexually liberated.
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The Stage: She spent a decade mastering comedic timing in operettas like Yes (1928) and plays like Fric-Frac (1936), where she perfected the “Gouaille”—the sharp, witty, working-class Parisian slang that would become her trademark.
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Early Film: Her transition to sound cinema allowed her voice—a high-pitched, melodic, yet cynical instrument—to become as famous as her long-limbed, elegant physique.
The Marcel Carné Masterpieces (1938–1945)
Arletty’s legacy is inextricably linked to director Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert. Together, they created the “Poetic Realist” style—films that were gritty and working-class in setting but lyrical and fatalistic in tone.
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Hôtel du Nord (1938): As the prostitute Raymonde, she delivered the iconic line, “Atmosphère!Atmosphère! Est-ce que j’ai une gueule d’atmosphère?” (Atmosphere! Do I look like an atmosphere?). It remains one of the most famous moments in French cinema history.
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Les Enfants du Paradis (1945): Widely considered the greatest French film of all time, it features Arletty as Garance, an enigmatic courtesan who is the object of four men’s obsession. She portrayed Garance with a serene, almost untouchable dignity that came to symbolize the spirit of France itself during the Occupation.
Post-War Controversy and “Streetcar” (1946–1960s)
Her career was nearly ended by “horizontal collaboration” due to her wartime affair with a German officer. After a brief imprisonment and a ban from filming, she pivoted back to the stage.
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A Streetcar Named Desire (1949): She played the first French Blanche DuBois on stage, translated by Jean Cocteau, a role that bridged her transition into mature, psychologically complex characters.
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Final Roles: She appeared in Sartre’s No Exit (1954) and had a cameo in the Hollywood epic The Longest Day (1962) before progressive blindness forced her retirement.
Critical Analysis
1. The “Gouaille” and Class Fluidity
Arletty was unique because she occupied two worlds simultaneously: she had the elegance of a high-fashion model but the mouth of a Parisian street urchin. Critically, she subverted the “fallen woman” trope. In her hands, a prostitute or a mistress wasn’t a victim; she was a philosopher of the pavement. She used her working-class roots not as a handicap, but as a source of armor and wit.
2. Anti-Romantic Femininity
While her contemporaries like Michèle Morgan were often cast as fragile romantic ideals, Arletty was anti-domestic. Her characters rarely sought marriage or motherhood; they sought freedom. Analysis of her work often highlights her “modernness”—she represented a woman who belonged to herself, even when her body was technically “for sale” in a script.
3. The “Garance” Archetype: Truth vs. Image
In Les Enfants du Paradis, Arletty’s performance is often described as “luminous but distant.” Critically, Garance is a character who refuses to be “known” or “owned” by the men around her. Arletty played her with a deliberate lack of sentimentality, making Garance a symbol of Truth (as her character is literally billed in a carnival sideshow). She doesn’t act for the audience’s sympathy; she demands their respect.
4. Political Iconography
Because Les Enfants du Paradis was filmed under the noses of the Nazi occupiers, Arletty’s Garance became a retroactive symbol of the “hidden France”—silent, beautiful, and enduring. However, the irony of her personal life (her affair with a German officer) creates a fascinating critical tension: she was the face of the nation’s cinematic resistance while simultaneously being a pariah for its social reality.
Arletty’s performance as Blanche DuBois in the 1949 French premiere of Un tramway nommé Désir is one of the most fascinating “clashes of style” in theatrical history. Directed by Raymond Rouleau and adapted by Jean Cocteau, the production was a massive cultural event in post-war Paris, but it presented a version of Blanche that was radically different from the American original.
The “Parisian” Blanche: A Critical Breakdown
1. The Cocteau Reimagining
Jean Cocteau did not simply translate Tennessee Williams; he “Cocteau-ized” him. He stripped away much of the Southern Gothic humidity and replaced it with a lean, surrealist French poeticism.
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Class vs. Race: In this version, the conflict between Blanche and Stanley was framed less as a clash of “Old South vs. New Industrialism” and more as a European class war.
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Stanley as the “Other”: Cocteau’s adaptation emphasized Stanley’s status as an immigrant “outsider,” using him as a mirror for the racial and social prejudices boiling in post-liberation France.
2. Arletty’s “Gouaille” vs. Blanche’s Fragility
The most significant critical tension was Arletty’s own persona. As discussed, she was the queen of the Gouaille—the sharp, cynical, street-wise Parisian.
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The “Tough” Southern Belle: Critics and audiences found it difficult to reconcile Arletty’s natural strength with Blanche’s supposed “moth-like” fragility. While Jessica Tandy (on Broadway) played Blanche as a woman already broken, Arletty played her as a woman fighting a duel.
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The Vocal Disconnect: Her famously melodic, mocking voice lent Blanche a sense of irony that made her seem more in control of her “illusions” than her American counterparts. She wasn’t a victim of her fantasies; she was their architect.
3. The Shadow of Collaboration
Critically, the performance was inseparable from Arletty’s real-life context. Having only recently returned from her post-war “purgatory” (due to her affair with a German officer), her portrayal of a woman with a “soiled past” seeking refuge in a hostile environment felt uncomfortably autobiographical.
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Meta-Theatricality: When Arletty’s Blanche spoke of being “run out of town” for her indiscretions, the Parisian audience didn’t just see a character in Mississippi; they saw the actress herself. This added a layer of defiance to the role that gave it a harder edge than Williams likely intended.
Critical Legacy
Historians often view Arletty’s Blanche as a “beautiful mistake.” * The “Antiseptic” Production: Critics at the time noted that the French production lacked the “sweat and grime” of Elia Kazan’s version. It was too elegant, too stylized, and Arletty was too “un-crushable.”
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A New Archetype: However, she paved the way for a specifically European interpretation of Williams—one where the characters are tragic not because they are weak, but because the world is too vulgar for their refined (if dishonest) sensibilities.
“She didn’t play a victim; she played a fallen queen who refused to abdicate.” — A contemporary French summary.
