Delphine Seyrig Movies
Born in Beirut to French-Alsatian parents, actress Delphine Seyrig received her training at the Comedie de Saint-Etienne and Centre Dramatique de l'Est in France, and the Actors Studio of New York. After stage experience and a stint in an obscure "underground" film, Seyrig burst onto the international scene with her portrayal of a frosty, elegant femme fatale in Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad (1961). Her later performance in Muriel (1963) won her the Venice Film Festival Best Actress award. Delphine Seyrig's final film appearances were designed to espouse her views on feminism; she also turned to directing, helming several TV shorts and the 1977 feature Sois belle et tais-toi. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide- 1998
The Paris-based photographer-painter-actor-filmmaker William Klein looks back on five decades of his life and multi-careers in this French documentary. Born in 1926, Klein is a native New Yorker who began living in Paris in 1948, studied painting with Fernand Leger, photographed for Vogue from 1955 to 1965, dropped out of the fashion world for 15 years, and directed hundreds of commercials (from soup to hosiery). He was seen onscreen as an actor (People Will Talk, La Jetee) and worked offscreen as a visual consultant (Louis Malle's 1960 Zazie dans le Metro). Klein made both short and feature documentaries (from fighters to fashion), including and Far From Vietnam (1967) and Muhammed Ali, The Greatest. His dramatic film Who Are You, Polly Magoo? (1966) won the 1967 Prix Jean Vigo. Also excerpted here is Mr. Freedom (1968), a fable about America's intervention in Vietnam. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Delphine Seyrig, Sami Frey, (more)
- 1988
While traveling on the Trans-Mongolian Railway, when a cozy group of female western tourists are abducted by a horde of female Mongolians wearing tribal dress, they fear the worst. They are forced to learn traditional Mongolian ways, and are made to do all sorts of onerous chores in the old-fashioned ways. They are equally perplexed when, after about a month, they are released to return to the train and resume their journeys. The situation becomes clearer when they are back on the train and the most garrulous among the released women strikes up a conversation with a Mongolian woman wearing western attire. It seems that every year, many Mongolian women on vacation from their modern jobs return to the steppes for a holiday to keep their culture alive, and the western women's abduction was just another aspect of their role-playing. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Delphine Seyrig, Irm Hermann, (more)
- 1987
- R
In this feature-length anthology of short films, seven women filmmakers from around the world interpret the seven "deadly sins" for a modern age. New Yorkers Bette Gordon and Maxi Cohen direct "Greed" and "Anger," respectively; Germans Helke Sander and Ulrike Ottinger take on "Gluttony" and "Pride"; Belgian director Chantal Akerman tackles "Sloth"; Austrian Valie Export composes "Lust"; and Laurence Gavron of France directs "Envy." ~ Sarah Welsh, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Evelyne Didi, Gabriela Herz, (more)
- 1986
Fannie Cottencon stars as Lilli, beauty salon owner and uncrowned queen of the shopping mall where the film, in its entirety, takes place. Delphine Seyrig costars as a mall boutique owner, suddenly confronted with her wartime lover. Before we're quite aware of it, the film has become a New Age Romeo and Juliet, complete with out-of-nowhere songs. Through plotlines as twisted as a tributy of the Colorado river, Cottencon's salon and Seyrig's boutique symbolically merge. Golden Eighties is known in the US as Window Shopping; its title was changed to avoid confusion with an earlier Chantal Akerman effort Les Annees 80s, also known as The Golden Eighties. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Delphine Seyrig, Myriam Boyer, (more)
- 1985
A tribute to the late, great French director Francois Truffaut, this documentary was undoubtedly named after his last movie, Vivement Dimanche, released in 1983. Included in this overview of Truffaut's contribution to filmmaking are clips from 14 of his movies arranged according to the themes he favored. These include childhood, literature, the cinema itself, romance, marriage, and even death (The Green Room). Of lesser notice in this documentary is the life of the man himself. There are some scenes of his receiving an award or two and some interview footage, but nothing extensive. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- 1984
In another avant-garde, underground film, director Ulrike Ottinger takes up the decadent, self-indulgent character of Dorian Gray (Veruschka von Lehndorff) and uses him/her to explore the seamier side of Berlin night and street life -- for 2 1/2 hours of running time. About half that time would have been more than enough, even for in-house, Berlin-based fans. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Delphine Seyrig
- 1983
Delphine Seyrig plays a middle-aged woman coping with an ungovernable present and holding out hopes of escaping to a more pleasant past. She leaves her current residence to retreat to her provincial French hometown. Here she dreams of locating and rekindling an old love. Seyrig is less inscrutable here than in her debut feature-film appearance Last Year in Marienbad (61), though the character is just as complex and difficult to please. Grain of Sand was released in France in 1983 as Le Grain de Sable. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Delphine Seyrig, Geneviève Fontanel, (more)
- 1981
As Orlando (Magdalena Montezuma) enters the world of "freaks," the movie develops scenes from a mythological netherworld, the Spanish Inquisition, the Middle Ages, and a few other settings to focus on unusual characters with physical or mental oddities. By the time the various vignettes that take place in these separate periods are completed, each with their own points and counterpoints, the "freaks" seem much less odd than their physically normal contemporaries. After Orlando has revealed much about the human condition through glimpses of a P.T. Barnum side-show, Siamese twins, as well as modern sexual morés, her journey with the viewer is completed. The device of Orlando, the time-traveler and liberated bisexual is based on Virginia Woolf's "Orlando: A Biography." The same set of actors play different roles in each of the five chronological segments. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Magdalena Montezuma, Delphine Seyrig, (more)
- 1981
- PG
Based on the novel by Bernice Rubens, I Sent a Letter to My Love stars Simone Signoret as a woman who has reached middle age without truly learning how to live. Responsible for the constant care of her paraplegic brother Jean Rochefort, Signoret seeks a brief respite from her confinement by inaugurating a pen-pal relationship with a man she has never met. Gradually, Signoret falls in love with her mystery correspondent, a love that is apparently reciprocated. No, we will not divulge the ending. Also featured in I Sent a Letter to My Love is cult favorite Delphine Seyrig. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Simone Signoret, Jean Rochefort, (more)
- 1981
An unhappy Frenchwoman is living in Los Angeles, alone with her son now that her boyfriend has left for good. She works typing for a filmmaker, on a beach that is as bleak and desolate as she feels at this juncture in her life. The daily routine is hard to bear in the face of her loneliness, and only the relationship with her son offers any chance of recovery from a deadening despair. This fictional film was meant to be seen alongside the director Agnes Varda's documentary on wall paintings in L.A. titled Murs, Murs. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sabine Mamou, Mathieu Demy, (more)
- 1980
A serious decision coming from a mid-life crisis comes off as a casual fling in this routine drama by Marta Meszaros. Barbara (Delphine Seyrig) is a biologist, a mother with two grown children, whose relationship to her husband has weakened over time. After a friend is killed in an accident, Barbara drives away to her mother's grave -- and perhaps to seek out her own roots as well. She is Polish but has lived in Hungary since she was little, and her mother is buried in Poland. On the way to her mother's gravesite, Barbara meets Marek (Jan Nowicki), a handsome actor who is not averse to a brief sexual encounter -- greatly complicating her life. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Delphine Seyrig, Jan Nowicki, (more)
- 1977
In the story of Reperages, Victor (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is a film director who has arranged to shoot a version of Anton Chekhov's play The Three Sisters. Casting her in the lead will enable his troubled wife, who has separated from him, to earn some money and receive some much-needed emotional support. Julie (Delphine Seyrig), his wife, has a drug problem, but Cecilia (Lea Massari), her co-star, happily approaches her with just the right kind of off-camera friendship to keep her going. A young actor ironically dies while shooting his audition piece: a death scene. This strange event has a beneficial and sobering effect on everyone. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean-Louis Trintignant, Delphine Seyrig, (more)
- 1977
Ironies abound in this witty romance which tells a tale of greed and love. Edward is a lawyer who works for a women's underwear factory. He is ambitious, and wants to take the factory over. He hits on the scheme of wooing both the wife of the factory owner and her daughter. Several things go wrong with his plan. For one thing, he has begun to fall in love with the daughter. For another, her mother, who has a heart condition, dies during a peak moment while making love. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Barry Foster, Delphine Seyrig, (more)
- 1976
- R
Michael is the younger son of a middle-class family, a strong-willed and free-thinking fellow, who is off in some distant country fighting for a revolutionary cause. Everyone in the family writes to him, describing the events of their lives, as they drift into a kind of conventionality which would perhaps have horrified them earlier. Only Michael's girlfriend Mara (Mariangela Melato), the mother of his child, retains her independence, even though it is through the help of Michael's increasingly conventional friends and family that she survives. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mariangela Melato, Delphine Seyrig, (more)
- 1976
Vera Baxter (Claudine Gabay) is talking to a woman in a bar. It seems that the woman was attracted to her by hearing her name called out: "Baxter, Vera Baxter." In response to her new friend's queries, Vera recounts the story of her life, beginning with marrying her no-good husband Cayre (Gerard Depardieu), who has been using her for some time as a kind of unpaid prostitute in order to keep his failing building business afloat. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Claudine Gabay, Delphine Seyrig, (more)
- 1975
The young hit man in this movie cannot bring himself to fulfill his contract on Katie (Delphine Seyrig), and for a little while the two have an affair. Even after their affair is over, he hesitates, which has dire consequences for the two of them. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Delphine Seyrig, Anouk Ferjac, (more)
- 1975
When Anne-Marie (Delphine Seyrig), the wife of the French vice-consul, grows weary of her oppressive life in 1930s India, she compulsively makes love so as to forget her situation. Her husband (Michel Lonsdale) is aware of her affairs but understands the cause of them and affects not to notice. Curiously, the mansion--so strongly evocative of India--where most of the movie was filmed, was just outside of Paris ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Delphine Seyrig, Michel Lonsdale, (more)
- 1975
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A classic of both feminist and experimental filmmaking, Chantal Akerman's marathon dissection of the life of Belgian housewife/mother/prostitute Jeanne Dielman (Delphine Seyrig) stays on the surface of the details of Jeanne's humdrum daily life, as if it were a real-life, real-time documentary of an ordinary life, in the tradition of Agnès Varda's earlier New Wave landmark, Cleo From 5 to 7 (1961). Jeanne feeds her son, fixes potatoes, does the marketing, entertains gentlemen -- but things slowly, almost imperceptibly start to go wrong, first those potatoes, and then, finally, something more shocking. Akerman sets out to capture the rhythm of daily life, even as that pace sets us up, after several hours, for the almost tossed-off, blink-and-you'll-miss-it climax. ~ Leo Charney, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Delphine Seyrig, Jan Decorte, (more)
- 1974
Alexandre (Eric Damain), the neglected teenager in this drama, finally gets some attention when he has a very serious accident while climbing a tree: it leads to the amputation of one of his legs. When he finds out that his mother (Stephane Audran) has a lover, he blackmails her into telling him all about it. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Eric Damain, Stéphane Audran, (more)
- 1974
In this bizarre psychological thriller, a handsome young boy (John Mouder-Brown), who is marred by a strange birthmark on his face, tells a disturbing tale about how his family died. The family had been living for some time in a villa which was overgrown with flowering vines. Some of the vines even penetrate to the inside of the house. It seems that the boy's father, (Fernando Rey), was part of a conspiracy to kill Hitler, and when the plot failed, he was forced to kill his family in order to prevent them from suffering horrible torture. Unable for some reason to kill himself, he escaped but became the victim of amnesia after a motorcycle accident. When a German governess came to stay, his father's memory is revived. The boy travels to Germany in pursuit of the governess and learns that her family seeks vengeance from his father. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Delphine Seyrig, John Moulder-Brown, (more)
- 1974
The painful life of a mentally unstable but highly gifted woman is unveiled in this film, based on episodes from the life of an actual person. Aloise (Delphine Seyrig) creates a series of haunting drawings while she is incarcerated in an institution for the insane in turn-of-the-century Switzerland. She endures torments as a musically gifted girl and later as a young woman; her developing madness and the barbaric treatments of the time are shown. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Isabelle Huppert, Delphine Seyrig, (more)
- 1974
Michael Caine stars as an espionage agent whose young son is kidnapped. Complicating matters is the fact that the kidnappers (John Vernon and Delphine Seyrig) are Caine's own colleagues. They want to secure Caine's aid in rounding up a diamond smuggling ring, and they don't care who they have to hurt to do so. He agrees to go along, all the while searching for his missing son. Janet Suzman co-stars as Caine's estranged wife, who is compelled to join him in his search. Helmed by veteran filmmaker Don Siegel, The Black Windmill is based on Seven Days to a Killing, a novel by Clive Egleton. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Caine, Donald Pleasence, (more)
