Passed by the Comédie-Française, the actress, who died at the age of 97, had played in Fanfan the tulip et Beautiful day.
Geneviève Page, glory of the theater which also embodied in the cinema a luxury closed house owner recruiting Catherine Deneuve in Beautiful day in 1967, died Friday in Paris at the age of 97, announced to AFP her granddaughter, actress Zoé Guillemaud. The actress, who marked classic theater and cinema in fifty years of career, died at her home, said the same source.
Daughter of a gallery owner, Geneviève Page had completed her career in the theater in 2011 with Britannicus de Racine, under the direction of Michel Fau, at the Figeac theater festival. “She had told me that she had played” Le Soulier de Satin “by Claudel then” Le Canard à l’Orange “with Jean Poiret”said the director. “I had a lot of fun and I received a lot”, assured the actress with beautiful malicious green eyes.
Born Geneviève Anne Marguerite Bonjean, December 13, 1927, in 16e Paris arrondissement, married to Jean-Claude Bujard, she was sponsoring Christian Dior. After her baccalaureate, like her father, keen on art and literature, she entered the Louvre school.
It was at 26 years old, in 1953 by turning in Open letter to a husbanda comedy by Alex Joffé with Robert Lamoureux whom she decides to become an actress. The public applauds him during the screening of the film: “I had the impression that I became an actress at this second.” She then joined the Conservatoire d’Art Dramatique de Paris, then the Comédie-Française and worked with the company Jean-Louis Barrault who will direct her in Angelo, tyrant of Padua by Victor Hugo. Thanks to the one who will become his friend, Gérard Philip, Geneviève Page enters the TNP, rubs shoulders with Jean Vilar and therefore gives the reply to Gérard Philip in Lorenzaccio and the Caprices de Marianne.
The actress embodies great heroines, doña proueze (The satin shoe) or Hermione (Andromache). She is also in The Night of Kingsa “dramatic” by Claude Barma. Its performance in Bitter tears From Petra von Kant to Rainer Werner Fassbinder, at the National Theater of Chaillot in 1980 earned him the prize for the best actress of the union of criticism.
“The theater starts and it ends, as Claudel says. We come back at 8 am and a half in the scene and at midnight less a quarter, we died in awful torments! »»
Geneviève Page
Geneviève Page preferred theater in the cinema, but the latter could not do without his haughty physique. The “Coitus interruptus” was not her “thing”, she said. “The theater starts and it ends, as Claudel says. We come home at half past 8 on the scene and at midnight less a quarter, we died in awful torments! ”.
This did not prevent her from shooting in many films, in France and in the United States where she also distinguished herself in the theater in The Happy Time by Samuel Taylor with Laurence Olivier. On the screen, she is illustrated for the first time in a police officer No pity for womenby Christian Stengel, with Simone Renant, Michel Auclair and Marcel Herrand (1951). Then she is a sacred marquise of Pompadour in Fanfan the tulip“very courteous” Christian-Jaque, where she finds Gérard Philip. “When you see yourself with Gina Lollobrigida, you fall into your arms, while at the time I have seen it little.”
During the filming of the enigmatic Mr. D., (Foreign intrigue) of Sheldon Reynols, Robert Mitchum “saves his life” by avoiding him to receive a projector on his head. “He liked to drink pastis,” she laughed. In Mayerling, she is the partner of Ava Gardner. In Belle de Jour by Luis Buñuel, she plays with jubilation Madame Anaïs, a Mother Macquerelle (1967). “We are going to find you a very simple, very pretty first name,” she said to the innocent Catherine Deneuve. “Luis Buñuel had asked me to kiss her on my mouth without warning her. I replied that if she didn’t give me a slap, I would give her one. (Le Point, July 2013).
Geneviève Page is still in Looking for the woman, Michel Strogoff, by Carmine Gallone, nicknamed the Commander, with Curd Jürgens who was afraid of horses. Then in a pocket love of Pierre Kast, alongside Jean Marais and a beginner Jean-Claude Brialy: “I called my agents to tell them,” Take it right away. ». In Le Bal des Airwieux, by George Cukor (1960), Dirk Bogarde is adorable: “It was a dream, he repeated with you … He cooked a pineapple turkey near his pool”.
The actress is illustrated in a superproduction which will be crowned with three Oscars: the CID (El Cid) of Anthony Mann with Sophie Loren who becomes the godmother of her son and Charlton Heston who had remained a loved one. “Don’t cry if not I become frigid,” warns Geneviève Page to the filmmaker. One of her most beautiful memories was her role as Gabrielle Valladon, the “wicked” in the private life of Sherlock Holmes (The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes), by Billy Wilder (1970).
Open, it did not prohibit any role. It is thus a nymphomaniac widow in Cold Buffet (1979). She found Bernard Blier there with whom she had played a play by Marcel Achard. The actor makes him pranks with the complicity of Gérard Depardieu and Jean Carmet. As soon as she could, Geneviève Page returned to the boards. In 1991, the Spanish director Lluis Pasqual led her in Jean Genet’s balcony at the Odéon. She won the 1997 Theater Pleasure Prize for Colombe by Jean Anouilh mounted by Michel Fagadau in which she played Madame Alexandra. In parallel, she had taught her art.