Olivier Dahan's La Môme | La Vie en rose (2007)

This biopic – and biopics can be hellishly diffcult to represent – is obviously designed with an international audience in mind, particularly those who at least know a little of the great Édith Piaf: it has, after all, a different title in the English version, in French no less, but of course named after one of the most famous of her songs. And there are, of course, many more songs in the movie. What positive things can I say about this film? Marion Cotillard's acting is superb, and somehow she's not only managed to convincingly show Piaf at various stages of her life, but also get round the question of her small height: a truly magnificent performance.

But the film itself? Oh. It weaves in and out of different periods for no apparent reason, it's a stew of scenes that not only don't follow from each other but seem sewn together with meaningless logic. If this were intended to be a cinematic version of a patchwork quilt it would be brilliant. As it is though, it's a hopeless failure. I was waiting for an appearance of someone acting Moustaki to give a tiny hint of redemption but no. And even a little humour wouldn't have gone amiss, such as the time in 1961 when she tried to seduce Johnny Hallyday – to his horror! Or wasn't that occasion generally known at the time of the film's release? Whatever – even Marion Cotillard can't save this turkey.

Gilles Costaz: Edith Piaf (1974)

Although much shorter than Duclos and Martin's biography, which I could in no way conclude, this book – which is both biography and the words of her most noted songs – I could relate to it far more as it is straightforward and doesn't lose itself at all.

It's interesting to note that both Piaf and Maurice Chevalier – who I can't stand at all – were both born in the Belleville area of Paris (20th arrondissement), but received a very different upbringing. Piaf had a much rougher time, and was literally born in the street. Her mother was an 'artiste lyrique' and her father a street acrobat. After staying some years (during three of which she was blind) with her brothel-keeping paternal grandmother in Bernay, l'Eure, her father took her back to Belleville when she was seven. There, she passed around the hat for her father's audience, and he got her to sing a few lines of songs in the process. Realising the success of her singing, he taught her some more songs.

She was on her own at the age of fifteen, became pregnant at seventeen but lost her baby at a young age. She moved to Pigalle and was 'discovered' at twenty by Louis Leplée, who changed her songs from the sugary Tino Rossi type to a more 'realistic' kind.

However, a bigger break came when Raymond Asso, who came to write songs for her, changed her name from 'la môme Piaf' to Edith Piaf. The rest, I suppose, is well-known history, and Costaz goes on to mention her first film La Garçonne (an adaptation of Victor Margueritte's novel); the beginning of her song-writing during the war ('La Vie en rose'); her acting L'Étoile sans lumière with Yves Montand; and her success with 'Les Trois Cloches', which I've mentioned before in this blog in relation to Jean-François Nicot and the wrongly identified grave in Baumes-les-Messieurs, Jura.

Piaf's short life, her addiction to morphine and refuge in alcohol, etc, make for sad reading. Both of her marriages were short-lived: the first, to the famous boxer Marcel Cerdan, only lasted a few years because he died in an air crash in 1949. She re-married in 1962, to the much younger Theophanis Lamboukas (later Sarapo), although she died a year later, at 47.

Costaz finishes the story on a positive note: Piaf's grave in Père-Lachaise has become one of the most sought-after sights in the cemetery; Serge Lama and Léo Ferré, for instance, wrote songs of praise to her; but most of all her singing lives on.

Paris 2015: Georges Moustaki, Cimetière du Père-Lachaise #2

The grave of Georges Moustaki (1933–2013), still almost hidden by floral tributes more than two years after his death. Moustaki was born in Egypt of Greek Italian-speaking parents and was a brilliant singer-songwriter. He wrote songs for Barbara, Yves Montand, Serge Reggiani...and Édith Piaf, with whom he had a short relationship and for whom he wrote the words to one of her most famous songs: 'Milord'. He lived on Île Saint-Louis and was a friend of the also Egyptian-born Albert Cossery, who 'worked' – if that word can be applied to Cossery without insulting his name – with him on Jacques Poitrenaud's film version of Mendiants et Orgueilleux, released in 1972. Amusingly, Moustaki also used to take Cossery for a spin on his motor bike.

 

One of Moustaki's best known songs is 'Le Métèque', which is also the title of one of his albums. This clip shows a young Moustaki miming half-heartedly to it, and both his style and the words give a clear idea of his sexy appeal: Georges Moustaki: 'Le Métèque'.

Pierre Duclos and Georges Martin: Piaf: Biographie (1995)

The first chapter of Piaf begins with Louis Leplée first discovering Édith Piaf singing on the corner of rue Troyon and avenue Mac-Mahon near l'Étoile, although later in the chapter the writer becomes more guarded, and says this might not be true that he discovered her there. And the chapter ends with Leplée's murder.

Chapter Two is all flashback, detailing what is known – or at least what has been said about Piaf – up to Leplée's death. And then Chapter Three picks up from Chapter One. Apart from pecking about a bit, searching for particular things that this biography says about events or people in Piaf's life, I'd had enough, and I suspect that many others have felt the same: this was written more than twenty years ago, and the only 'review' I can find is a two-sentence affair on the French Amazon website – it calls it badly written and one of the adjectives used in the title is merdique ('shitty'). So what's wrong with it?

Piaf was written by two people. In the Foreword, publisher and/or editor Hervé Hamon says that 'collector' and 'fan' Georges Martin wrote all the Indexes, which amount to about eighty pages of detailed discography (including unrecorded songs, refused songs, etc), filmography, theatography, and so on. Pierre Duclos 'became' 'fou de Piaf ('crazy about Piaf'), although Hamon immediately adds that this was in the guarded way that a biographer is of his or her subject. Umm: Duclos did later write a biography of Georges Cano, local politician in Saint-Jacques-de-la-Lande in Brittany (population 11,000) but I'll definitely give it a miss.

The reason I stopped reading – and I do so very rarely – is because I found the bulk of the book (the 450 pages written by Pierre Duclos) unreadable: I just couldn't digest a publication that more or less reads as a list of dates and songs and conflicting 'he-said-although-she-said' stories. But most of all I couldn't feel anything engaging, anything of interest to hold onto. Which is really frustrating and immensely disappointing as Édith Piaf is a fascinating character.

I won't dump this book though: despite the lack of Bibliography – and how unscholarly is that? – there is at least an Index that may well be useful to refer to in the future.