Emmanuelle Riva

Biography: life and films

Although first and foremost a stage actress, Emmanuelle Riva achieved worldwide renown at the start and end of her career in film roles that marked her out as one of the most remarkable performers of her generation. Half a century separates these two films, one dealing with the collective guilt of the Hiroshima bombing, the other with the traumas of growing old and dying. Between these two exceptional films, Riva's cinema career is pretty obscure and her talents were far better used on the stage. Originally named Paulette Riva, she was born in Cheniménil, Vosges, France on 24th February 1927. She came from a humble background, her family being descended from Italian immigrants. Her parents wanted her to pursue a respectable profession as a dressmaker, but she had other ideas. From an early age, she nurtured a passion for acting and joined an amateur theatre company in Remiremont. Against her parents' wishes, she went to Paris to study drama under Jean Meyer, and made her stage debut not long afterwards, in René Dupuy's 1954 production of George Bernard Shaw's Le Héros et le soldat.

Emmanuelle Riva's first film appearance was in a small role in Denys de La Patellière's Les Grandes familles (1958). Alain Resnais then gave her the leading role in a film that was to make her famous throughout the world - Hiroshima mon amour (1959). This was followed by significant parts in two noteworthy WWII dramas - Gillo Pontecorvo's controversial Holocaust-themed drama Kapò (1961) and Jean-Pierre Melville's compelling tale of temptation Léon Morin, prêtre (1961). In the latter, Riva gives one of her finest screen performances as a widow who becomes obsessively attached to a young Catholic priest (Jean-Paul Belmondo). The following year, the actress received the Best Actress award at the 1962 Venice Film Festival for her lead performance in Georges Franju's Thérèse Desqueyroux (1962). Franju also directed her in Thomas l'imposteur (1965). In André Cayatte's Les Risques du métier (1967), another controversial film, she plays the wife of a suspected child molester (Jacques Brel).

From the late 1960s, Emmanuelle Riva had difficulty attracting film work that was equal to her talents, so she turned away from cinema and devoted more of her time to her stage work. She was fortunate to work with some of the most talented French theatre directors of the time - Claude Régy, René Dupuy, Georges Wilson, Roger Planchon and Jacques Lassalle - on a wide range of plays by authors as diverse as George Bernard Shaw, Maxime Gorki, Harold Pinter, William Shakespeare, Luigi Pirandello, Marivaux and Molière. It is worth mentioning that Riva also had an interest in poetry and published three collections of poems: Juste derrière le sifflet des trains, Le Feu des miroirs and L'Otage du désir.

In the 1980s, Riva occasionally returned to cinema to lend her talents to some serious auteurs - Marco Bellochio (Les Yeux, la bouche), Philippe Garrel (Liberté, la nuit) - and mavericks - Jean-Pierre Mocky (Y a-t-il un Français dans la salle?), Wojciech Has (Les Tribulations de Balthasar Kober). In Krzysztof Kieslowski's Trois Couleurs: Bleu (1993), she had the honour of playing Juliette Binoche's mother, and in Tonie Marshall's Vénus beauté (institut) (1999) she adds lustre to an impressive female ensemble. The 2000s began well for her, with a small but memorable part in Jean-Pierre Améris's C'est la vie (2001), which impinges on the same territory as the film that would again bring her international renown, at the age of 85 - Michael Haneke's Amour (2012).

Paired with Jean-Louis Trintignant, Riva gives the performance of a lifetime in Haneke's devastatingly poignant portrayal of a devoted couple facing up to the unbearable torment of separation and death through old age. Riva was rewarded with the Best Leading Actress BAFTA and Best Actress César in 2013. She was also nominated for an Oscar, the oldest actress to have been recognised with this accolade. After this career highpoint, Riva has been called upon to appear in six more films, including Sébastien Betbeder's Marie et les naufragés (2016) and Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon's Paris pieds nus (2016). Her final film role is in Kristín Jóhannesdóttir's Alma. With three of her films still in production, Emmanuelle Riva died in Paris from cancer, on 27th January 2017, aged 89. She is now buried in Charonne cemetery, Paris.

Filmography

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