Romy Schneider

The turn in Romy Schneider's acting became visible in Jacques Deray's The Swimming Pool, where she is Marianne, Jean-Paul's lover. The assessment at Criterion says the film consolidated Alain Delon's image while it set hers free, carrying her out of the wholesome Habsburg fairy tale of the Sissi films towards sensuality and maturity. The same piece finds an interiority in her playing, secret smiles and sorrows, and says that line opened into a partnership with Claude Sautet. The first link in it was The Things of Life, which Sautet adapted from Paul Guimard's novel: built in flashbacks around a car crash, it became one of the year's largest box office successes and turned her and Michel Piccoli into stars of French cinema. She won the French film academy's Cesar twice, in the best actress category: in 1976 for That Most Important Thing: Love and in 1979 for her lead in Une Histoire Simple.