Simone Signoret

Susan Hayward, writing for Criterion, describes Simone Signoret's playing by its minimalism and its restraint, resting on small gestures, burning eyes, a glance, a decided walk and few words. In Jacques Becker's Casque d'Or, from 1952, she was Marie; on Philip Kemp's account the centre of that film is Marie, called Casque d'or for her golden hair, and Manda, two lovers whose end is settled from the start, and Kemp finds her self-assured and fragile at once. Her international standing, Hayward holds, was established by Alice Aisgill in Room at the Top, a performance that won her an Oscar. Her twenty-eight films here spread between 1946 and 1982, and the director she worked with most, on three, is Pierre Granier-Deferre. His film The Cat took her the actress Silver Bear at the 1971 Berlinale, recorded ex aequo and so shared with Shirley MacLaine for Desperate Characters. Jean Gabin took the actor's category alone at that ceremony, for the same film. La Vie devant soi won her the leading actress Cesar in 1978.