ABSTRACT
Also known as Beltiane, Seyrig is one of France’s great but underestimated actors. Renowned for her extraordinary voice and delivery, her stylized performance was both gracious and intense. An international star, she was at ease on both stage and screen. She took on primarily contemporary theatre roles (plays by Beckett, Stoppard and Cixous) and equally challenging parts in auteur cinema (Resnais, Duras, Buñuel, Ottinger). Her film roles delve into questions of the unconscious and memory (Resnais’s L’Année dernière à Marienbad of 1961), expose bourgeois hypocrisy-Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie) of 1972and speak out strongly for the feminist cause, which is a rare phenomenon among French screen stars (for example, Duras’s India Song of 1975, and Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du commerce 1080 Bruxelles of 1975).
