Beauty Archivist: An American in Paris & The Origin of French Girl Chic
Words: Grace Ellington
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Jean Seberg’s legacy has been mostly relegated to Pinterest. Black and white photos of her in a striped t-shirt or black dress, her fresh face, cropped pixie cut, distinctive beauty mark and full boyish eyebrows saved to countless French Girl Aesthetics boards. If you have seen her in a movie, it is probably Breathless. Jean-Luc Goddard’s masterpiece of the French New Wave and one of the most accessible, and pinnable, movies of that era. So, how did an American girl from small town Iowa come to represent French girl chic and why has her story, which is both unlikely and tragic, become flattened in the process?
Jean Seberg was a 17 year old high school student with no professional acting experience when she responded to a nationwide talent search orchestrated by controversial director Otto Preminger. Preminger was looking for a fresh new face, and a good media frenzy, to play the lead in his 1975 film Saint Joan. The casting call turned into a national spectacle, Seberg’s win a Cinderella story that fascinated the media. Preminger invited journalists to watch Jean’s screen-tests and sit in on the shaving of her long hair, cut as Joan of Arc prepares for battle. Footage of her emotional reaction to her shorn head was included in the film and heavily covered by the press. Reporters visited her home town, interviewed her friends and family and debated endlessly about Preminger's wisdom in casting such an inexperienced actress.
In reality, Seberg’s inexperience served two purposes for the director, as well as the rags to riches PR story, Jean’s naiveté of the film industry meant she didn’t know that she could push back to his tyrannical behaviour. Preminger belonged to a category of male auteurs including Stanley Kubrick and Bernardo Bertolucci that seemed to believe the only way to get a convincing performance from a woman was to put the actress through the same trials as her character experienced on screen. During the filming of the scene in which Saint Joan is burned at stake there was a pyrotechnic malfunction and Jean sustained burns on her torso that would leave scars for the rest of her life. The footage was included in the final cut.
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Even with the buzz around the production of Saint Joan the film received mixed to unfavourable reviews as Seberg with her cropped elfin hair and delicate naturalistic beauty failed to capture American audiences, who at the time were obsessing over the high glamour stars Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly and Elizabeth Taylor. But Jean would soon find a home in the cinema of the French New Wave and Paris, where her unpolished effortless style of beauty was embraced by a new movement of directors seeking to depart from the artifice of Hollywood.
Despite the lukewarm reception in America, Jean’s performance in Saint Joan, and her second film with Preminger Bonjour Tristesse, caught the attention of leader of the French New Wave Jean-Luc Goddard. Her unique and fresh screen presence appealed to the director, whose work sought to break with conventions imported from American cinema and make films that reflected the spontaneity of real life. Goddard thought she would be perfect to play the female lead in his film Breathless and approached Jean directly for the role, later saying “The character played by Jean Seberg (in Breathless) was a continuation of her role in Bonjour Tristesse, I could have taken the last shot of Preminger’s film and started after dissolving to a title: ‘Three years later.’”
Jean kept her closely cropped hair for her role as Patricia Franchini, an American journalist in Paris, a character who embodies a sort of lightness of being and naturalism despite her aspirations of sophistication. In one scene we even see her trim it herself with nail scissors. She has a gamine quality in the film and a simultaneous but conflicting air of chicness and youthful rebellion. Breathless contained many filmmaking innovations - famously jump cuts - but I think it is Goddard’s use of natural light which is most relevant to understanding what a departure the appearance of Seberg is from Hollywood icons of the day. It is hard to imagine the elaborate stage makeup of her American contemporaries in the delicate daylight of Breathless, the understated raw quality of her look was essential to the visual intimacy of the film. The coiffed hairdo and thick lipstick of a Hollywood picture would have read as textured and distancing.
Breathless made Jean an instant star in France with many young Parisian women adopting the short elfin crop that had been her signature since Saint Joan. America however, struggled to understand the appeal. In a television interview, Mike Wallce almost interrogates Jean, saying “you are a synthetic star…. You are a pretty girl, but not the prettiest girl in the world” before asking if she could do it all again would she perhaps choose to stick to her education.
You might think it possible that Seberg’s relevance today being fairly limited to Breathless and searches for French Girl Style friendly imagery is due to Hollywood’s slowness to catch up to the changing ideals of the emerging counter culture, and subsequent lack of appreciation for her beauty, but the truth is a lot darker and sadder. Jean’s career, legacy, and ultimately her life, was actively destroyed.
“In understanding the arc of Jean’s life, it seems to me even more tragic that she is not more celebrated today.”
In 1970 a malicious blind item (that carried many identifying details) would lead to a huge backlash against Jean and her eventual death at just 40 years old. The author of the smear campaign - the FBI. Jean Seberg - much like my previous column subject Jane Fonda - had long sympathised with the political radicals of the 1960s including the Black Panther Party, who under the Hoover administration were considered the greatest threat to internal security in the US. After making a donation of just over ten thousand dollars to the Black Panther Party, Jean became a focus of attention for the FBI who immediately tapped her phones. After learning that Jean was pregnant the FBI leaked a fabricated gossip story to the LA Times claiming that the father of her baby was not her husband, the French diplomat Romain Gary, but Ray Hewitt, the Black Panther Party’s minister of information.
An FBI memo sent directly to Hoover and later disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act reads "Bureau permission is requested to publicise the pregnancy of Jean Seberg, well-known movie actress, by [deleted] Black Panther party [deleted] by advising Hollywood gossip columnists in the Los Angeles area of the situation, It is felt that the possible publication of Seberg's plight could cause her embarrassment and serve to cheapen her image with the general public.”
During the fallout Jean Seberg gave birth prematurely to her baby who died two days later. Jean was pressured to have an open casket funeral to prove to reporters that her baby was white and therefore her husband’s. Her devastation deepened and her mental health severely deteriorated. Jean made many attempts on her life in the subsequent ten years, during which the FBI continued to harass and surveil her until she finally died in 1979 by what the Paris police called a “probable suicide”.
In understanding the arc of Jean’s life, it seems to me even more tragic that she is not more celebrated today. Her belief in civil rights and radicalism, beliefs that caused her work to be buried and her life to be destroyed, make it hard for me to not think of her contemporary Jane Fonda and wish that Jean had remained alive long enough to see her legacy vindicated as Fonda has. It is worth noting that although Fonda was also subject to a campaign of harassment by the FBI, she was the daughter of Henry Fonda, and essentially American royalty. Seberg’s origin as a small town Iowa girl plucked from obscurity was central to her celebrity and sometimes success from humble origins invites a perverse desire to knock someone back into their place.
As an actress and on screen presence, Seberg still feels startlingly modern today, her slightly androgynous beauty, natural delivery and her pixie cut feel as fresh now as they did in the 1960s, and Seberg deserves to be remembered more widely outside of niche cinema circles. If you haven’t already seen it, it’s a great time to watch Breathless.
