Must Know
(1921-1985) French actress, born to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, had a five-decade career of more than sixty films; her unassailable talent in creating not only memorable but iconic female characters, including Jewish heroines, gives her an important place in twentieth-century cultural history. The Jewish nature of her activities is discernable primarily in projects she undertook during the last two decades of her life, especially the work she did in conjunction with Mosco Boucault’s documentary film Terrorists in Retirement, about a group of Eastern European Jewish immigrants who, during World War II, formed an activist wing of the Communist Resistance in Paris and elsewhere. Her acclaimed novel Adieu Volodia evokes Jewish immigrant life in Paris between 1919 and 1942.
