Silvia Monfort

Silvia Monfort (French pronunciation: [silvja mɔ̃fɔʁ] , born Simone Marguerite Favre-Bertin [simɔn maʁɡəʁit favʁ bɛʁtɛ̃] , 6 June 1923 – 30 March 1991) was a French actress and theatre director. She was the daughter of Charles-Maurice Favre-Bertin, and a French sculptor, decorator and medalist, and was the wife of Pierre Gruneberg. She was named a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1973, an Officer of Arts and Letters in 1979, and Commander of Arts and Letters in 1983. She died in 1991 of lung cancer, and is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Monfort was born in the neighborhood of Le Marais in Rue Elzévir, a short distance from Rue de Thorigny, where she established her first theatre in 1972. Her family lived in this Parisian neighborhood for several generations. Her father sent her to boarding school after her mother died when she was young. She undertook her secondary studies first at Lycée Victor-Hugo and then at Lycée Victor Duruy.

She obtained her baccalauréat at the age of 14 with special permission. Her father had intended for her to pursue a career at the Gobelins Manufactory, but instead, she took theatre classes with Jean Hervé and Jean Valcourt.

In 1939, at the age of 16, she met Maurice Clavel, who directed the Resistance network in Eure-et-Loir. Under the pseudonym "Sinclair" (the name of a hill that looms over Sète), she participated in the liberation of Nogent-le-Rotrou and Chartres in 1944. She was among the notables who welcomed General de Gaulle in the square in front of Chartres Cathedral. After the war, she married Maurice Clavel. She was decorated with the Croix de Guerre by General de Gaulle and awarded the Bronze Star by General Patton.

In 1945, Monfort acted in Federico García Lorca's play La casa de Bernarda Alba. She drew the attention of Edwige Feuillère, with whom she shared the stage in L'Aigle à deux têtes by Jean Cocteau. The play was first presented in 1946 at the Royal Theatre of the Galeries Royales of Saint-Hubert in Brussels.

Through Clavel, she met Jean Vilar in 1947 and participated in the Théâtre National Populaire (TNP). She took part in the first Festival d'Avignon with The Story of Tobias and Sarah (1947).

Alongside Gérard Philipe, she played Chimène in Le Cid. She performed with Vilar in Cinna and The Marriage of Figaro.

Monfort made her film debut in Les Anges du péché. While looking for non-professionals for his film, director Robert Bresson hired her. In 1948, she played the role of Édith de Berg in the cinematic adaptation of L'Aigle à deux têtes by Cocteau with Feuillère and Jean Marais.

In 1955, Agnès Varda, then a photographer at the TNP, directed her first film, La Pointe Courte, one of the first of the New Wave. Varda recalls Monfort's participation in the film: "She joined the project with enthusiasm and professionalism," according to Varda. "I really think she was happy to fight for a cinema of the future."

Separated from Maurice Clavel, Silvia Monfort shared her life with director Jean-Paul Le Chanois and participated in his films. Despite having an arm in a plaster cast, Monfort took on the role of a Polish prisoner at the direction of Jean-Paul Le Chanois alongside François Périer and Pierre Fresnay in Les Évadés (1955), a film inspired by a true story. She then co-starred with Jean Gabin and Nicole Courcel in Le Cas du Docteur Laurent, a film centered on the theme of painless childbirth (1957), and then in Le Chanois' film Par-dessus le Mur (1961), which dealt with parent-child relations. In two films dealing with social conditions, she was Eponine of Les Misérables, alongside Gabin and Bourvil (1958), and then the Gypsy girl, Myrtille, in Mandrin beside Georges Rivière and Georges Wilson. This film concluded her cinematic career and her relationship with Le Chanois in 1962.

During the 1960s, Monfort took to the road with Jean Danet and his troupe, the Tréteaux de France, a traveling theatre company. She was actively involved in the initiative, ensuring that new and contemporary plays were performed alongside works from the classical repertoire. On 23 June 1965, Silvia wrote to Pierre Gruneberg: "I've convinced Danet to schedule a series of performances in September of The Prostitute and Suddenly, Last Summer under a big top around Paris (this way, the inconveniently returning directors will be able to see it there if necessary). Oh, I would have done what I could."

She wrote at least once, sometimes several times a day, to her companion Pierre Gruneberg. Regarding the collection of this correspondence, Letters to Pierre, Danielle Netter, assistant director, adds: "The Tréteaux de France was an extraordinary theatrical tool that gave us the occasion to present Sophocles and other dramatic poets before the tenants of the HLM, and one evening to hear a spectator declare at the end of Electra to Silvia 'It's as beautiful as a Western!', which filled our tragedienne with joy."

Monfort explored ancient and modern theatrical repertoires for nearly half a century, whether with the Tréteaux, in festivals, in private theatres, and later in her Carrés. She acted in five versions of Phèdre in different theatres as well as on television. She interpreted numerous works of Racine and Corneille. She performed Sophocles' Electra in unconventional venues, such as the "trou des Halles" in Paris in 1970.

She acted in the plays and theatrical adaptations of Maurice Clavel, such as The Isle of Goats and The Noon Terrace. She was directed by Roger Planchon at Villeurbanne in 1959 in Love's Second Surprise and by Luchino Visconti in Paris in 1961 in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore beside Alain Delon and Romy Schneider. She made appearances in Summer and Smoke (1953) and Suddenly, Last Summer (1965) by Tennessee Williams. She incarnated the Sphinx of Cocteau's The Infernal Machine in festivals as well as on television with Claude Giraud in 1963. She was The Respectful Prostitute of Jean-Paul Sartre (1965) and The Duchess of Malfi beside Raf Vallone (1981).

At Carré Thorigny, she brought about the debut of Bernard Giraudeau in Tom Eyen's Why Doesn't Anna's Dress Want to Come off (1974). She was also seen in The Oresteia (1962) and The Persians of Aeschylus (1984). She portrayed Lucrezia Borgia in Victor Hugo (1975), Marguerite de Bourgogne in The Tower of Nesle by Alexandre Dumas, père (1986), Alarica in The Evil Is Spreading (1963), Maid in Jacques Audiberti (1971), Ethel in The Rosenbergs Should Not Die (1968) by Alain Decaux. She took on Ionesco with Jacques, or the Submission (1971), When We Dead Awaken by Henrik Ibsen (1976), and then The Lady from the Sea' (1977). To celebrate the centenary of Cocteau's birth, she appeared for the last time on the Vaugirard stage in The Two Ways in 1989.

Silvia Monfort is among the most influential performers of Phèdre. A study by the CNRS about the tragedies that have incarnated this character in the 20th century was published in Pour la Science, the French version of Scientific American. This study analyzed the relationship between the pauses and the versified text. It also studies fluctuations in delivery and demonstrated that Silvia Monfort made the most important use of them (92% of pauses and 3.8 syllables/minute) similar to other tragic actresses (Sarah Bernhardt, Marie Bell, Nada Strancar and Natacha Amal). This characteristic of her performances noted for their psychological intensity and emotional nuance, according to the study.

She said of her character in 1973: "Phèdre burns in each one of us. We have hardly grasped the image in the mirror when she dims, and the imminence of this obliteration sharpens the acuteness of the reflection […] What matters is that there has been a meeting in mystery even from the first reading. It is like desire, or rather it is present in the look that provokes it, or rather there will never be unison. All the opinions, competent, imperious, singular, that were offered to me on the subject of Phèdre, and to which I listened intensely, had no other result with me than to lead me back to my Phèdre, despite her long being hazy, with the obviousness of a pawn moving back to the first square on a board game […] this is the wonder of Phèdre: to tackle it is to resign oneself to it."

In 1972, with the support of Jacques Duhamel, then Minister of Cultural Affairs, she set up and directed the Carré Thorigny Rue de Thorigny in the neighborhood of Le Marais in Paris, where she put on multidisciplinary shows. She was especially interested in the circus world, and organized an exhibit entitled Circus in Color, which met with success. Following her contacts with circus people and meeting with Alexis Gruss, she organized old-style circus performances in the courtyard of the Hôtel Salé, in front of the Carré. In 1974, the public's fancy led Monfort and Gruss to set up the first circus and mime school in France, L'école au Carré. They wanted to highlight the historical significance and traditions of the circus arts, and were involved in bringing to life an updated old-style circus. The Gruss Circus followed Monfort in her next moves until it became a national circus in 1982.

At the Carré Thorigny, Alain Decaux awarded Monfort the Legion of Honor in 1973, paying homage to "her passion for the theatre and the inflexible will with which she serves it."

The Carré had to leave Rue de Thorigny in 1974 because of a property transaction. Monfort thus transferred her Nouveau Carré into the old théâtre de la Gaîté-Lyrique. It opened on 1 October 1974, and she set up the Gruss Circus' big top in the square in front of the theatre. The Nouveau Carré (officially the Centre d'Action Culturelle de Paris) — or "Paris Cultural Center" — eventually encompassed the main theatre, two smaller houses for music and more intimate shows, the circus, a circus school, and a mime school. From 1978 to 1979, the circus, which had grown in importance, was moved under a new big top in the Jardin d'Acclimatation. In 1980, the Gaîté Lyrique theatre had to be renovated, and she had to move her Carré (now Carré-Silvia Monfort) onto the site of the former abattoirs of Vaugirard, where she set up the theatre under a specially built big top and brought along the Gruss circus's big top. The circus school was moved to another facility. Meanwhile, lacking funds, the project of renovating the Gaîté-Lyrique was abandoned.

She continued working to establish a permanent "Carré" at Vaugirard on the site of and in place of the big tops. The decision to build the theatre as it is today was made in 1986. On 7 March 1989, she wrote: "This will be my theatre. Even so, incredible! I don't know a single living person for whom his theatre was built, with his name and of the right size." However, she died a few months before its completion. Inaugurated in 1992, the own theatre bears her name: Théâtre Silvia-Monfort.

Monfort died of lung cancer on March 30, 1991, in Courchevel.

Pierre Gruneberg, Silvia Monfort's husband since 1990, founded the Silvia Monfort Prize Association in 1996. This prize is issued every two years to a young actress by a professional jury. Since its inception, the prize winners have been:

Private theatres, TNP and Tréteaux de France

Carré Thorigny

Nouveau Carré Gaîté-Lyrique

Jardin d'Acclimatation

Carré Silvia Monfort Vaugirard

Directed by her

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