Yves Montand and the Art of Being at Ease

There are men who look as though they have spent a great deal of time deciding how to appear effortless. Yves Montand had the more interesting gift of making you forget to ask.

Perhaps it was the open collar, or the way a jacket appeared to have settled naturally on his shoulders. Perhaps it was his smile, which could suggest that he knew something amusing but was generous enough not to keep it entirely to himself. On screen and on stage, he possessed a particular sort of ease: worldly without seeming detached, elegant without appearing too careful.

Of course, ease is often hard work in a good suit.

Ivo becomes Yves

Before he became Yves Montand, he was Ivo Livi, born in Italy in 1921. His family left fascist Italy for France when he was a small child, settling in Marseille. The city, its streets and its working life would remain important to the story of the man who later seemed so at home in Paris.

He left school young and worked before making his way into entertainment. There is something appealing about that beginning, particularly when looking at the polished performer he became. His refinement was not something he had simply inherited with a family name. It was learned, practised and assembled over time.

He sang in Marseille before moving towards larger stages. In Paris, Édith Piaf recognised his promise and helped shape his early career. She encouraged him, worked with him and brought him into a world that could be generous and demanding in roughly equal measure. Their relationship was personal as well as professional, though it would be unfair to either artist to tell the story of one solely through the other.

Montand brought his own presence to the stage: a restless energy, physical confidence and an instinct for inhabiting a song. His performances could seem casual, but the timing and movement behind them were carefully developed. A man may loosen his collar; that does not mean he has neglected his rehearsal.

A voice for an evening

Montand was not necessarily the singer one reaches for when one wants the most technically dazzling voice in the room. His strength, to these ears, lies in character. He could make a song feel spoken, remembered or offered across a table.

Listen to “Les Feuilles mortes” and there is an autumnal quality that needs very little decoration. The song belongs to a longer story, of course: Jacques Prévert wrote the words and Joseph Kosma the music. Montand’s interpretation helped carry it far beyond the film Les Portes de la nuit, where it appeared.

Then there is “À Paris,” with its affectionate movement through the city, and “La Bicyclette,” which seems to understand that an ordinary journey can become enormous when one is young and in love. His songs can be sentimental. Sometimes gloriously so. A little sentiment, handled with conviction, is not a failing.

One can imagine putting on a Montand record while preparing dinner, then discovering that the onions have been left unattended because someone has begun to sing along. This is not an endorsement of burnt onions. It is, however, an endorsement of giving an evening more character than it strictly requires.

The clothes and the man

Montand’s style is often remembered through open shirts, jackets, dark trousers, knitwear and the impression that he could move comfortably in all of them. His screen wardrobe changed with the role, and it would be foolish to pretend that every image of him offers a single, consistent uniform. What carries through is a sense of physical ease.

A shirt need not be buttoned to the throat to look considered. A jacket does not have to announce its expense. Trousers should allow a man to walk, sit down and live in them. Montand gives the impression that clothes are most successful when they allow the person wearing them to remain visible.

There is a useful lesson here, although one ought not to turn it into a law. The open collar is not a shortcut to becoming French, and a well-worn jacket will not automatically produce a compelling personality. Good style is partly proportion and partly attention. It is also knowing when to stop adjusting yourself and get on with the evening.

More than the charming man

His film career gave that charm somewhere more complicated to go. In Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear, Montand plays a man caught in a desperate and dangerous undertaking. There is little room there for the comforting idea that elegance makes life easy. In Le Cercle rouge, his presence belongs to a cooler, more restrained world. In Z and The Confession, both directed by Costa-Gavras, politics and power become central to the drama.

His marriage to the actress Simone Signoret was one of the most closely watched partnerships in French cultural life. It was also a real marriage, with difficulties that do not disappear simply because the photographs look wonderful. His affair with Marilyn Monroe became public. There is no need to dress that fact in romantic language or pretend that charm makes betrayal charming.

His political life, too, resisted a simple summary. Montand was publicly engaged on the left and later spoke critically about Soviet repression and communism. His positions changed over time, drawing admiration and criticism. A photograph of a man smoking thoughtfully is no substitute for examining what he believed and how those beliefs developed.

Perhaps that complexity is part of what keeps him interesting. He could be magnetic and flawed, polished and rooted in a harder beginning, politically committed and capable of changing his mind. He was not a perfect model of how to live. Few people are, however persuasive their tailoring.

An evening with Montand

Start with a few songs, then watch a film. Allow enough time between the two to wonder how the man singing so warmly can also hold a screen in silence. Look at the clothes, certainly, but notice the movement inside them.

There is pleasure in Montand’s particular kind of elegance because it seems to leave room for living. The collar opens. The conversation continues. Someone puts another record on, and there is still time for one more glass before the evening ends.