Marie-José Nat | WatchedThis
Marie-José Nat
Acting
Biography
Marie-José Benhalassa (22 April 1940 – 10 October 2019), known professionally as Marie-José Nat, was a French actress. Among her notable works in cinema were the sequel films Anatomy of a Marriage: My Days with Jean-Marc and Anatomy of a Marriage: My Days with Françoise (1963), directed by André Cayatte. In 1974, she received a Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress for her performance in the film Violins at the Ball. Benhalassa was born in Bonifacio, Corse-du-Sud, to a Kabyle Berber father, Abdelkader Benhalassa, and a Corsican mother, Vincentine (Biancarelli). In 1960, she married the actor Roger Dumas and divorced him in 1962. She then married French director Michel Drach with whom she had three sons, David, Julien and Aurélien. They divorced in 1981. She had a relationship of several years with the actor Victor Lanoux. On 30 September 2005 she married the painter, writer and songwriter Serge Rezvani in her third marriage. She died in Paris of cancer at age 79. After secondary studies at the Ajaccio high school, Benhalassa entered the cours Simon in Paris. Benhalassa began her career as a cover-girl and haute-couture model. In 1955, she won a competition from the magazine Femmes d'aujourd'hui which allowed her to become Jean-Claude Pascal's partner in a photo comics entitled L'amour est un songe. Denys de La Patellière offered her her first major role in 1959 in Rue des prairies alongside Jean Gabin, in which she played his daughter. The following year, she performed in a comedy sketch by René Clair alongside Claude Rich and Yves Robert, and obtained a major role in La Vérité by Henri-Georges Clouzot, playing Brigitte Bardot's rival opposite Sami Frey. In 1965, she married filmmaker Michel Drach; they had three children and divorced in 1981. She starred in several of her husband's films: Amelie or The Time to Love (1961), Elise, or Real Life (1970) and Les violons du bal (1974), inspired by his childhood experiences during World War II. She was also known for Train of Life (1998), Litan (1982) and The Dacians (1966) with Jean Sorel, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Victor Lanoux and Bernadette Lafont as acting partners. In 2001, Nat was a member of the jury at the 36th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2001, and at the 24th Cabourg Film Festival in 2010. She was the very first person to appear on the front cover of Télé 7 Jours in its current name on March 26, 1960. Nat was awarded Best Actress at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival for her performance in Violins at the Ball, and the film was nominated for the Golden Palm award. She was made a chevalier of the Légion d'honneur on 31 December 2004, chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite on 18 November 2002 and promoted to the rank of officer on 14 November 2011, commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres as a member of the conseil de l'ordre of which she was a member from 1 March 2001 until April 2012. Source: Article "Marie-José Nat" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Filmography Movies
Acting
Ceux qui aiment ne meurent jamais
During WW-I Odette gets to know that her husband André has fallen. Her littler son never saw him. He tries to recapitulate his last hours.
The Truth
As Dominique Marceau is being tried for the murder of Gilbert Tellier, accounts by different witnesses paint a picture of the kind of relationship the two used to share.
Opium and the Stick
In 1950, in Algeria, in a village in Kabylia, Algerian resistance fighters resisted the French occupation army. Bachir returns to the village to escape the clashes ravaging Algiers. In Thala, he has two brothers, Ali and Belaïd. The first is engaged with the ALN (The National Liberation Army) and fights against the colonizer. His second brother, Belaïd, the eldest, is convinced of a French Algeria. His family torn apart, Bachir decides to join the war and takes sides against the repression of the French army. The French army is trying in vain to turn the population against the insurgents by using disinformation. The more time passes, the more the inhabitants of the village and surrounding areas, oppressed, rally to the cause of the FLN, their houses and their fields will be burned... Adaptation to the cinema of the eponymous novel Opium and the Stick, published in 1965, by Mouloud Mammeri, the film was dubbed into Tamazight (Berber), a first for Algerian cinema.
Litan
Married couple Jock & Nora are visiting the town of Litan during Litan's Day, with its carnivalesque atmosphere. When Nora wakes that morning from dreaming the bizarre death of her husband, she sets out across town to find him and warn him. But as she does, she encounters stranger and stranger people and events erupting into a frenzy in front of her. Now, she and Jock must elude all of the impediments in their way of reaching safety on the outskirts of town.
Rue de Paris
While Henri was a POW during the war, his wife passed away, and he returned to face the challenges of bringing up three children alone. Henri may get drunk and angry at times, but he also has a better side that will not stay buried.
La Colère
Anger seizes a man who finds a fly in his Sunday soup. It spreads through his neighborhood, his city, his country and soon the whole world. (Segment of "Les sept péchés capitaux")
The Seven Deadly Sins
Seven directors each dramatize one of the seven deadly sins in a short film. In "Anger," a domestic argument over a fly in the Sunday soup escalates into nuclear war. In "Sloth," a movie star would rather pay someone to tie his shoe than bend over to do it himself, and he can't be bothered to accept a starlet's sexual favors. In "Gluttony," a peasant family on its way to the funeral of a relative who died from indigestion stops regularly to eat and drink en route, arriving in time to eat some more. In "Greed," a high-class prostitute refunds the price of a cadet's lottery ticket. In "Pride," an unfaithful wife finds reason to reform. And so on through lust and envy.
You Have Nothing to Declare?
Married against her will to the Comte de Trivelin, Paulette Dupont shares her anxieties with her childhood friend Labaule. Warned too late to prevent the ceremony from taking place, Labaule follows the couple on their honeymoon and prevents the consummation of the marriage by repeatedly intruding on the couple's privacy. Put on notice by Paulette's parents to consummate the marriage, Trivelin - who believes himself to be at fault - consults a psychiatrist. The latter advises him to visit a lady of lesser virtue: Gloria. But Gloria's clientele includes Dupont himself - Paulette's father - and Labaule!
Disobedience
Luca Manzi is a fourteen year old boy when the Northern Italy Republic of Salò is governed by the Fascists. He becomes a partisan but when the war ends he is disappointed because things have not changed as he had hoped they wood, and he decides to let himself die. He is saved by Edith who tries to introduce him to sex. Based on the novel by Alberto Moravia.
La Nuit de Tom Brown
How did Master Brown turn from a man of faith into a cantankerous, distrustful and cynical man? Nathaniel Hawthorne's character recounts the night when everything changed. In Canada, in a village where everyone seems more virtuous than he is, Tom Brown meets a man who claims to be the devil.
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