Born in Clichy in 1938 into a family of artists of Russian origin, the daughter of an opera singer and a dancer, Marina Vlady was initially trained in dance before finding herself in front of a camera at a very young age. She was just eleven years old when she made her film debut. Very quickly, directors realised they had more than just a young leading lady on their hands. André Cayatte offered her a major role in *Avant le déluge*, followed by Giuseppe De Santis, Robert Hossein, André Michel, Jean Delannoy, Marco Ferreri, Orson Welles, Jean-Luc Godard, Bertrand Tavernier and Ettore Scola. Her filmography alone spans several decades of European cinema.
She was, of course, Jean Delannoy’s unforgettable Princess of Clèves. At the time, she possessed that almost unreal beauty which the cinema of the 1960s still knew how to capture slowly, without seeking to explain it. But she was equally at home in Marco Ferreri’s biting world: her performance in *Le Lit conjugal* earned her the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1963. She then appeared in Orson Welles’ *Falstaff*, in Godard’s *Two or Three Things I Know About Her*, in Tavernier’s *Let the Party Begin* and in Jacques Rouffio’s *Seven Deaths by Prescription*.
This career path says something about Marina Vlady: she could have been content simply to be a star. She preferred to be an actress. She could move through mainstream cinema and then disappear into a much stranger, more political or more demanding body of work. She never seemed to belong entirely to the system that had made her famous. Whilst others methodically built their public image, she gave the impression of pursuing something else.
Her life, moreover, extended far beyond cinema. There was the theatre, singing, writing and her social activism. And above all, there was her almost legendary relationship with Vladimir Vysotsky, the great Soviet poet, actor and singer whom she married in 1970. His death in 1980 affected her deeply. A few years later, Marina Vlady dedicated *Vladimir ou le Vol arrêté* to him, a deeply moving book in which the cinema icon faded into the background, giving way to a woman grappling with love, loss and memory.
Perhaps that is what made her so unique. Marina Vlady had lived several lives without ever giving the impression of making a spectacle of it. Cinema, Moscow, Paris, love affairs, bereavements, political struggles, books: everything seemed to have left its mark on her face. She did not seek to erase the passage of time. And as she grew older, she remained beautiful precisely because she no longer resembled the young woman whom the cinema had once transformed into an icon.
There was something about Marina Vlady that our era produces less and less of: mystery. She was not a public figure manufactured by constant media exposure. She could withdraw, return, write, speak when she had something to say, and let silence do the rest. This reserve lent even greater weight to her presence.
We shall, of course, remember her films. We shall remember *La Princesse de Clèves*, *Le Lit conjugal*, *Falstaff*, Godard, Ferreri, Hossein, Tavernier. But great actors leave behind more than just a list of titles in a filmography. They leave behind a way of looking, of walking, of remaining silent. Just a few seconds of a face on a screen are enough to bring back an entire era.
Marina Vlady was one of those faces.
A unique, free-spirited, cultured and profoundly European actress, who had known the limelight without ever becoming superficial. A very beautiful woman, yes. But above all, a woman whose beauty seemed to hold a story within it.
And that is undoubtedly why she will be remembered.
Marina Vlady in 1955 — Studio Harcourt / Wikimedia Commons — CC BY 3.0 FR
