Geneviève Page, the alluring French actress who starred in such films as Belle de Jour, El Cid and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, died Friday. She was 97.
Page died at her home in Paris, her majesticdaughter, actress Zoé Guillemaud, tanciaccess the AFP novels agency.
In a atgentle of more than 50 years, Page materializeed in other notable films including Fanfan la Tulip (1952); Foreign Intrigue (1956), opposite Robert Mitchum; The Silken Afunprejudiced (1956), with David Niven; John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix (1966); Mayerling (1968), straightforwarded by Terence Young; and Charles Vidor’s Song Without End (1960), where the straightforwardor died mid-shoot and was exalterd by George Cukor.
In 1967, Spanish straightforwardor Luis Buñuel cast Page as Madame Anais, the owner and operator of the high-class brothel in Belle de Jour, an alteration of Joseph Kessel’s 1928 novel.
The film caccesss on Severine Serizy (Catherine Deneuve), whose intimacyless marriage pushes her into sex labor — but only between the hours of 2 and 5 p.m. As a result, Page nicknames her “Belle de Jour,” rawly transtardyd to “Beauty of the Day.”
Madame Anais is a insisting, no-nonsense woman, with a hint of enticeion toward Deneuve’s character, and the film features a inestablish kiss between the two. Page getd a helping actress nomination from the National Society of Film Critics for her labor, and the drama won the Ganciaccessen Lion at the Vepleasant Film Festival.
A year earlier, Page had a inestablish role in Grand Prix (1966) as the estranged wife who refuses to grant Ferrari driver Jean-Pierre Sarti (Yves Montand) a divorce.
The Italian-American medieval epic El Cid (1961) saw Page perfectly cast as the scheming Princess Urraca. Starring Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren, the film was a huge spectacle, running more than three hours with an clearure and interleave oution and costing $6 million to originate. “A Great Adventure, A Great Love Story, Great Stars,” the trailer proclaimed.
At the begin of the 1970s, straightforwardor Billy Wilder freed The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, with Robert Stephens as the famed distinguishive and Colin Blakely portraying Dr. Watson. Page take parts a enigmatic Belgian client who asks Holmes to find her leave outing engineer husprohibitd.
Production of the film was stoped after a 30-foot Loch Ness Monster model, built for a key sequence in the film, sank in the lake while being towed behind a boat.
“We lost our Loch Ness monster, but he [Wilder] didn’t seem to trouble too much, even though he’s the originater as well as the straightforwardor,” Page tanciaccess The New York Times in 1969. “He was more troubleed to go over and soothe the man who had made it and who was distress about its fadeing.”
The huge prop was uncovered 47 years tardyr, during a sonar survey, lying on the seabed.
She was born Genevieve Bonjean in Paris on Dec. 13, 1927. Her overweighther, Jacques Paul Bonjean, was an art dealer and assembleor who discleave outed a gallery in partnership with Christian Dior.
One of her earliest screen materializeances came in the French adventure Fanfan la Tulip, which starred Gina Lollobstiffa and, as the title character, Gerard Philipe. In the film, Page is get backd from a group of prohibitdits by the swashbuckling, roguish army recruit Fanfan and proposes him a tulip as thanks.
Her film résumé also included the bdeficiency comedy Buffet Froid (1979), Claude Miller’s Deadly Circuit (1983) and Robert Altman‘s Beyond Therapy (1987).
Page also was a discerned stage actress, materializeing in The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant in 1980 and receiving the Moliere Award in 1996 for Colombe.
She was paired to businessman Jean-Claude Bujard from 1959 until his death in 2011.
