Fréhel

We watched Pepe Le Moko. I haven't seen this film in years but it was the movie I would pair with L'atalante when I would. I had rough, bootleg VHS copies of both, hand me downs from a friend of mine.

One afternoon I rode my bike to visit Pierre Foucher who lived down the street. He was simplifying and thinning out his possessions. He didn't seem to have anything to begin with. Out in his yard were his screen printing supplies, by the trash were old magazines and boxes of ink. In his old station wagon were things he was going to keep, just a bag of clothing. He got into is car and said he was going to the post office to mail letters to a gypsy friend in Spain and he asked if I'd like to come along. I had other things to do. He then drove off but did a U-turn and returned to tell me to never to pick up dimes from the ground when heads pointed up. Then he drove off, made another U-turn, handed me the tapes and told me to watch two of his favorite films then said I'd marry a man with green eyes. I did! He was somewhat mysterious, from Montparnasse, crazy about American gangsters, the Camelot years and travelling the US. During one of my many summer apartment moves between 1990-1996, both tapes warped in the back seat of my car.

L'atalante I had seen at the Paramount one year and never forgot it because it seemed so dreamy. I had never seen Pepe Le Moko. It appealed to me because the setting was Algiers in the 1930's and I was introduced to Fréhel. I kept rewinding back to her scene and was touched by it. She seemed so sad. If you are not acquainted with her voice, she is often mistaken for Piaf. They don't sound alike unless you happen to hear a French chanteuse on a scratchy old recording. Fréhel came before Piaf and had a cleaner voice, both had tragic, tormented lives and loves.

It was difficult at the time to find Fréhel's music and information on her but I managed to procure Cd's and a book through inter-library loan. Piere made a whole list of tragic French chanteuses for me before he disappeared: Damia, Berthe Sylva...it was years before I was able to hear them all. Today they are only a click away on you tube. Fréhel is the only chanteuse that can really make me tear up because I always think of her scene in Pepe Le Moko.