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Dec 16, 2023 · The movie La Vie en Rose is a captivating and mesmerizing biography that delves into the life of the iconic French singer Edith Piaf. Directed by Olivier Dahan, this critically acclaimed film takes audiences on an emotional journey through Piaf’s turbulent life, from her humble beginnings in the streets of Paris to her meteoric rise as one of the greatest chanteuses in the world.
- She Had Another Story
- She Shared Her Name with A Tragic Hero
- She Was Abandoned
- Like Father, Like Daughter
- She Lived with Prostitutes
- She Couldn’T Say “No”
- She Went Blind
- She Experienced A Miracle
- She Took to The Street
- She Met A Long-Lost Relative
From the very beginning, Edith Piaf knew how to make a dramatic entrance. Although her birth certificate said she was born at the Hospital Tenon in Paris, she had a different story to tell. On December 19, 1915, Edith claimed that her mother—Annetta Maillard—never made it to the hospital. With a no-show ambulance, Maillard delivered her on the fron...
Piaf’s parents named her with courage in mind. Her name—Edith—comes from a British WWI nurse named Edith Cavell who risked her life for the sake of French troopers. After rescuing them from the Germans, Cavell faced a death sentence. They executed her only two months before Piaf’s birth. While both women led wildly different lives, they had many th...
Some say there’s no love as unconditional as a mother’s love for her child. That is, unless your mother is Edith Piaf’s. Sadly, Piaf’s mother wanted nothing to do with her and abandoned her at birth. For some of her childhood, she lived with her maternal grandmother, but in the end, she belonged to her father. And with WWI raging on, he had a diffi...
Piaf’s father—Louis Alphonse Gassion—was an acrobat with a theatrical past. He was a street performer hailing from Normandy, and as time would tell, these dramatic affinities one day blossomed in his own daughter. But in 1916, he had WWI to consider, and when he enlisted, he had no choice but to leave Piaf in the care of his mother—a woman with qui...
In Bernay, Normandy, Piaf’s grandmother welcomed the girl into her scandalous life. She ran a bordello—or what some called “a house of ill repute.” When Piaf's father went off to fight, he left his baby girl there. Some say it takes a village to raise a child, but it only took a house full of her grandmother’s “employees” to raise Edith. These resi...
With her turbulent romantic history, it’s no wonder Edith Piaf insists that her life growing up in the bordello influenced her weakness for men. For one, the importance of consent was woefully skewed for Piaf. She once reminisced, saying, “I thought when a boy called a girl, the girl would never refuse.” But as a child, Piaf’s physical illnesses fu...
During a chapter of her childhood, Edith Piaf couldn’t see at all. She suffered from keratitis—an inflammatory condition that affects the cornea of the eye. Her blindness woke pity in the hearts of her grandmother and the other girls. Together, they decided to pool money in an effort to find a cure for Piaf’s unfortunate condition. But sadly, the m...
The proposed cure for young Piaf’s blindness was…unconventional, to say the least. The money for Piaf’s eyes went toward a very special pilgrimage—a spiritual journey in the name of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. When Piaf’s eyesight saw considerable improvement, everyone around her believed that this healing was a downright miracle. With her sight grat...
At the age of 14, Edith Piaf was ready to start making some money. After returning from battle, her father went back to his acrobatic profession. Finally old enough to earn her keep, Piaf and her father began trudging the streets together, setting up shop on corners and performing for the everyday masses. Her songbird voice rang true through the ci...
Only a year into performing, Piaf met a very important person—her sister. Or to be more accurate, her half-sister, Simone “Momone” Berteaut. So little is known about Momone that some say that there’s a possibility that she wasn’t Piaf’s sister at all. Either way, they became soul sisters in the end. Momone joined Piaf on the street, and together, t...
Jun 8, 2007 · From the mean streets of the Belleville district of Paris to the dazzling limelight of New York's most famous concert halls, Edith Piaf's life was a constant battle to sing and survive, to live and love. Raised in her grandmother's brothel, Piaf was discovered in 1935 by nightclub owner Louis Leplee, who persuaded her to sing despite her extreme nervousness. Piaf became one of France's ...
La vie en rose is a film directed by Olivier Dahan with Marion Cotillard, Sylvie Testud, Pascal Greggory, Emmanuelle Seigner .... Year: 2007. Original title: La Môme (La Vie en Rose). Synopsis: She was tiny and tender, but her private life was marked by extraordinary tragedy. Edith Piaf (1915-1963) conveyed French identity to the rest of the ...
- Piaf (1974) This 1974 film is based on a novel by the same name. Piaf was written in 1969 by Simone Berteaut. Simone was one of Piaf’s closest friends and the two often referred to themselves as half-sisters.
- Édith et Marcel (Édith and Marcel) (1983) Piaf had several boyfriends and husbands throughout her life, but, the love of her life was a French professional boxer named Marcel Cerdan.
- Piaf (1984) Not to be confused by the 1974 movie above, Piaf (1984), is based on a play of the same name. The play debuted in the United States at the Plymouth Theatre on Broadway in 1981 and went on to run for a whopping 165 performances!
- La Môme (La Vie en Rose) (2007) The best (and most recent) for last! La Môme (La Vie en Rose) is a 2007 film that stars Marion Cotillard as Piaf and it is my absolute favorite movie on Édith Piaf’s life.
Through it all, writes Open Culture’s Mike Springer, “Piaf managed to hold onto a basically optimistic view of life.”Such a view, always tinged with rueful sadness, comes through in her performances of, for example, “La Vie en rose” (which roughly translates to “life through rose-colored glasses”).
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The first image presented is a frail Piaf belting out a song in 1959 while an ambulance stands by, and things don’t look much better when the film flashes back to 1918. Abandoned by her parents, Edith is raised in a brothel where she momentarily goes blind.
