Élina Labourdette

Élina Labourdette (born Élina Janine Alice Henri-Labourdette, 21 May 1919 – 30 September 2014) was a French actress. Her career consisted mostly of flirtatious roles on stage and screen. She is best known for her performances in Robert Bresson's Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne and in Jacques Becker's Edward and Caroline (1951).

Biography Élina Labourdette was born on 21 May 1919 in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. The daughter of the renowned coachbuilder and automobile designer , Élina at first wanted to be a dancer, before having to give up her dream of becoming a prima ballerina for health reasons. She learned rhythmic dance with Irène Popard and classical dance with . During her school years, she took her first acting lessons with the actress Ève Francis. In 1938 at the age of nineteen, she made her first film The Shanghai Drama, directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst. She then spent six months in England where, in addition to learning English, she took theatre and singing lessons. René Clair made her the teacher heroine of his film Air pur but the Second World War stopped the project. In 1944, towards the end of the war, she appeared in Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne directed by Robert Bresson, the film for which she became famous and remains best known. She played, with subtlety and great modernity, a cabaret dancer who has become a prostitute and is manipulated by a woman wishing to take revenge on a lover who rejected her, by throwing him into the arms of the dancer.

In 1950, Labourdette joined the theatre company of Madeleine Renaud and Jean-Louis Barrault, with whom she performed alongside her film career. She also did dubbing, notably lending her voice to Grace Kelly in the French versions of John Ford's Mogambo (1953) and Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief (1955). In 1956 she acted under the direction of Jean Renoir in Elena and Her Men, alongside Ingrid Bergman and Jean Marais. In 1961, she played a notable supporting role in Lola, Jacques Demy's first feature film. Her cinema film career ended with Le Clair de terre, a 1970 film by filmmaker Guy Gilles. From the end of the 1950s, she appeared several times in French soap operas and television films, including the popular Les Cousins de la Constance.

During her career, Labourdette worked for several notable directors, including G. W. Pabst, René Clair, Robert Bresson, René Clément, Jacques Becker, Gilles Grangier, Jean-Paul Le Chanois, Jean Renoir, and André Cayatte.

She was the second wife of journalist and writer Louis Pauwels from 1956 until his death in 1997. In 1961, they adopted a daughter, Zoé.

Labourdette died on 30 September 2014 in Le Mesnil-le-Roi, Yvelines, aged 95.

Filmography

Television