
Writing
Colette
Born 1873-01-28 · Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, Yonne, France
Colette's fame extends to being probably the only female writer known by her mononym—She is always and only Colette, though in fact this most feminine of names was her surname: She was born Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette on 28 January 1873 in the French village of Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye. Her work—mostly at novella length, short and sharp—survives because her chief subject is one that never goes out of fashion. "Love, the bread and butter of my pen," she wrote, though she put it more bluntly in her book The Pure and the Impure (1932): "The flesh, always the flesh, the mysteries and betrayals and frustrations and surprises of the flesh." The story of Colette and her work is one of the most astonishing in modern literature. She was a pioneer of the French school of autofiction (autobiographical fiction), writing about women's lives in ways that broke new ground. Her books were simultaneously popular and acclaimed—read by critics and the public alike—not to mention scandalous. And she made of her life a project just as fascinating and subversive as her books. Among Colette's best known works are the "Claudine" novels, "La naissance du jour," "Gigi," "Chéri," "The Tendrils of the Vine,"... She was also a mime, actress, journalist and a woman of letters. Colette was the first woman to be elected to the Académie Goncourt and the Belgian Royal Academy, both indicia of respect for her writing.
Acting credits
5.7Nicole Védrès' chronicle of Paris from 1900 to 1914 is brought to life through the use of original material, all authentic, secured from more then 700 films belonging to public and private collections. A few of the celebrities of the time shown are Enrico Caruso, Sarah Bernhardt, and Maurice Chevalier.
Paris 1900
1948
7.6The incredible life of novelist, screenwriter, actress and nude dancer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873-1954), who led her life to the beat, constantly reinventing herself through words, scandals and metamorphoses; a peasant woman who became an icon of the European Belle Époque; an artist who defied religion and social prejudices to live a hedonist existence worthy of her desires; a real woman who turned herself into a fictional character…
Colette, l'insoumise
2019
6.4Women (many of them lesbian) artists, writers, photographers, designers, and adventurers settled in Paris between the wars. They embraced France, some developed an ex-pat culture, and most cherished a way of life quite different than the one left behind.
Paris Was a Woman
1996
6.5In conversation, in her Paris apartment, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, mime, dancer, novelist, wonders whether she should give the green light to a proposed film about the houses in which she lived. “I’m no longer photogenic,” she insists; nearly 80, marriages, affair with a stepson and intermittent lesbianism behind her, refusing now even to mention the arthritis that confines and assaults her, Colette is vivacious. Yannick Bellon’s captivating postmodernist film, as much a study of evanescence as any poem by Dickinson, segues into the film that Colette, a few years before her end, has just said she doesn’t want to do. Giving voice(over) to her own commentary, she goes back, first, to the home in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, Yonne, where she was born.
Colette
1951
Behind the camera
7.0A country girl finds work as a chorus girl in Paris, gets embroiled with a bad egg, and then finds true love with a good-looking milkman.
Divine
1935
Based on one of Colette's novels, a young woman cannot remember the dog that visits her in a dream.
A dream
2026
8.0In The Other Woman, Farou (Jean Rochetfort) is an author whose success is matched only by his lechery. During the rehearsal of his newest play, a scandal unfolds. Farou's wife Fanny (Anne Duperey) knows that during his "creative periods," Farou gets a particular itch that he can't resist scratching, but her own jealousy has finally reached the boiling point. It starts when Jane (Caroline Sihol), the deliciously sexy secretary that Farou has brought on as a live in assistant, falls in love with the artist.
The Other Woman
1990
The relationship between two newlyweds is undermined by the increasingly cumbersome presence of his cat, which will bring to light jealousies and misunderstandings. Drama about a couple in search of their own identity, inspired by a story by Colette already brought to the screen in 1952 by Roberto Rossellini in an episode of the Seven Deadly Sins.
La gatta
2021
NRFirst film adaptation of Collette's 1900 novel /Claudine à l'école/.
Claudine à l'école
1917
No synopsis available yet.
The Wanderer
1932