The Long Shadow of a French Chanteuse

The petite, hunched figure in the somber black dress appears everywhere in Paris on billboards and cinema marquees. Her thin, outstretched arms seem to beckon onlookers closer. She bears no name nor reveals even a glimpse of her face. But no clues are needed: this iconic silhouette can belong only to Edith Piaf.

With Piaf as its subject, Olivier Dahan’s new film La Môme (The Kid), titled La Vie en Rose in some countries, was virtually assured success. In the first week following its Feb. 14 release, the film attracted over 1.5 million viewers — 400,000 more than the 2001 smash hit Amélie pulled in its first week. The towering billboards are an appropriate symbol of Piaf’s cultural legacy. She may have measured a mere 1.47 m, but the full-scale Piaf revival Dahan’s film has inspired shows that, decades after her death in 1963, her shadow still looms large over a France that clearly longs for her cozy intimacy.

Signs of Piaf nostalgia abound. On Feb. 28, La Môme’s soundtrack ranked No. 4 on France’s album charts and was among the Top 10 album downloads on iTunes’ French site. Six best-selling music books on the French version of Amazon are Piaf titles. At least five books on or by Piaf were published last month, and more are on the way. Paris’ prestigious Marigny Theater is reprising the hit play Piaf, une Vie en Rose et Noir to near-capacity crowds. Considering Piaf’s popularity abroad — which other French singer can shift 75,000 copies of their greatest hits in South Korea? — this comeback looks set to be more than just a Gallic phenomenon. Dahan’s film is rolling out across Europe now and in the U.S. on June 8.

Piaf’s life story is as familiar to the French as her catalog of hits. And like any good tale, it’s often told with much poetic license. The standard version goes something like this: born on a Paris sidewalk, Piaf was raised in her grandmother’s brothel in Normandy before her acrobat father took her back to her birthplace. After cabaret owner Louis Leplée discovered her singing in the street, Piaf was soon topping the bill in the city’s most exalted venues and conquering America. Oh, and don’t forget the miracle that cured her childhood blindness and rumors of her involvement in Leplée’s 1936 murder.

The reality is somewhat less dramatic. Piaf was actually born in Paris’ Tenon Hospital, according to her biographer, Jean-Dominique Brierre. She grew up poor but was never blind, though she did have an inflamed cornea that was cured by ordinary medical treatment. She was also cleared of any involvement in Leplée’s death. “Piaf didn’t invent these myths,” says Brierre, “but she knew it wouldn’t harm her image to let certain rumors lie. With the facts skewed, her life was like a character in a novel — a romantic novel full of mythical relationships. I think this makes her a typically French icon.”

Piaf had oceans of talent to back up the hype, earning her a global following. Since 1997, her greatest hits album has sold over 4 million copies, half of them outside France. “That’s a kind of international recognition that today’s French-language artists just don’t achieve,” says Cécile Prévost-Thomas, a sociologist specializing in French song. Piaf’s success abroad reminds the country of a time when its cultural exports could achieve popularity while remaining defiantly French. The passing of that era is lamented amid the proliferation of American Idolstyle reality shows and young French stars singing in English. “Today, songs are detached from the lives of popular singers,” says Prévost-Thomas, “but Piaf’s are personal and sincere.”

Perhaps it is no surprise that the French would long for Piaf’s groundedness at a time when their country feels its own ground shifting. Her humble authenticity amounts to a kind of safe haven from the obliterating force of a louder and crasser world culture. No wonder anxious French citizens are flocking into the outstretched arms of Paris’ favorite daughter.