ROMY SCHNEIDER : ONCE UPON A TIME…

ROMY SCHNEIDER : ONCE UPON A TIME…

Behind the dazzling smile of the most celebrated empress of the silver screen lies a more troubled truth — one of renunciations, relentless quests for freedom, and painful metamorphoses. In this masterful work, Romy Schneider's career is not merely recounted: it is dissected in the light of a childhood whose long shadows shaped her every gesture, her every glance before the camera.

The title, Once Upon a Time..., resonates as a tragic irony. For while the world wished to see in her a fairy-tale princess, the reality was one of fierce struggle to break free from the constraints imposed by an ever-present mother and the spectre of a Germany in search of redemption. From the forced candour of the Sissi years to the incandescence of Claude Sautet's masterpieces, this work analyses how Romy used her filmography as a territory of exorcism. Each role — from La Piscine to L'Important c'est d'aimer — is reread here as a stage in her personal construction — or deconstruction.

The author explores with great subtlety this constant porosity between screen and intimacy. How did the wounds of childhood, marked by absence and the weight of History, fuel the dramatic intensity that made her a unique actress? Through the study of her collaborations with Visconti, Welles, and Żuławski, a portrait emerges of a woman who never ceased to seek in the gaze of directors the validation that a fragmented past denied her.

A poignant analysis of the price of fame and the quest for identity of an absolute artist.