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 as a stage in her personal construction — or deconstruction. A poignant analysis of the price of fame and the quest for identity of an absolute artist.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS BOOK

• The Sissi years : How a role became a prison — and how Romy fought to escape it
• The wounds of childhood : Absence, the weight of History, and their impact on her dramatic intensity
• The great collaborations : Visconti, Welles, Żuławski — directors who shaped her reinvention
• Screen and intimacy : The constant porosity between her roles and her inner life
• The quest for validation : A woman who never ceased searching for the gaze that would make her whole

Available in ePub, PDF, and Kindle formats. Metvox Publications.