Born in a small town in Tuscany in 1921, as the youngest of three children, Yves Montand, whose real name is Ivo Livi, worked in different jobs in this city, from hairdressing to factory work, after his family escaped from the Mussolini regime and settled in Marseille.
However, his real dream was to leave his working life behind and join the amateur singers he watched with his older brother Julien one evening. In addition to these, the young man was a die-hard Fred Astaire fan and his biggest interests were; It was cinema, jazz and the American lifestyle.
In 1938, thanks to Berlingot, who was a manager in the neighborhood where he lived, he performed at the Alcazar and received great acclaim with his Trenet, Chevalier songs, and Fernandel imitations. Here he also sang Dans les plaines du Far West, which can be considered the first important song written for him by Charles Humel.
Ivo Livi (13 October 1921 – 9 November 1991), better known as Yves Montand, was an Italian-born French actor and singer. He is said to be one of France's greatest 20th-century artists.
During the war, he escaped from the Compulsory Labor Service (STO) and came to Paris and performed in cabarets. In 1944, he appeared before the audience as the opening artist of operetta singer André Dassary on ABC and was appreciated for his different style. Towards the end of the occupation years, his career seemed to be on track. In July 1944, he started performing at the Moulin Rouge before Edith Piaf's concerts. Since she was married to Henri Contet at that time, Piaf was very impressed by this young man, although she did not show it at first. These two would become lovers after a while, but their relationship would last only a few years. In 1945, he returned as a headliner to Etoile, where he had previously performed as the opening artist of Edith Piaf.
During the post-war years, Yves Montand continued his career in three main axes: first, music, with songs written by artists such as Francis Lemarque, Jacques Prévert, Joseph Kosma and Henri Crolla, and second, with plays such as Les Sorcières de Salem, which he staged with Simone Signoret, whom he married in 1951. It was a theatre. The most important field in which Montand was active during this period was cinema, with films such as Le Salaire de la peur (Henri-Georges Clouzot), L'Aveu (Costa Gavras) and La guerre est finie (Alain Resnais). Montand impressed his audience with his stage show, in which he successfully portrayed different faces, as well as the quality of his songs. While he gives political messages with songs such as C'est à l'aube and Quand un soldat, he becomes a cheerful bourgeois with Luna Park and Grands boulevards, a romantic with Les Feuilles Mortes and J'aime t'embrasser, and a master of difficult poems with Sanguine and Barbara. He was turning into a commentator.
One of the unforgettable pieces of Montand's repertoire was Les feuilles mortes, which became an international classic over time. The song, with lyrics by Jacques Prévert and music by Joseph Kosma, has been interpreted hundreds of times by different artists since it was first published in 1945. The English version, Automated Leaves, was sung by many world-famous names, from Nat King Cole to Frank Sinatra. Kosma first composed the piece for Roland Petit's ballet Le rendez-vous. There is uncertainty as to who first sang the song with the French lyrics we know today. While Yves Montand claimed that this person was him, Cora Vocaire stated in a program he attended in 1995 that he recorded the song for the first time in 1948, but the album was only released in 1950.
One of the most interesting songs in Yves Montand's repertoire is La chansonette. The song bears the signature of Jean Dréjac, the songwriter of classics such as Sous le ciel de Paris and Le petit bal du samedi soir, and Philippe-Gérad, one of the most important composers of the post-war French music market. One day, while the two men were talking about the old days and old songs, Dréjac complains to Philippe-Gérard, "Where are those old songs, what we do are just songs." This word “songlet” inspires the famous composer for a new song and La chansonnette emerges. The duo offered the song to Yves Montand, who recorded it before a trip to America, where he was counting the days to meet Marilyn Monroe, who was waiting for him. The song, released in the autumn of 1961, would attract great attention not only in France but also in many countries from America to Japan.
Another piece that we have become accustomed to listening to with Montand's extraordinary interpretation is Est-ce ainsi que les hommes vivent?, a Louis Aragon poem composed by Léo Ferré. – Is this how people live? In this poem, which appeared in his 1956 collection Le roman inachevé, Aragon talked about the years 1918-19, when he frequently spent time in brothels while waiting to be discharged from the army. The song, first recorded by Léo Ferré in 1961, was included in Montand's album released in 1968.
Not only Yves Montand's albums but also his concerts, which were prepared with great care and dedication, have attracted great attention for many years. So much so that in 1951, his unforgettable "one-man show" at the Théatre de l'Etoile was staged to a sold-out house for eight months. The artist owed his possession of such a rich repertoire to his masterful interpretation of the works of many of his colleagues. Among these names were Claude Nougaro and Jacques Datin. The song Le Jazz et le java, written by the duo in 1962, was recorded by Marcel Amont, Yves Montand, and Claude Nougaro in the same year. While the song became Nougaro's first big hit, Yves Montand's interpretation would not be forgotten for many years.
Another song immortalized by Montand's interpretation is La bicyclette, with lyrics by Pierre Barouh and music by Francis Lai. The child of a Jewish family of Turkish origin, Pierre, whose real name was Elie Barouh, was born in Paris in 1934. During World War II, his family sent him to a small town in the Vendée in western France for protection. The seven-year-old boy's name was no longer Elie but Pierre. Pierre often cycled around the town with other boys, such as Fernand, Firmin, Francis or Sébastien, who did not have to hide their real names. There was also a girl that all these boys dreamed of: her name was Paulette. Pierre Barouh wrote this song based on all these memories. The piece was offered to Yves Montand, who was thinking of quitting music at that time and focusing entirely on cinema, and he entered the studio without hesitation and recorded it.
In addition to being a singer and actor, Yves Montand also turned into an important political figure over the years. Although he was of worker origin, he moved away from this identity a little bit due to the songs he sang in the early periods of his career, but starting from the sixties, he started to express his political views openly again. It was also known that the artist, who decided to take the stage again for the benefit of refugees coming from that country in response to the coup in Chile in 1973 after quitting music, had been tracked and followed by French intelligence since 1949 due to his close relationship with the communist party. In his repertoire, the artist included songs such as Le chant des partisans, which describes the freedom movement during the Second World War, or Le temps des cerises, which is identified with the 1871 Paris commune. Among the notable songs of Yves Montand's recent repertoire were two adaptations of Nazım Hikmet. The famous poet's poem titled The Strangest Creature in the World was translated into French as Mon frère, and his work titled The Most Beautiful Sea was translated into French as La plus belle des mers and set to music with the compositions of Phillppe-Gérard.
After the 1968 Olympia concert, Yves Montand abandoned stage life, both out of fear of repeating himself and under the influence of the younger generation, which was gradually becoming more popular and focused entirely on cinema. In 1969, he starred in Costa Gavras's Z, which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, with Jean-Louis Trintignant and Irene Papas, in 1973 with Romy Schneider in Claude Sautet's César et Rosalie, and again in the director's chair in 1974. He starred alongside Serge Reggiani, Michel Piccoli, and Gérard Depardieu in Sautet's Vincent, François, Paul et les autres. The only album he released in the seventies was "Montand de mon temps" in 1974, in which he reinterpreted his old songs.
The year 1968 was a turning point for Montand because that year the artist both took a long break from his musical career and changed his political ideology as a result of his reaction to the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia after the Prague Spring. The artist, who defended liberal views in the eighties, frequently appeared in the media with his different appearances during this period, and his name was even mentioned for the presidency. Following the album titled "Montand d'hier et d'aujourd'hui" in 1981, he performed at Olympia for about six months, gathering nearly 180 thousand spectators, and released his last studio album in 1984.
Yves Montand was a complex and contradictory character, combining generosity and generosity, courage and fear. In other words, he was a real person with good sides as well as bad sides. Perhaps he owed his ability to attract millions of people in many different countries for many years to this extraordinary personality, which surpassed even his singing and acting performances...
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