Francois de Roubaix, film composer extraordinaire, drowned in November 1975 near the coast of Tenerife. Take a walk across the Cimétiere d’Arona, watch, and listen.
If you’re familiar with German language, you can also listen to the sonorous voice of Christian Gutowski telling the story of Francois de Roubaix, including a few excerpts from Roubaix’s works. I wrote this piece in May 2010 for MDR radio, Germany.
Francois de Roubaix & The Sea: A Love Story
Guuz probably recalls when I posted this first, maybe three or four years ago. Gee, Joanna. I’m still in love with her.
She had the looks of a Francoise Hardy with sex: Canadian born actress Joanna Shimkus, who appeared in only two handful of movies (after those, Sidney Poitier married her right from the spot). Robert Enrico’s classic Les Aventuriers (1967) made her immortal: a melancholy ménage a trois with her torn between Delon and Lino Ventura, the finest romantic triangle movie of them all, miles above and lots more fun than Truffaut’s Jules et Jim. The soundtrack is by composer wizard Francois de Roubaix, kind of a French Morricone of the 60s who scored most gallic noir movies of the time, an artist of pure genius who drowned near Tenerife in 1975. Joanna’s probably only recorded song is a tune from Les Aventuriers, but not in the (strictly instrumental scored) movie – a wonderfully laid-back campfire version, simply irresistible.
Joanna Shimkus – Les Aventuriers
As for her only recorded song, I was wrong. Loin is a tender sweeper from Robert Enrico’s movie Tante Zita, provided then by an FS friend, and in Ces mots stupides Joanna teamed up with Sacha Distel (!) for the French version of Something Stupid, immortalized by Nancy Sinatra and her blue-eyed daddy in September 1967.
Joanna Shimkus – Loin
Joanna Shimkus & Sacha Distel – Ces mots stupides
Because of the 5th anniversary of this blog, we will re-run a few legendary postings:
The French adult cinema of the 70s was about carnal excess as well as about hedonism, politics, and libertinage. For a brief moment, especially in the key year 1978, movies like Perversion d’une jeune mariée or Je suis à prendre transcended smut and sleaze into an art form – particularly due to the spellbinding presence of the young Brigitte Lahaie who managed to fill even the lewdest scenes with a kind of radiant innocence.
Her only single, Caresse Tendresse, recorded in 1987 for the Clever label, regrettably doesn’t emanate quite the same sensual poetry and magic – Brigitte’s voice clearly wasn’t her strongest physical asset, and the song itself sounds like a dancefloor collaboration between the „Vu de l’extérieur“ Gainsbourg and a sedated church organist. So what? As for Brigitte, it was a labor of love anyway.
Bonus: The title track from the 1980 Lahaie movie „Secrets d’adolescentes“ (a.k.a. „Le Porno esperienze di Luca e Fanny“), a voluptuous soundscape by the great Roberto Pregadio that was also used in Franco Prosperi’s nunploitation shocker „La Settima Donna“. Ethereal moaning not by Brigitte, but by the similarly magnificent Edda Dell’Orso, better known for her teamworks with Ennio Morricone – the queen of wordless erotic vocals of Italian cinema.
Brigitte Lahaie – Caresse tendresse
Roberto Pregadio – Secrets d’adolescentes
In addition to our original post: Pregadio’s super-sleazoid reprise of his gorgeous theme, including a funk guitar with a porn star moustache.
Roberto Pregadio – La Settima Donna (Ripresa)
Last year saw Jean-Francois Richet’s L’instinct de Mort, a gritty and classy gangster movie about Jacques Mesrine, France’s Public Enemy No. 1 in the Seventies. Music-wise, French Punk rockers Trust payed tribute to Mesrine with two songs on their meanwhile classic 1980 album Répression, an angry blast of antisocial attitude and Stooges drive: Instinct de mort reflects on Mesrine’s autobiography of the same title, and Le Mitard (The Dungeon) is based on a poem written by Mesrine in the maximum-security wing of Fleury Merogis prison. Today, Mesrine’s image has changed quite grotesquely; his autobiography was re-published in Flammarion’s Pop Culture program line (see right).
Trust – Le Mitard
