On Tuesday, March 13, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment releases the DVD of 2006's Casino Royale. Said release will inspire many a home video enthusiast to muse on the absolute correctness of the choice of Daniel Craig as the new Bond; and it will inspire just as many, if not more, of said enthusiasts to wonder, "Where does Eva Green get it from?"
As it happens, we know exactly have some pretty good ideas at to where Ms. Green gets it from. Follow us...
This is Eva's mom, Marlene Jobert Catherine Isabelle Duport, whose image I put up by mistake. See update below!. She's seen here in Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 Masculin-Feminin, which was a French-language co-production with the Swedish company Svensk Filmindustri.
This is Walter Green, Eva's dad. Unlike Jobert, he acted in only one film, Robert Bresson's Au Hasard Balthasar, made in 1965, released in 1966, and also, not perhaps coincidentally, a French-language co-production with Svensk Filmindustri. Green was in fact himself Swedish and was recommended to Bresson by his sister Marika Green, who acted in Bresson's 1959 Pickpocket... and subsequently in Rene Clement's 1969 Rider in the Rain (which also featured Jobert); later she appeared in the first film of the infamous Emmanuelle series. But we'll get to that another time. Walter Green never acted again—became a dentist if I recall correctly—but the productions of M/F and Balthazar brought him and Jobert together, just as they brought M/F director Godard together with Balthazar female lead Anna Wiazemsky. It just so happens that the Jobert/Green marriage was blessed with issue—specifically, international cinema It Girl Eva. Who, as far as we can tell from these images, resembles her dad more than her mom...
UPDATE: Okay, as a commenter points out—in kindly tones that I most appreciate, but don't quite deserve, I mixed up my Masculin/Feminin supporting actresses. Below is the real Marlene Jobert, in M/F...and I still say Eva Green favors her dad more than her mom...
Balthazar and M/F are both available from the Criterion Collection, and are both highly recommended, if you don't have 'em already.
yeah, but her cheekbones are all mom, it looks like.
Posted by: WP | March 08, 2007 at 10:38 PM
Wow, Bertolucci must've creamed himself [redundant, I know] when he cast Green alongside young Louis Garrel in The Dreamers.
Posted by: cinetrix | March 09, 2007 at 11:17 AM
Oh wow this I didn't know! Now you've made me want to see Masculin feminin again!
Posted by: Kenji Fujishima | March 10, 2007 at 09:04 AM
Steve only read me this. He didn't go back far enough to notice, so I sent him the Apocalypto/Continental lyrics. (Love the doctored photo!) I'd send you something on the Casino Royales (Casinos Royale?), since you may still need a laugh, but it's already too long to be funny, as usual for me. Oh, well!
Posted by: old lady | March 10, 2007 at 11:32 AM
Guess what - she's got a twin sister!
Our Miss Green is absolutely stunning in person, better than on the screen even. I kid you not.
Posted by: HB | March 10, 2007 at 03:45 PM
Um... that's not Marlene Jobert. The pic you've posted is of Catherine-Isabelle Duport, who also starred in Masculin-Feminin. Jobert played Elisabeth. But knowing what she actually looks like, your point stands.
Posted by: Paul C. | March 10, 2007 at 05:05 PM
Paul—thanks for the correction. It was a bone-headed mistake I probably would not have made under less pressurized circumstances. It's been fixed...Thanks also for being so civil in pointing out the snafu!
Posted by: Glenn K. | March 10, 2007 at 07:47 PM
No offense to Eva Green's parents, but those photos don't really show us where Eva Green gets it from.
Posted by: Mina | March 11, 2007 at 06:14 AM
I dunno about that. The chin and cheekbones are definitely dad's, and her complexion comes from mom.
The rockin' bod, however, is all hers.
Posted by: Paul C. | March 11, 2007 at 10:26 AM
Marlene Jobert gives an unforgettably frank, sexual performance in Maurice Pialat's 1972 masterpiece "Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble," worth checking out even though it's never been subtitled in English. It makes Little Eva's work in "The Dreamers" look positively prudish.
Posted by: Dave Kehr | March 13, 2007 at 05:35 PM
Eva's twin sister is non-identical.
I do wish more Pialat was available in the States.
HB - every movie 'star' I've ever met has been luminous in person. So much of that is 'presence,' and I'd bet Eva has that in spades.
Posted by: Dave McDougall | March 13, 2007 at 11:54 PM
Dave,
I've seen the sister - while she is fraternal, she's quite attractive.
While I would agree with you on the 'presence' notion - which she indeed has in spades - there are a handful that I've worked with that make you wonder how amazing the DP really was...
Green is stunning - I honestly don't think she looked as good in the Bond picture as she did in "Kingdom of Heaven" - but that's John Mathieson for you.
Posted by: HB | March 14, 2007 at 11:18 PM
In response to cinetrix's comment about Bertolucci: in fact, not only did he know all about Eva Green's parentage, but that was WHY he cast her in the first place. As he explained in his American Museum of the Moving Image talk after the screening of "The Dreamers", he cast Eva Green ("the daughter of the Children of Marx and Coca-Cola") and Louis Garrel (the son of Philippe Garrel, the "enfant terrible" of European art cinema of the late 1960s) because of their familial connections, to give his movie the "texture" of May 1968. And Bertolucci then went on to explain that Eva Green's father was Walter Green, one of the stars of "Au Hasazrd, Balthazar", whose sister had been Marka Green, Bresson's star of "Pickpocket".
(Some people have had terrible times working with Bresson - Dominique Sanda is famous for her disdain for the experience of working on "Une Femme Douce" - but other people are so enraptured that they send their relatives to work with him. Florence Carrez - the star of "Proces de Jeanne d'Arc" - sent Anne Wiazemsky, and Marika Green sent her brother Walter.)
Posted by: Daryl Chin | March 19, 2007 at 02:30 PM
Thinking about it, I can't help but wonder if Michael Pitt felt a little underqualified for THE DREAMERS compared to his costars.
In addition, what an odd contrast it might've been had Jake Gyllenhaal originally played the lead as planned. Compared to the offsprings of French New Wave performers, the son of two Hollywood journeypeople (director dad and screenwriter mom) might've really goosed the film on a subtextual level.
Posted by: Paul C. | March 20, 2007 at 10:58 PM
i love you EG
Posted by: | July 26, 2007 at 01:49 AM
Well there ya go. Two mensans will occasionally produce a six sigma.
Posted by: Anonemouse | January 18, 2008 at 12:32 PM
She is my wife.
Posted by: biggy | January 22, 2008 at 04:38 AM
Truth is the daughter of time.
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