Marianne was nineteen when she made her debut as a "diseuse" in Berlin. She arrived in Paris in the '30s, where she imposed the songs of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. Tragic to a fault, but in the German manner (the famous "expressionism"), in the tradition of the diseuses, she devoted herself to spoken song (the Sprechgesang of Berlin cabaret). At the Boeuf sur le toit, the place where the Tout-Paris of the time had to be seen, after having captivated Darius Milhaud, Paul Fort, Arthur Honegger, Aragon, Gide and Max Jacob, she stunned Jean Cocteau, who wrote "La Dame de Monte-Carlo" and "Anna la bonne" for her, a song which, like Jean Genet's Les Bonnes, was inspired by the murder perpetrated by the Papin sisters on their mistress. She sang "Embrasse-moi" (a song Piaf borrowed from her) by Prévert and Kosma, from whom she would later offer a most avant-garde version of "Les Feuilles mortes", as well as "La Chasse à l'enfant" (an evocation of the Belle-Île-en-Mer penal colony). Signed by Henri-Georges Clouzot and Maurice Yvain, "Jeu de massacre" reached new heights of cruelty and audacity, while Gaston Bonheur's "Les Soutiers" brought him into the realist movement.
After spending the war years in the United States, she returned to France and played leading roles in Les Amants de Vérone and Notre-Dame de Paris, before devoting herself to television production. She remains one of the forerunners of the "rive gauche" style, as well as artists such as Barbara and Jean Guidoni. In the 90s, young groups such as Casse Pipe and Les Têtes raides ("Mes sœurs n'aimaient pas les marins") covered her repertoire.
S. H.
