We’ve only just closed up the photo album and list of condolences for Georges Brassens, who died on 29 October 1981, and now it’s time to open up another box of souvenirs in memory of Yves Montand, who died two decades ago on 9 November. The small screen is offering a worthy but relatively modest commemoration, with a themed evening on the arts channel, Arte, last Sunday and a documentary by Patrick Rotman on France 2 on Tuesday, along with a few repeats of classic Montand films.

Not much new in the bookshops, either, except a book of photographs by Stéphane Korb, who was snapping away in the wings of Olympia when Montand made his last triumphant comeback in 1981 with three months of concerts – the kind of thing that hadn’t been seen since Edith Piaf. Korb is the son of Francis Lemarque, who wrote dozens of songs for Montand, a relationship that no doubt accounts for the intensity of his work. The preface to his book was written by Carole Amiel, Montand’s last partner, who has also published Il y a ceux qui rêvent les yeux ouverts et ceux qui vivent les yeux fermés a kind of biography written with Valentin Livi, the son she had with the singer twenty three years ago.

The record shops are offering a 7-disk collection, Ce monsieur-là, containing all of Montand’s songs from 1945 to 1960. The boxed set’s low price reflects the fact that the recordings are now part of the public domain. Among the few greatest hits compilations released this season is Chansons et poésies populaires de France, which has bags of charm but is clearly aimed at a school market, including Le Chant des partisans, Le Temps des cerises, Le Galérien, La Complainte de Mandrin, Le Dormeur du val, etc.

Daring pioneer

All of which says a lot about the ambiguity of Yves Montand’s posthumous fate. He is more and more often remembered as the singer of a timeless repertoire, and the celebrity press likes to portray him as one of the biggest charmers of the century – after all, it’s hard to beat a string of affairs with the likes of Édith Piaf, Marilyn Monroe and Simone Signoret.

As is often the way with so-called “classic” artists, people tend to forget just how innovative, daring and modern Montand was in his time. He is held up as the symbol of the golden age of French music-hall, producing gems like Les Feuilles mortes and Les Grands Boulevards, monuments of an era painted in red, white and blue, as just about as Gallic as the Eiffel Tower and camembert.

In reality, Montand would spend days at a time rehearsing his steps and stage directions in front of a mirror, with his admiring eyes fixed firmly on the other side of the Atlantic, focused on Fred Astaire. He may not have had the elfin physique of the leading Hollywood dancer and singer, but he sought to reproduce the same lightness of foot and natural gestures that only come from hours of hard work.

In deliberately populist post-war France, he transposed the magic of Astaire’s floaty dance steps and opulent Hollywood décors into the lives of the working classes. When the words he sang were penned by Jacques Prévert and Francis Lemarque, they were coloured with the commitment of a far-left-wing youth. Montand had little trouble in reproducing the stance and accent of a working-class Parisian: he was a child of the poor neighbourhoods of Marseille, where his Italian family rubbed shoulders with the whole gamut of proletarians.

His ambition was not to be some kind of bad boy of chanson, more like a French-style American: lippy perhaps, but most of all elegant, nimble and skilled. Audiences who attended live concerts once his career started to take off around 1946 were treated to quite some show.

Eyes on America

No one could combine singing, dancing and acting like he could… actually one person could: Maurice Chevalier. Like him, Montand kept his eyes fixed on the America of showmen, Broadway and polished choreographies. Like him, he embodied a kind of working-class ideal, and both of them made it big in the USA, singing and acting.

On stage, the silhouettes he cast in the strip of light from the projector, his tap-dancing interludes and punchy, Sinatra-like energy worked together to forge him an immense reputation that he moved away from in 1964 to focus on the cinema, only sporadically returning to music-hall. This partly explains why Montand’s first glory is often forgotten –  that of the greatest singer of a decade, before author-composer-singers like Georges Brassens and later Jacques Brel came along and overtook him in notoriety and airplay.

The fact that his position has become so hard to define may explain why we still know so little about the biopic project currently being orchestrated by two people close to him, with his official biographer Patrick Rotman doing the script-writing and his nephew Jean-Louis Livi on production. Christophe Ruggia (Le Gone du chaâba) will probably direct it, but nothing is known about the schedule, scenario and even which lead actor is likely to play Yves Montand. With a bit of luck, he’ll at least know how to sing.

Yves Montand Ce monsieur-là (CD Harmonia Mundi) 2011
Yves Montand Chansons et poésies populaires de France (CD Harmonia Mundi) 2011 Stéphane Korb Yves Montand (published by Jean-Claude Gawsewitch) 2011
Carole Amiel and Valentin Livi Il y a ceux qui rêvent les yeux ouverts et ceux qui vivent les yeux fermés (published by Michel Lafon) 2011