archéologie musicale's video: Estella Blain - Album Compilation 65 69 Tribute

Gorgeous Estella Blain (1930 -- 1982) was one of the sexy stars in Brigitte Bardot style of the French cinema of the 1950's. Her career lost steam during the 1960's and her life ended in tragedy. Estella Blain was born as Micheline Estellat in Paris in 1930. In 1953 she married the actor Gérard Blain. The following year they appeared together in the film Les fruits sauvages/Wild Fruit (1954, Hervé Bromberger). She played a young girl who accidentally kills her alcoholic father and with a group of rebellious youngsters she finds refuge in an old, deserted village. Estella and Gérard divorced in 1956, but she kept his name. She played one of the sexy schoolgirls in Les collégiennes/The Twilight Girls (1957, André Hunebelle) with Agnès Laurent and Catherine Deneuve in her first, small film role. Blain worked again with director Hervé Bromberger at La bonne tisane/Good Medicine (1958, Hervé Bromberger) in which she played a young idealistic nurse on her first tour of duty, who is horrified by the carelessness of her colleagues and the doctors. She was quite busy in this period. In the routine spy thriller Le fauve est lâché/The Beast Is Loose (1959, Maurice Labro) she starred opposite tough guy Lino Ventura. In Les dragueurs/The Chasers (1959, Jean-Pierre Mocky), she was one of the girls chased by Jacques Charrier and Charles Aznavour. And in the thriller Des femmes disparaissent/The Road to Shame (1959, Edouard Molinaro) she played a victim of white-slave trade who is saved by her car mechanic fiancé, played by Robert Hossein. At Films de France, James Travers reviews: "an all too obvious imitation of the American gangster movie, although Molinaro does manage to evoke the essence of classic film noir very effectively in some sequences. The problem with the film is that it is too much of a pastiche, with very little substance to it -- no real characterisation, a threadbare plot, and interminable, badly choreographed, fight scenes. On the plus side, Art Blakey's marvellous jazz score gives the film a touch of stylish modernity, an innovation which thriller directors of the time were quick to emulate".