Ordinary Miracle: Simone Signoret

The other night I saw Ship of Fools again.

Today, as what I hopefully trust is evidence of the power within Oscar Werner’s acting, I feel as tired as that great actor’s character feels near the end of the film. It is just moments before he has his unforgettably real and excruciating heart attack on the deck of that ship of exceptional performances.

The most exceptional performance, of course … at least in my humble opinion … is that of Simone Signoret.

Where do I begin to describe the mystery of her genius as one of the greatest film actresses we will ever see?

With her own description of her own towering gifts.

“I don’t know about my acting being as great as they say,” she once offered. “But I do know one thing about myself. I am transparent.”

Transparent.

Hmmm … “transparency.”

Wasn’t that the sales gimmick Obama used to get elected?

The only transparent things about the Obama Nation are its lies.

Oh, well … back to the artist’s pursuit of truth and my realization that there can be no pursuit really.

You either “got it or you don’t got it”.

If you don’t have it, the more you do to pursue it, the further away it gets.

In my memory, no actor or actress had Truth with a capital T and with more selflessness than Simone Signoret.

I’ve seen “flawless performances” many times … but not with the depth of … yes … transparency she brought to her work.

Frequently her simple nakedness on screen … with all her clothes on, of course … is unbearable.

I look away in tearful awe.

Of course, I’m a romantic and I married my first wife in idolatrous memory of Simone Signoret’s performance in Room At The Top.

My first wife is French.

If you’ll remember, Lawrence Harvey did not marry Simone Signoret because he was … well … a ruthless careerist, the kind I played in the television mini-series, Holocaust.

No careerist in that mold, by the way, could possibly surpass the careerism of President Barack Obama.

One can never overstate the warning signs that have existed within the first year of the Obama Nation’s ownership of the White House.

Hmmm, indeed.

That “tearful awe” of mine is evidence of Simone Signoret as a divinely ordinary miracle.

What she bestows us with her transparency is the eternal truths within all of us.

Our bottomless and god-like sensitivities.

In the case of that ship of ordinary miracles, her performance set the mark for all of the rest.

I’ve dropped from the great distances most “civilians” drop through, and fallen in love with a number of great actors and actresses.

None of those “greats,” however, in my 69 year-old-dotage, have shown me the very theme I intend to write about for the increasingly brief rest of my life, The Ordinary Miracle of Being A Human Being.

Simone Signoret shows you that.

Repeatedly.

Go to her work in Ship of Fools and worship, okay?