Feature Film | "Monsieur Aznavour" and the Price of Fame

Several chapters from the life of Shahnourh Vaghinag Aznavourian, born in Paris in 1924, who rose to global stardom as Charles Aznavour. The first is titled "Two Guitars" and sets the tone for the next two hours. A melancholic search for lost time, for the sources of the incredible productivity that distinguished Aznavour as a singer and actor. Music, it becomes clear here, has always been the link between yesterday and today, between life, love, and death.

His parents ran a modest Armenian restaurant in Paris. Or more precisely, they occasionally ran another, even smaller and simpler one after the previous one went bankrupt. Growing up in the bohemian Latin Quarter, the young Charles Aznavour knew very well what poverty was. From then on, his desire to be successful was always linked to the idea of ​​one day making a lot of money. When he later met Frank Sinatra in New York, he told him his goal was to receive the same (astronomically high) fee for a performance as Sinatra. And he actually achieved that. Aznavour possessed all the strengths and weaknesses of someone who had worked his way up from the bottom.

In 2018, Aznavour died, just two weeks after having been on stage (at the age of 94). Work was his life – and his passion. A few years earlier, I had seen him in Berlin. He was in excellent shape, physically, mentally, and vocally, but nevertheless radiated an incredible distance, almost hostility, towards the audience. Before the concert began, he announced that if there was any flash of light from the audience, he would immediately stop the concert. No one doubted that he really would do this. No, the old Aznavour no longer feigned love for his audience; he had experienced too many ups and downs to now try to please everyone. I was impressed by the way he sang his melancholic songs (he wrote and composed over 1,000), as always with a large orchestra and the participation of family members – and yet as if he were singing entirely by himself.

The fickle public favor he had courted for so many years apparently no longer interested him. This is also the subject of "Monsieur Aznavour" by Mehdi Idir and Grand Corps Malade, which was also co-produced by the Aznavour family. This is a feature film as a homage, but one worth watching because it doesn't hide the price of fame.

In the 1950s he was often told with blunt directness that only a handsome man should sing love songs, and that he was not one.

A few years ago, an unusual Aznavour documentary was released – all private film sequences, shot by the artist himself with his own 8mm camera over the course of many years. Aznavour knew that publicity is half the battle. But only half the battle. Woe betide anyone who fails when everyone's eyes are on them! His family was always around him; his sister was probably closer to him than his three wives. And yet, in 1976, Aznavour's son Patrick took his own life (at the age of 25) – a wound that never healed, as we know from personal accounts.

The film was produced with great effort, with a keen sense for the right atmosphere. But does it work when you cast the incomparably energetic Aznavour with an actor like Tahar Rahim? Only halfway, because Aznavour wasn't athletically predictable like him, but rather incalculably scrawny, with a charisma that was more intellectual than sensual.

In the 1950s, he was often told, with blunt directness, that only a handsome man should sing love songs, and that he wasn't one. Indeed, Aznavour didn't fit the stereotypical image of a French chansonnier. He was only 1.64 meters tall and had a voice that was always somewhat hoarse, unattractive but expressive. So he played to half-empty halls and an audience that didn't like him. Why, then, did he keep working, ultimately forcing success? Aznavour would later romanticize this austere period of marginalization in his chanson "La Bohème." His life, he claimed, was a "yearning dream" during this time: "I was the greatest of the great fantasists."

Tahar Rahim, who doesn't sing Aznavour himself, limits himself to a few of Aznavour's typical gestures and facial expressions. However, he fails to evoke Aznavour's inner fervor; the sharpness of his mind (which seemed to hinder the singer for a long time) is completely absent here – thus, Tahar Rahim's Aznavour takes on a completely inappropriately one-dimensional, ultimately boring quality.

That's what happens when you don't have your own idea for a film, but instead believe you have to illustrate something that's already been given to you. But the personality, the inner tension, even the ruthlessness of this man, doesn't translate that way. Instead, a disconcerting smoothness takes over. The same thing happens here with Édith Piaf, who, in Marie-Julie Baup's performance, shrinks from a provocatively filthy primal force to a cuddly caricature without depth.

Is all this uninteresting because it's portrayed too superficially? Of course, a song by Charles Aznavour says a lot about him (especially since the original music is cleverly edited into the film). However, the historical context does a lot to draw you into the story little by little. It tells of more than just his ambition, defeats, and glory.

Aznavour's life story begins in Paris in the 1920s and ends in 2018. What a historical arc! German occupation officers were in the nightclubs of the early 1940s; Aznavour was arrested more than once on the street because he was suspected of being Jewish. Naturally, this shaped him, giving his songs an unusual seriousness.

In 1946, in the orbit of Édith Piaf, he began writing songs for her – but the road to the big stage was still long for him. It was certainly wise of him to establish himself as a film actor (in over 70 roles!) at the same time. His portrayal of a failed concert pianist who becomes entangled in the criminal underworld in François Truffaut's "Shoot the Pianist" from 1960 made film history. So did his character of the Jewish toy salesman in Schlöndorff's "The Tin Drum" and his Jesuit-fanatical Naphta in "The Magic Mountain." Aznavour, as a man, had so many more facets, more rough edges, more drivenness than this certainly charming "biopic" gives him credit for.

Why doesn't Charles Aznavour, who was many things (even the Armenian ambassador to Switzerland at the end), really come close here? Because the directing duo Mehdi Idir and Grand Corps Malade don't dare take the step from the external arc of life to that "inner space of the world" that, for Rilke, represents the true connection between self and world. There's too much imitation and outward posturing, but too little exploration of the need for expression.

What made him become a manic singer of hopeless loneliness, surrounded by family and friends? This inner biography, which would have had to be (re)invented, is not recounted here.

"Monsieur Aznavour," France 2024. Directed and written by Mehdi Idir, Grand Corps Malade. Starring: Tahar Rahim, Bastien Bouillon, and Marie-Julie Baup. 134 minutes. Theatrical release: May 22.