the shimmering portrait of a magnetic star

ARTE – SUNDAY JANUARY 23 AT 10.50 P.M. – DOCUMENTARY

Impressive trajectory than that of Julie Andrews, 86 years old. As recently as 2020, the English singer and actress endorsed the “voice” of Lady Whistledown in the series Bridgerton, on Netflix. Always go-getter, adventurous, the unforgettable Mary Poppins (1964), the equally irresistible heroine of The melody of happiness (1965), juggled between musicals, movies and shows with amazing energy and class.

Rejoicing, the documentary produced in 2019 by Yves Riou entitled Julie Andrews, the melody of a lifetime surfs at high speed on the roller coaster of an intense course. The child prodigy with a five-octave voice, who was hiding very young with her mother and stepfather in the Andrews Trio in the seediest English cabarets, was 13 when she sang in front of King George VI of England, in 1948.

Four years later, here she is, arriving in New York and starting a successful career on Broadway with My Fair Lady. It then stands out in Camelot (1961) with Richard Burton, dancing and whistling like a marvelous chaffinch. Walt Disney sees her and offers her Mary Poppins. For this first film, where she discovers the profession of actress while levitating most of the time hanging on cables, she hits the bullseye and wins a Golden Globe, then an Oscar for the role in 1965. She then goes on to collaborate with cinema, with, in particular, Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Wise.

Mischievous humor

Chronological, rich in multiple excerpts from shows and films, archive images, this shimmering portrait is punctuated by numerous interviews throughout his life. The one who was adored from the age of 30 always appears there sparkling, precise, smiling – with the distance of this mischievous humor which explodes on the screen. His eventful, offensive artistic quest goes through ups and downs to culminate again in victor victoria (1982), directed by Blake Edwards, in which she plays ” a man pretending to be a woman pretending to be a man”. By playing his elastic vocal register to the fullest. In 1969, she married Edwards, and they would live together until the filmmaker’s death in 2010.

At the same time, she became an ambassador for Unicef, defended the cause of women in Third World countries but also composed songs, wrote her autobiography, children’s books and educational television series for young audiences. In 1989, she ventured into her first one-woman show, which unfolded while singing the stages of her career. She was 60 years old when she lost her marvelously pitched voice. Plunging into the Julie Andrews tornado turns out to be not only thrilling but incredibly joyful. By immediately making you want to see all his cult films and the others too.