Lauren Bacall vs Catherine Deneuve
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From a meditation on different kinds of cinema female sex symbols.
[Lauren Bacall] was not a regular beauty; her face was too broad, her mouth too wide, her eyes too far apart, and her ears too big. She was also neither blonde nor dark, but sallow and mousy.
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[Catherine]Deneuve’s is what they call “time-less beauty”; she preserves it by keeping her revs very low. She comes to every role immaculately prepared, and she follows every directorial instruction to the letter. She begins by underplaying and allows the director, in her own phrase, to push her up, if he can be bothered. She has been described as “a receptacle for every conceivable imagination”, and this is her strength in cinematic terms