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I came across French singer Christophe (b. 1945) for a first time when watching The Singer (2006). He makes a brief cameo appearance in the film as himself: an enigmatic and introverted aging popular star who still attracts a faithful cult following of thousands to his stage concerts. We only get a glimpse of him concentrating in front of a mirror before the concert. But even this glimpse was sufficient to get me interested to check out the singer, an offspring of an Italian-French family who has seen many ups and downs over the years and has cultivated an image that is not less interesting than much better-known Johnny Hallyday (b. 1943). Indeed, his fascinating biography talks of downturns and comebacks, reconstructing an age in French popular culture that is simultaneously disappearing and nostalgically attractive.

As it turns out, many clips of Christophe’s songs can be found on YouTube, which show his changing appearance (and stage persona) over the years.

Here I am posting clips featuring three performances of one of his best-known songs, Les Marionettes (1965), which have taken place over a period of thirty-five years.

The first one is an interesting video made long before the MTV age, in the 1960s, and showing the singer as a young boy, reminiscent to David Hemmings as seen in Antonioni’s Blowup (1966), who looks pretty much as if he has just left school and still plays with paper and string, making puppets.

The second one is from the 1980s, about 20 years later, a comeback after many turbulent events in the singer’s life. The voice is still the same, but Christophe has matured in look; he already has what is to become his trademark mustache. See on the background the references to Harley Davidson-type motorcycles and related paraphernalia from the American SouthWest, of the sort that he is known to have been fascinated with. This is a man who comes across somebody who is spending his winters near Grand Canyon or in New Mexico and who only puts on a suit for brief spells back to Europe. Also listen to the end to hear the American twists in this performance.

The last one is from a tamed performance of the song in 2002, weary and laid back. This is the cultish look that the singer had in the film with Depardieu.

The Wikipedia article on Christophe claims he was mostly influenced by American music. Maybe. To me, however, Les Marionettes sounds much more like the famous Belgian Adamo’s Tombe la neige and and Herve Vilard’s Capri c’est fini, both songs huge hits from the same 1965. I vaguely remember this music from my early years, I must have heard them for a first time around the time I was six or seven (they have either been on the radio or we probably had them on records at home, an example of distribution of Western culture behind the iron curtain).

The pop idol of my Bulgarian childhood, singer Emil Dimitrov, who I understand had achieved some popularity in France around the same time and who was also singing songs of marionettes and traveling artists (e.g. Arlekino), sounded very much the same. Arlekino, a link to which I embed here, was particularly important also because it later on became a break-through song for Russia’s mega-star Alla Pugachova and is still performed by younger Russian singers.