Unlike most of the current crop of Continental screen sirens who have ridden the crest of Europe's celluloid New Wave to cinematic success, France's Catherine Deneuve has relied more heavily on her acting than on her anatomy in her rise to the ranks of filmic femmes fatales. Since her initial appearance in these pages as one of Europe's New Sex Sirens (Playboy, September 1963), the pretty 21-year-old Parisienne has bypassed her promotional billing as just another in the long line of international cinema sex-pots to establish a reputation as a capable cinemactress, with leading roles in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg--last year's Golden Palm-winning film at Cannes--and her current film, Repulsion. The latter marks Mlle. Deneuve's debut in an English-speaking part under the dynamic direction of Polish impresario Roman Polanski, whose Knife in the Water earned him top honors at the 1962 Venice Film Festival and subsequent acclaim from the New York Film Critics Society for the year's Best Foreign Film.
The youngest member of one of France's most famed families, comely Catherine is an admirable addition to the Thespian tradition set down by her actor father, Maurice Dorleac, and her older sister, Nouvelle Vague vamp Françoise Dorleac (That Man from Rio, Genghis Khan), with whom she will soon appear opposite Jean-Paul Belmondo in a filmic bedroom farce entitled Male Hunt. Between sequences in the filming of Repulsion, Playboy's cameras were busy capturing this classic uncoverage of Gallic glamor at its best.