A two-minute clip captures 19-year-old Marianne Faithfull singing "As Tears Go By" a cappella in Jean-Luc Godard's 1966 film Made in U.S.A. — a performance that remained largely unseen by American audiences for decades.
Faithfull, who passed away yesterday at 78, appears in a café scene that New Yorker film critic Richard Brody calls a perfect snapshot of "styles of the day." The scene represents a intersection of 1960s cultural icons— Godard, then at the height of his creative powers, filming Faithfull performing a song that had been hits for both her and the Rolling Stones.
The film itself has an intriguing backstory. Based on Donald E. Westlake's novel The Jugger, but made without securing adaptation rights, Made in U.S.A. remained in legal limbo until 2009. As Brody recounts, he managed to see it in the 1980s under less-than-ideal conditions: "The Mudd Club got hold of a 16-mm print and showed it — with the projector in the room — to a crowd of heavy smokers. It was like watching a movie outdoors in London by night, or as if through the shrouding mists of time."
Open Culture has more about the film.
Bonus: "It's All over Now Baby Blue," sung by Marianne Faithfull, from The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968):
Previously:
• Marianne Faithfull survives COVID-19 hospitalization, returns home
• Marianne Faithfull's upcoming 'She Walks in Beauty'
• Marianne Faithfull and Joan Baez sing 'As Tears Go By' in Dylan's hotel room, 1965
• Watch David Bowie and Marianne Faithful (dressed as a nun) perform 'I Got You Babe' in 1973
• The OTHER 1960s psychedelic motorcycle rider movie