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up or were seeking refuge in the Unoccupied Zone. Among the songs she recorded in May, the passionately felt “Où sont-ils mes petits copains?” was unusual because it spoke of war’s impact on friendship, but even more so because Piaf penned the lyrics and had them set to military music by Monnot: “Où sont-ils tous mes copains / Qui sont partis un matin / Faire la guerre? / Où sont-ils tous mes p’tits gars / Qui chantaient, ‘On en r’viendra / Faut pas s’en faire.’ ” (“Where are all my pals? / They left one morning / For the war / Where are all those dear guys / Who were singing, ‘We’ll be back / Don’t worry.’ ”) The missing copains—they hail from all over Paris—form the throng imagined in the final line, “Le voilà! Les voilà!,” an up-tempo vision of prewar life. By comparison, Piaf’s bluesy “J’ai dansé avec l’amour,” also set by Monnot, mimes a dancing couple’s embrace in its swaying rhythms—a song that could be aired on the radio without complaint from the censor.

When the film director Georges Lacombe asked Edith to star in Montmartre-sur-Seine, about a flower girl who becomes a singer, the opportunity to perform her own songs onscreen proved irresistible. She and Monnot collaborated on the score, which includes “J’ai dansé avec l’amour,” and two romantic waltz tunes, “Un Coin tout bleu” and “Tu es partout.” Obtaining a role for Meurisse did not improve their deteriorating relationship. He criticized her interpretation of the heroine, Lily—who falls in love with her accompanist though he is enamored of someone else. When Meurisse said that she had made fish eyes in a love scene, Edith exploded. Their fight ended only after he sat on her and both burst out laughing.

Another cast member, the young Jean-Louis Barrault (whose character admires Lily in vain), took a more favorable view: “Everything she did or sang touched the heart.” Edith could have been a fine actress, he thought: “She was extremely sensitive, which I understood since we both came from modest backgrounds.” Looking back, he admired her integrity, the way “she remained ‘Piaf’ for the rest of her days, following her infallible instinct.”

Montmartre-sur-Seine summed up Piaf’s prewar life by capitalizing on her reputation as a street singer who beguiles audiences from all backgrounds, even those suffering from class resentments. In a nostalgic sequence filmed on a bridge over the Seine, she croons the lilting “Tu es partout” to the unresponsive hero (played by Henri Vidal); in the next scene, the scenario underscores the modesty of Lily’s (and Edith’s) background by having her peddle sheet music to the crowd in her titi-parisien accent. “Je ne veux plus laver la vaisselle,” another of her songs composed with Monnot, was omitted from the film because of its insubordinate tone, which was enhanced by Monnot’s rising lines and tempo: “Je ne veux plus vider les poubelles / Je veux qu’on m’appelle Mademoiselle.” (“I don’t want to empty the garbage / I want to be called Mademoiselle.”) Piaf’s lyrics, which read like a declaration of independence by a réaliste heroine, marked the start of her attempt to distance herself from that tradition’s emphasis on the squalid side of life, its misérabilisme.

Henri Contet, then a journalist sent by Paris-Midi to visit the film set, failed to see how anyone could resist her. The pavement might be cardboard, he wrote, but “this false street set became real as soon as she sang.” (Paul Meurisse, on the other hand, seemed unemotional.) Contet pondered the film’s “complicated, tortuous” plot, the hero’s lack of interest in the singer. “But after all,” he concluded, “isn’t real life, the way we live it, often more complicated, difficult, and heartbreaking than the passions that are invented for us?”

Contet, a handsome blond with an elegant air, was attracted to Piaf, who was still living with Meurisse. That autumn, he wrote several more articles about Montmartre-sur-Seine. In “Edith Piaf Weeps for Her Lost Love,” Contet’s narrative restages the scene when her impassive lover leaves her. “What to do,” he wrote with tongue in cheek, “console