‘You got to look at things with the eye in your heart, not with the eye in your head.’ – Lame Deer, Medicine Man of the Oglala people
Film
Voted Best Drama at the Portobello Film Festival, Emma’s short film is based on her full length script about the relationship between Marguerite Monnot and Edith Piaf.
IN THE SHADOW
By Emma Lyndon-Stanford
Two powerful women from wholly contrasting backgrounds come together to create music. Their intense relationship is marred by obsession, jealousy and, in the end, painful separation and tragedy.
The true story of a woman history has overlooked – the partner in one of the greatest musical collaborations of the 20th century.
Marguerite Monnot, a celebrated piano prodigy from small-town France, is crushed under the weight of expectation. A nervous breakdown ends her performing career, but her gift for song-writing remains.
She meets her absolute antithesis, a feisty young singer, Edith Piaf, brought up in a brothel and singing on the streets of Paris.
Despite their differences, their unlikely and tempestuous partnership, founded on musical friendship and loyalty, lasts over a quarter of a century. They become the first ever successful female song-writing team: producing over a hundred songs that live on across the world 80 years later – songs like La Vie En Rose, Hymne a L’ Amour, Milord and C’est L’Amour.
Emma has directed and produced the short film, in collaboration with Steve Graham, providing a glimpse into the budding relationship between Edith Piaf and Marguerite Monnot, and to give a taster of the full length version.