A LUMINESCENT FILM PRESENCE : LOVELY JEANNE MOREAU CONTINUES TO SERVE AS A MODEL OF THE BRAINY, BEAUTIFUL WOMAN.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Writer

Jeanne Moreau could convincingly claim that she's worked with more great film artists than any other actress. Orson Welles, Jean Renoir, Francois Truffaut, Luis Bunuel, Michelangelo Antonioni, Louis Malle, Elia Kazan, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders, Jacques Demy - her resume reads like a guidebook to all the possibilities of what film as an art form can be.

And Moreau is justifiably proud of her body of work. But she wants you to know that ``Twister'' was pretty cool, too.

``My great teachers have been literature and cinema; they're how I learned about life,'' Moreau, as elegant and genuine as ever at 68, said during a recent visit to Los Angeles to promote her latest film, ``The Proprietor.'' ``Even what are called big blockbuster films - though people say there is nothing deep about them and the characters are meaningless and there's no story - relate to humankind. They relate to our desires, our fantasies; everything has a profound emotional power.

``That's why I respect every form of cinema,'' Moreau added between sips of espresso in her unmistakable sweet, sandpaper voice. ``But it is true that, by nature and by character, I've always been oriented, and attracted by, people who could teach me something, carry me along with them and share things. I think, in a way, I participated with them in deconstructing a sort of cliched image of womanhood and, with my dedication and my practice, helped build another image of women.''

Moreau's not idly bragging. Though the stage-trained Parisienne began making movies in 1948, she didn't really make an impact until she met up with Malle a decade later. Their first film together, the romantic thriller ``Frantic'' (also known as ``Elevator to the Gallows''), was considered one of the earliest swells of the French new wave movement Moreau soon would ride to prominence. The couple's (which Moreau and Malle were at the time) second feature, ``The Lovers,'' is widely credited with breaking new ground in erotic candor on the screen - and was just as widely, and sensationally, censored for it.

Moreau followed up with another succes de scandale, Roger Vadim's 1959 contemporary version of the 18th-century sexual snakefest ``Les Liaisons Dangereuses.'' Antonioni's ``La Notte'' and a brief bit in Jean-Luc Godard's ``A Woman Is a Woman'' came next, but it was her performance as the unconventional, mercurial and utterly enchanting Catherine in Truffaut's 1961 ``Jules and Jim'' that did, indeed, redefine women on the screen for all time to come.

As Adrienne Mark, ``The Proprietor's'' fictional French author whose works inspired new wave films like the ones Moreau made, the actress could be playing a disguised version of herself. Moreau denies this vehemently, but the movie's director, Ismail Merchant, admitted that ``it was also inspired by a number of writers such as Francoise Sagan and Marguerite Duras (whose work was the basis for several Moreau films). But I never thought of anybody else but Jeanne, from the very beginning, to play Adrienne. She was a source of inspiration, really.''

``Well, when you've made so many films and you've been on the screen for so many years, you exude a certain power that you're not even aware of,'' Moreau allowed. ``It's true that when people see the first images of me in a movie, they just see my face. Then, gradually, they come down off of that and get used to the new character, who they finally follow. Maybe that's the feeling; it's not an empty box, like when you see a new face and wonder what's inside.''

Moreau liked what she found inside of Adrienne Mark, who gives up a long, comfortable self-exile in New York to return to Paris and confront the traumas of her youth.

``I think she's very courageous,'' Moreau said. ``I wonder if I would have the guts to give up a beautiful life, like she does, and take the risk of, maybe, not being able to do what she wishes. But I suppose that's what we all should be like, like the phoenix.''

Even Moreau concedes that there's a little bit of that phoenix in her. Of all the French actresses who came to prominence during the new wave, only she and Catherine Deneuve maintained thriving, high-profile careers throughout the changing movie landscape of succeeding decades.

Moreau also has branched out. She's long had a solid songwriting and recording career and directed two films, ``Lumiere'' and ``The Adolescent.'' Moreau is currently preparing her third directing effort, which also will be her first in English: an adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates' ``Solstice,'' to be shot in Maine next spring.

While still averaging three movie jobs a year, Moreau also finds time to serve on international film festival juries, most recently for last month's Montreal fest. Twice married, to directors Jean-Louis Richard and William Friedkin, she has one son, Jerome, an artist who lives in Orange County.

Moreau freely admitted that her ability to continually adapt to changing times while exploring the eternal conflicts of human nature has been informed by the great artists she's worked with. She possesses, of course, a treasure trove of anecdotes about them. But it's the insights that really make her stories worth hearing.

``Usually, in discussions of film, there is the creator/artist vs. the money,'' she said, in reference to working with the perpetually underfunded Welles on ``The Immortal Story.'' ``That's silly, because the money gives color to the film. Even if it's not on the screen, it tells about the mood of the crew and the production, how it went. It's like a fragrance, like a flavor.

``Everything contributes to give a certain style, a certain form to the film. Orson had very little money from French television, but that film looks so special, has moments that are so beautiful, because Orson had to deal with the lack of money. He was provoked, he had to go beyond his imagination, and he had to have invention. And I had to have that with him. Made with twice the money, this film would not have been the same.''

As for ``The Bride Wore Black,'' a kicky, later Truffaut thriller in which Moreau played a vengeful instant widow who tracked down the hunters who accidentally killed her groom, the actress can boil down the late, beloved director's method to one simple but effective instruction.

``The only indication Francois gave me, in a letter he sent, was `Please Jeanne, don't forget: Think always of Humphrey Bogart.' I did!''

The Malles and Truffauts of world cinema are no longer with us. But Jeanne Moreau is still going strong, and she is confident that the medium which has shaped so much of her life will thrive forever.

``I'm very positive about the future of cinema, because it's a way of expression,'' Moreau said. ``It's an addiction. We need to see ourselves. Asking me if movies will die is as though you were going to ask me if all of the mirrors all over the place were going to disappear. Men need to see the image of men.

``Remember, even watching `Twister' - it reflects some obsession about us. Even if you think, on the surface, `Oh, there's nothing like that' - pay attention.''

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2 Photos

Photo: (1) ``When ... you've been on the screen for so m any years, you exude a certain power that you're not even aware of,'' explains Jeanne Moreau, pictured in ``The Proprietor.''

(2) One of Moreau's early triumphs came in Roger Vadim's 1959 contemporary version of the 18th-century sexual thriller ``Les Liaisons Dangereuses.''