Eddy Mitchell has been a lifelong fan of the silver screen. Besides forging a career as an actor in cult films such as Coup de torchon and Le Bonheur est dans le pré, the singer also became a household name presenting the French TV movie show La Dernière séance (1982-1998.) Meanwhile, as a singer and songwriter Monsieur Eddy has frequently celebrated the joys and emotions of cinema and peppered his songs with references to Hollywood legends. So it seems fitting that Eddy's latest album, Grand Ecran, should take him back to the movies with covers of famous film songs. Eddy's highly personal selection of French and American classics makes Grand Ecran much more of a self-portrait than many of the albums the singer has written himself.

Highlights of Grand Ecran include a new version of Dylan's Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door (penned by Claude Moine aka Eddy Mitchell himself) and a number of French classics - several of which have been adapted for the American screen, notably Gilbert Bécaud's Je t’appartiens, Charles Aznavour's Hier encore, Prévert and Kosma's Les Feuilles mortes and Pleurer des rivières (which French music fans know and love as a hit by Viktor Lazlo rather than Julie London's Cry Me a River.) Monsieur Eddy also tackles film songs that are so quintessentially American that hearing them in French comes as something of a shock. Eddy's virile Latin version of the Johnny Cash classic I Walk the Line (rewritten by Jérôme Attal as Je file droit) comes as a real surprise as does the French crooner's romantic reworking of It Was a Very Good Year (Ma plus belle année.)

On this album more than ever, Eddy Mitchell positions himself halfway between the tenets of popular American music and the hallmark of French "variété." Those who remember the old French covers of Sixteen Tons (Seize tonnes) - covered by Armand Mestral and Jean Bertola in the 1950s - will appreciate just how clever a spin Mitchell puts on things. While conserving all of the American coalmining classic's original rhythm and swing, Monsieur Eddy adds a certain French touch, an inevitable 'je ne sais quoi.' No wonder that when he teams up with Melody Gardot for a duet of Over The Rainbow, Eddy Mitchell insists on rendering the Judy Garland classic in true Gallic style rather than singing in English!