L'amour existe (1960) - full transcript

For a long time... I lived in the suburbs.

My earliest memory

is a suburban memory.

In that memory...

a suburban train goes by...

as if it were in a movie.

Memory and movies

replace the real things...

that you'll never be able

to grasp again.

For a long time now, I've lived

in the Courbevoie neighbourhood.

Old houses were demolished by bombs,

but that opened the spared church

to better view.

I exchanged a casualty for these

consecrated stones.

He was a school chum.

We used to sing in class...

"To die for one's country...

"One day of glory is worth

a hundred years of life."

The Vidal-Lablache geography maps...

used to arouse a desire

for faraway journeys...

but above all maintained

their illusions...

even within our

dreary environment.

Innocent eyes can read

without bitterness, here...

where the paving stones,

the dust and rusted metal...

are like an outcrop

of deep geological layers.

'The Palais', 'The Palace',

'The Eden', 'The Magic', 'The Lux'...

The most beautiful night of the week

was born on Thursday afternoon.

Crowded in the front row,

the best seats...

the girls and boys have acquired...

a new realm for 2 hours,

at a cost of pennies.

Because the strongholds

of the great Pantin mills...

were a town designed by Hugo...

the glass piled up

by the Ourcq canal...

sparkles better

than precious stones.

When you're 15, it's nothing

to pass a trotter, out training.

The winter wind cuts through the polygon

of the Vincennes woods...

less severe than the wind

of the coming winter...

which would see German tanks

exercising in the fields.

A first flirtation, walking

along the banks of the Marne...

dark shadows and silent balls...

no dancing for the girls...

the dance-hall shutters would be closed.

The bathing spots of the Marne,

Eldorado of yesterday...

old, mute, few of them...

asleep beside the mud.

Suddenly the streets

are slow and quiet.

Where are the dance halls,

the fish-and-chip shops of yesterday?

Paris will no longer swing

to the sound of the accordion.

The entire suburb is frozen...

as the favourite setting

for French films.

In Montreuil, Melies'' studio is demolished.

So, wonders and pleasures

slip silently away.

The sad, bored suburb,

marches grey in the rain,

sang Piaf.

The sad, bored suburb

marches grey in the rain.

Boredom is the driving force

eroding poor neighbourhoods.

The castles of childhood

fade away...

Adults come back to their schoolyard,

like it was recess.

Then trains take them away.

The suburbs are growing,

to be broken up into small lots.

The suburbs are the chosen land

of the small house.

It's the insanity of pettiness.

My little house, my little garden,

a nice little job...

a nice little life...

nice and quiet.

A life spent waiting for payday.

A life weighed in hours worked.

A rich life, with overtime.

A thoughtful life,

when regarding assistance...

security... retirement...

insurance.

Beings, who pay retail

for everything...

and sell themselves for wholesale.

MY HAPPY HOME

IN SPITE OF ALL

VICIOUS DOGS

We've now been married

more than 10 years.

I've never seen her upset.

We live in the kitchen.

It's the smallest room.

Apart from on festive occasions...

the dining room is not open

to the household.

It's the biggest room.

Where we carefully treasure

our most precious things.

Life in the future

already has a past...

and the present,

an eternity of waiting.

The suburban house

is an expression

of the lack in both hospitality

and generosity, of the Frenchman.

Threatened, he will disappear.

For the deaf...

the battle is not always silence.

Reckless people build

to the very outposts.

Greater Paris is the poorest

in the world in green spaces.

However, the systematic destruction

of old parks is not completed.

Massacred by developers who dish up

fashionable fake-luxury residences...

set off by 100-year old trees.

The civilian-barracks era

has arrived.

A concentration-camp world,

payable in installments.

Urban planning based

around garbage collection.

Poor materials that have degraded

before the building is complete.

The landscaping usually being bleak...

we go so far as to

eliminate windows...

since there's nothing

worth looking at.

The developers maintain the nostalgia

of utilitarian Nazi architecture.

Perfection of the segregation

of classes...

introduction of the segregation

of ages...

Parents of the same age...

having the same number of children

of the same age.

You have no choice...

you are chosen.

Children as good as the images

that the teachers desire.

Suspicious games in the vast basements.

The constraint of prefabricated games...

or escape...

What will be their memories?

Happiness will be decided

in research departments.

Working-class suburbs

will shift from red to pink.

Who today accuses French people

of being unruly?

A conditioned class of joint-owners,

ready to take over.

[ A CAR OFFERED TO BUYERS}

A class that votes one way.

[SANDSTONE] [WALL-TO-WALL CARPET]

A fake culture,

living in fake buildings.

[MAHOGANY]

[MARBLE] [FREE CAR]

More and more, the advertising

outstrips reality.

[FREE CAR]

They exist just 3 km

from the Champs Elysees.

Built of planks and tarred cardboard

which easily ignites.

Kerosene powers cooking

and lighting.

The number of microbes

breathed in 1 cubic metre of air

by a department-store saleswoman...

4 million.

Number of keystrokes

typed in a year by a typist...

15 million.

Shortage of playgrounds.

Deficit of sports grounds: 75 percent

Deficit of kindergartens: 99 percent.

Number of high schools

in the Seine municipalities: 9.

In Paris: 29.

Sons of workers at university: 3 percent.

At Paris University: 1.5 percent.

Sons of workers

at the School of Medicine: 0.9 percent.

In the Faculty of Letters : 0.2 percent.

Theatres outside of Paris: 0.

Concert halls: 0.

Half the year, the only hours

of freedom are at night.

But every morning, there is

the dread of being late.

Departure in the dark of night.

Race to the station.

Blind and chaotic journey

in a packed and sweaty crowd.

Immersed in the lukewarm subway.

Endless passageways

to change lines.

Automatic gates.

Crowding

in overloaded carriages.

More bus trips.

The workplace is deliverance.

In the evening,

we do it all again.

Two hour, three hour,

four hour commutes each day.

This grey water doesn't stir

with the peak-hour rushes.

Most of it is away.

Some stays behind.

The land is experiencing low tide.

The bus, a kilometre millionaire,

and the worker, a millionaire

in actions at work...

are separated one last time,

one evening, so discreetly...

that they didn't take notice.

Old platform buses

have no retirement.

The administration resells them

to restart a career.

As for the other... the old worker...

Old age, which for each employee

must undoubtedly occur.

Old age as its own reward.

Like a deal that no one

wants to accept.

They paid for it,

paid for being old.

The only age when

you're left alone.

But what peace do you get?

Rest, at 9,000 francs a month?

Isolation in the old neighbourhood?

Retirement home?

They are waiting for the hour that

returns them to the land of childhood.

The hour when the animals

come home.

Hills won over by the shadows...

barking dogs...

the smell of cattle.

A recognised voice,

far away.

No.

They were able to reach out

and feel the page of the book...

the first book they ever read.

"It is cold outside..."

"...and the dog comes to rub

against my legs."

"Mummy serves the soup,

and it is very hot."

"Jacques stands up straight."

The public gardens have not

been replaced...

...those stretches of Ile-de-France

which only yesterday...

...ran all the way to Paris,

in search of landscape painters.

The traveller in a rush

is oblivious to the suburbs.

Their streets more suited to barricades

than to parades,

keep their impenetrable beauties secret.

The only one who could have

told of them is silent.

No one taught him to read them.

A gifted child...

...that adolescence finds stuck,

and permanently unhappy.

It's no good staying there...

imprisoned, after being born there,

...a few kilometres too far

out of the way.

Years and years of cheap hotels

and furnished rooms.

Ten packed into one room.

Blows given,

blows received.

Your ears shut

to any cries.

And the finish of work

just when museums close.

No promotion.

No ideas.

No amount of money

will buy cauterisation.

There should be nothing left

which perpetuates misery.

The lessons of darkness are never

inscribed on monuments.

The Hand of Glory

that orders and directs...

...can also implore.

Just change the position

you view it from.

Subtitles by FatPlank for KG