L'amour existe (1960) - full transcript
A social commentary on post-war France's urban developments.
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
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