Voyage à travers le cinéma français (2017–2018): Season 0, Episode 0 - Mes années 1960 - full transcript
Tavernier revisits his own sixties ,open to any kind of cinema.
Imagine you're at the movies.
MY JOURNEY THROUGH FRENCH CINEMA
MY SIXTIES
When I left Georges de Beauregard
after a violent argument,
I was out of work.
Two days later,
I was contacted by Pierre Rissient
who had launched Joseph Losey
and revived Fritz Lang's
Hangmen Also Die.
He suggested I work with him
as freelance press attaché.
This partnership would last ten years
without the slightest argument
in perfect harmony.
I wanted the films to be released.
I fought for their success.
The latest crusade was Raoul Walsh.
I feel Raoul Walsh
has been badly underrated.
He's far better
than John Ford and Howard Hawks,
not to downgrade them.
But Walsh is a cut above.
I found it very unfair
he wasn't as well known.
Our rules were simple:
we promoted only films we liked,
foregrounded the artists,
their aesthetic and political
choices,
rather than stars
and production gossip.
That attitude for a press attaché
was quite new at the time,
almost revolutionary.
We handled
several Hollywood directors:
Raoul Walsh, Howard Hawks,
John Ford, Clint Eastwood,
and defended many French films.
Those by Claude Chabrol,
such as Le Boucher,
This Man Must Die, which I loved.
Sadly, we couldn't get the rights
for this project.
I adored Chabrol.
I was also fond of Eric Rohmer,
although we were not as close,
as Rohmer was so very reserved.
One day Rohmer asked me to narrate
La Boulangère de Monceau...
and dub Barbet Schroeder.
He had me rehearse over lunch
at the offices of the Cahiers,
asking me to speak very fast.
The shortbread
was as good as anywhere else.
It was factory-made
and easy to find.
But I could eat it in the quiet
street unobserved by Sylvie,
who might suddenly appear
out of the crowded market.
Besides, buying my cookie
had become a sort of ritual
between me
and the girl at the bakery.
His film described a neighborhood
I'd move to a few years later.
He told me,
"They say I'm a rightwing filmmaker."
40 francs.
"Yet I'm the only one
who gives the price of shortbread."
In my films there's a lot of talk.
I felt they'd be
less appreciated abroad.
Don't you think there's something
very French about your films?
Yes, I believe so.
I loved
Rohmer's way of speaking,
his unshakeable rigor,
his love for
and attention to the nuances
and beauties of the French language.
The only way to get to me
is through curiosity.
I wondered if the kid
wasn't making fun of me
playing out a scenario
of your devising.
When I kissed her the other day
to find out,
I really had to force myself.
When I took her hand,
not as I'd take the hand
of an old friend or a child,
I thought about the pleasure
of touching it,
and that bothered me.
We walked hand in hand,
and it weighed on me,
not like some sin,
but because
it was so pointless.
Pierre Rissient and I were known
as specialists of film noir,
and that's how Pierre
was contacted by Jacques Deray.
I'm New Wave
if it's because I'm 30 years old.
I'm not New Wave if that means
never having been on a set.
I became a director
by way of the traditional route:
assistant director.
We'd noticed Jacques Deray
one morning in 1962,
in February, I think,
when in the MGM screening room,
he showed Pierre and me
Rififi in Tokyo.
We were stunned
by this very powerful opening scene.
We handled most of his other films.
Especially La Piscine.
Deray was fond of crime stories.
He seemed to obey
the rules of the genre,
while insidiously bending them.
He had a very personal way
of taking over a set.
His reframings,
his slow tracking shots
magnified
Alain Delon and Romy Schneider,
whom he filmed
like two superb wildcats.
Jean-Paul!
I love you.
Don't be silly.
Among a group of people,
I recognized Albert Cossery,
a brilliant writer
whose novel La violence
et la dérision he wanted to adapt,
a caustic fable
on how to oppose dictatorship
by derision.
Jacques Deray was grumpy,
private and loyal,
like his hometown, Lyon.
He was loyal to his collaborators,
as Gilles Grangier had been to him.
Loyal to his screenwriters:
José Giovanni
and Jean-Claude Carrière.
Loyal to authors whose rights
he defended
at the Writers and Composers Guild
with Claude Sautet for many years.
And loyal to the Institut Lumière,
where he was
an indispensable vice-president.
Watching him argue, deliberate
and negotiate with politicians,
I understood how he could cope
with his producers on set.
Deray is immediately associated
with José Giovanni,
with whom we stayed in contact
since Classe tous risques.
When he started making films,
he called on us to promote them,
starting with La Loi du survivant,
an endearing film
and impossible to find.
José remained a brilliant
and effective screenwriter,
but he didn't always grasp
the importance of mise en scene,
which he confused with technique.
I remember that during the shooting
of Dernier domicile connu,
one of his best films,
watching the scene
when a hoodlum kills
the witness
the police were supposed to protect,
I told him to keep
almost the entire shot
in which Constantin
walks toward Aimé de March.
This one.
An incredibly effective shot.
Unfortunately,
he let the editor
chop it up
and trivialize the editing.
On the other hand,
he directed every second,
every gesture of this street fight,
which is masterfully filmed.
Lino and I worked out the scene.
We didn't want a stuntman to do it.
We wanted something nasty.
Lino is an actor...
You don't direct him.
I didn't.
With Lino I was an adapter,
a screenwriter.
We work
on the subject together.
When I have an idea,
I discuss it with him.
We're on the same wavelength.
He'll say,
"No, if I were playing that,
I wouldn't do it that way.
"I wouldn't open the door that way.
"I'd stand like this."
Then I'll get another idea,
and it all comes together.
He brings the character
to life for me.
My imagination
works in relation to him.
We've already made
6-8 films together.
Nor can I forget Yves Boisset,
who I knew at the Cinéma 59, 60,
and 61 film journals.
Yves, first co-author
of20 Ans de cinéma américain
with Jean-Pierre Coursodon,
in which I was only an associate.
In The Cop,
based on a Pierre Lesou novel,
who also wrote Le Doulos,
Boisset indulged in some in-jokes.
I want to speak to Tavernier.
Yes, Mr. Tavernier himself.
As Pierre Murat wrote in Télérama,
"The Cop describes
a dark, violent world
"with no illusions."
Second trip.
- Good luck, Dan.
- Good luck, Viletti.
To quote Pierre Murat again,
"The film enraged Raymond Marcellin,
"then Interior minister,
"who wanted it banned
and demanded cuts
"especially the last gunshot,
meant to suggest the cop's suicide."
Papa.
Look hard and never forget.
See,
that's a cop.
Bastard.
Barnero had kids, too.
Even today,
maybe more than before,
The Cop remains
a disturbing meditation
on the relation
between law and order.
Why won't you let up on him?
He didn't kill your friend.
You avenged Barnero,
like Dan avenged my brother.
But you have a badge,
you can carry a gun,
and you're a sworn official.
You're not an ordinary criminal,
Mr. Policeman.
A policeman's task
is not a noble task.
A properly functioning body
still produces waste
but it disposes of waste properly.
As for every disposal task,
the police task
must be accomplished swiftly,
neatly
and discreetly.
With his co-screenwriter
Claude Veillot,
Boisset considerably irked
the government,
and all those in power.
I admit to a fondness
for his anarchistic side,
which gives credence
to films like R.A.S.,
Allons z'enfants and Le Juge Fayard.
We also worked on many first films.
But we didn't just promote them.
We often got them released
in a small theater
or an exhibition chain.
For instance,
Le Temps de vivre, by Bernard Paul,
a communist director,
sadly forgotten,
was unable to find a theater.
We organized a screening
for Jean Renoir,
with the help of Françoise Arnoul,
the film's coproducer,
who had also designed
the sets and costumes.
Jean Renoir liked the film a lot.
So we set up a meeting
with Boris Gourevitch,
who owned the Lincoln theater
and several Latin Quarter screens,
and Marina Vlady,
who starred in the film.
They both started speaking Russian,
and within 30 minutes we had
theaters for Le Temps de vivre.
We then organized
a 40-city tour in the provinces
with Bernard Paul and Marina.
I often accompanied them.
It was the first time
a film was released in this manner.
It's ironic, when you hear
people complain
they have no time to enjoy life,
to make a film
about time to enjoy life.
For the reason you just gave,
in fact.
If people complain,
that means they have reasons to.
I think it's one
of the big problems today.
It's not a reaction
against those who want to enjoy life.
On the contrary, it's against
everything that prevents them.
I really want to see that film again.
Also Dernière sortie avant Roissy,
a premonitory chronicle
about life in the projects
that shared themes
with many films we promoted.
They shared
the same sense of protest,
not fashionable then,
and dissected a diffuse unrest
provoked by the excesses
of consumer society.
That was the case
with René Allio's Pierre et Paul,
a powerful, rigorous film.
He's a man who's over 40,
in full possession of his faculties,
in fine form,
who makes enough money
to buy the latest gadgets.
This is the model shown
to the potential consumer
that we all are.
This sudden awareness,
this revelation,
while it triggers a reexamination
of his relations with his father,
it also triggers panic
in the face of death.
When you see your death,
you sense what your life is like,
and when it's absurd,
you realize it.
We promoted all these militant films,
in tune with France and
the social realities of the 1960s.
I could add
Christian de Chalonge's O Salto
about Portuguese emigrant workers,
or Marin Karmitz's Coup pour coup.
Most of these films
have now disappeared,
as though wiped off the map.
I met Philippe Fourastié while
working for Georges de Beauregard.
He'd been Godard's assistant,
and went through the ringer
on the set of La 317ème Section.
There were no blanks,
they had to use real bullets.
But I got to know him best
when La Bande à Bonnot was released.
A film that hasn't aged badly.
Even if the mise en scene lacks edge,
its sincerity is moving.
It is embodied by
Philippe's anarchistic convictions.
He was a great friend
of Caussimon, Brel, Léo Ferré
and Céline's widow.
They're back,
behind celebrity faces:
Bonnot is Bruno Cremer.
Marie La Rouge, Annie Girardot.
Raymond La Science is Jacques Brel.
Let's look at our crimes.
Not Dieudonné's or the others'.
I mean Soudy, myself
and rest of the gang.
There was a cashier, cops,
the deputy police chief,
a few bourgeois.
But no workers or wretches!
Yes, I killed a police sergeant.
And you, how many Tonkinese?
You, how many negroes?
And you, stupid little steno,
how many have been beaten
to death here?
Do you note their screams
with exclamation points?
And Berthillon,
does your method identify bankers,
officers, company executives?
We have nothing to do
with people like you.
Placing the story in context,
you see that society
made them out as bandits
to discredit their politics,
as a political movement.
The film tries
to rehabilitate them as anarchists.
That's the aim.
Philippe Fourastié only made
two films and a TV series,
Mandrin.
He never managed to mount
his St. Francis of Assisi
he was working on with Léo Ferré.
One evening,
he invited us to dinner with friends,
and there,
he announced he had a brain tumor
and that he and his girlfriend
were off to Brittany
to die in solitude.
He wanted no witness,
and I don't think his death
was even announced
in the news or the trade papers.
Among the first films,
I'll mention the very original
and visually stunning
Remparts d'argile,
by Jean-Louis Bertuccelli,
based on an incident reported
by the sociologist Jean Duvignaud.
It deals with a strike.
A few workers in a palm grove
sit down one morning,
and the army intervenes.
The strike actually took place
in Tunisia,
but the film was shot in Algeria
due to censorship.
In these conditions, we won't work.
The film, magnificently photographed
by Andreas Winding,
has virtually no dialogue.
This lyrical, premonitory film
evokes women's roles
in North Africa,
a unique subject
never mentioned then.
Bertuccelli gives us
a magnificent portrait of a woman,
a woman
who during the strike,
becomes aware of her status
and, without warning, rebels.
No tirades, no pathos.
Simply a gesture.
Among the first films Pierre Rissient
and I fervently defended,
I have a special place
for L'Horizon by Jacques Rouffio,
that unlikely bear of a man,
surly, warm-hearted.
Rouffio moreover forms the link
between several films I've mentioned.
He was producer or production manager
for Bernard Paul and Giovanni,
and Jacques Deray's assistant.
L'Horizon was and remains
a magnificent film,
sensitive and deeply moving.
One of the best films
inspired by WWI,
which it tackles
obliquely, insidiously:
no battles, no trenches,
no heroism or savagery...
Your pass.
...but the difficult convalescence
of a wounded young soldier,
superbly played by Jacques Perrin,
who returns to his family
behind the lines.
Back wound?
No wonder we haven't reached Berlin.
Your pass.
The idea that prompted me
to make this film was based on
the reluctance of some soldiers
who'd been called up again
- not the career soldiers -
to go off to Algeria,
to fight a war
that had caught them off guard.
They thought
career soldiers might have to go,
but not them, as they'd been released
from their military obligations.
Well, well.
A little thinner, that's all.
Let's have a look at you.
A little thinner.
I'm not worried.
Madame Lafalette's cooking
will fatten him up again.
Rouffio, having found
in Georges Conchon, his screenwriter,
an ideal collaborator,
totally in symbiosis with his ideas,
without dramatic effects or slogans,
treated the theme of desertion
that terrified both the right
and the communists equally.
Antonin,
I don't want you to go back.
No matter the cost.
- We can't stop anything.
- We can, I tell you.
Going back or not,
it's all the same to me.
There's worse.
I don't get you.
The father was movingly played
by René Dary.
What's the matter, son?
Since you've been home,
we haven't had a decent conversation.
Why is that?
You don't want to?
No. And neither do you.
Why not?
Because of her?
Because of Elisa?
That made you mad, huh?
Don't be stupid.
It was especially a beautiful
love story with a heroine, Elisa,
played by Macha Méril,
a passionate, exacting young woman
who wanted her love
to equal her dreams.
Antonin?
Reading the paper?
It's she who persuades
the young soldier to desert.
I've waited for your answer
for a month. Do you realize?
And you read the paper
to the sound of machine gun fire.
This man's mad!
"War is a contagious disease
"that rots the whole nation."
- "We soldiers..."
- What about me?
You're afraid I'll influence you.
You must believe me.
Sure, I love you and I want you
to want the same as me.
But the main thing is
to help you see clearly.
When you do, it'll be easy.
Whatever you decide.
Can you see us in Spain
living in poverty?
Yes.
And in 10 years, 20 years,
after amnesty,
crossing the border with gray hair.
I can see us very well,
with a swarm of children
raised to love France,
speaking French like their parents,
because of that damned remorse
I could never rid you of.
But you see us afterwards...
L'Horizon almost was the victim
of the censors' wrath for defeatism,
as the Algerian War was near,
especially because of this strike
scene the poilus tried to impose.
Don't let the train leave!
Hold fast, guys.
Come on, guys.
Keep calm.
The police!
Damn, the police!
The police against us?
We've had it.
One of the tunes
written by Serge Gainsbourg
years later became his song "Elisa."
Female characters are also central
to Michel Deville's first films,
two bittersweet comedies,
that were clever, incisive, modern,
brilliantly scripted
by Nina Companeez.
Go ahead, Valérie.
It's not in the text.
Sorry, it's not.
We'll keep going.
Been here long?
Hardly. Only two or three hours.
But we're having fun, aren't we?
Gentlemen are strolling by.
Keeps you busy.
Nothing, no one.
What's their problem today?
A pity.
- I'd prepared something.
- What?
For instance, the guy comes up,
a pig, out of breath, flushed.
He says to me,
All by yourself?
Bored?
So I look at him.
And I say...
Sorry to interrupt.
Can you read that line
a little less like a society woman?
Look, sometimes it's hard to lie.
But at least when I speak,
I say exactly what I choose.
Not just something
going through my head.
I always tell myself,
I must find something of my own.
Because a lie is truly one's own.
What merit is there
in telling the truth?
That's lazy.
It comes spontaneously.
It's not funny, it's insipid.
Look, do me a favor:
try doing some exercises.
I know, turn my tongue seven times
before speaking.
No!
With that gimmick, you have an idea,
you look it over,
wrap it up, but let it out anyway.
You need to come up with another.
Lying takes practice,
and you need it.
You'll see, it's entertaining,
like a novel,
but instead of writing
what you make up, you live it.
I'm listening.
If I followed you,
I didn't want to lose sight of you,
perhaps put you out,
it's because for a long time now,
I've loved you.
You don't believe me?
I swear it's true.
You know
what my sister and I call you?
The Cid.
When I think of you,
I say...
Rodrigue.
You're amazing!
- I wondered what you'd dream up.
- Don't believe me?
Not one bit.
Accept it, Juliette. You have
a reputation in the building.
A reputation?
Every tenant
has received your attentions.
Your inventions, rather.
I was anxiously awaiting my turn.
It's unfair to be caught
at one's own game.
Pierre and I backed
a wide variety of directors,
from Ida Lupino
to Barbet Schroeder for More,
Raoul Walsh, Abraham Polonsky,
Jean Rouch for The Lion Hunters.
Early one Saturday morning,
the hunters get ready
to make the poison.
It's a very serious operation
that takes place
every four years,
and from which women are excluded.
They go off into the bush.
For that is where
bad things are made.
The hunters stop under a tree,
in the shade of which
generations of hunters
have made nadyi,
the poison for arrows.
I don't like to steal images.
Or rob people
of a piece of their life,
especially an essential piece.
I try to involve the people
with whom I make films.
They're part of an adventure
called a film.
They know we're filming them.
I ask them not to look at the camera.
- Can they?
- They can, I don't care.
The camera's there.
They look at the camera, and me.
And it's an adventure.
When the film's done,
I show them the rushes.
Then we decide what to do.
Here they said, "That won't do.
"We have to keep going.
We don't see enough lions.
"We'll look bad.
"Our wives already think
"we go to chase girls
in the next village.
"They'll say we're bad hunters."
So I had to do another year.
In the morning,
the trap is empty.
And there are tracks.
A lion's been caught.
Rouch's contagious warmth,
and his empathy with his characters
are palpable in every shot.
The hunters salute the lion.
Tahirou, their chief,
calms the young lion.
For it is not good
to kill an angry lion.
Tahirou slowly swings his ax
to-and-fro.
He speaks to the lion in his heart.
Yeya and Wongari chant
the hunters' song
and praise the young lion.
It wasn't hard to defend Rouch.
What was hard, though,
was to get paid, even a small amount,
by Pierre Braunberger.
Jean Aurenche
and Jean Anouilh both say
they saw him tear up and eat a check
he'd just made out to them
while continuing
to talk on the phone.
In a very different vein,
after watching
Les Aventures de Salavin,
we handled films
by Pierre Granier-Deferre,
an overly discreet filmmaker
and a very endearing man
whom I would become attached to.
Later on, he even asked me
to finish one of his films.
Pierre, who lived in pain,
spending much of his life
on the operating table,
had a great sense of humor
and derision.
That means I announce my flaws.
A sort of coldness, reserve,
intense modesty, profound humility,
which is totally absurd.
Unless it's an act.
But no, I really am that way.
He liked to put himself down.
Yet he imposed
a personal perspective,
and recorded urban upheavals
in the working-class suburbs
in Le Chat.
There's something
I need to know.
There's something important
I need to know.
Lay off me!
What'd I do wrong?
Nothing.
You've been perfect.
And I've been a bastard,
like all men.
I just can't stand the sight of you.
I said I'd love you forever.
I was wrong.
I've grown old,
and I don't love you anymore.
But I do.
Don't be ridiculous. Not at our age.
Time has separated us.
It will separate us for good one day.
I want it to be now.
Then kill yourself.
Jean Gabin didn't act with me
like with Grangier.
With Grangier he was exuberant.
He let himself go, took it easy.
With me he'd stiffen up,
get pinch-lipped, he'd be a block.
In La Horse or Le Chat, nothing.
It's unconscious imitation.
A director influences.
He has a great influence on actors.
They imitate a director as long as
there's a little personality,
like me.
If it's big, it's more impressive.
- What'd he say?
- Nothing.
I'll make something to eat.
- Listen...
- What?
You don't care
that your cat tried to kill me.
We're definitely beyond hope.
A beautiful, paradoxical love story,
as is La Veuve Couderc,
in which Delon
and Signoret are sensational.
Fine dialogue by Pascal Jardin.
I just wanted to say...
I was rough on her, wasn't I?
You were.
Maybe she's right to take advantage.
I don't know.
With her young girl's breasts.
Sometimes I envy her,
you understand?
Yes.
I also like those furtive moments
when he strays from the plot,
reinforced by the score
by Philippe Sarde,
who knew how to bring out
Granier's inner lyricism.
Gabin said of Granier
that he was a real director.
And Signoret saw him
as Becker's heir,
the same Protestant reserve,
the same lean narrative.
In any event,
he really taught me to direct actors.
During the first day of shooting
of La Veuve Couderc,
I think at Boulogne studios,
we were in the kitchen set
and Signoret questioned every prop:
"Is this skimmer the right period?
Is this stewpot not too rich?"
After an hour or two, she said,
"I'm ready. We can shoot."
You run after youth.
and when I yell, you tell the truth.
Granier said,
"No, something's missing.
"A touch of color.
I want strawberries."
30 minutes later,
he had his strawberries.
Granier and Simone
looked at each other.
She got the message.
There was someone in charge on set.
Where were you all night?
With Félicie.
You know that, so why ask?
What do you see in Félicie?
Her youth.
Jean Lavigne!
The farm's surrounded!
You have one minute
to come out with your hands up,
or we're coming in!
Anyone helping you
will be charged as an accessory.
You never said
your name was Lavigne.
I'd forgotten.
I cheated by pretending at the end
that it was a true story,
by giving the character a backstory.
Still, there were a few journalists
who, primed by Tavernier,
my press attaché,
and who had much more talent than I,
for that at least,
who said,
"Yes, I remember the Lavigne Affair."
It never existed!
Jardin and I invent the name,
figuring it would authenticate
La Veuve Couderc.
It worked on a few.
One of my best memories of that time:
L'Amour c'est gai,
l'amour c'est triste,
a gem directed
by Jean-Daniel Pollet,
brilliantly scripted by Remo Forlani.
A little tailor,
like someone out of a fairy tale,
masterfully played by Claude Melki,
serves as whipping boy
for the horrible Maxime,
a narrow-minded, macho pimp,
incredible Jean-Pierre Marielle.
I didn't say good evening.
Léon, do forgive me.
Good evening, Léon.
This is neat.
What is it, a sleeping bag?
A suit for Fat Momo.
It'll look great on Fat Momo.
Someone should count the number
of affronts, humiliations, slaps
he doles out
in remarkable sequence shots.
So, Chump, getting some air?
Hey, Maxime.
All going well?
Not well at all.
What's wrong?
Bardot dropped you?
Maybe the English can't cook.
But as for dress...
Bowler hats aren't my thing.
Maybe not,
but for looking smart...
Anyhow, the English are queers.
- Not all of them.
- Almost.
Was Churchill a queer?
Not him, but the others.
And Queen Elizabeth,
is she queer?
Queens are stupid.
Let me tell you, Maxime,
you reason like a communist.
That bother you?
Not really.
Let me ask you something.
Why not go live in Russia?
You could eat buckets of caviar.
I hear that over there, the caviar...
You're so dumb, Léon.
Too dumb.
Why's that?
If you weren't so dumb, I'd tell you.
If I weren't so dumb,
I wouldn't be too dumb.
What a dummy!
"The poison of
and the penchant for failure, "
as Lourcelles writes,
"in this unusual,
voluntarily theatrical film
"in which caricature, zaniness,
"sometimes seediness,
lyricism and unrealism,
"self-interest and improvisation,
"constantly mingle
and find an ideal setting."
You dance well.
In this setting,
Forlani's delightful dialogue
- he has a cameo -
and Melki's incredible face
work wonders.
Better master at home
than slave elsewhere.
And the little lady
who wasn't your lady?
She's in Morlaix.
She wrote Marie a postcard.
She has no time to write me.
She's busy with the grape harvest.
A real crunch.
Grape harvest, in Brittany? In April?
I guess so.
This journey through memory,
my own, and that of French film,
had to include Alain Resnais
who made memory
the driving force,
the inner movement, the backbone
of so many films,
so many masterpieces.
Starting of course with Night and Fog
whose mantra is "Remember."
Resnais and the deportee poet
Jean Cayrol
reiterate their refusal to forget.
By interweaving past and present
in the editing,
in response to the terrible images
of extermination
come these slow tracking shots,
underscored by Hanns Eisler's music
through the Polish countryside,
a world that seems
to have eradicated this past.
And the last lines
warn us against forgetting,
sadly, in a premonitory manner.
Somewhere in our midst,
there are lucky Kapos,
reinstated officers
and anonymous informers.
Those reluctant to believe.
Or only from time to time.
There are those of us
who look at these ruins today
as though the concentration monster
were buried beneath them.
Those who pretend to take hope again
as the image fades.
As if there were a cure
for the scourge of these camps.
Those who pretend all this happened
only once, in only one land.
Those who refuse to look around them.
Deaf to the incessant screams.
Night and Fog fought oblivion.
Toute la mémoire du monde
explores a place:
the Bibliothèque Nationale,
which was designed
to preserve this memory.
The Periodicals reading room
bears witness
to the ever-changing world.
Most of the world's newspapers
can be consulted here.
In the Prints Department,
every picture is stored,
be it an engraving,
a lithograph or a photograph.
This is a museum.
Another museum
is the Medals Department.
Louis XIV was the first
to gather together these treasures.
If a collection is incomplete,
it loses its value
so the slightest mistake
must be avoided.
This is a memory
before the digital era,
memory on paper,
which makes these admirable images
and long dolly shots
all the more precious.
Among these collections
was found Rimbaud's first writing,
published in an obscure journal
in the Ardennes.
Who knows what else
may come to light among these pages?
What will be the most reliable
testament to our civilization?
It was at the Vendôme,
a favorite cinema of mine
near the Opera,
and where I'd discovered
many Japanese films:
The Crab-Canners, Rashomon,
that I went several times to see
Hiroshima mon amour.
I was 18, and it left me speechless.
I went back three times,
deeply moved by this
strangely constructed love story,
its incantatory dialogue,
the mingling of intimate scenes
and archive footage.
You saw nothing in Hiroshima.
Nothing.
I saw everything.
I saw the hospital. I'm sure of it.
The hospital in Hiroshima exists.
How could I not have seen it?
You didn't see
any hospital in Hiroshima.
It also deals with the impossibility
of fictionalizing
the horrors of an atomic catastrophe.
Far from contrasting
a personal tragedy,
an unhappy love affair,
a shorn woman,
and a collective tragedy,
as claimed by some critics
acting like accountants,
Resnais and Duras cause us to feel
that the perception of this tragedy
also depends on these feelings,
individual suffering
that can sharpen or conceal it.
I admired these films,
and years after,
during Life and Nothing But,
I became great friends with Resnais,
whom I met through Sabine Azéma,
who was so brilliant in Mélo,
Smoking/No Smoking and Coeurs.
Magic moments were shared
with this sensitive,
incredibly erudite man.
Listening to him talk
about musical comedy
or Bob Hope was a sheer delight.
He was so passionate
and organized
- he'd unearth
the most surprising documents -
and so funny and reserved.
He directed you,
- I appeared in his Gershwin -,
with implacable gentleness,
and like Eric Rohmer,
he never used his status
to attack or criticize
other filmmakers.
A model of moral elegance.
To close this brief tribute,
I've chosen an admirable,
underrated film,
Je t'aime, je t'aime,
written by Jacques Sternberg,
which he defined
as a science fiction fairy tale.
You lie down.
We lock you in,
and you go back one year
to find yourself right here
one minute later.
Disappointed?
The idea of working
with Alain thrilled me.
I said I was very pleased,
but he told me,
"Claude, I must warn you,
"you won't be on screen."
I replied,
"Alain, with you, that's fine."
- Was it nice?
- Great.
Did you see a lot of fish?
Two sea snakes,
a few sharks, giant jellyfish.
Other than that, nothing special.
One day he called me,
8-10 days before shooting,
sounding distraught:
"Claude, I have a problem.
"I told you
"you wouldn't be on screen.
"Well, you will be.
"You'll be on screen all the time.
"I mean, it'll be you
"at the center of the image,
all the time."
Under dubious scientific auspices
an employee agrees to relive
a minute of happiness from his past.
But the machine goes haywire.
Ridder travels through his past
minute by minute.
Je t'aime, je t'aime is remarkable
for its euphoric inventiveness
with this speech on cats.
So man was created
just for the benefit of cats.
- Understand?
- Yes, I do.
The civilization we have built
has no other purpose
than to feed cats
and provide for their comfort.
For cats?
Exactly.
Man has invented thousands of things
only to produce objects
for cats' wellbeing.
Breton fishermen, cat litter trays,
rugs, cushions, radiators, bowls...
To think that for 100 million years
algae and mollusks ruled the Earth
and then reptiles dominated,
and at last, someone founded
this firm that employs me.
To think I'm rushing at
100,000 km/hour from birth to death
and that the world will turn
millions of years more without me...
Yet here I am on this fireball,
a pencil in hand
wondering how to convince a customer
that we're sorry
for losing a parcel
shipped on the 4th.
That we'll do our utmost...
How's it going?
Fine.
What the...?
What's that mouse doing here?
Did you say something?
No.
Its heartrending melancholy
grips you.
I'm going to die.
That's it.
Catrine,
do you understand?
You were right.
Regrets gradually replace
the moments of happiness.
As Gilles Deleuze wrote,
"Je t'aime, je t'aime
is one of those films
"that show how we inhabit time,
how we move in it,
"in this form that carries us away,
picks us up and broadens us."
I'd like to see the mouse again.
My journey through French cinema
has been an exercise
in admiration and gratitude
- the memory of the heart,
as H. C. Andersen puts it.
"When you drink from a well,
remember the well digger,"
says a Chinese proverb.
I have plunged into these very
contemporary films that have given me
joy, laughter, immeasurable emotion.
They shield us
against the tyranny of ignorance,
fanaticism, preconceived ideas.
And I wish to thank and celebrate
those who dug those wells,
those directors,
screenwriters,
composers,
actors
and actresses,
who, by taking me by the hand,
enabled me to discover, appreciate
and love France.
They gave me a taste for memory,
an essential rampart
against an era of tweets
and the tyranny of the present.
Reaching the end of this journey,
an end that leaves me
hungry for more,
I think of all the territories
I couldn't explore
with well-known directors
such as Verneuil, Christian-Jaque,
Louis Malle, Franju,
or forgotten, such as Faurez,
René Wheeler, Albert Valentin.
And all the films
I would have liked to show you:
André Berthomieu's Bal des Pompiers,
Jacques Constant's Campement 13,
Marcel Bluwal's Le Monte-charge
and Maurice de Canonge's
Police judiciaire.
And among all these films,
I still want to choose one,
as an example...
Don't try to understand.
This is between me and me.
And don't be afraid,
I'm just a revenant.
You're very beautiful,
but you don't remind me of anything.
Wasn't there a wall there once?
To conclude in style,
I chose Un Revenant, which I love.
One of Christian-Jaque's best films
with some of Henri Jeanson's
most brilliant dialogue.
My horizon, a still life.
And because it's a story about Lyon,
inspired by a crime in Lyon.
In my family,
we discussed it in a whisper:
the mysterious
and sordid "Gillet Affair,"
a crime committed
on the property of a very rich family
of silk merchants and bankers
in 1922,
that was totally quashed
by the courts and the press.
Christian-Jaque, Henri Jeanson
and Louis Chavance imagined
that the victim of the crime
came back twenty years later
to settle scores.
You're a master
at hushing things up,
my dear Jérôme.
Look at me!
I'm not making empty threats.
I'm capable of the worst.
The worst!
Now Jérôme, 20 years later,
you wouldn't
shoot your old friend a second time,
would you?
It would make too much noise.
I've become a celebrity.
I'd be too conspicuous a corpse.
They use the story
to paint a scathing picture
of Lyon's high society,
skewering their conformism,
their greed and their miserliness.
You have 150,000 in credit
at the jewelers.
You may choose the ring.
150,000 francs.
It's a sacrifice
but a good investment.
You'll honeymoon in Italy.
The exchange is in our favor.
Now let's eat.
- But Papa...
- What?
I don't love Gilberte.
Who asked you to love her?
Jouvet had returned from exile.
He'd gone to South America
to flee Vichy.
He gives an autobiographical edge
to the character's anger
and bitterness,
as well as to all those moments
when we see the real Jouvet at work.
Ladies, you may leave.
- Serge, leave me the stage, ok?
- Yes, boss.
Honegger!
- Rehearsing the orchestra tonight?
- Of course.
Francis!
I'll leave everything
to François.
He did something very kind,
and fell with elegance.
I enjoyed seeing you again.
And it was in this wonderful scene
with Marguerite Moreno
that Jouvet had the idea of casting
her in La Folle de Chaillot.
I'll see myself out.
I'm not that old.
By the way...
I'll tell you a secret.
Twenty years ago, Jérôme
was not very nice to you.
Not nice at all.
I just thought you should know.
Goodbye, Jean-Jacques.
You are perfect.
Just perfect.
So when do you leave?
This evening?
Bon voyage.
Subtitles:
Cynthia Schoch & Lenny Borger
Subtitling: ECLAIR
MY JOURNEY THROUGH FRENCH CINEMA
MY SIXTIES
When I left Georges de Beauregard
after a violent argument,
I was out of work.
Two days later,
I was contacted by Pierre Rissient
who had launched Joseph Losey
and revived Fritz Lang's
Hangmen Also Die.
He suggested I work with him
as freelance press attaché.
This partnership would last ten years
without the slightest argument
in perfect harmony.
I wanted the films to be released.
I fought for their success.
The latest crusade was Raoul Walsh.
I feel Raoul Walsh
has been badly underrated.
He's far better
than John Ford and Howard Hawks,
not to downgrade them.
But Walsh is a cut above.
I found it very unfair
he wasn't as well known.
Our rules were simple:
we promoted only films we liked,
foregrounded the artists,
their aesthetic and political
choices,
rather than stars
and production gossip.
That attitude for a press attaché
was quite new at the time,
almost revolutionary.
We handled
several Hollywood directors:
Raoul Walsh, Howard Hawks,
John Ford, Clint Eastwood,
and defended many French films.
Those by Claude Chabrol,
such as Le Boucher,
This Man Must Die, which I loved.
Sadly, we couldn't get the rights
for this project.
I adored Chabrol.
I was also fond of Eric Rohmer,
although we were not as close,
as Rohmer was so very reserved.
One day Rohmer asked me to narrate
La Boulangère de Monceau...
and dub Barbet Schroeder.
He had me rehearse over lunch
at the offices of the Cahiers,
asking me to speak very fast.
The shortbread
was as good as anywhere else.
It was factory-made
and easy to find.
But I could eat it in the quiet
street unobserved by Sylvie,
who might suddenly appear
out of the crowded market.
Besides, buying my cookie
had become a sort of ritual
between me
and the girl at the bakery.
His film described a neighborhood
I'd move to a few years later.
He told me,
"They say I'm a rightwing filmmaker."
40 francs.
"Yet I'm the only one
who gives the price of shortbread."
In my films there's a lot of talk.
I felt they'd be
less appreciated abroad.
Don't you think there's something
very French about your films?
Yes, I believe so.
I loved
Rohmer's way of speaking,
his unshakeable rigor,
his love for
and attention to the nuances
and beauties of the French language.
The only way to get to me
is through curiosity.
I wondered if the kid
wasn't making fun of me
playing out a scenario
of your devising.
When I kissed her the other day
to find out,
I really had to force myself.
When I took her hand,
not as I'd take the hand
of an old friend or a child,
I thought about the pleasure
of touching it,
and that bothered me.
We walked hand in hand,
and it weighed on me,
not like some sin,
but because
it was so pointless.
Pierre Rissient and I were known
as specialists of film noir,
and that's how Pierre
was contacted by Jacques Deray.
I'm New Wave
if it's because I'm 30 years old.
I'm not New Wave if that means
never having been on a set.
I became a director
by way of the traditional route:
assistant director.
We'd noticed Jacques Deray
one morning in 1962,
in February, I think,
when in the MGM screening room,
he showed Pierre and me
Rififi in Tokyo.
We were stunned
by this very powerful opening scene.
We handled most of his other films.
Especially La Piscine.
Deray was fond of crime stories.
He seemed to obey
the rules of the genre,
while insidiously bending them.
He had a very personal way
of taking over a set.
His reframings,
his slow tracking shots
magnified
Alain Delon and Romy Schneider,
whom he filmed
like two superb wildcats.
Jean-Paul!
I love you.
Don't be silly.
Among a group of people,
I recognized Albert Cossery,
a brilliant writer
whose novel La violence
et la dérision he wanted to adapt,
a caustic fable
on how to oppose dictatorship
by derision.
Jacques Deray was grumpy,
private and loyal,
like his hometown, Lyon.
He was loyal to his collaborators,
as Gilles Grangier had been to him.
Loyal to his screenwriters:
José Giovanni
and Jean-Claude Carrière.
Loyal to authors whose rights
he defended
at the Writers and Composers Guild
with Claude Sautet for many years.
And loyal to the Institut Lumière,
where he was
an indispensable vice-president.
Watching him argue, deliberate
and negotiate with politicians,
I understood how he could cope
with his producers on set.
Deray is immediately associated
with José Giovanni,
with whom we stayed in contact
since Classe tous risques.
When he started making films,
he called on us to promote them,
starting with La Loi du survivant,
an endearing film
and impossible to find.
José remained a brilliant
and effective screenwriter,
but he didn't always grasp
the importance of mise en scene,
which he confused with technique.
I remember that during the shooting
of Dernier domicile connu,
one of his best films,
watching the scene
when a hoodlum kills
the witness
the police were supposed to protect,
I told him to keep
almost the entire shot
in which Constantin
walks toward Aimé de March.
This one.
An incredibly effective shot.
Unfortunately,
he let the editor
chop it up
and trivialize the editing.
On the other hand,
he directed every second,
every gesture of this street fight,
which is masterfully filmed.
Lino and I worked out the scene.
We didn't want a stuntman to do it.
We wanted something nasty.
Lino is an actor...
You don't direct him.
I didn't.
With Lino I was an adapter,
a screenwriter.
We work
on the subject together.
When I have an idea,
I discuss it with him.
We're on the same wavelength.
He'll say,
"No, if I were playing that,
I wouldn't do it that way.
"I wouldn't open the door that way.
"I'd stand like this."
Then I'll get another idea,
and it all comes together.
He brings the character
to life for me.
My imagination
works in relation to him.
We've already made
6-8 films together.
Nor can I forget Yves Boisset,
who I knew at the Cinéma 59, 60,
and 61 film journals.
Yves, first co-author
of20 Ans de cinéma américain
with Jean-Pierre Coursodon,
in which I was only an associate.
In The Cop,
based on a Pierre Lesou novel,
who also wrote Le Doulos,
Boisset indulged in some in-jokes.
I want to speak to Tavernier.
Yes, Mr. Tavernier himself.
As Pierre Murat wrote in Télérama,
"The Cop describes
a dark, violent world
"with no illusions."
Second trip.
- Good luck, Dan.
- Good luck, Viletti.
To quote Pierre Murat again,
"The film enraged Raymond Marcellin,
"then Interior minister,
"who wanted it banned
and demanded cuts
"especially the last gunshot,
meant to suggest the cop's suicide."
Papa.
Look hard and never forget.
See,
that's a cop.
Bastard.
Barnero had kids, too.
Even today,
maybe more than before,
The Cop remains
a disturbing meditation
on the relation
between law and order.
Why won't you let up on him?
He didn't kill your friend.
You avenged Barnero,
like Dan avenged my brother.
But you have a badge,
you can carry a gun,
and you're a sworn official.
You're not an ordinary criminal,
Mr. Policeman.
A policeman's task
is not a noble task.
A properly functioning body
still produces waste
but it disposes of waste properly.
As for every disposal task,
the police task
must be accomplished swiftly,
neatly
and discreetly.
With his co-screenwriter
Claude Veillot,
Boisset considerably irked
the government,
and all those in power.
I admit to a fondness
for his anarchistic side,
which gives credence
to films like R.A.S.,
Allons z'enfants and Le Juge Fayard.
We also worked on many first films.
But we didn't just promote them.
We often got them released
in a small theater
or an exhibition chain.
For instance,
Le Temps de vivre, by Bernard Paul,
a communist director,
sadly forgotten,
was unable to find a theater.
We organized a screening
for Jean Renoir,
with the help of Françoise Arnoul,
the film's coproducer,
who had also designed
the sets and costumes.
Jean Renoir liked the film a lot.
So we set up a meeting
with Boris Gourevitch,
who owned the Lincoln theater
and several Latin Quarter screens,
and Marina Vlady,
who starred in the film.
They both started speaking Russian,
and within 30 minutes we had
theaters for Le Temps de vivre.
We then organized
a 40-city tour in the provinces
with Bernard Paul and Marina.
I often accompanied them.
It was the first time
a film was released in this manner.
It's ironic, when you hear
people complain
they have no time to enjoy life,
to make a film
about time to enjoy life.
For the reason you just gave,
in fact.
If people complain,
that means they have reasons to.
I think it's one
of the big problems today.
It's not a reaction
against those who want to enjoy life.
On the contrary, it's against
everything that prevents them.
I really want to see that film again.
Also Dernière sortie avant Roissy,
a premonitory chronicle
about life in the projects
that shared themes
with many films we promoted.
They shared
the same sense of protest,
not fashionable then,
and dissected a diffuse unrest
provoked by the excesses
of consumer society.
That was the case
with René Allio's Pierre et Paul,
a powerful, rigorous film.
He's a man who's over 40,
in full possession of his faculties,
in fine form,
who makes enough money
to buy the latest gadgets.
This is the model shown
to the potential consumer
that we all are.
This sudden awareness,
this revelation,
while it triggers a reexamination
of his relations with his father,
it also triggers panic
in the face of death.
When you see your death,
you sense what your life is like,
and when it's absurd,
you realize it.
We promoted all these militant films,
in tune with France and
the social realities of the 1960s.
I could add
Christian de Chalonge's O Salto
about Portuguese emigrant workers,
or Marin Karmitz's Coup pour coup.
Most of these films
have now disappeared,
as though wiped off the map.
I met Philippe Fourastié while
working for Georges de Beauregard.
He'd been Godard's assistant,
and went through the ringer
on the set of La 317ème Section.
There were no blanks,
they had to use real bullets.
But I got to know him best
when La Bande à Bonnot was released.
A film that hasn't aged badly.
Even if the mise en scene lacks edge,
its sincerity is moving.
It is embodied by
Philippe's anarchistic convictions.
He was a great friend
of Caussimon, Brel, Léo Ferré
and Céline's widow.
They're back,
behind celebrity faces:
Bonnot is Bruno Cremer.
Marie La Rouge, Annie Girardot.
Raymond La Science is Jacques Brel.
Let's look at our crimes.
Not Dieudonné's or the others'.
I mean Soudy, myself
and rest of the gang.
There was a cashier, cops,
the deputy police chief,
a few bourgeois.
But no workers or wretches!
Yes, I killed a police sergeant.
And you, how many Tonkinese?
You, how many negroes?
And you, stupid little steno,
how many have been beaten
to death here?
Do you note their screams
with exclamation points?
And Berthillon,
does your method identify bankers,
officers, company executives?
We have nothing to do
with people like you.
Placing the story in context,
you see that society
made them out as bandits
to discredit their politics,
as a political movement.
The film tries
to rehabilitate them as anarchists.
That's the aim.
Philippe Fourastié only made
two films and a TV series,
Mandrin.
He never managed to mount
his St. Francis of Assisi
he was working on with Léo Ferré.
One evening,
he invited us to dinner with friends,
and there,
he announced he had a brain tumor
and that he and his girlfriend
were off to Brittany
to die in solitude.
He wanted no witness,
and I don't think his death
was even announced
in the news or the trade papers.
Among the first films,
I'll mention the very original
and visually stunning
Remparts d'argile,
by Jean-Louis Bertuccelli,
based on an incident reported
by the sociologist Jean Duvignaud.
It deals with a strike.
A few workers in a palm grove
sit down one morning,
and the army intervenes.
The strike actually took place
in Tunisia,
but the film was shot in Algeria
due to censorship.
In these conditions, we won't work.
The film, magnificently photographed
by Andreas Winding,
has virtually no dialogue.
This lyrical, premonitory film
evokes women's roles
in North Africa,
a unique subject
never mentioned then.
Bertuccelli gives us
a magnificent portrait of a woman,
a woman
who during the strike,
becomes aware of her status
and, without warning, rebels.
No tirades, no pathos.
Simply a gesture.
Among the first films Pierre Rissient
and I fervently defended,
I have a special place
for L'Horizon by Jacques Rouffio,
that unlikely bear of a man,
surly, warm-hearted.
Rouffio moreover forms the link
between several films I've mentioned.
He was producer or production manager
for Bernard Paul and Giovanni,
and Jacques Deray's assistant.
L'Horizon was and remains
a magnificent film,
sensitive and deeply moving.
One of the best films
inspired by WWI,
which it tackles
obliquely, insidiously:
no battles, no trenches,
no heroism or savagery...
Your pass.
...but the difficult convalescence
of a wounded young soldier,
superbly played by Jacques Perrin,
who returns to his family
behind the lines.
Back wound?
No wonder we haven't reached Berlin.
Your pass.
The idea that prompted me
to make this film was based on
the reluctance of some soldiers
who'd been called up again
- not the career soldiers -
to go off to Algeria,
to fight a war
that had caught them off guard.
They thought
career soldiers might have to go,
but not them, as they'd been released
from their military obligations.
Well, well.
A little thinner, that's all.
Let's have a look at you.
A little thinner.
I'm not worried.
Madame Lafalette's cooking
will fatten him up again.
Rouffio, having found
in Georges Conchon, his screenwriter,
an ideal collaborator,
totally in symbiosis with his ideas,
without dramatic effects or slogans,
treated the theme of desertion
that terrified both the right
and the communists equally.
Antonin,
I don't want you to go back.
No matter the cost.
- We can't stop anything.
- We can, I tell you.
Going back or not,
it's all the same to me.
There's worse.
I don't get you.
The father was movingly played
by René Dary.
What's the matter, son?
Since you've been home,
we haven't had a decent conversation.
Why is that?
You don't want to?
No. And neither do you.
Why not?
Because of her?
Because of Elisa?
That made you mad, huh?
Don't be stupid.
It was especially a beautiful
love story with a heroine, Elisa,
played by Macha Méril,
a passionate, exacting young woman
who wanted her love
to equal her dreams.
Antonin?
Reading the paper?
It's she who persuades
the young soldier to desert.
I've waited for your answer
for a month. Do you realize?
And you read the paper
to the sound of machine gun fire.
This man's mad!
"War is a contagious disease
"that rots the whole nation."
- "We soldiers..."
- What about me?
You're afraid I'll influence you.
You must believe me.
Sure, I love you and I want you
to want the same as me.
But the main thing is
to help you see clearly.
When you do, it'll be easy.
Whatever you decide.
Can you see us in Spain
living in poverty?
Yes.
And in 10 years, 20 years,
after amnesty,
crossing the border with gray hair.
I can see us very well,
with a swarm of children
raised to love France,
speaking French like their parents,
because of that damned remorse
I could never rid you of.
But you see us afterwards...
L'Horizon almost was the victim
of the censors' wrath for defeatism,
as the Algerian War was near,
especially because of this strike
scene the poilus tried to impose.
Don't let the train leave!
Hold fast, guys.
Come on, guys.
Keep calm.
The police!
Damn, the police!
The police against us?
We've had it.
One of the tunes
written by Serge Gainsbourg
years later became his song "Elisa."
Female characters are also central
to Michel Deville's first films,
two bittersweet comedies,
that were clever, incisive, modern,
brilliantly scripted
by Nina Companeez.
Go ahead, Valérie.
It's not in the text.
Sorry, it's not.
We'll keep going.
Been here long?
Hardly. Only two or three hours.
But we're having fun, aren't we?
Gentlemen are strolling by.
Keeps you busy.
Nothing, no one.
What's their problem today?
A pity.
- I'd prepared something.
- What?
For instance, the guy comes up,
a pig, out of breath, flushed.
He says to me,
All by yourself?
Bored?
So I look at him.
And I say...
Sorry to interrupt.
Can you read that line
a little less like a society woman?
Look, sometimes it's hard to lie.
But at least when I speak,
I say exactly what I choose.
Not just something
going through my head.
I always tell myself,
I must find something of my own.
Because a lie is truly one's own.
What merit is there
in telling the truth?
That's lazy.
It comes spontaneously.
It's not funny, it's insipid.
Look, do me a favor:
try doing some exercises.
I know, turn my tongue seven times
before speaking.
No!
With that gimmick, you have an idea,
you look it over,
wrap it up, but let it out anyway.
You need to come up with another.
Lying takes practice,
and you need it.
You'll see, it's entertaining,
like a novel,
but instead of writing
what you make up, you live it.
I'm listening.
If I followed you,
I didn't want to lose sight of you,
perhaps put you out,
it's because for a long time now,
I've loved you.
You don't believe me?
I swear it's true.
You know
what my sister and I call you?
The Cid.
When I think of you,
I say...
Rodrigue.
You're amazing!
- I wondered what you'd dream up.
- Don't believe me?
Not one bit.
Accept it, Juliette. You have
a reputation in the building.
A reputation?
Every tenant
has received your attentions.
Your inventions, rather.
I was anxiously awaiting my turn.
It's unfair to be caught
at one's own game.
Pierre and I backed
a wide variety of directors,
from Ida Lupino
to Barbet Schroeder for More,
Raoul Walsh, Abraham Polonsky,
Jean Rouch for The Lion Hunters.
Early one Saturday morning,
the hunters get ready
to make the poison.
It's a very serious operation
that takes place
every four years,
and from which women are excluded.
They go off into the bush.
For that is where
bad things are made.
The hunters stop under a tree,
in the shade of which
generations of hunters
have made nadyi,
the poison for arrows.
I don't like to steal images.
Or rob people
of a piece of their life,
especially an essential piece.
I try to involve the people
with whom I make films.
They're part of an adventure
called a film.
They know we're filming them.
I ask them not to look at the camera.
- Can they?
- They can, I don't care.
The camera's there.
They look at the camera, and me.
And it's an adventure.
When the film's done,
I show them the rushes.
Then we decide what to do.
Here they said, "That won't do.
"We have to keep going.
We don't see enough lions.
"We'll look bad.
"Our wives already think
"we go to chase girls
in the next village.
"They'll say we're bad hunters."
So I had to do another year.
In the morning,
the trap is empty.
And there are tracks.
A lion's been caught.
Rouch's contagious warmth,
and his empathy with his characters
are palpable in every shot.
The hunters salute the lion.
Tahirou, their chief,
calms the young lion.
For it is not good
to kill an angry lion.
Tahirou slowly swings his ax
to-and-fro.
He speaks to the lion in his heart.
Yeya and Wongari chant
the hunters' song
and praise the young lion.
It wasn't hard to defend Rouch.
What was hard, though,
was to get paid, even a small amount,
by Pierre Braunberger.
Jean Aurenche
and Jean Anouilh both say
they saw him tear up and eat a check
he'd just made out to them
while continuing
to talk on the phone.
In a very different vein,
after watching
Les Aventures de Salavin,
we handled films
by Pierre Granier-Deferre,
an overly discreet filmmaker
and a very endearing man
whom I would become attached to.
Later on, he even asked me
to finish one of his films.
Pierre, who lived in pain,
spending much of his life
on the operating table,
had a great sense of humor
and derision.
That means I announce my flaws.
A sort of coldness, reserve,
intense modesty, profound humility,
which is totally absurd.
Unless it's an act.
But no, I really am that way.
He liked to put himself down.
Yet he imposed
a personal perspective,
and recorded urban upheavals
in the working-class suburbs
in Le Chat.
There's something
I need to know.
There's something important
I need to know.
Lay off me!
What'd I do wrong?
Nothing.
You've been perfect.
And I've been a bastard,
like all men.
I just can't stand the sight of you.
I said I'd love you forever.
I was wrong.
I've grown old,
and I don't love you anymore.
But I do.
Don't be ridiculous. Not at our age.
Time has separated us.
It will separate us for good one day.
I want it to be now.
Then kill yourself.
Jean Gabin didn't act with me
like with Grangier.
With Grangier he was exuberant.
He let himself go, took it easy.
With me he'd stiffen up,
get pinch-lipped, he'd be a block.
In La Horse or Le Chat, nothing.
It's unconscious imitation.
A director influences.
He has a great influence on actors.
They imitate a director as long as
there's a little personality,
like me.
If it's big, it's more impressive.
- What'd he say?
- Nothing.
I'll make something to eat.
- Listen...
- What?
You don't care
that your cat tried to kill me.
We're definitely beyond hope.
A beautiful, paradoxical love story,
as is La Veuve Couderc,
in which Delon
and Signoret are sensational.
Fine dialogue by Pascal Jardin.
I just wanted to say...
I was rough on her, wasn't I?
You were.
Maybe she's right to take advantage.
I don't know.
With her young girl's breasts.
Sometimes I envy her,
you understand?
Yes.
I also like those furtive moments
when he strays from the plot,
reinforced by the score
by Philippe Sarde,
who knew how to bring out
Granier's inner lyricism.
Gabin said of Granier
that he was a real director.
And Signoret saw him
as Becker's heir,
the same Protestant reserve,
the same lean narrative.
In any event,
he really taught me to direct actors.
During the first day of shooting
of La Veuve Couderc,
I think at Boulogne studios,
we were in the kitchen set
and Signoret questioned every prop:
"Is this skimmer the right period?
Is this stewpot not too rich?"
After an hour or two, she said,
"I'm ready. We can shoot."
You run after youth.
and when I yell, you tell the truth.
Granier said,
"No, something's missing.
"A touch of color.
I want strawberries."
30 minutes later,
he had his strawberries.
Granier and Simone
looked at each other.
She got the message.
There was someone in charge on set.
Where were you all night?
With Félicie.
You know that, so why ask?
What do you see in Félicie?
Her youth.
Jean Lavigne!
The farm's surrounded!
You have one minute
to come out with your hands up,
or we're coming in!
Anyone helping you
will be charged as an accessory.
You never said
your name was Lavigne.
I'd forgotten.
I cheated by pretending at the end
that it was a true story,
by giving the character a backstory.
Still, there were a few journalists
who, primed by Tavernier,
my press attaché,
and who had much more talent than I,
for that at least,
who said,
"Yes, I remember the Lavigne Affair."
It never existed!
Jardin and I invent the name,
figuring it would authenticate
La Veuve Couderc.
It worked on a few.
One of my best memories of that time:
L'Amour c'est gai,
l'amour c'est triste,
a gem directed
by Jean-Daniel Pollet,
brilliantly scripted by Remo Forlani.
A little tailor,
like someone out of a fairy tale,
masterfully played by Claude Melki,
serves as whipping boy
for the horrible Maxime,
a narrow-minded, macho pimp,
incredible Jean-Pierre Marielle.
I didn't say good evening.
Léon, do forgive me.
Good evening, Léon.
This is neat.
What is it, a sleeping bag?
A suit for Fat Momo.
It'll look great on Fat Momo.
Someone should count the number
of affronts, humiliations, slaps
he doles out
in remarkable sequence shots.
So, Chump, getting some air?
Hey, Maxime.
All going well?
Not well at all.
What's wrong?
Bardot dropped you?
Maybe the English can't cook.
But as for dress...
Bowler hats aren't my thing.
Maybe not,
but for looking smart...
Anyhow, the English are queers.
- Not all of them.
- Almost.
Was Churchill a queer?
Not him, but the others.
And Queen Elizabeth,
is she queer?
Queens are stupid.
Let me tell you, Maxime,
you reason like a communist.
That bother you?
Not really.
Let me ask you something.
Why not go live in Russia?
You could eat buckets of caviar.
I hear that over there, the caviar...
You're so dumb, Léon.
Too dumb.
Why's that?
If you weren't so dumb, I'd tell you.
If I weren't so dumb,
I wouldn't be too dumb.
What a dummy!
"The poison of
and the penchant for failure, "
as Lourcelles writes,
"in this unusual,
voluntarily theatrical film
"in which caricature, zaniness,
"sometimes seediness,
lyricism and unrealism,
"self-interest and improvisation,
"constantly mingle
and find an ideal setting."
You dance well.
In this setting,
Forlani's delightful dialogue
- he has a cameo -
and Melki's incredible face
work wonders.
Better master at home
than slave elsewhere.
And the little lady
who wasn't your lady?
She's in Morlaix.
She wrote Marie a postcard.
She has no time to write me.
She's busy with the grape harvest.
A real crunch.
Grape harvest, in Brittany? In April?
I guess so.
This journey through memory,
my own, and that of French film,
had to include Alain Resnais
who made memory
the driving force,
the inner movement, the backbone
of so many films,
so many masterpieces.
Starting of course with Night and Fog
whose mantra is "Remember."
Resnais and the deportee poet
Jean Cayrol
reiterate their refusal to forget.
By interweaving past and present
in the editing,
in response to the terrible images
of extermination
come these slow tracking shots,
underscored by Hanns Eisler's music
through the Polish countryside,
a world that seems
to have eradicated this past.
And the last lines
warn us against forgetting,
sadly, in a premonitory manner.
Somewhere in our midst,
there are lucky Kapos,
reinstated officers
and anonymous informers.
Those reluctant to believe.
Or only from time to time.
There are those of us
who look at these ruins today
as though the concentration monster
were buried beneath them.
Those who pretend to take hope again
as the image fades.
As if there were a cure
for the scourge of these camps.
Those who pretend all this happened
only once, in only one land.
Those who refuse to look around them.
Deaf to the incessant screams.
Night and Fog fought oblivion.
Toute la mémoire du monde
explores a place:
the Bibliothèque Nationale,
which was designed
to preserve this memory.
The Periodicals reading room
bears witness
to the ever-changing world.
Most of the world's newspapers
can be consulted here.
In the Prints Department,
every picture is stored,
be it an engraving,
a lithograph or a photograph.
This is a museum.
Another museum
is the Medals Department.
Louis XIV was the first
to gather together these treasures.
If a collection is incomplete,
it loses its value
so the slightest mistake
must be avoided.
This is a memory
before the digital era,
memory on paper,
which makes these admirable images
and long dolly shots
all the more precious.
Among these collections
was found Rimbaud's first writing,
published in an obscure journal
in the Ardennes.
Who knows what else
may come to light among these pages?
What will be the most reliable
testament to our civilization?
It was at the Vendôme,
a favorite cinema of mine
near the Opera,
and where I'd discovered
many Japanese films:
The Crab-Canners, Rashomon,
that I went several times to see
Hiroshima mon amour.
I was 18, and it left me speechless.
I went back three times,
deeply moved by this
strangely constructed love story,
its incantatory dialogue,
the mingling of intimate scenes
and archive footage.
You saw nothing in Hiroshima.
Nothing.
I saw everything.
I saw the hospital. I'm sure of it.
The hospital in Hiroshima exists.
How could I not have seen it?
You didn't see
any hospital in Hiroshima.
It also deals with the impossibility
of fictionalizing
the horrors of an atomic catastrophe.
Far from contrasting
a personal tragedy,
an unhappy love affair,
a shorn woman,
and a collective tragedy,
as claimed by some critics
acting like accountants,
Resnais and Duras cause us to feel
that the perception of this tragedy
also depends on these feelings,
individual suffering
that can sharpen or conceal it.
I admired these films,
and years after,
during Life and Nothing But,
I became great friends with Resnais,
whom I met through Sabine Azéma,
who was so brilliant in Mélo,
Smoking/No Smoking and Coeurs.
Magic moments were shared
with this sensitive,
incredibly erudite man.
Listening to him talk
about musical comedy
or Bob Hope was a sheer delight.
He was so passionate
and organized
- he'd unearth
the most surprising documents -
and so funny and reserved.
He directed you,
- I appeared in his Gershwin -,
with implacable gentleness,
and like Eric Rohmer,
he never used his status
to attack or criticize
other filmmakers.
A model of moral elegance.
To close this brief tribute,
I've chosen an admirable,
underrated film,
Je t'aime, je t'aime,
written by Jacques Sternberg,
which he defined
as a science fiction fairy tale.
You lie down.
We lock you in,
and you go back one year
to find yourself right here
one minute later.
Disappointed?
The idea of working
with Alain thrilled me.
I said I was very pleased,
but he told me,
"Claude, I must warn you,
"you won't be on screen."
I replied,
"Alain, with you, that's fine."
- Was it nice?
- Great.
Did you see a lot of fish?
Two sea snakes,
a few sharks, giant jellyfish.
Other than that, nothing special.
One day he called me,
8-10 days before shooting,
sounding distraught:
"Claude, I have a problem.
"I told you
"you wouldn't be on screen.
"Well, you will be.
"You'll be on screen all the time.
"I mean, it'll be you
"at the center of the image,
all the time."
Under dubious scientific auspices
an employee agrees to relive
a minute of happiness from his past.
But the machine goes haywire.
Ridder travels through his past
minute by minute.
Je t'aime, je t'aime is remarkable
for its euphoric inventiveness
with this speech on cats.
So man was created
just for the benefit of cats.
- Understand?
- Yes, I do.
The civilization we have built
has no other purpose
than to feed cats
and provide for their comfort.
For cats?
Exactly.
Man has invented thousands of things
only to produce objects
for cats' wellbeing.
Breton fishermen, cat litter trays,
rugs, cushions, radiators, bowls...
To think that for 100 million years
algae and mollusks ruled the Earth
and then reptiles dominated,
and at last, someone founded
this firm that employs me.
To think I'm rushing at
100,000 km/hour from birth to death
and that the world will turn
millions of years more without me...
Yet here I am on this fireball,
a pencil in hand
wondering how to convince a customer
that we're sorry
for losing a parcel
shipped on the 4th.
That we'll do our utmost...
How's it going?
Fine.
What the...?
What's that mouse doing here?
Did you say something?
No.
Its heartrending melancholy
grips you.
I'm going to die.
That's it.
Catrine,
do you understand?
You were right.
Regrets gradually replace
the moments of happiness.
As Gilles Deleuze wrote,
"Je t'aime, je t'aime
is one of those films
"that show how we inhabit time,
how we move in it,
"in this form that carries us away,
picks us up and broadens us."
I'd like to see the mouse again.
My journey through French cinema
has been an exercise
in admiration and gratitude
- the memory of the heart,
as H. C. Andersen puts it.
"When you drink from a well,
remember the well digger,"
says a Chinese proverb.
I have plunged into these very
contemporary films that have given me
joy, laughter, immeasurable emotion.
They shield us
against the tyranny of ignorance,
fanaticism, preconceived ideas.
And I wish to thank and celebrate
those who dug those wells,
those directors,
screenwriters,
composers,
actors
and actresses,
who, by taking me by the hand,
enabled me to discover, appreciate
and love France.
They gave me a taste for memory,
an essential rampart
against an era of tweets
and the tyranny of the present.
Reaching the end of this journey,
an end that leaves me
hungry for more,
I think of all the territories
I couldn't explore
with well-known directors
such as Verneuil, Christian-Jaque,
Louis Malle, Franju,
or forgotten, such as Faurez,
René Wheeler, Albert Valentin.
And all the films
I would have liked to show you:
André Berthomieu's Bal des Pompiers,
Jacques Constant's Campement 13,
Marcel Bluwal's Le Monte-charge
and Maurice de Canonge's
Police judiciaire.
And among all these films,
I still want to choose one,
as an example...
Don't try to understand.
This is between me and me.
And don't be afraid,
I'm just a revenant.
You're very beautiful,
but you don't remind me of anything.
Wasn't there a wall there once?
To conclude in style,
I chose Un Revenant, which I love.
One of Christian-Jaque's best films
with some of Henri Jeanson's
most brilliant dialogue.
My horizon, a still life.
And because it's a story about Lyon,
inspired by a crime in Lyon.
In my family,
we discussed it in a whisper:
the mysterious
and sordid "Gillet Affair,"
a crime committed
on the property of a very rich family
of silk merchants and bankers
in 1922,
that was totally quashed
by the courts and the press.
Christian-Jaque, Henri Jeanson
and Louis Chavance imagined
that the victim of the crime
came back twenty years later
to settle scores.
You're a master
at hushing things up,
my dear Jérôme.
Look at me!
I'm not making empty threats.
I'm capable of the worst.
The worst!
Now Jérôme, 20 years later,
you wouldn't
shoot your old friend a second time,
would you?
It would make too much noise.
I've become a celebrity.
I'd be too conspicuous a corpse.
They use the story
to paint a scathing picture
of Lyon's high society,
skewering their conformism,
their greed and their miserliness.
You have 150,000 in credit
at the jewelers.
You may choose the ring.
150,000 francs.
It's a sacrifice
but a good investment.
You'll honeymoon in Italy.
The exchange is in our favor.
Now let's eat.
- But Papa...
- What?
I don't love Gilberte.
Who asked you to love her?
Jouvet had returned from exile.
He'd gone to South America
to flee Vichy.
He gives an autobiographical edge
to the character's anger
and bitterness,
as well as to all those moments
when we see the real Jouvet at work.
Ladies, you may leave.
- Serge, leave me the stage, ok?
- Yes, boss.
Honegger!
- Rehearsing the orchestra tonight?
- Of course.
Francis!
I'll leave everything
to François.
He did something very kind,
and fell with elegance.
I enjoyed seeing you again.
And it was in this wonderful scene
with Marguerite Moreno
that Jouvet had the idea of casting
her in La Folle de Chaillot.
I'll see myself out.
I'm not that old.
By the way...
I'll tell you a secret.
Twenty years ago, Jérôme
was not very nice to you.
Not nice at all.
I just thought you should know.
Goodbye, Jean-Jacques.
You are perfect.
Just perfect.
So when do you leave?
This evening?
Bon voyage.
Subtitles:
Cynthia Schoch & Lenny Borger
Subtitling: ECLAIR