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My stomach is turning

I have a weak throat
My stomach is too low

And my ribs are too high
My hips are fighting

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OK. Sit down, dear sir.

Sit down.

An eccentric, disturbing

filmmaker,

a great inventor of forms,

the sparkling Alain Resnais

left a permanent mark
in the New Wave's shadow

which made him

one of the fathers of European
cinematographic modernity.

With Same Old Song,

Smoking / No Smoking,

L'année dernière à Marienbad,

Hiroshima, mon amour,

he cast his incredulous child's eyes

in a world of escheat

ready to question everything,

reinvent everything.

There, perfect.

Refusing television broadcast
out of emotion,

which made him lose his ways,

he fed a process in austerity.

His personal archives,
largely unpublished,

enable us to re-read the career
of this fantastic adventurer,

that of a man in a depressive world,

looking to take control
of his emotions,

make the choice of joy,
of knowledge.

A flamboyant career,

in the search of happiness.

ALAIN RESNAIS
THE AUDACIOUS

Alain Resnais was born in Vannes,
on June 3, 1922,

in Morbihan.

Who chose this unique fertilizer?
Chance.

My family destined me
to a career as a pharmacist,

as my father and grandfather
were pharmacists.

Each of these cells
is a real miniature world.

They contain particles in constant
number, chromosomes,

which are the main creators
of heredity.

They decide each
of our personalities.

But the child's survival was quickly

compromised by
breathing difficulties.

I remember a doctor saying
to my family...

It was in the room next door.
I was sick.

He said a sentence
that must have shocked me,

which was: "You won't get him up."

Well. I was seven,

but I knew that he was
a very pessimistic doctor

and it didn't bother me.

Asthmatic, only being able to sleep
seated,

the young Resnais was removed
from school at nine

and continued studies at home.

I was quite unwell.

I was more a dreamer

and I compensated for

my health problems by reading a lot.

ALAIN RESNAIS'S ARCHIVES

Attracted by image,

the young Resnais initiated himself
to photography early.

A habit he would keep his whole life,

using it almost like a notebook.

There were moments
in the Morbihan Gulf...

I really liked

landing on an island.
Especially that. I loved it.

His parents hoped he would
be disciplined,

with good grades, playing piano
and going to church.

They were quickly disillusioned.

The child liked dreaming
he was a billionaire and an orphan.

He played heating sand with friends,

to try and make glass,
like the Egyptians,

he liked strange castles
and eccentric aristocrats,

cartoon strips, but not
the discoveries of Harry Dickson,

that he removed, too scary.

I always have this feeling
each time I read a newspaper,

each time I meet people
who have certainties,

that the essential is elsewhere,

that explains the feeling of dead-end
in which we are.

In fact, I think
he experienced difference

extremely early.

Between being sick,

the fact he was hypersensitive,
super shy

and not wanting to be
a pharmacist at all.

From the moment
of the first experience

and when you don't die,

you become someone particular.

The world in Alain Resnais's eyes.

I spent my whole childhood

with one single desire.
That of going to Paris.

For me, Paris was a sort of paradise,

perhaps because of gardens
like Buttes-Chaumont.

Perhaps also because of
the thousands of cinemas,

which I felt populated the capital,

and hundreds of posters
that I saw on walls.

Being a child, I was fascinated

by all the worlds I met

and the one I clearly didn't know
at all

was that of theater.

When I discovered that the people
in this world

were much nicer, more open, happier,

sensitive to everything,
curious about everything,

I wanted to become an actor.

Despite his desire to overcome
his introversion,

the panic attacks he had

pushed him to choose
a less-exposed profession.

I lacked control in everything I did

and I thought it better
to renounce it.

Under the advice of a girlfriend,

he oriented himself toward mountains.

Some of my friends,
who taught at IDHEC,

were a bit confused.

They said: "This boy, it's a shame.

"He's smart, he's cultivated,

"he's sensitive,
but he'll do nothing in cinema."

Because when we went into his shell,

as he was at the time,
it seemed quite hard.

No, Resnais wasn't at all
sure of himself.

And he didn't love himself.

He declared that one day,

that he hated himself.

Each time there was a big test...

WRITER

...it gave him energy.

It was touching even.

"I like beings who struggle to live,

"who accept life as it is,"

he noted in his notebooks.

Yes.

He said that, if he had to write
his biography,

he would have called it
Traveling uncomfortably,

as he was always uncomfortable.

I never wanted to be a director.

I never had the idea
of becoming a director.

I would have also agreed to be
chief operator.

I would have even accepted
sound technician,

if I'd had the chance.

The main thing, for me,
was being in the world.

Mounter, assistant,

Resnais created, in his free time,
little films in 16mm.

As I was unemployed in montage,

I couldn't refuse a short film.

I made a few films in 16mm,
like little reports

in the private world.

VAN GOGH
SILENT ORIGINAL VERSION, 1947

His portrait of Van Gogh
drew attention

out of a strange use of paintings,

in a narrative way.

Blurry, out of the frame, superposed.

These enthusiastic experiments

earned him the Oscar
for best short film

in 1950.

Which was a very bad omen
for its director,

if he didn't want to
broadcast himself.

And even worse for his parents.

In my family, cinema was badly seen.
Yes, that's what was funny.

Cinema was something
not very serious.

Not only not serious,

but that hurt France a lot,

because people wasted time
going to cinema.

I remember a lot of conversations

of this type and so, if I tried
to make an 8-mm,

I associated myself
with all these little thugs,

all these people who wasted time,

instead of doing noble
and useful things to the nation,

by going to the cinema.

Doing that wasn't much better.

But it wasn't to demotivate him.

Resnais conceived a feeling
against this suffocating world

from which he heard, all his

childhood, only patriotic,
warmonger things,

favorable to the fascist forces
in Spain,

until his readings, in 1937,

in favor of the Republic,

marked the awakening
of his critical spirit.

"Then, when Hitler prohibited
Mickey Mouse

"and when Mussolini seized
Flash Gordon,

"I understood the meaning
of dictatorships

"and I chose my camp."

Sensitive to the oppressed,

his fantasy hurtled toward the
reality of a mean and unfair world.

Sure he wouldn't be satisfied,

he approached the future
great director Chris Marker,

with whom was born an artistic
and political emulation.

AN EMPIRE OF 100 MILLION PEOPLE

While in 1950,

France continued to impose
colonial domination by force,

Resnais and Marker accepted an order
on African art.

A dream opportunity

to explicitly attack,
but with shapes,

this unworthy influence.

It's that we're the Martians
of Africa.

We arrive from our planet,

with our ways of seeing,

with our white magic
and with our machines.

Cheerful music, scholarship,

chiseled language.

The attack hit.

All this dominated by white man
who sees things at his height

and rises above the contradictions
of reality.

From this height, Africa
is a wonderful laboratory,

where, despite a few losses,
the good negro

dreamed of by the white man
are patiently made.

An immense provocation,

while French colonies already started
to rebel.

The film was prohibited for 10 years.

Yes, but he said he was shy,

but he was nervy,

that is, a bit provocative.

He had to overcome this.

When he treated a subject,
he didn't do it half-heartedly.

But it's true that he was
a sensitive person,

who let people speak.
Often, in conversations,

I was uncomfortable
because there were others speaking

while it would have been better
to let him speak.

But he was very respectful
of everyone

and he didn't want to impose himself.

He imposed himself via his work.

This climate of bullying and threats

led the negro artist
to a new metamorphosis

and in the ring, in his orchestra,

his role was to give shots that
his brother received in the street.

Often, it was new and unexpected,

in its construction, its shape.

Resnais found his way.

That of an extremely elegant,
inventive

cinematography, of the worst
diversions of the century.

I think it's one of
the characteristics of cinema,

manipulating time.

The Jean-Vigo prize was just awarded
to Mr. Alain Resnais

and Chris Marker
for Statues Also Die.

He had stage fright.
Alain Resnais was consecrated.

The rumor spread about this
brilliant young filmmaker,

who knew how to refine
abrasive subjects.

It was the start of a prosperous

period, where Resnais made
three senseless films,

that documented an essential part
of contemporary discomfort.

While he always gave the impression
of apologizing for being there,

not daring to introduce himself

as a director, the young man
was propelled

as one of the major figures
of French cinema.

June 9, 1955, Combat title:

Alain Resnais
on the quest of difficulties.

In a society still traumatized
by its collapse

and its mistakes during World War 2,

which was trying to find itself
in a form of forgetting, of lies

and of a blind race
to material comfort,

Alain Resnais accepted an order
on the explosive subject,

judged until then
impossible to represent,

concentration camps.

NIGHT AND FOG
1955

1933.

The machine starts.

No film has had as much effect
on me as Night and Fog.

It took a nation
without a wrong note.

I realized with over 60 years
of distance.

We knew of concentration camps,

even at high school, in Germany.

We spoke about it,

but without much precision.

Work starts.

A concentration camp is built
like a stadium or a hotel,

with entrepreneurs, quotes,
competition,

undoubtedly with bribes.

No style imposed. It's left to
the imagination.

Alpine style,

garage style,

Japanese style.

No style.

Architects calmy invent
these porches,

destined to be crossed just once.

Resnais analyzed for the first time,

with rigor and detail,

the concentration machine

in which he made sure he included
the matter, still poorly known,

of extermination.

It's a film that was made
in a state of vertigo.

Each night, I had nightmares
and I woke up screaming.

First look on the camp.
It's another planet.

Under its hygienic excuse,
the nudity of the first shock

delivered to the camp
an already humiliated,

shaven,

tattooed,

numbered man.

Far from limiting himself
to a description of facts,

Resnais chose to alter his narration

with the use of
a political script and music...

"I'm not responsible," says the Kapo,

...which gives a magnitude, a breath.

"I'm not responsible,"
says the officer.

I'm not responsible.

So, who is responsible?

What's incredible in the film

is what it doesn't say.
The documents speak for themselves.

Simply aligning the documents,

that would have been too much.

We went to see the remainder
of a camp and I thought:

I have an idea that will seem crazy.

I want to make it in color
and black and white simultaneously.

This reality of camps was so in vain

that on our tour,
we try to discover the remains.

Refusing to limit himself
to archives,

Resnais made the audacious choice
of contemporary filming.

At the time of speaking,

the cold swamp water and ruins
fill the gaps in mass graves,

a cold and opaque water,
like our bad memory.

I felt that we couldn't
only suggest this horror.

We had to let the spectator's
imagination work.

Nine million deaths haunt
this landscape.

All the possible procedures.

There is us, who watch
these ruins sincerely,

as if the old concentration monster
died

on the debris,

that we pretend to hope
in front of this disappearing image,

as if we were recovering
from the concentration plague.

We who pretend to believe
that all this is from one time

and one country,

and who don't think to look
all around us

and who can't hear
the endless screaming.

FILM DIRECTOR

I feel like in Alain Resnais's work,

since Night and Fog,

the idea of representing
the unrepresentable,

like the great tragedies
of the 20th century,

of trying to find a form
to suggest the unspeakable

is the starting point
of his approach to cinema.

The paradox of cinema he plays at
is always absence.

There's always absence.

We see in his work,
in his first films,

with his taste for
these long tracking shots,

this way of scrutinizing facades

as if he was constantly asking:
"What can we see?"

How to go beyond the surface
of things?

How to go deeper?

How to find a truth in this place?

This constant aspiration
to see and understand

is remarkable.

For me, that's cinema.

Someone who presents us the world
through their eyes

and wonders.

What is the meaning of all this?
What does this mean?

All while knowing that

nothing is clear,
that there's always a form

of understanding beyond us.

Showing humility toward what we tell,

not trying to impose
a totalitarian vision,

where we think we know everything,

but remaining on a human scale.

There's already a catastrophe.

The eviction of Alain Resnais's film
Night and Fog

dedicated to death camps,

set off a wave of protests.

A measure called diplomatic

on which we don't have to comment
here.

The protest that was in reality
censorship,

would crystallize on the image
of a French policeman,

surveying the Pithiviers camp.

It would become emblematic
of what France wanted to hide.

Its participation
in the concentration process.

Dauman told me:

"I don't regret having produced
this film.

"I'm proud, but I can guarantee you
that it will always remain hidden.

"No cinema will agree to play it."

He was so wrong.

Prohibited short films
in censored short films,

Alain Resnais was finally able
to access long films

with the even more taboo project
of the atomic bomb,

on its controversial use
by American forces

during World War 2,

which led to, in Hiroshima,
the massacre of civilian populations.

But Resnais

didn't see what a new documentary
could bring.

He declined. It wasn't possible.

This difficulty would become
the subject of the film.

You haven't seen anything
in Hiroshima. Nothing.

I've seen everything. Everything.

The whole first part of
Hiroshima, mon amour, at the museum,

questions our capacity to understand
the events

from objects,

from documentaries or a fiction.

Does it let us get closer
to the truth?

Beyond suffering.

Does it enlighten us on the context?

What does that mean?

Then it goes into a poetic form,

to try and go even deeper.

It was less physical in the female

character to awaken
the trauma of an old love.

A German soldier died in her arms
in the Liberation.

A woman's voice takes over.
Calm, motivational.

-I've seen everything.
-No, you haven't.

Nothing.

Too marginal to hope
to interest established directors,

Resnais turned toward
a totally novice writer

in screenwriting.

Marguerite Duras.

Resnais's work,
it's always the meeting

of Resnais and a big writer.

Who's called Chris Marker, Queneau

or all those who worked with him.

Hello, Alain Resnais. How are you?

I've finished the recording.

I'll send it to you continuously
in two days.

I think of you a lot.

They asked me, like everyone I think,

to write a few scenes in the week,

and to record it on tape.

And after, he listened
to these tapes in the dark.

He said that as long as
he visualized the film, everything

was fine and when we couldn't see,

there was a problem,
he had to work on it.

They're together, naked, in a bed.

It's after love.

Was he French, the man you loved
during the war?

In Nevers.

Resnais asked me

to describe the film
before he made it.

Dear Marguerite Duras,

I won't forget these strange days
spent in my room

in the company of your voice.

It was strangely moving for me,

your magneto phone letter.

I decided to play it every night
during filming.

Affectionately, Alain.

I meet you.

I remember you.

My passion for Marguerite Duras

came from the musicality
of her style.

You're killing me.
You're good for me.

I'm only speaking about the physical
effect on the spectators.

We calmed down.

We're calm.

How would I have known

that this city is made
in the size of love?

How would I have known

that you were made in my soul's size?

I like you.

What an event.

There's a sort of prestige
in all this. Undoubtedly.

In any case, cinema has
something magical,

where you feel good.
Because what we're

looking for is to hypnotize
the spectator.

He really entered my universe,

completely. As completely
as is possible.

Resnais has a sort of facility
of attention,

that is extravagant, extraordinary.

Resnais noted the words
by the script,

what I said, what I did.

And so the legend of Resnais
the technician was born,

director of a film he refused
to be the author of.

A provocation he devoted

to himself in this rare interview.

I think it's just a problem
of realism

and perhaps even of lucidity.

I don't consider myself
a film writer.

I consider myself a director

and I take the responsibility
of the director.

But his correspondence with Duras
shows a very different reality,

that of a writer as courteous
as he is demanding

and who doesn't hesitate to modify
the text as much as needed.

I would like Riva to respond.

I'd like to mention...

Would it be possible to simplify?

Perhaps cut?

The response still seems ambiguous.
Still not satisfied.

I'm a pain, right?

I'm still as obsessive.

His notebooks are full
of interrogations,

doubts that would make
anyone renounce doing the film.

Unclear, laborious, too far.

Hostile reading result.

Section. Were we right to abandon?

Resnais noted everything.

He ran directing ideas
past other directors.

Lesson from Visconti, from Clément,
from Becker.

His writings revealed an extremely
meticulous, pensive

director,

sometimes on only sensitive
or sensorial things,

like the breathing of lovers,

to which he preferred
the noise of a comb,

hair, wind.

Patiently, after synthesizing,
copying,

certainties emerged.

A Nevers and Hiroshima mix.

I want to avoid a return
to the classic.

His ambition was to work rhymes

and he already renounced the exact
reconstitution of the past.

Who knows how many times
I'll modify my memories?

One of my favorite sequences
in cinema

is the night stroll
in Hiroshima, mon amour,

of the two characters,

wandering in the streets
of Hiroshima,

where the scenes are shared
between that of Nevers in France,

where Emmanuelle Riva's character
spent her childhood.

This way in which time and space mix

is really unique.

This film really is a central work
in 20th century art.

I think I'll continue to watch it
again and again,

until I die.

But, upsetting order,

the film started a violent polemic
in Cannes.

"Awful," the president of the jury
stated. "It's shit."

We're not even at the arguments.

We're simply at the stage of insults.

But...

That's all it took to
artificially place the UFO Resnais

at the head of the bow
of an entire generation.

It bothers me to speak about
affinities between Alain Resnais

and I, because I truly consider him
the uncontested master

not only of young French cinema,

but of French cinema, period.

Hiroshima, mon amour was the most
influential French film.

It's very difficult to envisage
other films

with classic narration procedures.

Hiroshima was brandished a bit like
the flag.

The flag of a new generation,

in any case of French film.

Resnais was he who knew things.

We were amateurs.

Him, not at all. We hid behind him.

I didn't think I was part
of the movement.

I was carried by the New Wave.
No doubt.

Film is of capital importance.

It's thanks to this generation
that producers trusted him

to do long films.

TRIALS
L'ANNÉE DERNIÈRE À MARIENBAD, 1961

Resnais,

who did the casting
in his own apartment,

rue des Plantes,
with actress Delphine Seyrig,

had no intention
of closing off in a group,

nor in political or past subjects.

While we've always celebrated
Alain Resnais in form

and a cerebral side, a bit of having
treated this or that subject,

I've always seen the opposite.
I've always seen a sensitive man.

Everything was thought out,

but not coldly, not cerebrally.

I tend to always leave primality
to a certain instinct.

Rather than logical reasoning.

I tried to put as much
unconscious as possible.

Resnais wanted to explore
a new cinema,

without real history,

based only on sensations,

that would be totally open
to interpretation,

like music.

And so was born an incredible
cinematographic adventure,

that of L'Année dernière à Marienbad,

that propelled Resnais to the top
of global cinema.

We hoped that after Hiroshima,
he would do

something that would enter
more in the system.

It turned out that Resnais,
to the contrary, accentuated

the formal character of his research.

The film was made on snippets
of situations.

Remember.

It was at night. The last one,
undoubtedly.

In a Baroque castle,
where a feeling of threat existed,

where inhabitants, half petrified,
live as recluses,

a man tries to convince his wife

of the reality of his memory,

that of their passionate relationship
the year before.

I don't know what room you speak of.

I was never with you in a room.

You don't want to remember,

because you're afraid.

Without real dramatic progression,

the events repeat indefinitely.

As if we were stuck in time,

after a trauma.

At the center of his attention

dominated the fantastic figure
of Delphine Seyrig,

who Resnais patiently transformed

into this feverish
and evaporated icon.

Between them, the work was naturally
fed by seduction

and desire.

In a traumatized
and incoherent world,

desire seemed to be the only energy
possible to move ahead.

Resnais wasn't beautiful,
but he was very charming

and it was a charm that everyone
was sensitive to.

He didn't play that.

He wasn't someone who...
No, not at all.

I found he was of a great simplicity.

Actually, if he was sure
of his charm,

he wouldn't have been so uncertain.

No.

Far too atypical to be consensual,

the film became an object of fashion

and intense controversies.

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL, 1961

During, at least,
the first 45 minutes

of the Venice projection,

the audience reacted very badly,

punctuating each of the film's lines

with great laughter,

to the point where I turned around

to the festival organizers and said:

"I think here, we just suffered
for 40 minutes

"and we better get the audience
happy again and stop the film."

And suddenly,

some of the spectators

started applauding very violently

and the other part of the audience
quietened down

and the last 45 minutes of the film

continued in absolute silence.

And after, we had the Lion d'or.

L'Année dernière à Marienbad.

The film is today considered cult.

And so went Alain Resnais's destiny,

who systematically had to face
hostility

in order to be recognized.

I had a bit of the taste
of the precipice

and we walk very close to the cave.

It leaves a stronger memory.

But at the same time,

there are no more prudent,
timid, more timorous than me.

So it's quite funny.
There's this double trend.

But it's true that I'm more
stimulated by a film

that will cause formal problems.

I can't think

that we can make an emotion born
in the spectator

if there isn't an exact, decided,

intentional form.

There's a chemical box,
Chemical 2000.

There's a sort of Resnais 2000

in all his films.

He had very strong intuition,

but he also questioned himself.

It became the result of experience.

We'll see what it makes,
the future film.

What effect will it have

if we show only moments
of problems or agitation,

if the voice was off,

if we mixed two completely
different scenes?

He stimulated his entire team.

The more different it was,
the more he liked it.

I was fascinated by the idea
of working with Alain,

but he told me: "Wait, Claude,
I need to warn you.

"We won't see you on the screen.

"The camera will be you.

"We'll see you simply

"when you go in front of the mirror."

I said: "Look, I hope there are
many mirrors.

"But, Alain, with you,

"it's very good."

On the other, there is simply
my taste as a spectator.

I go to the cinema.

It's true that I like
having surprises.

But the rising economic pressure

made the cinema industry
less and less open to iconoclasts.

Weakened by the failure of his film
I Love You, I Love You,

released in 1968,

Resnais took off for New York
in search of a second wind,

and started a hard desert crossing.

For nearly five years,
I wasn't able to work.

We started with an idea.

We saw that when the idea developed,

that it would become
too expensive a film,

that we couldn't reasonably
produce it.

In debt,

Resnais survived thanks to
the generosity of friends.

I feel like life is such
a mysterious, obscure

or absurd thing,

I'll let you decide the adjective,

that I feel a bit like a swimmer

who doesn't know how to swim

in a sea that doesn't take him
very far

and who has to fight so as not
to drown.

But every day.

To stem this loss of confidence,
of joy,

a monastic life was organized,

centered exclusively on work.

Resnais owed his comfort
to the presence of Florence Malraux,

the daughter of
the minister of culture de Gaulle,

particularly sensitive to
artists' lives.

She was his assistant since
l'Année dernière à Marienbad

and admitted to falling in love
with him

due to Night and Fog.

They got married in secret
at the New York consulate,

by choosing two anonymous people
in the crowd as witnesses.

While his asthma problems had been
fixed for a long time,

Resnais still had fragile health.

He was easily tired,

drank huge amounts of coffee
to fight against his narcolepsy.

And even if Florence tried
to be the interface

with the world to calm him,

Resnais started, he himself said,
to worry

as soon as he got up at 5 a.m.

Except when he filmed, when
he woke up and worried from 4 a.m.

It was the case, fortunately,
when he returned

to France, where thanks to

Jean Paul Belmondo and his agent,
Gérard Lebovici, who continued

to trust him, Resnais made
his comeback with Stavisky.

Jean Paul Belmondo was Stavisky,

a film by Alain Resnais, who
returned after five years of silence.

And especially, Providence

which once again aroused interest.

A transition period,

which documented
his reconstruction process.

We'll speak about daily life again.

The essential was managing
to survive.

Still as eager to change life,

but disappointed by politics,

Resnais dove into a great free spirit

by reading scientific works.

He became convinced

that the revolution isn't
against someone,

it's for us to do.

"Dream and revolution," he pleaded,
"are the same thing."

So here, I'm forced
to allude to Henri Laborit.

While the result of Laborit's works
is exact,

it seems as though, when we have
a leak of imagination,

it's first of all a way to survive.

Imagination will enable life
to be prolonged.

As he read a certain number
of my books,

and that he found better,

he said: "I have a debt
of recognition to you,

"given that I'm depressive."

I can't keep it

for me,
I have to let these notions out.

Look.

Science is the key to happiness.

-You're crazy.
-And he continues.

That's what Resnais offered,

by confronting fictional characters

with scientific theories.

Bastard. Thug.

Damn.

In this third situation,

the rat will face another rat,

who will be his opponent.

This fight is absolutely useless.

It didn't enable him
to avoid punishment,

but he acts. He will be
in very good state.

And in man,

social laws prohibit
this defensive violence in general.

The worker, who sees his boss
every day,

whose head he can't remember,

he can't break his face,

as agents will be sent.

And we need...

He can't flee, he'll be jobless.

And every day of the week,

every week of the months, every month

of the year, all these years,

he's unable to act.

Acting to survive.

That's the moral.

Aggression can be a solution
from a biological point of view,

but Resnais suggested another.
The action of the brain.

Fantasy. Dream.

Imagination is perhaps

the only way to bear life

to remain balanced
during an existence.

Are there great people?

As our instincts are
completely child-like,

even if our reasoning is adult,

we remain children all our existence.

He was lighter and lighter, yes,

the more films he did

and as life went on.

It was as if he reappeared

as the child he must have been,

as the spectator who went to see
his first theater piece

at Madeleine theater and elsewhere,
to see Guitry or Bernstein.

And he was like a happy child,
ready to have fun.

He didn't really have...

He wasn't really allowed
to be a child.

He gave himself the luxury
of becoming a child around 70.

"A successful life is an idea
of youth

"completed at a ripe age,"
thought Resnais.

His parents prohibited

him from seeing adaptations of
Not on the Lips and Mélo

when he was small.

"We could say while joking,"
he continued,

"that I made these films because
it's the only way to see the plays

"and people do them for me."

It something I like a lot.

-Perhaps it's late.
-So what?

I never sleep. You must sleep a lot.

I'll play as much as you like.

It's true that there is a change.

It's uncontestable.

And it really happened, I think,
from Mélo.

From Mélo, he entered
into something else.

He joined this world

he dreamed of, that of theater.

He joined it as a screenwriter.

He was a bit frightening.

You get us out of these stories.

Yvonne, give me this plate.

And especially these judgments.

Didn't you pay for our head?

I would have liked to direct
a theater group.

I really like seeing actors

transform, renew

and also recognize them.

-Your tea, ma'am.
-I don't want it.

I just had one.

I have no other way to speak to you.

-Your pastry.
-I wrote a word for you.

They need to see me serving you.

No. I don't want it.

I've had three cups. I don't want it.

I'll drown myself.

Don't be stupid.
Serve me a small cup.

-I love you.
-In the cup.

I know you love me, but...
In the cup.

-I'd give my life for you.
-Look... yes.

You're not a waiter.

I don't know. Try to do something.

I feel like they know.

Taking the opposite views
of all attempts,

Resnais joined the unappreciated
genre of filmed theater,

giving him an unexpected joy,

a modernity even, in the way
he did things.

No more jumps back in time
for montages, virtuoso but broken,

the opaque recitals.

Now, intrigue became more limpid,
the plans lengthened,

the camera focused
on his new priority.

What a funny moment.

The performance of actors.

Well, I'm waiting for him.

But he did something else,

because there was an encounter
that took place,

with what we could call
Resnais comedy.

He called it that himself.

That is, Dussollier, Azéma

and I.

To a friend who marveled
at finding Sabine Azéma wonderful,

Alain Resnais responded maliciously:

"I'm very happy that you think that."

A circumlocution
for this thoughtful artist

whose life and cinema
were completely upended,

electrocuted by the presence
of this enthusiastic young woman,

full of life.

Get out of there, Rowena.

I'll get out when you say:
"I want a poem."

The most mysterious
thing about existence

is why you meet a person

and they become essential to you,

you obsess over them.

She was able to see me, listen to me.
She calmed my fear.

Fountain of soul.

No, stop. We're going.

It was to us he said:
"Man is in despair.

"Man is bad.

"Man is only disappointment and lies,

"but he has an extraordinary power

"or a curse. He gets attached"

She would be his last wife

and the center of gravity
of the joyful group,

the subject of all the experiments,

of the rediscovery of unfashionable

writers
and iconoclastic propositions.

How am I? Am I good?

Yes, much better.

-Ah really?
-Yes.

He fled fashions.

I often see that
in self-taught people.

People interested in everything,

as much as in radishes
as in cellphones

or American politics
or whatever other story.

So he was always surprising.

I would struggle if you stopped.

It was in Same Old Song
that it struck me the most.

I'm sad for no reason.
It makes me even sadder.

Résiste

SAME OLD SONG, 1997

Prove that you exist

Look for your happiness everywhere

Go, refuse this selfish world

Same Old Song,
the idea was wonderful.

The song is part of our lives
and through a film like that,

he gave a place to song,
it was worth lines.

What is that fool doing?

He told of situations
and states of souls.

What, my face?
What's wrong with my face?

It was much more evocative

than if they'd said that
with words and sentences.

She won't come back to you

No tone. The phone is disconnected.

Everyone, after this film came out...

I saw in young screenwriters' eyes:

"Why didn't I think that?"

There too, it's a game
with bad taste.

Popular song,

considered as a completely minor art.

And he said, for him,

that it could have an impact
on your life

greater than
a fascinating philosopher.

But well,

suddenly, you're in a certain state,

and you hear a song
with simple lyrics.

I came to tell you I'm leaving

And your tears can't change anything

It will move you and have a consoling

or stimulating effect
on your emotions.

That was his starting point.

I always like to make believe
that I'm in control.

The film describes
a joyous back-and-forth

of lost people...

Well, it's a fail.

...looking for a difficult balance.

You want me to give my opinion?

I prefer you like this.
This is really you.

This is really you.

I wanted to call it
Songs while depressed,

because the people he describes
are people fighting,

in order to be

the least sad possible.

I can feel, I can feel

I can feel that it's you

I can feel

I can feel that it's you

Resnais took his thoughts
on social conditioning,

initiated in My American Uncle,

and on the utility of culture,

as an element of emotional mediation.

I think that, very often,
we don't express our thoughts.

We're very limited

by the dominating thought,

by our education,
by what is correct, incorrect,

the social mask,

and so we have more difficulty
expressing our real desire,

even knowing it before expressing it.

These songs, that's more
what it meant for us.

It goes and it returns

It's made from little nothings

Alain Resnais...

...for Hiroshima, mon amour.

It would be Alain Resnais's
biggest success,

which celebrated his 75th birthday

and his last original screenplay.

The more time went on,
the more hurried he was.

He went toward existing scripts,
theater pieces.

On the quay, the Malaquais quay

At 23, you enter straight

To the left, you turn around
It's the door to the heart

There is no mistake
Next to that of a frame-maker

In Alain Resnais's archives,
this citation:

"Like all animated images,
theater is temporary.

"I see, I enjoy and it's over.

"It's lost forever, will have
been seen for nothing.

"May nothing let us forget

"the joy of theater.

"This fact is worse
than the worst defeat."

Producers, sometimes, with him,
were disconcerted

because he told of the film

and then there were these jellyfish,

this illness at work,

that festered,
that contaminated the film.

There was always a ghost in Resnais.

There was always a cold wind.

And for that,

Ayckbourn, for example, is a writer
similar to him.

Who's there, Lionel?

Who have you brought?

It's OK, Dad. Don't worry.

Under extremely light
and funny appearances,

as his pieces are funny,
but there was this darkness.

-My father.
-Yes.

Is it one of your girls again?

Lionel, I'm talking to you.

-Sorry, he's a bit...
-It's OK.

I hope she has a nice ass.

-Not like the last one.
-Don't worry.

Cœurs, which is a piece by Ayckbourn,

the producers or others
thought it was a comedy,

but it came out as a bit
of a twilight film.

There was something a bit dark
deep down.

But at the same time,
there was a fun form,

as you have to escape in jokes,

in laughs, in lightness,

in pirouettes.

-Hello.
-Hi. It's me.

What were you watching?

I'm watching the football.

Football? But you hate it.

As I never felt

that my films were easy

regarding exploitation,

I want to say

that for the 50-or-so years
I've worked in cinema,

what surprises me

is that they were,
more or less, accepted.

He was afraid of doing
one film too many.

I heard him say that.

Ten.

At the same time,
he always had ideas.

That's what was extremely moving.

Very moving.

Even physically less impressive,

he had many ideas.
He wanted to make films.

He had many ideas, many plans.

It's the difference

between the physical capacity
to do things

and everything we can have
in our head.

Swear you'll never leave me.

I'm thinking of a quote
from an American writer:

"What a strange feeling to age,
for a little boy."

Does the brain still work completely?

The brain itself seems to be
the most solid thing,

at the end of the day, in the body.
It's quite curious.

Consciousness is perhaps
the last thing to leave.

Let's go.

Go.

LIFE OF RILEY, 2014

Death, in itself, can't frighten.

One's own death can't frighten.
It's the death of others,

the death of loved ones,
that is terrifying.

-Hello?
-Lambert Wilson?

Speaking.

I'm calling to give you
some sad news.

At over 90 years old,

Resnais, still fantastic,
played with his own death.

The rule was that actors

play a film as themselves.

I asked them to come
as they would have reacted

if one of their familiar writers,

who they loved a lot, died,

in the same outfit
they'd come to the funeral.

And there, I respected
the documentary side.

It was, clearly, very fun to do.

So, she said to dad:

"Life isn't a novel."

Life isn't a novel?

When I was a child, my father
always told me: "Careful,

"enjoy your childhood.
Later, you'll be a student,

"you'll eat beef with rabies.

"Don't forget that life
isn't a novel."

What does that mean?

We'll understand later.

"I've lived my life perfectly
and I've discovered

"that childhood isn't the best age
in life,

"that student life wasn't so bad

"and that beef with rabies

"was better than what we ate at home.

"So yes, life is a novel."

We might not have realized
at the time,

but we had so much fun.

We had so much fun.

I think... That's all Folks.

Pat Anderson
Subtitling: Hiventy by TransPerfect