Original subtitles

Imagine you're at the movies.

My Journey Through French Cinema

Something unites Bertrand and me:

we are both children of the Liberation

and the Cinémathèque. -Jean-Luc Godard

It may have all begun in this park,

where the house l was born in once stood.

I filmed Philippe Noiret here,

looking for his past like I am now...

and my father, too, to hear about his war years,

and about Louis Aragon, whom my parents had hid for months,

and who wrote "There Is No Happy Love" for my mother.

Aragon played a role in my life

when l defended Godard's Pierrot le fou.

But let's not go too fast.

It was here, the house I lived in.

It was here, in this park,

in the house that stood there,

that those first images fired my imagination.

I especially remember one afternoon,

my parents took me out to the terrace that overlooked Lyon.

I was three years old. It was September, '44.

And I saw lots of flares lighting up the sky.

They announced the entrance of troops liberating Lyon.

American and French troops.

All around me, people were laughing and clapping.

It was a festive atmosphere.

And I've never forgotten that sight.

I've never forgotten that light in the sky.

And when I went to the movies,

and suddenly light filled the screen and the curtain opened,

I thought of the lights in the sky,

and the screen about to light up

symbolized, in a way, the hope I sensed around me

during that moment on the terrace.

To be a child of the Liberation was also to be a war child,

with all that goes with it.

I was diagnosed early on with a problem in my retina

that was apparently due to the food shortage.

I had what they called "a primary infection."

l learned only recently that it was actually tuberculosis.

My parents sent me to a sanatorium in St. Gervais.

On Sundays, they showed movies.

That's where a movie made its first real impact on me.

It was a chase scene.

There were two motorcycle cops chasing gangsters.

They had to decide whether to take the coast road or the tunnel.

They must've taken the tunnel.

If we take the shortcut, we can head them off.

Yes, take the shortcut.

I could visualize that chase scene very clearly for years to come.

But it wasn't until maybe 25 years later

that I identified the movie.

The first movie that really impressed me

was directed by Jacques Becker.

It was Dernier atout.

The film that so impressed me

was the work of one of France's greatest filmmakers.

One that I would worship.

At age six, I could've made a worse choice.

Dernier atout is a brilliant but minor film of Becker's.

The real shock came in seeing Casque d'Or

at the Noctambule on Rue Champollion

where I used to play hooky.

l was staggered

by the serene assurance

with which Becker managed to create a tragic climate

that he usually distilled with more restraint.

I can't leave you my lamp.

Here the tragedy hits you frontally.

What's striking is his formal and visual command,

the narrative elegance,

and the way this mastery

never interferes with the emotion,

never makes the work impersonal.

It's's a film in which you constantly feel the characters' heartbeat.

The mise-en-sce‘ne flexes emotion like you flex your muscles.

It's a gangster's den. We could get murdered.

Maybe even raped.

See how the various characters enter the dance hall,

"The Ange! Gabriel."

The way the bourgeois enter,

all edgy about being in this den of iniquity.

Casque d'Or's entrance.

And Manda's.

Ladies.

Sir.

Each is broken down into shots and framed with such precision,

such clarity and minute attention to reality

that enables Becker to create a different climate

and a different tension every time.

The famous Mr. Modigliani. Do sit down.

He didn't use those devices that date a number of French films:

tilt shots, falsely poetic ideas.

There's a remark that applies to Becker as well

that Jacques Rivette made about Hawks:

that he put the camera at eye level.

-Mr. Modigliani and Mr... -Sborovsky.

Pleased to meet you.

Becker is one of the French directors

who best understood and mastered American filmmaking.

He was a huge fan of Hawks and Lubitsch.

That passion for American movies

is evident in all his films.

First his love of jazz in Rendez-vous de juillet.

Like all American filmmakers, he knew how to convey

that sense of space and time.

Manu!

No!

What are you waiting for?

Don't shoot! You'll kill Martin!

It's crooked! It's longer in back than in front!

Like many American directors,

he knew that pace is everything.

And pace in Becker's films is quick, crisp, and lean.

It's a pace in tune with the characters' feelings.

It's not contrived.

l hate you.

What was that?

l hate you! l hate you!

You‘re vile.

He assimilated American movies, but he didn't copy them.

Sorry, l didn't mean to.

Most of his films have a distinctly French flavor.

They have great camembert here. How do they manage?

You like camembert?

-l asked, you like camembert? -To hell with camembert!

He could highlight a detail

to evoke the climate of a period like no one else.

Cauliflower!

-It looks awful. -Take it or leave it.

There's only two kilograms.

That'll do.

All the characters in Rendez-vous de juillet

seem bound by the climate of the time,

the changes perturbing society

and the dreams seeming to emerge in the postwar period.

In Grisbi,

the gangsters are nothing like American gangsters.

Some scenes would be unthinkable

in an American film noir of the time.

Here's a brush for your chops. Toothpaste's on the sink.

Another major difference with American movies

is Becker's distrust of plot.

Even when he brilliantly melds

the destiny of some 15 characters in Goupi-Mains rouges,

none of the characters disappear behind the plot.

They each have their own lives.

What's so funny?

And when he interweaves destinies and feelings,

instead of complicating,

he refines the plot.

In Antoine and Antoinette, the dramatic core

is amazingly simple:

Someone loses a lottery ticket. He may or may not find it.

That's the plot.

It comes 30 minutes into the action.

Can't find it?

He tried to use very few events,

giving them significance by dissecting them.

Always the idea of dilation and dissection,

of confronting difficulty by breaking it down.

Something difficult?

He'd break it down into gestures, gazes, words,

and overcome the difficulty.

In his comedies, the plot is even more pared down.

Edouard et Caroline unfolds in a few hours,

and revolves around a dress being torn.

Grisbi simplifies Simonin's novel.

Becker merer follows his hero, Max.

We see nothing but what Max sees.

Becker insisted on these very organic, simple plots.

He didn't want to give the impression

that the characters' behavior was scripted,

but that their beha vior seemed to dictate the script.

In that regard, he remains

one of the most modern filmmakers of his time.

Florence, what a pleasure!

Good evening.

What strikes me in his films is his empathy for his characters.

There‘s an incredible blend of warm familiarity and restraint.

I'd rather you speak French.

l don't understand your English.

-Really? -Not a word.

Strange that Spencer doesn't understand your English.

l think you speak just fine.

l learned it in college.

Oxford, you know.

That explains it. Oxford talk has nothing to do with Chicago.

Possibly, because in England they get me just fine.

Watching his movies,

l thought of him as "a friendly filmmaker,"

while thinking l'd hesitate to call him by his first name,

intimidated by the sense of propriety he exuded.

To me, Becker is a director who had common decency,

that notion dear to George Orwell,

which implies ordinary acts of mutual aid and trust,

minimal but basic social ties.

A first-class ticket.

Antoinette, going out tonight?

No, I'm finishing my dress. Lend me your sewing machine?

-Sure. -See you later.

Not an ethic, but a spontaneous sense

of what should and shouldn't be done.

Give me the box. We'll share.

Chow time.

Funny how you rub your hands.

l come from a family of clergy. My uncle was a bishop.

You don't say. So that's why they call you Monsignor.

-Do l dig in? -Please do.

-I'd do anything for you. -Go away.

Listen.

You're all I think about,

your eyes, your hair, your body...

Let me go!

I'd give you everything. Come with me.

The grocer, however, who probably got rich on the black market

played brilliantly by Noël Floquevert,

is a good example of common indecency,

if only in the way he treats the women who work for him.

Mr. Roland, will you be long?

Why?

Do you care?

If anyone calls, what do l say?

If you care, stop by tonight. It's been a month.

You have a good job. Don't lose it.

An unusual remark for the period.

French cinema at the time was hardly known

for its radical feminism. Becker...

was one of those men who believed

that women occupied a major place in life,

that he couldn't quite pinpoint,

that wasn't easy to rationalize, but that was very powerful.

In talking about life, you had to include women.

Got a match?

Who's that?

l should ask you that.

Look at the character of Manda's fiancée,

a character films usually sacrifice and who here isn't belittled.

Becker makes her really exist.

-Marie. -Cheers, buster.

Whore!

-What? -You'd better go, Marie.

l got one yesterday. We're even.

Becker manages to get in very biting notations

about women's roles,

or very funn y remarks, as in Rue de l'Estrapade,

when Anne Vernon makes fun of Louis Jourdan.

Have you lost your mind? You can't wear a woman's scarf!

Why? Doesn't it suit me?

Becker and Annette Wademant reverse roles.

I want you!

-You're pretty, so pretty. -Enough.

You know you are, you little scamp.

Enough!

The last aspect of Becker's movies,

maybe the most important:

He was the French director

who made his characters work the most.

No one is idle in Becker's films.

The peasants in Goupi-Mains rouges,

the seamstresses in Falbalas...

Three weeks!

And the overtime! l can see it coming.

If you're not happy, complain to the boss.

Now get cracking.

Jean-Paul Gaultier, a guest at The Lumière Institute,

told us he watched Falbalas again every year,

and every year it made him cry.

It showed a world l didn't know, the world of high fashion,

and he did it in an exceptional way.

When l went into that line

thanks to the film, because of the film,

l realized just to what extent the description was wildly accurate...

just how real the details and the characters were.

Well...

Hello, Raymond.

So, it's work work, grind grind.

As you see.

Even the youths In Rendez-vous de juillet

are people who want to work.

It's harder than you think.

Given my budget,

I can only give you a tiny, virtually symbolic subsidy.

-Do you see what I mean? -Yes.

Something like a blessing.

That would help our cause.

The most convincing example is, of course, Le Trou.

The entire film rests on a group effort

with those very long scenes filmed in real time

where you see people digging.

Becker had much in common with Bresson.

There's a kinship in their stylistic purity,

in their formal refinement.

Jacques Becker died while finishing Le Trou.

His death inspired Jean-Pierre Melville

to write a magnificent tribute.

He was 52 when his mastery and his maturity

dictated that he make a monumental film

that would deal with all the essential aspects of man:

dignity, courage,

fraternity, intellect,

nobility, respect, and shame.

A few years after the sanatorium, again for my health,

I was sent to boarding school.

We could only go out on Sundays if we had good marks.

That's when I saw tons of movies in neighborhood theaters

that have all vanished.

Studio Obligado, the California, the Delta,

the Florida,

the Eldorado.

When Quentin Tarantino heard

that l watched movies at the Far West,

he said to me, "That's incredible, Bertrand.

You saw movies in a theater called the Far West.

That's so cool, Bertrand."

As an example of the atmosphere in those theaters then,

at the Pathé Journal, l saw a guy next to me

open a can of peas, heat it up,

and eat it.

No one described these local theaters better

than Luc Moullet in a film that's funny, inventive, and incisive:

The seats of the Alcazar...

With a good bath of oil,

it works just fine.

...in which he reproduces screening conditions,

the difficulty of getting a ticket for a front row seat. ..

This was my favorite seat.

There was also Titanic.

But also the petty disputes

between rival clans of critics from Cahiers du Cinéma and Positif.

So you've gone cold on Cottafavi?

-What do you mean? -You walked out of A Free Woman.

They showed mostly westerns and American B movies

released 10-15 years earlier,

but also French films from the '30 and '40s,

Fernandel vehicles like Un de la légion

and the ghastly Ernest the Rebel.

I didn't choose between old films and new releases.

And l didn't feel like a nostalgic.

l discovered with great pleasure Macao, l'enfer du jeu,

a Sternbergian exotic adventure

set against the Sino-Japanese war,

brilliantly directed by Jean Delannoy.

SPEND YOUR HOLIDAYS IN JAPAN, LAND OF THE RISING SUN

Colorful adventurers

wonderfully played by Sessue Hayakawa

and Erich von Stroheim

feud and betray one another over a load of weapons.

l need 100 Mauser machine guns,

Model 21,

with a million cartridges,

3,000 Mauser rifles,

Model 21, .38 caliber.

Also over the beautiful Mireille Balin.

Her scenes with a very subtle, sometimes touching Stroheim,

served by Roger Vitrac's superb dialog, are memorable.

I figured you didn't have time to get your luggage.

My 22 trunks are still at the hotel.

What do you think of this dress?

You've been cruising on the Place Vendome.

Among other places.

It's a 42.

Just my size.

Her surprisingly natural, uninhibited acting style

is extremely modern.

You're a couturier?

No, just a collector.

But the disenchanted, disillusioned tone is also striking,

and there's no real bad guy or a Manichean plot,

making the film totally amoral,

which has enabled it to age well.

About that check that bounced...

Well, it's all settled now.

Under the Occupation, Delannoy had to get rid of Stroheim

and re-shoot his scenes with Pierre Renoir

so that the Nazis wouldn't destroy the film.

One Sunday afternoon l got my second movie shock

with a French film.

Jean Renoir's La grand illusion.

l saw it in a theater

on Faubourg Montmartre called Le Club.

l arrived in the middle of the film,

in a scene that immediately impressed me by its power

and its emotion.

Stop the show! Stop the show!

Stop, fellas!

We've retaken Douaumont. It's in the German papers.

The Marseillaise, please.

You have to imagine a teenager watching the scene,

his head full of stories of the Occupation, the Résistance,

everything my father told me.

Each shot, each moment had such resonance,

blending a past that was still very present

with a World War l story.

When the film was over,

l was totally stunned.

I remained in the theater to watch it again.

Hey, Halphen! Going to Epernay?

That scene often brings tears to my eyes.

In that little moment, you sense

that Renoir dredges up tons of feelings:

that the war was dragging on,

that Gabin has been through a lot,

that things weigh heavily on him.

None of that is in the dialog.

lt‘s alI conveyed in the way the characters move,

the choice of framing, and the silences.

I find this scene miraculous.

LIQUOR KILLS! LIQUOR DRIVES YOU MAD!

THE CAPTAIN DRINKS IT!!

I felt I was seeing another type of cinema.

There's something particularly French about La grand illusion.

l was on stage before the war,

in vaudeville.

-Ever see me? -Theater's too deep for me.

I prefer cycling. You follow the Tour de France?

You must've heard of Fabert, Lapize, Garrigou, Troussellier...

Yvan Ouder the Belgian.

Sure.

We can buy anything we like?

Sure, through the PX.

So l very quickly caught up on all of Renoir's films.

Few endings move me as much

as the end of A Day in the Country.

l come here often.

l have my best memories here.

l think about it every night.

Henriette!

La Marseillaise is a masterpiece,

even if the subject is bowdlerized.

It's one of the first epics to dramatize

anonymous figures, ordinary people.

l wanted to treat this great moment

in a spirit of intimacy.

l tried to imagine

l was witness to real, contemporary events,

and that my camera was concealed,

capturing the little aspects of these great moments.

-ls your crow done? -No.

It's as dry as an old man without breeches.

It's an old crow.

Lucky we found it. With only Mr. de Lafayette's provisions...

Down with aristocrats. We starve, they betray the homeland.

And De Rochambeau?

You don't know De Rochambeau?

The General? l haven't had the honor.

l know Marat. l talked to him once in Rouen.

There's a grounding,

a strength, a lyricism, and openness of mind.

The portrait of the royal family is simply extraordinary.

Certain actors, technicians, and directors

believe that Renoir was no technician.

He didn't act like an ordinary filmmaker.

What a lot of leaves.

They're falling early this year.

Not a technician, and yet...

Let's look for instance at Rules of the Game.

Sorry l shot that pheasant.

l thought it was mine.

Often Renoir's camera movements

aren't there to accelerate the action.

They're used to link the background

with what's about to happen in the foreground.

These movements bring together

what's going on in the background and the foreground.

They're very subtle, sometimes lyrical variations

on depth of focus.

Lateral movements

combine with perpendicular movements of the characters

who come from the back and approach the camera.

Like Carette in Rules of the Game.

The shot begins on Carette.

As he walks fonlvard, the camera follows him laterally...

Marceau!

...to another character who brings us back to Carette.

Hello, Schumacher. How are you?

Want my rabbit?

Right, Schumacher?

l don't know. I just got here.

Watch how the camera follows a character in a wide shot,

loses him to focus on another,

then switches from a long shot to a medium shot

without resorting to a reverse angle shot.

La Chesnaye may be a yid,

but he chewed me out recently over a potato salad.

You know, or maybe you don't, that for a salad to be any good,

you pour white wine on the potatoes when they're boiling hot.

But Celestin was afraid of burning his fingers.

Well, the boss sensed right off that he hadn't done it.

Say what you like, but l call that a true gentleman.

Renoir had this stroke of genius,

adding people throughout the scene, probably upstairs,

who are practicing piano.

I'm the new valet.

The Marquis must have mentioned me.

-What can you do, my good man? -l don't know. A bit of everything.

Do you shine boots?

When it comes to grooming, I'm what you call a specialist.

Tomorrow morning, collect the boots outside the guest rooms.

He's a decent fellow. A very decent fellow.

l get the feeling Renoir's dolly shots

were a reaction against his father's attempt

to abolish depth of field.

He admired his father deeply,

but wanted to find a visual approach that didn't copy him.

A way of staking out his territory.

Delighted.

And honored to have you. You know everyone.

My dear Jurieux.

It's enough to watch the fluidity

with which Renoir blocks out group scenes -

meals, meetings -

the way characters cut each other off,

how the dialog overlaps,

to demolish the criticisms about his technical ability.

Let me kiss you. I'm so glad to see you here.

André, may l kiss you, too?

And me, and me?

And me?

l think I'm entitled to.

-Does he play belote? -Sure he does.

Let's ask him.

A nice wedding isn't bad.

Almost as good as a nice funeral.

That's a good one.

Old Legrand, ever on the bail!

What do you think?

Very, very good cover.

But why all the stuff about pharmaceutical products?

It's amusing to note that Jean Renoir and Jacques Prévert

were the first to criticize the intrusion of ads in a work of art.

"Arizona Jim put his revolver on the table,

took a small round box out of his pocket and opened it saying:

With Ranimax pills, be bold, be bold, and evermore bold."

-That's disgusting. -As you say.

l never wrote that! Pathetic.

l published Arizona Jim solely as a favor to you.

-l know that. -But all that costs money.

Usually, authors help us out a bit.

That's not the case with you.

That's why we add a little advertising.

A little.

There's some on page three. On page nine.

-And on the last page. -We do what it takes.

Money is money. There's no way around it.

You're an artist.

You're a dreamer.

When Renoir came up against an unexpected difficulty,

he'd disappear,

leaving his crew to work it out.

So you want to stay with him? You just can't.

l sacrificed everything for you.

Come on, Lucienne, l want you to know...

If you only knew, you might understand.

La Chienne, for instance,

was mostly edited by Paul Fejos.

Renoir was at a loss before the material he'd filmed

and Fejos managed to structure it

and give it a logical flow.

Marguerite Renoir took over for subsequent films

and played a considerable role.

Don't laugh, Lucienne.

Don't laugh like that.

Don't laugh like that, Lucienne.

Don't laugh like that, Lucienne!

Don't laugh like that, Lucienne!

Jean Gabin and I talked about Renoir at length one afternoon.

l spent five, six hours with Gabin,

who said to me, "Tavernier, let me tell you:

I learned my craft with Renoir and Duvivier.

Renoir taught me everything about acting,

how to act, how to modulate one's performance,

how to hold back, or, on the contrary, let oneself go.

Duvivier taught me everything about playing to the camera.

When shooting La bête humaine, in the cab,

cameraman Curt Courant said to me, "Mr. Gabin,

I want you to move over there,

because for the frame, the lighting will be nicer."

Gabin said, "That's one of the few times l saw him get angry."

He started hollering,

shouting angrily,

"Mr. Courant, don't talk to Mr. Gabin like that.

Mr. Gabin wants to stand there.

It's up to you to adapt the light to Mr. Gabin,

Mr. Gabin is not at your service.

And stop badgering the actors with your UFA lighting."

That's the story Gabin told,

and he added, "Few people back then

dared defy the cameraman's tyranny.

It gave the actors...

It gave the actors great freedom.

We felt comfortable with him."

You sense that in La bête humaine,

in one of the finest scenes in French cinema.

What's in your basket?

A can of sardines and cassoulet. Want some?

No, canned food ruins the stomach.

Get married, old buddy. Get married.

I'm already married to Lison. That's enough.

So now we're married to a locomotive!

Goodbye, fellows.

Say, Gramps, we had a swell train today.

Wind at our backs.

We saved on coal. Good for us.

That burned gearbox worries you.

Only because we're here.

If we were at the Batignolles depot, I know all the guys in the shop.

They do good work here.

Well, yeah.

l got to work with Renoir on the revival of La bête humaine.

We spent two, three weeks together.

He spoke movingly about Simone Simon

and dialogue attributed to him that were actually Zola's.

He added, "Zola's a better dialogist than people think,

and l stole a number of his lines.”

Let go of my hands.

Don't look at me like that. You'll wear your eyes out.

He was an incredibly warm person, always ready with a laugh,

who you were inclined to believe even when it turned out

he was giving you nonsense.

I think he so wanted to charm

and not disappoint the person he was talking to.

Much of what he told Truffaut and Rivette

turns out to be highly debatable.

No, Renoir didn't hate the studio. That's totally untrue.

Many of his scenes, including some of the best,

were shot in the studio.

In Rules of the Game, everyone is saying good night.

Given the facilities back then,

the scene could only be shot in the studio.

Good night.

Good night, old boy.

Pleased?

Good night, La Chesnaye.

There once was a little boat There once was a little boat

Renoir used to claim that the "Little Boat" scene

was improvised.

But Pascal Mérigeau's biography says

it was in the first version of the script, word for word.

Lovely as ever, Valentine.

You should never fear revenants.

Look at Le Crime de Monsieur Lange.

It's absurd to think such a shot was conceived that morning,

given the heavy equipment, the cameras,

the way such a scene had to be lit with indoor sets and outdoor sets.

It had to have taken two or three days of preparation and fine tuning.

The camera frames René Lefêvre on the first floor.

We see him move from room to room.

The camera leaves him

and frames him again coming down, out into the yard.

And there, contrary to what's often been written,

there's another shot.

l still read that this scene was done in one long take.

But there‘s a continuity cut from a long shot to a medium shot.

The whole shot is described in detail in the first draft

which was called "On the Courtyard. ”

It was all thought out.

From the writing stage, Renoir fully intended

to treat a moment like that in a single shot

or make it look like one.

It's another trick.

Is he dead?

It was so easy.

We can't stay here.

It also fits in with the idea that I keep trying to perfect:

not to cut scenes

and let the actors follow their own course.

I tried it with incredibly complicated movements.

Bachelet and the camera crew had a tough time.

It was like snakes were twisted around the camera tripod.

The camera went in all directions,

going to the actors, following them up and down.

The very cramped sets made it all the more difficult.

The sets were in normal dimensions, built around a courtyard.

Son, say what you like, but work is something.

Enough. How much you want?

How much?

I want it all, angel. It's all mine.

You sold the rights of Arizona Jim for 200,000 francs. They're mine.

You forced a signature out of me.

That wouldn't stand up in court.

-And the complaints? -What complaints?

And Meunier's debt? You'll be arrested if you reappear.

Sure, I know that. But they'll release me soon enough.

I'll get my money back.

With his cleverness and intuition,

he managed to create an impression of naturalness,

and an astounding sense of improvisation,

as if the camera just happened to be there

transcending a screenplay that was often followed almost to the letter.

We're going to publish Javert.

It will be sensational.

But you can't. There's the staff, the cooperative.

Think you can make me cry over the furniture?

The staff, the cooperative... I don't give a damn!

He liked to please and he was drawn to success.

He went with the Popular Front because it was headed for success.

He went with the Communist Party because it had men

who were undeniably physically

and humanly strong, leaders.

The impulse that thrust him toward force,

and I do mean force, carried him very far.

In that regard he became

the lay godfather of the Party leader's son.

It is a matter of regret

that this extraordinary director

nevertheless penned one or two despicable letters

in 1940,

addressed to a Vichy minister.

That scum is still at it. I don't see how we can eliminate them.

The only way to make a decent film

is to find a backer who's not one of them.

Even then, we still must deal with those undesirables for a studio.

Renoir, the man who directed Monsieur Lange, with Prévert.

What I'm telling you took place in '40.

Pierre Renoir told me, "Jean worries me.

I'm afraid he'll rush into the arms of the Germans."

-He said that? -Yes. And...

-In late 1940? -In 1940.

At the start of the Occupation, when everything was so confused.

-You were in Paris? -Yes.

I came back to Paris fast.

I came back in September.

I ran into Pierre in November and he told me that.

And luckily,

some time after, Pierre,

with whom I'd stayed in contact, told me,

“Everything's fine,

he's leaving for America."

Here again, I want to recount what Gabin told me:

"Renoir called a meeting in 1940

at the Negresco."

He added, turning to Darrieux,

"Remember, Danielle? You were there.

He brought us together and said, "Folks,

I'm off to the US to convince them

that Marshal Pétain's regime is a good idea."

And Gabin said to me, "It floored me.

I was a child of the Popular Front."

He added, "Renoir, as a director:

a genius.

As a person: a whore."

That was Gabin's opinion.

He also said, "One thing I can't forgive him for,

when you're the son of Auguste Renoir,

you don't take American citizenship."

Hey, you, there.

Papers, please.

-This your first job in France? -No, I've been here before.

Okay, go on.

Remember what Charles Spaak said about him,

"Renoir has such enthusiasm that he can meet an Italian fascist,

and if he's well dressed, wearing fine leather,

suddenly he'll embrace his cause

without even realizing that fascism and the Marxism

he'd professed moments earlier were incompatible.

"And finally," said Spaak,

you'd forgive Renoir anything."

One of the best ways to forget these regrettable flaws

is to watch the films he made after returning to France,

in particular the dizzying final number in French cancan.

Spotlight on

There was the prewar period and the postwar period.

Before the war, yes, I made some good films.

Gabin was the first actor

to lend a sort of tragic substance

to the notion of a people's hero and a working class hero.

What do you expect? I slog all day long.

When you slog, nights are for sleeping.

It's as if Gabin was my passport

to understanding the spirit of the Popular Front.

You know what? Basically, we all want the same thing.

To be free. Free, in a little place of our own.

None us can get that on his own.

Think you'll get far on your 20,000 francs?

But if we stick together...

He's totally linked to Renoir, Duvivier; Grémillon,

Prévert, and Spaak.

He's totally linked to a number of filmmakers

who imposed characters at the time that were unusual.

A deserter in Port of Shadows

wasn't the sort of character you met in many films.

Shooting seems easy.

Like at the fairground.

At the shooting gallery,

you shoot,

the guy lets out a shout,

puts his hands on his belly and makes a little face,

like a kid who's eaten too much.

Then his hands turn red.

Then he falls.

And you're there all alone, kind of bewildered.

There's a natural acceptance of obstacles to overcome,

and tasks to accomplish

that Gabin handles marvelously.

Are they taking the goddamn towline or not?

They couldn't shut up earlier. Now, not a squawk!

What a mess, for chrissake.

The lifeboat! Look, the lifeboat, Captain!

They're nuts, lowering a lifeboat in weather like this!

Say, flowers. That's nice. Are they for my name day?

Is your name François?

Gabin has been much maligned.

It's been said that he betrayed his prewar ideals,

that he became gentrified.

Then who are the flowers for?

Gabin betrayed?

One must remember that he left France

for the United States to avoid the Collaboration.

That afternoon l spent with him, he told me,

"Tavernier, you've got to remember,

I'm one of the only Frenchmen who paid to go to war.

I had to buy back my Universal contract.”

He added, "Do you think he thanked me?

That guy, that pituitary gland,

that Flemish giant rabbit?"

He meant De Gaulle.

Gabin had enlisted.

The ship carrying him to Italy was bombed one night.

That was the night his hair went white.

Don't care to save a mug like that.

His war episode

would re-emerge in a very obscure Gilles Grangier film.

Supposedly, I cleaned up under Adolf.

What crap!

I made less in four years with the Krauts

than two months with the Yanks.

Where were you at the Liberation?

On the beaches.

”I was on the beaches.”

A virtually autobiographical remark

that pops up by surprise in the film.

Not bad.

He had trouble getting back in movies,

under Marlene Dietrich's influence.

She pressed him to refuse Les portes de la nuit.

Prévert was furious with Marlene Dietrich,

"That idiot who spent the war in Beverly Hills,

who thought our script was anti-French.

She had no idea what Occupation was like."

It was tough, you know.

I call it my dark period,

when the black flag floats over the soup pot.

It wasn't good.

Sure, I left when I was 37,

right when my career was booming because of all those good films.

Then the war. I came back with all that white hair.

But Gabin, after the war,

remained working class in La nuit est mon royaume.

It's a film that recaptures the virtues of the prewar period.

-I'll say it again... -Once is enough!

The humbug, the good advice, I've had my fill.

I've had it up to here.

Your Dr. Veaujoy lied to me, my mother lied to me.

All of you who can see.

The worst possible thing hits me.

And a nun comes and tells me it's nothing.

Are you kidding me?

The prewar Gabin is never totally gone.

"They'll find something..." Tell me the truth, stop leading me on.

It's the worst remedy.

Because I'm suffering, too.

When you go blind, we'll talk about it.

Des gens sans importance

starts with a line that situates the type of work.

Berthier and I had been driving for 60 hours non-stop.

Is this thing always slow?

In Gas-Oil...

So you're gonna wake me at dawn again?

I have to pick up the endives at Berthier's at 5:00.

He's still there in Le Chat.

Le Chat is a film Gabin wanted to do.

He co-produced Le Chat.

What's the use of their meetings?

What's the use? You amaze me. What do you live on?

My pension.

Meetings like this got you your pension.

But still...

No "but still," that's how it is.

He's also remarkable in La vérité sur Bébé Donge.

And there, he took risks.

Divorced?

For part of the film, he's unpleasant and macho.

Your sister nearly married first.

In the end, you beat her.

By a nipple, true. A bit small for my taste.

So you know my taste now.

So I'm crude, what of it?

Sorry about your girlish dreams.

Wake up now. At some point you have to snap out of it.

Grisbi is 20 years ahead of its time.

-We've got to talk, Max. -About what?

Becker creates one of cinema's first anti-heroes.

In doing so, he plays havoc with the Gabin myth.

Gabin, the romantic hero,

in this film is a rather jaded fifty-something

who wants to turn in early

and even refuses Jeanne Moreau's advances.

If you talk to him, he'll listen.

Don't be mad at me, Max.

I'd like your help. I'm scared what might happen to me.

The paper was right. You're the star of French cuisine.

-What did I tell you? -Satisfied?

France in the 1950s was changed by the war.

There were no more utopias, but wounds to heal.

It's true that Gabin would represent a wealthier France.

I submitted your file to the Ministry.

You'll be decorated in January, under Fine Arts.

-Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister. -Goodbye.

He's absoluter brilliant in En cas de malheur.

He represents a strong France,

sure of its rights, that would suddenly meet the Devil.

May as well enjoy it before they jail me.

He is equalIy superb as the lone, alcoholic cop

in Gilles Grangier's neglected Désordre et la Nuit.

Contrary to the puritan image associated with him,

he goes to bed on the first night with a prostitute junkie

who is also a major witness in the investigation he's conducting.

Are you for or against?

I mean my stockings.

How old are you, Lucky?

Come.

I'll tell you everything.

His roles in En cas de malheur

and in La Traversée de Paris

are extraordinary achievements.

Those things aren't for the poor.

Look, mister,

don't make trouble. Just go. This is a quiet business...

-And respectable. -Respectable?

But you employ Jews in a public place.

I don't employ her.

She gives me a hand.

You exploit her, too.

I ought to denounce you, teach you some manners.

Why make laws if you don't obey them?

Riffraff!

Drop it! Don't listen to him.

People without a conscience make me sick.

Filth! I'd throw you all in prison.

No pity. In prison.

Hoodlums. Anarchists. Bad Frenchman.

But first, names, ages, marital status. Out with it!

Look, man, I did anger scenes 'cause people stuck me with 'em.

The subject demanded it.

Personally, I'm not keen.

Look at handsome here

with his drunkard's mug and his gray meat,

and flab everywhere, nothing but flab!

You'll never change your face.

And the old biddy with a face like jelly and lard.

Three chins and boobs down to here.

50 years each, 100 years the lot! 100 years of stupidity!

You think France can afford a financial scandal?

The two years you'd do like some common thief

wouldn't be reparations as regards the state.

Mr. Prime Minister, I swear I only told my wife.

Keep still, you married a bank!

You're a monster, Mrs. Morin.

A monster of stupidity.

You're acting like a...

Vain, possessive, and mean.

But most of all, you're stupid. Oh, so stupid!

You made your son stupid.

You kept him from father, friends, a normal childhood.

Because he's not normal, you both know that!

Ask his wife.

He may have talent, but not for everything.

That's your doing.

People said he played Gabin. A bunch of crap!

Gabin was versatile.

He wasn't the same as prime minister...

You like to go through the kitchen for news like everyone.

It's a little routine.

If my cook gives you news of my health,

why not give her the Beef Mironton recipe?

As a truck driver, he didn't have the same walk.

Even if he moved at a slow pace, it wasn't the same slow pace.

Two chicken à la crème,

two sides of peas, two Grand Marnier soufflés.

He was someone who espoused any trade

in an incredibly organic, visceral fashion,

making us believe he'd been at it for 15 years.

Madam Chatelin, your wife.

My ex.

What does she want now?

-Are you a relative? -I'm her daughter.

-What does she want, money? -No.

In the 20 years since we divorced,

when I hear from her, it's to hit me up.

He invokes the character's past without it ever being described.

That's what made him so brilliant.

He's phenomenal in Un singe en hiver.

Things bring on things.

Whats-its beget whats-its. Nothing is by chance.

Back to the barracks.

This is on me.

Mind your beeswax, rookie. I got my back pay.

They paid you with a train ticket?

Here.

I'll give you one way and keep the return. Do the same.

-I can't. -You don't trust me?

-I don't have a ticket. -You should always have a ticket.

Just in case.

I spent my life going back and forth.

Unstable, they call it.

We're doing too much talking. We'll get dehydrated.

Nine times out of ten, the director didn't direct Gabin.

Gabin directed the director.

Listen to him. He goes through his script,

then says,

"On page 19, there's a line that sticks in my mouth.

I'm cutting it."

That's Gabin.

Or the director says,

"Jean, hurry to the window, open it, and look at the street.

Close it suddenly. The cops are downstairs."

Gabin doesn't react.

But he doesn't like two words: "hurry" and "suddenly."

The director eagerly says, "Let's rehearse."

So Jean gets up,

he goes to the window, slowly,

dragging his feet,

doesn't open it,

looks at the street, scratches his neck,

turns to the camera and says, "I'm ready."

He knew what a shoot was.

He had the film in his head.

-Henri Ferré? -Yes.

He'd call the screenwriter,

"Molière, come here. Hey, Molière!

You ought to rework your text.

Look, I thought that...

There."

He cut it.

"Isn't that better?" he'd say. Just like that.

And someone'd say, "We need you on the set."

So he'd come. It was an airplane cabin.

He looked at the camera, "What lens?"

The guy answers, "A 50 mm."

He'd say, "I'm not in frame," and leave.

The guy said, "He's right."

So it's true, at the very end of his career,

he didn't knock himself out.

He worked only with crew he liked.

He'd refuse to go up stairs

because he was afraid of a heart attack.

So he'd say,

"All right, three steps, and then cut."

In Le Chat, he's supposed to leave Signoret and go upstairs.

Off screen, he went all the way up.

He came back and asked Simone,

"That help you?

For the look?"

I just love actors.

I love them.

Actors are swell. Actors are great.

They're the ones who translate it all.

On day two of Gas-Oil, he called Grangier after the dailies.

"The youngster this morning,

Bozzuffi... he's good.

So do the shot on him, not on me."

He even added, "l always ask for at least two scenes from behind.

Can't let them get sick of our face. Give 'em a rest."

He told Bozzuffi,

"Whatever happens in your career, always stay a redskin."

Bozzuffi asked, "A redskin? What do you mean?"

"Let me explain, it's simple.

A redskin:

You're at Place de la Concorde,

there's loads of traffic.

Cars and people everywhere.

Next to the obelisk is an Indian. All you see is him."

That's me,

in several copies.

Sweet of you to put me up.

And then, there's Gabin's charm,

his gentleness.

There's no one like him in moments of tenderness and vulnerability.

That's Bolo, my teddy, when I was little.

I've kept him.

He's missing an ear, but he has a nice face.

He looks like you.

He does. A family resemblance.

You see, he's like you.

He has one cheerful eye, the other is a bit sad.

The ever blue-eyed, still childish gaze smiles.

The thin lips reveal life's trials.

In a spirit of provocation,

I chose the final scene of one of Marcel Carné's last films:

an exchange between an examining judge

who tried in vain

to get a conviction for policemen who killed a suspect in custody...

A fine speech, counselor.

...and the police attorney.

You just forgot the conclusion.

Look.

You won a total victory.

Hatred is the victor.

You know, hate, love...

You can't stop windmills from turning.

I, too, read Don Quixote as a child. It was my favorite book.

-You never should have grown up. -l hate lost causes.

No cause is ever lost. The history of mankind proves it.

Yesterday's losers are tomorrow's winners.

Only one thing matters.

Taking a step forward, even if it's a tiny one.

As Paul Vecchiali wrote...

"Carné had gone out of fashion.

This plea for the truth was disregarded."

And he justly compared Carné's work,

dignified, unpretentious, and placid,

to that of his main actor...

...Jacques Brel.

Don't budge.

You put together an honest, clear case.

Nothing is left in the dark.

Pure Mozart.

It has the same easy movement, but sadly, the same fragility.

You can't have everything.

Mozart, fragile? That's your opinion.

If you'll excuse me, Mr. Moulard has the rest of the score.

Whatever the film's qualifies,

they seem somewhat fragile

compared to certain scenes from Le jour se lève.

Here comes the animal tamer. What's he doing here?

Can't be up to any good.

He must be here to see you.

Me? He's here about the kid.

I don't want to hear about it.

That won't stop him.

l can think of few filmmakers

who've been attacked by their colleagues as much as Carné.

He's taking his time to come up.

What's he up to?

Charming.

That's right.

I eavesdrop.

Jeanson, returning from a discussion with Carné,

flew into a rage.

“Every time I talk to him about a feeling or an emotion,

to emphasize, he says,

'Do you have them cross a bridge so the atmosphere is foggy?

Do you think of putting them beside the canal?

Fog would be good for the atmosphere."'

So Jeanson sat down and wrote:

l need a change of atmosphere, and my atmosphere is you.

Nobody's ever called me an atmosphere before!

If I'm an atmosphere, you're an odd sort of burg.

Mobsters who aren't mobsters and brag about what they once were!

Atmosphere, atmosphere! Do l look like an atmosphere?

If that's the case, happy fishing and happy atmosphere!

That tirade is the result of a writer's fit of rage

at his director.

It's almost too famous

because it has overshadowed other, more striking moments.

-What time is your train? -At 10:50 tonight.

Usually, at that hour, I hit the turf under the metro.

A funny line of work, when I think about it calmly.

Some nights, 20-25 trains go by without finding me a client.

When I'm bored, l count the trains that go by.

One day I broke my own record:

57 trains without seeing anyone.

Yet it's a station that hustles.

Mr. Edmond was up early today.

At 7:00, he was shaved.

He went to the station to pick up our tickets.

He knows how to travel.

You should see how organized he is.

Traveling with him is a dream. In a station, he's another man.

He waits on you hand and foot.

He buys you oranges and peels them.

He lights a cigarette and gives it to you.

For kindness he can't be beat.

He explains places we go by.

"Here‘s where Charley's cat house is.

This is where the ex-cons hang out.

This is Lyon where Alphonse shot Dédé."

A real geographer!

And the closer we get to the sea, the more tender he is.

He knows how to behave on a train.

Third class feels like first class with him.

You travel with him a lot?

It's the first time.

I must admit, for this film,

l had the hardest time imposing Jouvet and Arletty

on the producer and on the director.

At the time, stage and film were totally compartmentalized.

The producer had never seen Arletty

and he didn't know who Jouvet was.

Jouvet? Unknown to him, as strange as it may seem.

As for the director...

Who was it?

Duvivier?

No, not Duvivier. He knows actors. And knows how to direct them.

It was Carné.

One of Prévert's 1001 inventions.

And Carné did not want to tackle actors he didn't know.

Look, down there.

The little lights.

The lights of Menilmontant.

In his memoirs, Carné admitted his error,

and Arletty, who is marvelous in Hotel du Nord,

is extraordinary in Children of Paradise.

l can't even recognize the room where l lived with my mother.

You lived in Menilmontant?

I was born there.

I lived happily there. For a long time.

Very happily.

Yet my mother was poor and my father had left her.

She worked for others as a laundress.

She loved me, I loved her.

She was lovely, she was cheerful.

She taught me to laugh and sing.

And then, she died.

And everything changed.

And you ended up alone?

At 15, around here a girl who grows up too fast

isn't alone for long.

As for Jouvet, Carné defended himself

by saying he didn't think he'd be credible as a pimp.

And yet, he is.

You notified the landlady?

I even broke down the door.

l was in my room when I heard the shot.

It was a 6.35 caliber.

It was a 6.35. I'm never wrong. I have a musician's ear.

Jacques Prévert was even harsher than Jeanson

regarding Carné's relationship with actors.

Prévert told me he personally did all the casting.

They fell out over Les Portes de la nuit,

when Prévert suggested Simone Signoret.

A brilliant idea that Carné stupidly rejected,

insisting on Nathalie Nattier, who's a disaster in the film.

Prévert added that Carné was the only filmmaker

who was incapable of writing a scene, even a line.

A pretty damning portrait,

and yet, the films exist.

Some of them are masterpieces.

Not only masterpieces,

but among the greatest masterpieces of French cinema.

Carné must have had something to do with it.

First, he was a workaholic.

And I think he made Prévert produce,

Prévert, who may have been a bit laid-back.

And when he'd assimilated a script,

nothing could shake him.

Carné became a rock.

He could resist all pressure.

He yielded on nothing.

For instance, when the producer wanted to get rid of the fog,

because it "obscured the set."

He also had to stand firm

to preserve the audacity of the scripts.

It‘s not by chance if in Hôtel du Nord

there is one of the rare allusions

to the Spanish Civil War made in a French film.

What's the matter with him?

My little Manolo, don't be afraid.

Don't you all stare at him.

In my line l call it "spooked."

Sure he's spooked.

The kid spent two years in Barcelona. He's seen worse.

What's his problem then?

It's not fear, it's memories.

Stay by me, Manolo dear. No one will hurt you.

What a strange idea.

What is?

Adopting the kid. Nobody knows a thing about him.

I know his whole family is dead.

He's a foreigner.

He's not a foreigner, he's an orphan.

There's also this homosexual character

filmed with warmth and empathy

that is unique in the French cinema of the time.

Hey, Fernand.

I was looking for you.

You didn't recognize me?

l didn't even look at you, seeing you with the lady...

-I won't spoil your evening. -Not at all.

I didn't dare say so, but I'm sleepy. Thanks anyway.

Really, don't worry about me.

When Alexandre Trauner suggested

that Gabin's character

live on the top floor and not the second,

as originally scripted,

Carné backed him instantly,

and yet, the idea was very costly.

I sensed it couldn't be on the second floor.

First, he was too close. Second, there was no danger.

It had to be on the top floor.

So we started developing.

I sketched out some ideas,

and everyone agreed it was the solution.

But naturally, when you count floors, you count money, too.

And the producer tried every day to cut down a story.

Carné sensed that this idea would isolate Gabin

to have him tower over the crowd.

It would prevent him from hearing people,

even their encouragements and their support.

Leave me alone!

Alone, you hear?

I just want to be left in peace!

In peace!

He's shouting.

François! François!

But the talent and power of his films reside in his shot breakdowns.

He didn't do many takes. He had little material to edit.

Principal photography was so short.

Will you shut your trap?

When you see, for instance,

how he managed to film in very tight sets, a hotel landing...

He mostly used a 32mm lens.

He was hooked on that focal length.

And in very narrow sets, he gets the most out of them.

Every shot energizes the narrative.

No two are alike.

What was that? Did somebody fall?

Somebody. ..

Somebody...!

Somebody fell!

Listen.

Listen to me good...

And then, there are moments when characters confront each other.

The reverse angle shots in Carné's films written by Prévert

are really something.

Sautet talked about them constantly.

He said he‘d rarely seen scenes broken down into shots

as well as those with Gabin and Jules Berry.

-Do you love her? -Yes.

-And her? -That your business?

My good man, think about it.

I've a right to know what went on between you.

Understand, a right.

A right...

You wear me out.

-You hear me? -What do you...

What do you plan to do?

Think about it.

It's a bit...

You don't plan to...

-François... -What?

Ragman! Old clothes!

Old clothes for sale?

And in my dream, I heard something else.

I heard: Rat-on-a-man!

Old friends for sale?

Is it true that you have access to those gents

and you sell friends? Jericho?

Lies! As sure as they call me...

Snitch. Forked Tongue. Thirteenth at Table.

Carné, it's obvious from his later films,

must have been a loner,

someone who had trouble

dealing with amicable, humanist feelings.

Traveling, for a painter, must be a source of renewal.

Prévert brought him generosity

in his view of characters...

Tenderness.

Nothing keeps me here. If the trip wasn't too costly...

Listen, we know artists aren't rich.

Come on, young man,

big decisions should be made in front of small bottles.

I'll conclude with a passage

from an essay by Claude Sautet about Le jour se lève:/i

The film was shot in 1939,

between the Popular Front's collapse and the horror of WWII,

in the fragile no-man's-land of a studio with Marcel Carné,

at his sharpest, his most mature,

the essential cement,

and Gabin, so handsome and melancholy.

Arletty, never more authentic.

And especially Jules Berry,

in Le crime de Monsieur Lange, his greatest role.

My memory can't shake those first minutes,

the dawn light on that vertical building,

that ordinary apartment door,

transformed and sinister,

beyond which a gunshot is heard.

Then Gabin's weary voice...

Look where that got you.

...and the door opening

and Berry's body stumbling out and down the stairs.

And soon, on that famous image of Gabin at the window,

that intimate and fatal voice:

"And yet, yesterday, remember..."

that begins the extraordinary flashback.

Fads come and go, and Le jour se lève

remains a masterpiece drowned in its obscure fame.

And so it goes.

The music was wonderful.

And there was that theme...

It's an old Breton theme.

-What film was that in? -Port of Shadows.

I was walking in the streets with that dog behind me.

It was that melody.

Jaubert was probably the greatest film score composer

of that time,

the most diverse, the boldest,

the one who best understood film in a very intimate, powerful manner,

and who best understood mise-en-scène.

Goodbye!

Showing excerpts from L'Atalante

is a form of tribute to Jean Vigo.

Between the two, there is an innate comprehension

in their way of using music and sounds to initiate a theme.

The score of L'Atalante

was one of the most lyrical in French cinema of that era.

It's amazing how he used orchestra instruments.

An accordion gets the music started...

...that yields to a saxophone

that carries the emotion in the film.

It's obvious that Jaubert was in the same vein

as people like Kurt Weill.

Maurice Jaubert was 30 when the talkies arrived.

He was the first composer to grasp what sound film could offer.

Unlike many of his colleagues,

he didn't see the soundtrack or the actors' voices

as the composer's enemy.

Laugh. I know more amazing things than playing records with a finger.

He despised the conception of music that reigned in American studios.

He didn't think you should arbitrarily stick

the same type of orchestra,

the same type of musical color or language.

He believed music should find the heart of a film.

It should come in

when words can no longer translate emotions.

Music prolongs them.

And he pulled it off in all his films.

There's a moment when Jaubert is especially striking.

It's the flashback evoking the waltz

in Un carnet de bal.

There's no real theme in Le jour se lève.

No melodic motif,

not an easily detectable one anyway.

There's a climate.

Each time, Jaubert would seek the pulse of the film.

I say "pulse,"

because that's what dictated the score of Le jour se lève,

based on a beating heart.

Beneath it can be heard a sort of Dies Irae,

but deconstructed.

It's a model score.

And Jaubert's death was a tragic loss.

He died very young.

For years, I looked in vain

for recordings by Jaubert,

Kosma,

Auric, and Honegger.

There was nothing to be found.

But in the United States, a huge effort

had been made in film musicology.

Very early on, there were a lot of records available.

It wasn't until François Truffaut took a remarkable initiative,

by having re-recordings made of Jaubert's music

for the purposes of his film Adèle H.

He had re-recordings done,

thanks to François Porcile and Patrice Mestral,

of a series of works, starting with L'Atalante.

l still remember when I first found this record.

Finally l could listen to the score,

which is among the most beautiful of French '30s cinema,

and of cinema, period.

To this day, over half of Maurice Jaubert's work

still hasn't been recorded or performed.

Early on, l had a keen interest in certain film composers,

and I realized with what originality some directors used them,

favoring the timbre of one or more solo instruments

rather than a full orchestra

so dear to Hollywood.

Three strong memories:

the guitar in Jeux interdits,

the influence of the zither in The Third Man...

Why did you scream?

-Are you scared? -No.

The harmonica in Grisbi.

The incredible sound of Miles Davis' trumpet

in Elevator for the Gallows.

I also discovered how some directors used classical music,

as in A Man Escaped.

l can see nothing similar in American movies.

Again, French composers in the 1930s, '40s,

'50s, and '60s were some of the world's finest.

There are reasons for such excellence.

First, most Hollywood directors had no say in the musical score

right up into the mid-1950s.

Conversely, the big French directors

worked in harmony with the composers of their choice.

The climate and music culture was totally different.

Louise...

-Good luck. -Thank you, Nanny.

The Americans were deeply influenced by romanticism,

as well as by Bruckner, Mahler, Brahms,

and the Vienna school.

The French were influenced by Ravel, Debussy, Poulenc,

and the new Berlin musicians:

K urt Weill and Paul Dessau.

They were incredibly talented, often novel and modern,

in tune to the films,

good at counterpoint.

Yet, they were ignored.

Do you know that tune?

No.

Me neither.

And l know lots of songs.

I've heard it before.

But where and when?

Joseph Kosma,

his whole life long, fought hierarchies

and a set of values that put academic music on one side

and popular music on the other.

And it's not by chance that Prévert found in him

an exceptional composer

and that many Prévert-Kosma tunes will remain evergreen classics.

And the waves come and wash away

The footprints of lovers

Gone separate ways

Music...

Kosma would discover if not music, at least the desire to write it

after spending three to four years in Berlin

where he was affected

by the incredible musical effervescence there.

He discovered the works of Brecht and Kurt Weill.

Kosma had this first encounter, which was crucial,

and he wanted at that moment to write music

directly accessible to the public, to the people,

born of the people to return to the people,

and which, at the same time, contained a political message.

Right away he found filmmakers

who believed that movies could change things a bit,

who believed, as Renoir told me one day,

you have to make a film thinking

that you'll change the course of history.

You need that arrogance.

But you also must be humble enough to think, if you touch two people,

you've done something extraordinary.

That's so typical,

that opening military march,

which belongs to a genre

that inspired the people whom l spoke of before:

Schubert, Mahler, Kurt Weill...

The anti-militarist military march.

It's very representative.

With Schubert, it's constant.

You use military music,

its rhythm and tempo, and that aspect of immutability,

which comes at you.

At the same time, it speaks

not of mobilizing people, but the horror of war.

The end music left a lasting impression on me,

the way it suddenly bursts forth.

It's all the more powerful as Kosma, like Jaubert,

doesn't try to put music on the entire film.

Maybe it was Renoir's choice, too.

So when it begins, it has such power!

The music wells up here.

You get the feeling it penetrates the very heart of Lantier's emotions.

This music isn't purely dark.

It tries to introduce a glimmer of hope.

Jacques, what's wrong?

Jacques! Jacques!

Of course, there's Children of Paradise.

Kosma couldn't get credit for the music in 1944.

He was Jewish, communist, and underground.

But we know Kosma scored parts of the film:

all the pantomimes.

Barrault adapted them for the stage. The show was a huge success.

And, in a way, Kosma's music, too, stood out on its own

to illustrate a French masterpiece admired the world over.

It's very moving to think that this music,

with its very French accents and tone

was written by someone who had not been French for very long.

Kosma was completely immersed

in a typically French, Parisian spirit.

The same pretty much goes for Offenbach.

Among the films Kosma scored,

l want to mention Henri Calef's Bagarres.

Kosma wrote a beautiful, very lyrical score.

Carmelle!

Open the door!

Or I'll break it down!

Do you hear me, Carmelle?

I'll smash it to pieces.

With ideas that are modern, too.

Meaning the music stops.

There's no music over one of the most dramatic moments.

Go to bed.

Kosma and Renoir first met during Le crime de Monsieur Lange.

Yet, Monsieur Lange was scored by Jean Wiener.

But Prévert, who wrote the screenplay,

also wrote a song,

and he wanted the song set to music by his friend Joseph Kosma.

Day by day

Night after night

Under the stars

That's the way l live

Where is that star That I've never seen ?

"Under the Stars," the first Kosma-Prévert song,

and yet, one of the least cited.

Day by day

Night after night

Under the stars

That's the way l live

l often found French crime movies of the era limp and unexciting.

Stories of pimps, night clubs,

rather sordid at that.

Luckily, there were Eddie Constantine's films,

that were a breath of fresh air

with their humor and laid-back feeling.

l loved Eddie Constantine's films.

I never missed one.

Cet homme est dangereux is one of my favorites.

You can come out now. The coast is clear.

Speak French. People hate subtitles.

l said, I love the thrill of danger.

Marvelous dialogue by Marcel Duhamel.

Cet homme est dangereux was directed by Jean Sacha,

whom l knew well and was fond of.

Jean Sacha was a cinephile turned director,

like Pierre Chenal and Edmond T. Gréville.

In the 1930s, he started a magazine called L'Ami du Film.

He was also a poster designer and talented artist

as these drawings show:

Joan Crawford,

Garbo.

Just a few lines.

A lovely drawing of Veronica Lake.

He served as editor to Max Ophuls and Orson Welles.

And you sense Welles' influence

throughout Cet homme est dangereux,

shot with short focal lens

not often used in French cinema at the time.

With a rather expressionistic use of light

and startling angles.

Jean Sacha worked very closely

with a remarkable yet underrated cameraman,

Marcel Weiss.

Sacha didn't like to shoot with live sound.

He wanted to recreate the soundtrack while editing.

Here, he cut all the sound ambiance, keeping only the music...

The music coming from the boat that fades in and out

depending on how close he gets to its source.

Zero. Nothing on zero.

The tone here is less parodic.

Lemmy Caution doesn't always have a grip on the situation.

Hey, fellas, nice work.

Solid, undemanding.

But they all disappeared when the check came.

And you paid cash.

Many times, he's heard thinking aloud,

making delightful voice-over quips...

What are they doing?

Have they started reading Gone with the Wind?

Just when l'm in a huge hurry.

...that enable Sacha to do some subjective camera work

that was a direct tribute to Delmer Daves' Dark Passage.

Make up your mind, Lemmy.

Courage, Lemmy.

Thanks, Lemmy, I'll need it.

What's striking here is how Sacha films violence.

How could I know, Lemmy? I thought...

Look, you saw Van Zelten's daughter.

The mines, the railroads, the planes...

The guns.

One for MacFee. You owed him one.

One for me, from a friend.

The violence is brisk, brutal, and straightforward.

Loosen up.

Think about something else.

Like Jean Sacha,

John Berry also worked with Orson Welles

at the Mercury Theater as an actor.

After a fabulous crime film,

He Ran All the Way,

suspected of communist sympathies,

he was blacklisted.

Unable to work in the US,

he went into self-exile in Europe like Dassin, Losey, and Cy Enfield.

There he shot Ça va barder.

You piece of shit!

Thanks to Constantine, he got credit for the film,

the first film to defy the blacklist, one year before Rififi.

Police.

What were you doing outside?

-We had an appointment. -Here?

No, at the Paradise at 11:00. He stood me up.

He had an excuse. He was dead.

-So you were at the Paradise at 11:00? -At 11:30.

And before that?

You must be kidding. You gonna pin that me?

Where were you at 11:00?

In a foot race.

-Alone, naturally? -No, behind the bar hostess.

A comic.

A comic!

The hilarious dialogue was written by Jacques-Laurent Bost,

Pierre's brother, co-founder of Les Temps Modernes,

and Simone de Beauvoir's lover,

who became his regular collaborator.

Come in, my man.

You're not shocked, are you? Ever seen a naked man?

Once. In a museum.

Nothing like a hot bath for losing weight.

Your cure's just starting.

Berry had a way of using sets and filming that was American,

aided by the fine photography of Jacques Lemare,

another underestimated cameraman.

Many supporting role actors, often seen in French films,

were transfigured here, cast against type.

It lent them splendid color and presence.

Jean Carmet,

André Versini,

Clément Harari.

Second...

Fourth floor... linens, upholstery fabric.

Jean Danet as the nasty scarface.

And Berry,

in one of the best fight scenes of Constantine's films.

And especially Roger Saget.

In jail, can we order out for meals?

-Sure. -Swell.

Constantine continued an uneven career

that included some insipid pulp by Guy Lefranc and Bernard Borderie.

Luckily, there were more interesting pics,

such as John Berry's Je suis un sentimental,

Vittorio Cottafavi's Avanzi di galera,

and the very fine, very unusual, very touching Lucky Jo.

What is it, Jo?

One thing I'd like

is to sink my teeth into a juicy green apple.

Got any in your fridge?

I've got better. Come on.

How about cherries off a cherry tree?

That'd be swell.

There's a Iadder over there.

Careful, don't step on the lettuce.

What else do you grow?

A bit of everything.

Grass, herbs, bay leaf, all that.

So that's what smells so good.

Now take your pick of cherries.

I didn't want it to be a Constantine-style movie.

He was delighted. He was sick of brawls.

But then the distributers said: "Okay, you have Constantine,

but we want lots of brawls or it's not a 'Constantine.'"

That amused me, l'd never done fight scenes.

But he was crushed. He took the film because of no fights.

But we got along well. I was very fond of him. A sweet guy.

We can't forget Alphaville,

which took him to Fassbinder's films.

lncreasingly, l see the human form

as a lovers' dialogue.

The heart has but one mouth.

Everything by chance.

All words without thought.

Feelings adrift.

Men roam the city.

When I left boarding school,

l could finally go to the movies at will,

even if I had to skip class and failed my baccalaureate,

unlike my friend Volker Schlôndorff.

l often wrote to François Truffaut, sometimes to disagree,

especially about The Searchers, which he demolished.

And l expressed the wish to see him shoot his first feature.

He answered right away, a fine show of courtesy,

and invited me to the set

on Rue Vaugirard.

Bravo.

He was shooting a classroom scene with Guy Decomble.

We have a new Juvenal in class.

But he can't tell an alexandrine from a decasyllable.

Doinel, conjugate for tomorrow...

Go to your seat to take it down.

In the indicative, conditional, and subjunctive...

The rest of you, your notebooks.

He was gentle and calm,

a great contrast with Melville.

“I deface the classroom walls,

and I mangle French prosody."

l went to see the film right off. It was so moving and powerful.

l was there on the first day at 2:00 p. m.

for Shoot the Piano Player.

Its comical, moving, and original tone delighted me.

It's done like this in the movies.

I went to the movies today. I saw Torpedoes in Alaska.

How was it?

John Wayne shows the Americans want peace.

Then Yanks are just like me.

Making fun of me?

I'm not making fun, pet.

I had to put up with the crowd booing,

outraged by Raoul Coutard's bold photograph y.

It's the only film I saw booed on the Champs Elysées

with Night of the Hunter at the Marboeuf.

Her name was Françoise

But they called her "Framboise"

The adjutant had got the idea Though he had precious few ideas

She served us drinks

In the boondocks of Maine-et-Loire

But she was not Madelon She had a different name

And for a start, pinching her chin Was out of the question

Besides, she was from Antibes

What a snub!

Snub and Raspberry

I spent most evenings at the Cinémathèque on Rue d'UIm

where Henri Langlois' programming was at once brilliant, erratic,

almost Dadaist.

Here‘s where he piles up the treasures

for a future film museum.

Here's where he decides which film from 1908 or 1924

you see on Rue d'Ulm or Avenue Albert de Mun.

I saw a print of Macao

by Joseph von Sternberg with Mitchum

dubbed in Vietnamese.

A few years later, I'd get clubbed by the police

trying to defend Henri Langlois

and watched a riot police officer slowly crush my glasses

as l tried to get up.

At the Cinémathèque, I discovered Malraux's Espoir.

As well as a surprising, unknown Duvivier

which didn't correspond

to the image I'd been given of that director.

The Eiffel Tower...

The Eiffel Tower...

It was at the Cinémathèque during a Louis Daquin retrospective

that l met Yves Martin,

a remarkable poet

who wrote Le Partisan and Poème Court suivi d‘un Long,

and Bernard Martinand

who ended up working with Langlois.

We founded the Nickel Odeon film club,

devoted to American movies.

We wanted to decide for ourselves,

not settle for judgments made 10 - 15 years prior

or films dismissed for partisan reasons.

We'd also discover a wide variety of films,

from Jean Rouch's l, a Negro,

to shorts by Jacques Demy and Resnais,

or Le garçon sauvage by the often criticized director,

sometimes rightly, Jean Delannoy.

As Jacques Lourcelles writes,

"Delannoy describes with tranquil audacity

the green paradise of childhood loves,

where the mother is the love object of a demanding son."

-We'll always be together? -Always.

-Just the two of us? -Just the two of us.

An extraordinary actor trio

and a great role for Franck Villard.

But you know your mother was pained.

It didn't bother you to see she suffered?

To see she was unhappy?

A swell son you have.

You raised him well. What a disgrace!

He hardly even deserves parents.

I'm not an interesting mother.

But I swear, I care for him.

I believe you, but as for him, you're the only person he loves.

He told you he fell in the water one night, by accident.

It's not true.

He told me the truth just an hour ago.

My little boy...

That's what love is when you're 11.

My darling.

There are children you have to make into men.

He's rather the opposite:

a man you have to make into a kid.

The door closes on the Algerian.

Don't go away. October 17 continues.

After many incidents, we finally managed to see Octobre à Paris,

about the crackdown on the Algerian demonstration in 1961

that they tried to ban.

But on February 8,

I witnessed a policeman who had voluntarily killed.

For we were into politics, contrary to the myth about cinephiles.

That night, the police closed theaters showing it

and cordoned off the area.

We finally saw the film at a film club

specialized in Chinese cinema.

There Bernard Martinand took us to sheds

filled with thousands of cans of film.

A small distributor, EG Muller, collected them

to destroy them and turn them into combs.

He readily agreed to sell us the titles we wanted.

That's how we bought the French version

of Samuel Fuller's first film, l Shot Jesse James,

a totally zany Ulmer

shot in Super-Cinecolor:

Babes in Bagdad,

and two nitrate prints,

in other words, inflammable,

of two major Edmond T. Gréville films:

Pour une nuit d'amour, and Le diable souffle.

Very early on, I was 19,

I was attuned to the problem of film survival and preservation.

The subject was never broached in the movie magazines l read.

It was those two films that we saved

that introduced me to Edmond T. Gréville's work.

As she leaves, grab her by the arm...

The prince of fringe directors.

This pastor's son spent his career

shuttling between France and England

and shooting films the world over.

When l met him with a few friends,

he had trouble completing his personal projects

like La Dame de Monsoreau.

He was broke.

Sometimes I had to lend him money, and l was just a student.

How sad to leave all this already.

Gréville's best films are full of ideas.

Remous is staggeringly bold.

The subject: sexual impotence.

The hero played by Jean Galland becomes impotent after a car crash.

The film analyzes the consequences of such impotence.

And it does so with compassion and care for the characters.

Both for the character of the wife,

a sexually frustrated woman played by Jeanne Boitel,

and for the husband.

In fact, desire and sexual frustration as well as voyeurism

are the driving themes of nearly all of Gréville's films.

Let's go home.

His directing style blends a deep love for silent films

with very modern ideas for shots, moments of searing intensity...

"Image play” as you might say word play.

This lends them an absolutely inimitable tone.

I love you.

You're the only one I ever loved.

I'll never love anyone but you.

I've never doubted it, Jeanne.

You hear me?

Never.

Never.

Henri!

One mustn't overlook Menaces,

which remains one of his most personal,

successful films.

Hitler's speeches heard throughout

are all contemporaneous with the film.

You have foreign Iodgers, but decent folk. Elsewhere, look out.

-Why's that? -Because of events.

The tensions in Europe.

Here, French and foreigners form one big family.

Why, Mademoiselle Denise...

Menaces tells the story of refugees stuck in a hotel.

There are IItalians, French, and British,

and Dr. Hoffman played by Eric von Stroheim.

To say the least,

especially in Mr. Hoffman‘s case, without family or country,

an exile with a mutilated face.

Stroheim was Gréville's god.

He'd wanted him to play the director in Marchand d'Amour.

So he was thrilled to be able to work with him.

Stroheim arrived and declared,

"I'd like the character to be a legless cripple

that kids hoist up to the seventh floor."

Gréville was appalled.

He couldn't deal with a cripple the whole film.

He had a flash of inspiration.

He said to Stroheim,

"I've got a better idea.

Your face has been damaged,

half of it destroyed in WWI,

and you wear a mask to cover that part of your face.

It's a little like a Janus mask:

one side is war, the other is peace."

Stroheim loved the idea and forgot about the cripple.

Tomorrow,

the sky will be rent by airplanes, bombs,

attacks, explosions of shrapnel.

A sky full of steel, fire,

and poison gas.

But l want to live!

To live,

you must be able to love.

Menaces is the only French film openly against Munich.

The negative was saved by LTC Iab employees who buried it

and prevented its destruction.

At Liberation, Gréville figured,

since he was the last to make a movie before the war,

he'd make the first movie after Liberation,

and he shot an epilogue.

But all the actors who played resistance fighters, the antifascists,

were in jail or banned from working for collaboration. All of them!

Ginette Leclerc, Jean Galland...

So he chose the daughter of a concierge

who looked like Ginette Leclerc and used her.

At Liberation, he undertook a very personal work,

Le diable souffle.

The wind,

this cold wind from the Pyrenees,

which churns up the sky and reeds as it blows,

this is the main character of our story.

But there are others...

Another story of sexual frustration,

between two men and a woman,

confined to an isolated place, another Gréville obsession.

Here it's an island threatened by flood.

As the proverb Gréville made up goes,

"Woman is fire, man is oakum, and the devil blows."

It was a very low-budget production.

The Rhone wasn't running high.

Gréville and Alekan came up with some tricks

to make us believe a flood.

They planted trees,

and as the shoot progressed, they cut them.

The water wasn't rising, the trees were shrinking.

I did what I could.

She's dead.

Dead...

The devil has blown.

She's gone.

Murderer!

Paradoxically, it's easier

to see the films shot in England,

some of which are excellent.

For instance, Brief Ecstasy,

that Graham Greene championed,

Secret Lives,

and especially Noose, a film noir

that's incredibly inventive, visually speaking.

Talking with passionate young cinephiles

and seeing his films,

boosted Gréville and gave him new energy.

He undertook two new films,

Les menteurs, not bad, and L'Accident,

wrote an original screenplay,

and started writing his memoirs,

his fascinating, comical memoirs.

But unfortunately, he died prematurely.

My friends from the Nickel Odeon all had to chip in

to pay for his funeral.

And when the news came out,

we got a very moving letter from René Clair

who spoke very highly of Gréville,

expressed his admiration,

reminded us that he'd directed him in Sous les toits de Paris,

and sent us a check.

Decades later,

I was finally able to publish his memoirs,

unfortunately incomplete,

and the first novel he wrote at age 19,

Supprimé par I'Ascenseur.

Here, as they tell it in Montmartre,

is the strange story of...

In Lyon, there was a theater called Le Club

where l discovered Bob le Flambeur.

The theater was particular

in that it had a strip tease number at intermission.

I went back three times that week,

not just for the strip tease, which was pretty basic.

A girl took off her clothes on a shabby little stage.

She was sitting on a chair...

But the film made a big impression on me.

The voice-over narration by Melville had me hooked from the start.

The story begins in those minutes between night and day,

by the dawn's early light.

Montmartre is both heaven and...

The shots of daybreak over Pigalle had me hooked.

...hell.

The neons are about to go out.

People pass one another, forever strangers.

Working people, like this cleaning lady,

who's very Iate.

And idlers, like this young girl way ahead of her years.

With time, l came to think Bob le Flambeur was overrated.

A few unusual scenes, like the casing of the Deauville casino,

filmed in real time without back projection,

the casual feeling created by the offhand tone of the narration,

that made up for Auguste Le Breton's mediocre dialogue,

and a rather conventional screenplay.

There was the charm of Roger Duchêne,

whose life resembled Bob's,

and the stunning presence of Isabelle Corey,

sexy and innocent...

l don't need a guardian.

Just a spanking.

...and perverse.

It's dangerous to listen to a sidewalk Romeo.

Defending widows and orphans?

One more crack and you'll get your spanking.

Dare you!

Deux hommes dans Manhattan sent us into even greater raptures.

Again, the charm and beauty of a few nighttime shots,

a couple of them filmed by François Reichenbach,

the tracking shot highlighting Christian Chevalier's lovely song,

shot on the main sound stage of Jenner Studios,

were disserved by a mediocre script with a string of red herrings.

Narrative freedom was confused with the lack of a script.

The performance by Melville, a dubious actor...

...made the film even more amateurish.

Three-quarters of it was shot in Paris.

l wrote an outrageous piece about Deux hommes dans Manhattan

in the magazine we started at the Sorbonne: L'Etrave.

Other contributors included Frédéric Vitoux,

who joined the Académie Française,

and René Cleitman,

who would produce Life and Nothing But and Fresh Bait.

I used the article to contact Melville,

who greeted me in his studios at 25B rue Jenner.

An extraordinarily powerful moment.

He was the first director l'd met.

And he had his own studios.

I'd spend many months there,

waiting hours in the small offices to the right as you enter.

Through this window, I'd see Melville arriving,

three or four hours late,

broken up by reassuring phone calls.

"l'm coming, buddy, don't move."

To make up for it, he'd drive me around Paris in his American car,

raising and Iowering the electric windows.

We'd go see a movie or two,

then after dinner he'd take me up to Montmartre or Pigalle,

like the cops in Le Doulos,

showing me high spots of crime or resistance.

He was a great storyteller.

He was an insomniac

and never got me home before 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning.

He wanted to form my film education.

He'd impress me or rebuff me.

"Raoul Walsh is crap,

except Strawberry Blonde, a masterpiece."

He had two categories of films, crap and masterpieces.

He seemed to enjoy having young cinephiles

at his disposal night and day.

Jean-Pierre Melville went to see my parents

to talk them into letting me make movies.

Claude Sautet did the same.

They were my two movie godfathers.

And Melville even gave me my first job:

intern on Leon Morin, Priest.

l became Volker Schlôndorff's assistant,

as he'd been promoted to first assistant on the film,

and Melville even asked him to play a bit part,

like here, a German soldier.

I didn't see...

Yes, yes, and then always sabotage with the train.

It was a thrilling experience, but often a nightmare.

He'd humiliate members of the crew in public,

like the set designer, in front of everyone,

by slashing wallpaper he didn't like.

He chewed me out for recommending Moonfleet to him.

Henri Decaë whispered to me, "You're right."

He'd often fall out with actors he'd adored.

With Belmondo, during L'Aîné des Ferchaux.

It's 12:45 now.

He's right. Having us come when nothing is ready!

Waste of time. We're not stooges!

I'm fed up, too, Mr. Melville!

I've had it. Up to here!

-l'm no stooge. -And l am ?

I'm kept waiting. Yesterday it was 8:00 to 11:00.

Think l enjoy it?

You were in your bathtub. l'm not stupid.

- When ? -Yesterday.

l wait while Mr. Melville looks for his cuff links!

-What? -I've had it with big shots!

With Lino Ventura in Army of Shadows,

they only spoke through the assistant.

l was present at a number of scenes like this...

Melville: "Mr. Pellegrin,

please ask Mr. Ventura to enter and hang his hat on the peg."

Georges Pellegrin would take two steps

and repeat what Ventura had just heard.

"Mr. Pellegrin, please ask Mr. Melville

if I should hang up my coat as well as my hat."

They arrived during the night. There was no one when I went by.

It's a miracle the film didn't suffer for a second.

I'd almost say, on the contrary.

Everything is ready for the interrogation.

I set out a table and chairs.

We're not here for a trial.

We're here for this.

Still, he had a huge influence on me.

It was fascinating to watch him plan reverse angle shots

with maniacal precision.

For instance in Leon Morin, Priest.

Your hands are still pure, aren't they?

No.

No, Father.

Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost.

You owe it the utmost respect.

Isn't the human body wondrous?

Yes.

Then you mustn't abuse it.

You will cease your depravity?

I will.

Are you kind at the office?

The girls hate me for converting.

Melville used the shot-reverse shot.

He said, "It may not be modern, but it sure does the job."

And he wasn't sloppy about it,

he used it with a precision unseen with any other director.

If he were to do a shot-reverse shot on us,

he‘d measure the distance between the Iens and your eye.

58 centimeters.

For the reverse shot,

I'd have to be exactly 58 centimeters away:

the eye in the center of the camera,

so that our looks could really meet.

And then there was the width of the shots,

which he carefully chose.

And suddenly, taking this shot-reverse shot cliché,

the dumbest way to work out a scene,

he made it into an art.

From the Avenue Mozart job. You were behind it.

You're misinformed. I had nothing to do with it.

I make enough money.

I don't care.

l have the jewels. I need a certain sum of money.

I'd gladly help you out.

You don't even have to...

Who did you phone just now?

The cemetery.

To reserve a plot, in case you don't behave.

He used his studio masterfully, aside from the stages.

There wasn't a single space

that wasn't filmed at least three or four times.

This corridor along the bar

is transformed into an American hospital.

The studio door serves as building entrance

again in Deux hommes dans Manhattan,

as the entrance to nightclubs in Le Doulos,

Le Samouraï.

He'd always ask his assistants

to integrate the studio's back stairs leading to the second floor.

The staircase figures in Le Doulos.

And in Le Samouraï.

As does the garage entrance behind the studios on a side street.

The tank full?

All set, Mr. Bob.

Usually cars go in and out

to the sound of a dog barking.

I don't think he was good at writing original screenplays.

I'm not convinced by Deux hommes, or by Le Cercle Rouge,

or by Un Flic.

Le Samouraï, far better,

still copies This Gun for Hire,

replacing the cat by a bird.

But he was a fabulous adapter, a fantastic reader.

He knew immediately what to take from a book,

whether it was Le silence de la mer,

or Le Doulos.

He had the novel.

He would buy two copies

to have the front and back of each page.

He'd note the passages he wanted to use.

I had to cut them out

and paste them onto blank sheets of paper.

Then, between the cut-out passages of the book,

he'd write his script in:

continuity shots, additional dialogue, etc.

He came up with the great idea

of having Cocteau narrate Les Enfants Terribles.

He also came up with the idea of using Bach and Vivaldi,

when Cocteau wanted two pianists: Wiener and Doucet.

I remember a day

when I had Cocteau rush over to stand in front of a microphone

to record his heartbeat,

which we hear at one point, beating in Edouard Dermit's breast

in Les Enfants Terribles.

He could be incredibly daring,

managing to keep Béatrice Beck's very literary dialogue,

which Belmondo and Emmanuelle Riva transcended.

Why shouldn't the Lord perform miracles for heretics?

Does He love them less?

Under your influence, I came to imagine that God was Catholic.

Let's call Him the universal Catholic

in our profane language.

Still, He can be many other things, too.

You know what our Lord said?

"In my father's house are many rooms."

Contradictory rooms?

Perhaps.

But the contradictions are mainly in our mind.

Melville also transcended Kessel's book, Army of Shadows.

We could have saved Félix.

No.

Nothing, nobody.

Not even you.

Besides, the police are after you.

Lie low for a while, then come back.

The first plane is for you.

Forget it.

With these maquis popping up all over,

someone has to unify the command,

train them,

provision them.

There's no one now to replace me.

If they nab you, we'll have to replace you.

Working with him, l discovered his obsessions,

his bars,

where dancers danced, usually up on the counter.

His mirrors.

He was influenced by American movies.

His police stations weren't French.

Yet you ran away like a wretch.

I'm surprised at you.

Police station offices weren't set up that way then.

Windows had venetian blinds.

The police knew more than me.

The wallpaper and the backgrounds

were right out of Wise's Odds against Tomorrow,

a film Melville made us watch every night,

along with Godard's Le Petit Soldat.

They all saw something from their windows.

But that doesn't get us anywhere.

Some say they saw someone behind the wheel, alone.

Others that there were two guys. No one mentioned a woman.

During the shoots, I noted moments

he borrowed from American movies we'd watched together

and that he'd loved.

Desailly's toothpick in this scene,

this absolutely fabulous sequence shot...

That toothpick comes from André de Toth's Crime Wave.

Sterling Hayden chews on it throughout the film.

Everybody saw it.

Some days are no good.

And I can see what influenced Tarantino in Le Doulos.

The confrontation between René Lefèvre and Serge Reggiani,

this banal exchange that takes a tragic turn,

contains the matrix of the first scene of Inglourious Basterds.

Between 15,000 and 20,000.

A far cry from the 11 million reported in the papers.

Speak to Remi about that job?

-What do you think? -You did.

Then what are you waiting for?

You cry poverty. There's work just waiting for you.

Okay, there's a safe. But you'll have all night.

The house is isolated.

That's just it. It looks too simple.

I don't like simple things.

Like six years ago.

Melville's influence is still enormous.

Not only on Tarantino. I was astonished.

It was before Tarantino's first film. I met him at Sundance.

He said to me, "Le Doulos is my favorite movie."

I said, "How is that? Is there even a print in the US?"

Thanks, old pal.

It'll tide me over.

Don't you worry.

Take the money if you need it.

Okay.

And don't forget your cigarettes on the table.

He created a stylized, fantasized world,

remote from French reality.

No historical markers,

yet without copying his model.

A nocturnal universe,

more desolate, more melancholic,

devoid of that tonic or ironic energy,

right down to the description of evil.

He dreamed of being William Wyler, wanted to film like him.

But his shots are always longer than Wyler's,

stripped down,

and length is handled in a totally different manner.

Virtually no music.

Out-of-frame action is more frequent.

Unthinkable in an American thriller.

The spareness is more extreme.

The waiting and the silences are more emphasized.

Finally, he's closer to Bresson than Wyler.

The oppressive apartments

without windows, or shaded by heavy drapes,

are the reverse of American crime movies,

which play with windows and sources of light,

depth of field,

an opening on the city.

In fact, very autobiographically

he recreated the atmosphere of his office and bedroom.

Sure you're not doing something stupid?

l wanted to be sure about the job.

I'm tired of mooching off Thérèse.

But I admit to having a soft spot for Leon Morin, Priest.

It evokes the Occupation mainly through women's eyes.

Rather be shot than make eyes at them.

It was incredibly daring to focus a film on theological debates

between a communist atheist and a priest.

Here.

Look.

Lord,

fulfill my wish just once.

Just this once.

Then, blessed be the eternal torment.

Comel

Au revoir.

That's a figure of speech.

Sure, we'll meet again.

Not in this life.

In the next.

The ambiguity of conversion,

but also the frustration of repressed love...

that's what Melville dramatized in this devastating masterpiece.

The portrait of this priest out of the ordinary, out of time.

A resistance fighter.

Like Gerbier in Army of Shadows,

a film about repressed desire.

Look at this ending. So economical, so blunt.

Go!

Melville masterfully transposes

the aesthetic codes of his crime films.

Films like Le Doulos and Le deuxième souffle

have become cult for directors from Tarantino to John Woo,

to the detriment of a more personal segment of his work,

where I find the more private Melville.

He virtually never talked about it.

The Melville in the Resistance under various pseudonyms:

Cartier, Nono,

who made it to England from Spain

after an exhausting odyssey in which he lost his brother.

He never spoke to us about his pain.

He told me that he went to England finally to be able to see

Michael Powell's Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.

Melville, who fought in Italy and France,

then combated the communist union

to impose his own crew, his way of shooting,

his vision.

When we finished Leon Morin, Priest,

Melville made it clear I was a Iousy assistant.

He was right.

He added, "I think you'll be good at defending films,

so you'd make a good press agent."

He introduced me to Georges de Beauregard, his producer,

still reeling from the unexpected success of Breathless.

Georges de Beauregard

hired me right off as press agent at Rome-Paris Films,

the compan y he'd just founded together with Carlo Ponti.

And so, in 15 minutes, I'd lost my job and found another.

I started by working on films being completed,

such as the wonderful Adieu Philippine.

-I was with Michel until 2:00 a.m. -Is he a good kisser?

l have dazzling memories of certain scenes:

the two girls walking in the street, that Rozier filmed fabulously,

the scenes shot in the TV studio,

and all the hilarious moments

with Vittorio Caprioli as a crooked, penniless producer.

l come to your office?

You mean, here? No.

I'd rather we meet somewhere else. Know La Maison du Café?

Young people have it easy now.

When I started working in '23, there were no vacations.

The editing took forever.

Beauregard, maybe influenced by Godard,

annoyed by cost overruns, finally sold the film,

which was polished for another year before its release.

So what's up, Dédé?

Oh, nothing.

For a young man wild about cinema, Rome-Paris Films was magical.

We rubbed elbows with Godard,

talked to him about John Ford,

with Claude Chabrol, always the joker.

l don't take myself seriously.

We're always someone else's fool.

l'd rather be someone's fool than his prig.

Agnes Varda...

The release of Cleo from 5 to 7 is a wonderful memory,

as is the film itself.

A chronicle of an hour and a half

in the life of a woman afraid to die and who recovers her soul.

Hold your horses.

Being ugly is death.

I'm beautiful and ten times more alive than others.

l'd invited my friend Roger Tailleur to a screening.

He wrote a magnificent piece.

Nothing is more admirable

than intelligence imbued with sensibility,

unless it is sensibility guided by intelligence.

Nothing rarer than a mind enamored of rigor no less than fancy

if not a temperament at once hyper-instinctive and extra-lucid.

Agnes Varda is the harmony of these opposites.

My favors, his voice

The flavor of my heart-shaped mouth

Rome-Paris Films was a small-scale, casual operation.

I remember the release of L'oeil du malin.

Not a single entry at the Plaza cinema on the first day,

which delighted Chabrol to no end.

We made the film for half the estimated budget.

Right, Georges?

-Georges had found... -A German co-producer.

...a German co-producer whose name I won't mention out of kindness.

He was thrown in jail two days before shooting.

He had a 50% co-production share.

But Georges, fearless, asked me to do the film on half the budget.

I said we'd try.

And we did it.

Beauregard was a gambler.

An extrovert, a warm man, who went by instinct.

After the success of Breathless,

he asked Godard to bring him others like him.

That's how people like Rozier, Demy, Varda, and Chabrol came in.

They all did movies for Rome-Paris Films.

Michel Cournot did a portrait of Beauregard

that's at once fantasized, made up,

and oddly enough, quite accurate.

The fun part is reading a screenplay,

and then, later, seeing the film.

And vanishing in-between.

Otherwise, where's the surprise?

Chabrol's films are beyond me.

They're only understood by himself and pharmacists.

l love Chabrol. He's an anarchist.

He doesn't age.

I'd like some chocolate!

He's always 45 years old.

Alone.

No family."

You must tell me.

You have nothing to lose now.

Did you kill them?

That, counselor, I can't tell you.

That's my little baggage.

I go to my death,

my soul innocent and at peace.

-Did he carve them up? -We don't know.

I think he chopped them up, rather.

We don't know if people want to see Landru chop them up.

True, we accept a certain horror,

and beyond that, you hesitate.

When in doubt, it's best to do neither.

I worked with Godard on Contempt,

Pierrot le fou, and Les Carabiniers.

Each time Beauregard wanted me

to explain that this time

Godard was making a real movie,

with a real script, written beforehand.

It was totally untrue.

So I had to show the books that supposedly inspired him.

And each time, the result was a dazzling work,

innovative, visually sublime,

but totally unlike the original plan.

The more I make films, the less I know.

I think I make films to find out what the cinema is.

Like, to cite a great example,

Mallarmé wrote poetry to find out what poetry really was.

The only thing of interest

is the path people take.

I saw him shoot his films.

I heard Raoul Coutard struggle

with the erratic definition of Techniscope.

He claimed it'd make the film resemble an impressionist painting.

And I'rn the one who brought Samuel Fuller on the set.

Godard didn't want me to bring him journalists

who had praised him.

He much preferred to meet critics who'd slammed his films.

For instance, Robert Benayoun from Positif,

who I brought to the set of Les Carabiniers.

I was also very impressed

by the way he integrated into his narrative, into his vision,

Antoine Duhamel's incredible music.

He'd written long phrases that had no precise timing.

Godard stopped them...

...and picked them up again, adding silences.

-A complicated... -...story.

Leave in a hurry.

He did the same with Delerue's equally brilliant scores.

I have to see that American.

I was there when Carlo Ponti demanded

that a scene with Bardot in the nude be added.

See my feet in the mirror?

Yes.

You think they're pretty?

Yes, very.

What is rather paradoxical is that in the Italian version,

the scene requested by the Italian co-producer isn't there.

It was cut

and Delerue's music was entirely redone

by the very talented Pierrot Piccioni.

l find it rather amusing that an Italian co-producer's request

ends up with a film that doesn't contain the scene

he'd imposed on the director during shooting.

-This is my wife, Camille. -Pleased to meet you.

-Fritz Lang. -Hello.

He made that western with Marlene Dietrich.

It was terrific.

I prefer M.

Your M? We just saw it on TV. l really enjoyed it.

Thank you. That's kind.

But in Rancho Notorious,

I love the scene with Mel Ferrer and the scale.

Thank you. When l finish The Odyssey...

When Pierrot le fou came out, I had an idea.

Since Godard often quoted Aragon,

I called the weekly he edited and said,

"I'm the son of René Tavernier,

the man who hid you in Monchat during the war.

I want to show you a film that might move you."

The next morning,

he was in the Publicis screening room with Elsa Triolet.

Both of them greeted me with a warm hug.

The screening began,

and out of it came a historic four-page piece.

Attending the screening of Pierrot le fou,

l'd forgotten what one was supposed to say and think about Godard.

That he has mannerisms, quotes such and such,

lectures us, believes this and that.

In short, that he was insufferable, long-winded, sententious.

l saw one thing, one thing only:

that it was beautiful,

superhumanly, physically beautiful,

in its soul and imagination.

What we watch for two hours,

and this beauty, which the word beauty cannot adequately define,

it must be said that this parade of images

is simply sublime.

There was also Pierre Schoendoerffer,

one of the first directors Beauregard produced.

War is a fact. It has existed forever.

Schoendoerffer returned exhausted,

sick, wiped out from malaria,

after shooting La 317e section.

It was the start of a long friendship

in which even our differences united us.

It was also my first job as director.

l wrote and directed the trailer.

The script was spoken by the film's editor, Armand Psenny,

who edited all my early films.

May 4, 1954,

during the Geneva conference to end the lndochinese war,

four French and 41 Cambodian back-up troops

evacuate the post at Luang Ba to fall back on Tao Tsai.

White splits.

Yellow stays.

I still find La 317e section

one of France's, even the world's, greatest war films.

No one described it better than Michel Cournot.

Everything we see here

was lived and recorded by Pierre Schoendoerffer

while he fought in lndochina.

His light and camera movement restored every detail.

Memory is not a faculty given to everyone.

One man was able to look war in the face, listen to it.

Here, war is not depicted, highlighted.

Nor is it spied upon, seen from behind,

as in war newsreels.

With this film, we're not at a show.

We change skins.

Tonight,

the animals...

I'm scared of wild animals.

Let's move out.

As for Melville, it was a burst of admiration

that made me want to meet Claude Sautet the first time.

It was just after seeing Classe tous risques.

l'd been incredibly touched

by the film's tone from the very start.

And how out of step it was with French crime movies.

Pierrot, once we're in France, we won't travel anymore.

-We'll always be together, okay? -Yes.

Who knows, we might arrive before you do.

Buy us some shirts.

I will.

Don't worry. It'll be okay.

There were 27 versions of the first voice-over.

She wanted to warn him to be careful.

But what was the point?

Since she'd been packing and unpacking, she'd stop talking.

Or almost.

The children followed. They lacked for nothing,

except a school.

For this last trip, she'd packed only the essentials.

Her handbag contained the last of their money.

After the voice-over,

comes the holdup in Milan, shot with a hidden camera.

The scene hasn't aged a bit.

The way Claude avoided all the genre clichés

left me full of admiration.

That's why I wanted to see him and meet him.

My first interview, my first review. It had to be short.

The film didn't have official critical approval.

At the end l wrote, "They say it's a B movie,

but better B as in Boetticher than A as in Allegret."

I regret the pique against Allegret, pointless.

But it was a way of trying to defend Sautet.

The Cahiers weren't kind.

Cahiers du Cinéma always shot me down.

But that's okay. It vaccinated me. No, I was glad.

It hurt, at first. Then I thought, that's all right. Good.

Claude had another career besides directing.

He was a script doctor,

rescuing films that lay fallow, pulling them together.

Everyone used him.

Among those Claude worked with was Jean-Paul Rappeneau.

Yes. He was co-screenwriter

on La Vie de château.

Rappeneau himself said it was Claude

who found the film's final tone.

It was Claude who recommended Noiret.

Rappeneau wanted Louis Jourdan.

Claude couldn't see him in the country

"Louis Jourdan in an apple orchard!”

He told him to take Noiret

and to quicken the pace even more.

Crying to Daddy? "My man doesn't love me!"

He was assistant director.

It became essential for him to try to improve the film.

Proposing if only a single shot, an idea,

that would make the film a jot better.

And that's how he ended up working on the script.

He actually co-scripted films he was an assistant on,

like Franju's Eyes Without a Face and Le fauve est lâché.

That's a terrific story.

The director, Maurice Labro,

resented having Lino Ventura imposed on him.

When his contract expired, he took off.

The producer asked Sautet to finish the film.

Sautet took over for the last few weeks.

All the chase scenes around the cliffs at Etretat.

The film's tone changed.

The shots are sharp, precise.

Sautet came into his own during Le fauve est lâché,

a minor programmer.

And that's when Lino took notice of him.

Claude and I have a kind of innate complicity

which existed from when I first knew him as assistant director.

I'd already been under his spell, and I thought,

"I want to make a film with that guy when I get a chance."

Lino went to see José Giovanni and said,

"There's a guy I just made a film with.

l think he'd be right for your film.”

Claude read the book and Giovanni asked,

"How do you see the film?"

He said, "l see Lino walking, holding his kids by the hand.

"Then, later, l see him with his kids walking 50 yards behind him."

l knew he had the story in his gut as much as l did.

We did the film.

I had just worked at length with Jacques Becker on Le Trou

and I realized that Sautet

had many points in common with Becker.

The same rigor, the same authenticity of feelings,

without being bombastic, or shrilly melodramatic,

or pandering.

And the Giovanni-Sautet friendship was born there.

But then the nightmare began.

Sautet had noticed Belmondo.

The producer had said, "No way.

If we cast him, audiences will ask for their money back.”

Let me give you a name.

l don't want you to react. It will surprise you.

The guy was Dario Moreno.

Now when you see Classe tous risques,

you can imagine him pulling up in an ambulance.

She took my rifle

And gave me An old feather duster instead

Hey, you!

He said, "I want a western hero."

The best thing about me is my left hook.

There's an amazing scene in the post office.

Sautet plays on the two physiques,

the two attitudes,

the way the two actors perform very differently,

but respectful of one another.

Lino immediately championed him and loved working with him.

Yet they didn't have the same acting style.

And Sautet played on that.

Fargier sent me.

Sautet's obsession throughout the film was to keep Lino from gaining weight.

It was a story about decline.

A character on the decline can't be getting fatter.

He was with him at meals to make sure Ventura,

who loved to eat,

didn't eat too much and weaken the character's credibility.

Directing the actors was often done at meals.

The end of the film is totally elliptical.

It doesn't try for sentimentality or Iyricism.

It's amazingly modem.

A few days later, Abel Davos was arrested.

He was tried, sentenced, and executed.

After this encounter, we stayed in close touch.

Our friendship never ceased.

I showed him all my films, from screenplay to first cut.

He gave me some incredible ideas -- cuts to make, restructuring.

Until the day, after Captain Conan,

he said, "Pal, don't touch a thing."

One of the biggest compliments l ever had.

"Touch one frame and we're finished."

He was very, very tense during screenings.

l remember a screening of The Things of Life

and a critic's reaction when talking to Sautet

at the bar of the Studiorama.

He was full of praise for the film.

But he said,

"If Piccoli had swung to the left, there'd have been no accident."

Then and there, all hell broke loose.

Sautet began to holler.

"I didn't make a film about the highway code.

I didn't make a film about road safety.

That's not the subject."

He yelled, "You jerk,

l made a film about a guy who's glad to die

because it saves him from making a choice."

It's a very dark story.

But far from being a sort of apology of Pompidou's France,

on the contrary it's a seismograph

of what was dramatically changing in France.

I don't believe it.

You must be kidding. It's all decided.

Decided by whom?

By the company, by everybody.

Not by us.

Not by me.

People will look out the window and see gardens, not parking lots.

Re-read your contract, and you'll see there's...

Stuff your contract!

If I see a rabbit hutch go up out there, I'll tear it down!

Would you live here? No!

I'll come build sewers under your noses. You'll see.

Advertise first, think later if you like.

In several films, Piccoli flies into rages inspired by Sautet.

The main thing is to stay calm. Obviously.

Sautet is always very calm on the set.

Yesterday, for instance, my script was "Hello, ma'am."

You told me to say, "Ma'am, hello." How am I to know?

You told me to say, "Ma'am, hello." It was in the script!

I said "Hello" to her! My God!

A curious thing about his decade...

it starts with Classe tous risques and ends with Things of Life.

Very different films.

But after Things of Life,

there are films that use bits and pieces of Classe tous risques.

I'm not complaining.

But it doesn't come free.

There are the same precise gestures,

the same sharp yet sympathetic gaze

for certain characters,

Romy Schneider or the junk men in Max and the Junkmen.

Gotta admit, we're not aces.

That's life, pal. What do you expect?

I'm like Abel.

I'd like to do a big job, cash in, and run.

I can't see them pulling a big job.

Not the Bank of France, but a little amateur holdup.

They're small fry.

But they can become big fry.

With all the unpunished crime you read about,

that penniless riffraff is bound to wake up and say, "Why not us?"

Obviously.

Sautet is the opposite of a Parisian filmmaker.

His films are set in the outskirts of the city, the fringes.

In Max, look at those losers,

who will fall into a Machiavellian trap laid by the policeman,

masterfully played by Piccoli.

To think he was called an optimistic Pompidoulian filmmaker!

Max, optimistic?

It's perhaps the film closest to Fritz Lang ever made.

Sautet knew how to give form visually

to a community, a world, a milieu.

He renders that in the script

but also in the way he directs his actors,

in the way he alternates group scenes and wanderings.

Pierre Rissient, one of the first to champion Sautet with me,

pointed out this fluid mise-en-scène.

Another thing about Sautet: music.

I don't know a filmmaker with such knowledge of music,

at once intellectual,

passionate, and visceral.

To hear him talk about Bach was fabulous,

to hear him talk about jazz, too.

We had long discussions about Art Tatum.

Too many notes, he thought.

You see that in the construction and scoring of his films.

Even in the theme music of Max.

Theme music Philippe Sarde and Claude Sautet

For a long time, Sautet was able to coat

that darkness running through his work.

Still, people would notice it

in A Heart in Winter and Nelly and Mr. Arnaud.

Suddenly, the chill of winter started gaining hold.

But we find it in his other films.

For Jacques Becker and Claude Sautet

And coming soon...

What did Louis Lumière say to bring out his workers?

What was his first order?

The first order in the first film in cinema history?

We'll have to imagine it. We have no archives.

We know nothing.

He didn't say, "Action!"

"Go..." What did he say?

Did he call them by first names?

Knowing he had 55 seconds.