Original subtitles

FOR GIANNI AMICO

AND JAMES AGEE

It has become necessary to inform European governments

of a fact so small

they don't seem aware of it.

A population is being assassinated.

Where? In Europe. Are there witnesses?

One witness: The world. Do the governments see this? No.

THE DEAD MAN OF THE YEAR

CURRENCY OF THE ABSOLUTE

Nations have something above them which is beneath them: Governments.

Sometimes this contradiction is blatant.

Civilisation is in the people. Barbarity is in the leaders.

Is this barbarity intentional? No.

Simply professional.

Governments ignore what humanity knows.

Governments can only be short-sighted: Reason of State.

Humanity sees with another eye: Conscience.

European governments will be surprised

to learn this: Crimes are crimes.

Governments have no more right than people to murder.

Europe shows solidarity.

Everything done in Europe is done by Europe.

A government of beasts must be treated like a beast.

At this moment, not far,

people are slaughtering, setting fires, pillaging,

slitting parents' throats, selling girls and boys.

The youngest are felled with swords.

Families are burnt in their homes.

In a few hours, Balak's 9000 inhabitants

were reduced to 1300.

Cemeteries are so full, bodies cannot be buried.

The dead send the plague to the living

who sent them to slaughter.

We inform European governments

the bellies of pregnant woman are being ripped open.

In public places are skeletons of women's bodies, torn asunder.

Dogs gnaw at the skulls of raped girls.

All this is horrible.

A gesture from European governments could stop it.

Those who commit these crimes are terrifying.

Those who let them be committed are vile.

Governments stammer. They've tried stuttering before.

They say we are exaggerating.

Yes, we are.

Balak wasn't exterminated in a few hours, but in a few days.

Two hundred villages weren't burned. Only ninety-nine were.

It's not the plague, just typhoid fever.

Not all the women were raped. Not all the girls were sold.

Some escaped.

Castrated prisoners were beheaded first,

making it a lesser evil.

The boy thrown from spike to spike

was just speared with a bayonet.

Et cetera, et cetera.

THE SIGNS AMONGST US

And why did those people revolt?

Why can't a flock of men be owned like a flock of cattle?

Et cetera, et cetera.

Speaking this way adds to the horror.

Haggling over public indignation is pathetic.

Toning down makes things worse: Subtlety pleading in favour of barbarity.

Let's call a spade a spade: Killing a man

in Bondy Forest or the Black Forest is a crime.

Killing a race in the forest of diplomacy

is a crime too. A bigger one. That's all.

I BEG YOU, SIR

Where will it end? When will that heroic nation's ordeal be over?

We're told we forget certain questions.

Killing a man is a crime. Killing a race is a question.

Each government has its question.

We answer: Humanity has its question too.

Here it is:

Bigger than India, England, Russia.

It is the baby in its mother's belly.

AUGUST 29, 1876

HISTORIES OF CINEMA 3A

The Holy Book tells us that before leaving,

Lot's daughters wanted one last look back.

They were turned into salt.

We only film the past. That is, what passes.

DON'T TELL TALES, KID

And silver salts fix the light.

TELL STORIES

No stories... when I was inventing.

Stories...

when I invent nothing.

What stories, exactly?

The battle of Borodino

and the end of the French domination, as told by Tolstoy.

The battle of Baghdad, as told by CNN.

The triumph of American television and its groupies.

A German, Erich Pommer,

founder of Universal -

Matsushita Electronics, today -

exclaimed: ''I'll make the world cry in their seats!''

Maybe he did.

Newspapers and television stations

show only death and tears.

On the other hand, people who watch television all day

have no more tears to cry.

They've unlearned how to look.

What story do we want?

Supposing we are still worthy of The Charterhouse

and of crimes and punishment.

David O. Selznick demanded:

''I want Del Rio and Tyrone Power in a South Seas romance.

''Any story will do, as long as it's called Birds Of Paradise

''and it ends with Del Rio jumping into a volcano!''

WHAT IS CINEMA

NOTHING

WHAT DOES IT WANT

EVERYTHING

WHAT CAN IT DO

SOMETHING

Strangest of all...

the living dead of this world are constructed on the former world.

Their perceptions and sensations are from before.

NOTHING

Such horror...

WHAT DOES IT WANT

EVERYTHING

WHAT CAN IT DO

SOMETHING

OF THE ABSOLUTE

FROM THE DARKNESS

I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE THINKING

IT WAS SILENT CINEMA

IN THE COMPANY OF MISS CLARA HASKIL

MISTAKE: MARTHA ARGERICH

I was alone, lost in my thoughts.

I was holding a book: Manet by Bataille.

THOUGHT 1

Manet's women seem to say: ''I know what you're thinking.''

Probably because until Manet - Malraux taught me this -

inner reality was more subtle than the cosmos.

The famous, pale smiles of da Vinci and Vermeer

first say: ''Me, me.''

The world comes after.

Even Corot's woman in pink doesn't think the thoughts of Olympia,

of Berthe Morisot,

of the Folies-Bergčre barmaid.

Because finally, the world within

has opened out to the cosmos.

With Manet begins modern painting: That is, the cinématographe.

That is, forms making their way toward speech.

Precisely: A form which thinks.

Cinema was first made for thinking. This would soon be forgotten.

But that's another story.

The flame will go out for good in Auschwitz.

This thought is worth at least a farthing.

THOUGHT 1 +2

I was alone, lost in my thoughts.

Then Zola came along with his eternal camera.

He ended Nana with these words: ''To Berlin! To Berlin!''

Then Catherine Hessling arrived.

40 years and two wars after Zola,

she took the train to Berlin.

The first co-production with the UFA.

The last was Quai Des Brumes.

But Goebbels upset everything.

He disliked Michčle Morgan's eyes.

WITH THE SHARP CUT OF KISSES

You have beautiful eyes, you know.

Kiss me.

THE YEARS PASS TOO QUICKLY

KEEP AWAY

FROM SHATTERED MEMORIES

Kiss me.

Hurry, we're in a rush.

I FINALLY LAY DOWN PRIDE AND ROMANCE

MISTAKE THE PRIDE

THE MECHANICAL SENTENCE RESUMES

ON MY LIPS LINGERS A STUPID LOOK

HEARD TOO MANY TIMES THANKS TO RADIO

Alas, I was alone in thinking

that she wasn't alone on that train in 1942,

one year before the Liberation -

Albert, Danielle, Junie, Suzy, Viviane -

just before the Gličres maquis fell

despite the help Bresson's youngest dame brought in a whisper.

BEFORE THE LIBERATION OF PARIS

Hang on to life, with all your strength.

Hang on to me.

I love you. You can't leave me, You can't go away.

Hang on in there, be strong. Fight it.

I'm fighting.

THE PAST IS NEVER DEAD

You suffer. And you will go on suffering for a long time.

Because we are not done paying for all our misdeeds.

IT'S NOT EVEN PAST

Under the theme of art, cinema stars are about to leave for Germany.

At Gare de l'Est station, one can recognise Albert Préjean...

...Daničle Darrieux...

...Suzy Delair,

Junie Astor,

HER LITTLE FANFARE

Viviane Romance.

THE WAGES OF FEAR

Returning the invitation of Dr Karl Frohlich, CEO of the German cinema corporation,

these artists will be, for twelve days,

the hosts of their fellows actors from the Vienna, Munich and Berlin studios.

IN THE NEXT TRAIN THERE WAS

HER TRAIN WAS LEAVING

FOR AUSCHWITZ

And I am probably still alone...

in thinking that one of the visitors on that night in '42,

that Gilles - no, not the one in Drieu - goes to visit Dominique

and asks: ''So, do we or don't we take this train of 42?''

And that their hearts thumped and thumped...

...some poor profits gained at great expense,

a feeling of grief.

However

Time is here, at the door of Death

who roughly rebuffs it,

just as the inexhaustible conscience

heaps me with cruel reproaches.

I believe conscience is lying

and time should condemn fate.

But my eyes are clouded

by the shy repent.

Blessed am I with an energy

which gives me the gift of finding peace,

of escaping stormy seas and cruel sorrows,

and fix them all in a peaceful eternity.

No one is sorry to see you leave.

No voice sobs goodbyes.

So much has suffered your heart. How can you still be willing to stay?

Know that bonds are countless and powerful.

No one is sorry to see you leave.

No voice sobs goodbyes.

So much has suffered your heart. How can you still be willing to stay?

Know that bonds are countless and powerful

that tie us to clay.

The misunderstanding of love lingers for a long time,

can't bring itself to leave.

Well, my dear Marie,

this train, shall we take it or not?

Then sweet is the sleep when glory, with its laurels wreath, crowns the martial ribbon.

But a brave, when his name is tarnished, would rather fight than rest.

...which transcend each of our poor lives.

Paris!

Outraged Paris!

Broken Paris!

Martyred Paris,

but liberated Paris!

I was alone that night, with my dreams.

50 years later, we celebrate the Liberation.

Television, because power has become spectacle,

is organising a huge show.

No decoration for Guy Debord.

French cinema never shook off the Germans or Americans,

so no one will be there to film Claude Roy, who is seizing the CNC

that citadel built by Vichy.

The waves reconstituted by Japanese cameras

will again forget to bury the dead...

as the poet did.

- Isn't the anonymity of it awful? - What?

115 Resistance fighters, they say. It doesn't mean anything.

THE CAMERA IS THE SCREEN

When each one of them is a man.

And we don't know who they are. If they love a woman, if they have children.

If they'd rather go to the movie than the theatre. We know nothing.

Poetry is resistance.

Ossip Mandelstam knew this.

But these days, everyone ignores Russians.

Why is it that from '40 to '45 there was no resistance cinema?

There were resistance films. Left and right, here and there,

but the only film, in the true sense,

to resist America's occupation of cinema

and a uniform way of making films

was an Italian film.

It is not by chance.

Italy fought the least.

It suffered greatly. But having betrayed twice,

it suffered to have lost its identity.

It found it with Rome, Open City

because the film was made by men without uniform.

It was the only time.

The Russians made martyr films. The Americans made commercials.

The English made what they always make: Nothing.

The Germans had no cinema.

No more cinema.

And the French made Sylvia And The Ghost.

The Poles made two expiatory films, The Passenger and The Last Step,

and a nostalgic film, Kanal.

Then they welcomed Spielberg.

''Never again'' became ''It's better than nothing''.

But with Rome, Open City, Italy regained the right

for a nation to look itself in the eye.

Then came the crop of great Italian cinema.

But there is something strange.

How did Italian cinema become so great

if no one - Rossellini, Visconti, Antonioni, Fellini -

recorded sound with image?

Only one answer.

AND OFTEN IN MEN'S SLEEP

The language of Ovid and Virgil, of Dante and Leopardi

made its way into the image.

IT HAS AN IMAGE THAT IS SEEN TO DO

IN SOOTH, WHEN PERISHES THE OTHER IMAGE,

AND OTHER IS GENDERED OF ANOTHER POSE

THAT FORMER SEEMTH TO HAVE CHANGED ITS GESTURES

OH, HOW SEVERE IT IS, THE POWER OF GOD

THAT, AS ITS VENGEANCE, SHOWERS DOWN SUCH BLOWS!

AND STRAIGHT AWAY, GOD AND VOICE VANISHED

AND SLEEP WITH VOICE, AND GOD

AND DAY FOLLOWED THE FLIGHT OF SLEEP WITH LOVING LIGHT

VIRTUE WITH POVERTY DIDST THOU PREFER

THE MAN WHO SAYS TO EVERYBODY ''I DON'T LOVE HER ANYMORE''

IS STILL IN LOVE

REALITY IS THERE

WHY MANIPULATE IT

A THOUGHT

WHICH FORMS

A FORM

WHICH THINKS

TO BE CONTINUED