Original subtitles

Autumn

Written, filmed and directed by Marcel Hanoun

Julien: Michael Lonsdale

Anne: Tamia

Assistant: Mohamed Bensalah Bernard Pinon, Olivier Delilez

''Anne'' is read like ''Love'' like a word of love: Anne.

Script Girl: Marielle Paternostre

Assistant Camera: Babette Mangolte

Sound Recording: Martine Loubet

Film-set photographer: Veronica Selver

I'd like to make my own film.

Assistant Editors: Martine Loubet, Olivier Delilez

He sat right in front of the screen.

Sound Mix: Jean-Paul Loublier

Auditorium: CTIS

Hello?

Jean-Fran�ois?

Excuse me, Martine

Is he there?

Listen Jean-fran�ois, I need heIp,

I need you to find me an assistant, I'd prefer a woman,

I'll never finish the film in time alone and I'd like it to be ready for Venice,

Do you have what I need?

Call her and call me back,

Yes, she'll be paid by the production, standard rate,

She'll be housed,

And her train trip will be reimbursed,

I'll wait for your call,

It's called Juliette Sacrified,

What filmmakers do you like?

Is this in relation to Donatien Alphonse Francois?

- What? - Juliette.

Were you thinking of Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade?

- You haven't answered my question. - Nor you mine.

I love Bergman, Bresson...

Dreyer...

Visconti too.

An overlooked filmmaker Chris Marker.

A Pasolini film the Gospel According to' Matthew,

I like that Pasolini's film is in some kind of harmony

with its source of inspiration, like

undeniably, the old painters naturally found this same harmony.

And too bad for the few idiots who won't understand the meaning of longevity

in the use of music from many periods but linked by the same source.

They won't like my film either.

Some day, I'd like to make a film based on Sade.

Do you want to get a coffee?

May I rewind?

Do you think this zoom out will be very useful?

No, you can cut it.

What seems beautiful to me

what I'd like to do is a book with no subject

that would hold only by the internal force of its style,

like the Earth is maintained in space with no support.

Yes she's here, hold on.

Yes, they let me in with no passport.

Then why did you let me leave? You're an idiot,

Listen I said you're an idiot as a joke.

Yes, it's working out, it's interesting.

Of course, I'll come back. Come on Michel, don't be stupid,

Yes, I want to go with you, to swim with you.

What's the matter?

Return to the sea and my motherland.

...return to my father?

Are you kidding?

I know, the moment of birth expels onto the shores of death.

No, it's you. You're jealous but for no reason,

Do what you want,

Him? He...

You're silly, Michel.

I'll call you back.

Me too, I'll call you back.

It was written in the 19th century, a letter from Flaubert to Louis Colet.

So you think you're Madame Bovary?

If you're married, why don't you wear a wedding ring?

Who told you I was?

Jean-Francois, when he told me you'd work with me.

He seemed to act as guardian of your virtue and mine.

He also said your husband delayed his vacation to let you come.

You're going to Corsica?

Flaubert also wrote but I don't remember well

too bad if I betray it, I'll betray it for sure,

but I think that betraying is being faithful,

and perfection would be describing with as much happiness and merit,

an action that instead of happening in its original place, Constantinople,

was situated in an unimportant village: Denzitto, I think.

What does your husband do?

Let's keep working or we'll never finish on time.

I'll show you the next scene with music already dubbed.

Find soundtrack D-J.

He has no special training.

I don't know any music more tragic, but I fear it's too much for the scene.

Yet, a contradiction must be sought

and registered:

Juliette has just Iearned she's pregnant.

And she's waiting impatiently and joyously

to tell her husband.

To calm her impatience, she puts on a record, the first one she sees: Mozart.

This tragic music

could be in contradiction with her tragic death,

which we won't see, although she'll be taken to a clinic later.

At least this music will contradict Juliette's current joy.

It will be disturbing.

Better just to watch it, don't you think? Can I start?

I know what you're thinking: the scene would be stronger silent.

Juliette is always playing the same record, but we never hear it.

It's quite arbitrary.

Mozart understood the misunderstanding of the myth of Jean, the great seducer.

He didn't confuse him with Casanova.

Shall we rewind?

Do you think they'll be able to take this?

- What? - Them, the audience.

Let's try from here.

Let's trade places, I need to be closer to the screen.

Music is bourgeois.

Down with music! Down with bourgeois culture!

You saw the review of my last film said I used too much bourgeois music?

No. I don't read the bourgeois press anymore.

The only reviews I remember are those by an actress.

She made me go see it.

I already told you, I was very irritated by your film.

But I want to see it again.

Within this irritation, I think there was a certain admiration.

You don't remember, or you'd have said something:

I approached you one day in front of the studio in the rue Mouffetard.

I just said: Are you Julien?

- That's all? - That was all.

That must be why I don't remember. You must have seemed to be teasing me.

You were with a beautiful brunette girl.

It may have been your assistant.

I prefer the sequence silent. Leave it silent.

The moonlight is very beautiful.

You've made me drink too much.

You look like a coffin.

I mean Madame Recamier as seen by Magritte.

Have you thought of ho,w the true reverse shot

as they say in film,

of Madame Recamier

is the public rather than the painter painting?

That's even truer of Van Eyck and even more of Velasquez

who painted Las Meninas from the audience's perspective and beyond.

Come closer, Anne.

It's a virtual reverse shot that could even stop being virtual

if it wasn't given, by the audience.

And if the spectator wanted to be not only the audience

but also the creator.

As Mallarm� wrote in a preface,

this story is addressed to the reader's intelligence,

meaning the viewer,

who directs things through intelligence.

Do you believe in the viewer's creativity?

The most audacious thing in a political film

would be to have slogans said by a topless girl.

When Jean-Marie comes, home and sees Juliette

he's cranky and doesn't give her the attention he should.

This is why the next day out of regret, he comes home in a better mood.

But he will never see Juliette alive again.

To highlight the situation's fatality and ineluctability...

so as to accentuate Jean-Marie's remorse and his future despair,

that us others, viewers we won't see but imagine,

I'm going to film his two successive returns 24 hours apart, in one take.

So, one take with two cameras, at the same time.

One tracking with a telephoto lens, tilted down,

and the other tracking with a wide angle lens, tilted up a bit.

Both moments made up of bad mood and remorse

are found together and closed in a unity of time,

or space.

It's the same moment.

Excuse me, I'm starting to get a little tired.

But I'll come early tomorrow.

You'll show me what you've done if you keep working.

I can come ear Iy tomorrow morning,

You'll show me what you've done, if you keep working,

I think I won't sleep tonight.

No, no, don't.

I love Michel, I love my husband.

Maybe later...

What did I say? I must be crazy.

What do you think of my hat?

What do you think of it?

I don't know if you fit your hat or if your hat fib you.

Okay then.

I feel ridiculous with this.

People were looking at me in the street.

I tried to keep it on until I got here.

Did you work well?

Did you sleep last night?

I'll show you.

Let's rewind.

Ready?

Always ready!

Later, I'm still not sure

I'll stop the music on the black and white shots.

I'll only keep the music for the nature shots in color:

the yellow, red and green trees,

seen from the moving car.

The music may continue over the last black and white shot.

The music may continue over the last black and white shot.

I'm going to go rest a little.

Do you want to edit alone the Juliette-Francoise conversation,

sequence 18?

I'll try editing alone the sequence Mr. Director doesn't want to edit

and that he throws at his hungry editor.

Anne, I trust you,

I'm a little tired, excuse me.

I'm going but it's as if I were staying.

Keep working as if you were me.

I was waiting for your call,

Of course I was waiting for you to call me,

You're already working?

I called your hotel Iate yesterday,

No one told you?

You're going well beyond the union hours!

Ah! You're learning a lot!

I'm not being ironic, I'm happy for you,

He's sleeping near the editing room and you can't speak louder?

You're completely crazy, Michel.

You should come here for one or two days,

more if you can.

He's crazy.

He hung up.

It hardly snowed on you.

You know, it's amazing.

Did you feel I needed you?

I just did something.

Don't get upset.

Maybe you'll like it or maybe you won't. I'll redo what you want.

I woke up suddenly and felt you needed me.

I still have to fix a little thing. Then I'll show you.

It's easier to cut film then a bad appendix.

At least, when a cut isn't good,

you can always start over

and put it back together.

Fatal mistake

as a rule, I never fix a shot I already cut.

If it's too short it remains too short.

I say that but I've always cut just right.

An undoubtedly tragic mistake.

Fatal pride that makes you discover in others...

...your own faults.

I will surely be your next victim.

Are you ready?

Always ready!

Fran�oise, I must tell you, I'm going to have a baby,

that's your only reaction? What, him?

No, not yet,

Yes, He wants to, I think,

Fran�oise, I must tell you, I'm going to have a baby,

Oh really? That's your only reaction?

Come on, don't be stupid.

It happens more often than we think, than we want and than we admit.

What about him?

It's Jean-Marie, of course.

But does he know?

No, not yet.

You want to marry him?

Yes.

Anne...

I'm pleased with you.

No, is that true?

You're teasing... you're teasing me.

Don't tease me.

No, I promise, I'm not teasing you.

You perfectly understood my intention of denouncing this scene as a performance,

that the scene denounces itself to acquire its own authenticity.

This is what cinema should be.

So we had to know that Juliettte had learned all her lines by heart

and she took the time to memorize them.

It's good you used the still shot of Juliette.

This long time. This idle time...

Just before the beginning of the scene.

She seems a little lost.

I hadn't yet called action

and...

I didn't know why I felt the need to let the action go a moment too long.

And you really knew how to use this moment that's too long.

I might not have edited it like this but it had to be like this.

If I were your husband,

I couldn't live long away from you.

I would already have come here.

Does he like what you do? Your profession...

He likes what I do without liking too much that I do it.

He loved the cinema

before me

He was interested in it before I was.

Maybe...

maybe,

in a way,

he is jealous.

Maybe he regrets not being oriented in the direction I'm going.

I'd like to make a film myself, Julien.

It's funny, I just said your name.

It's the first time I've said it.

I must tell you, in spite of Stendhal:

He said that if he had to come here it would be to punch you in the nose'.

He has no reason to be jealous. - I think he's right.

If I were in his place, I would be even more.

What should I do?

Well, what's he doing?

I mean, what's his profession?

He's concerned with what happens up here.

Not for people, for machines.

Electronic brains.

He's an engineer.

I love Anne. I've always...

I've always loved Anne.

Anne is pronounced...

I love Anne.

I've always I've -- Damn!

I love Anne.

I've always loved Anne.

''Anne'' is pronounced like ''amorous.''

Or better yet, like a word of love. Anne.

There's a doubling,

a redundancy in saying ''Anne, I love you.''

I don't know which word is superfluous.

None is too much.

One cancels the other and vice versa.

I'll put your name in my next film.

Listen, I'm going to tell you about my next film.

Tell me what you think of it.

Maybe you'll want to help me, to participate.

But I have to tell you something first.

What I'm going to say may sound crazy.

I want my films to attain the rigor of a Bach.

The poetic, mathematical rigor I think Valery talked about.

I want my films to be like math equations,

which won't be fooled and won't fool anyone.

Because their common denominator will be

man and his collective unconscious.

And each man could find some of what

he can already find elsewhere.

One day we should no longer need films to be logical,

like we don't demand music to be logical.

It will no longer be necessary to tell,

to tell nice stories.

Listen

some friends, a couple,

told me one day about an extraordinary image.

I'm going to put it in my film.

They were in the south of Italy, I think,

and they went into a church high up in a village.

In front of the altar they turned around',

and from that exact perspective,

they saw only the green sea and the blue sky,

and the line of the horizon divided exactly in two the height of the porch.

What your saying isn't crazy, but you're crazy to say it.

You're talking like an old reactionary idiot, you fantasize,

think of surreal things.

You're living crazy love.

I may be reading in reverse the same absurdity as the prisoner's gestures

in Solzhenitsyn.

The prisoner painted on the hats, chapkas,

of the other prisoners, their prisoner number.

He had a beard.

Men filed past him and with a quick and supple move,

this bearded man fulfilled his duty

and the narrator saw in it the anointing gesture of a pope.

If I understand it

cinema's function is on the other hand

an anointing gesture in which some only see a vulgar gesture.

And films would be useless gestures.

Last summer in Roussillon

some friends, including a painter I'd just met named Pierre,

yes, Pierre,

brought me to Serrabone Priory.

I couldn't describe the very strong impression that I felt,

this false silence on a faraway background of insect noises,

this light falling from the sky,

the tranquil beauty of the place,

the feeling of an absent time,

of eternal duration.

I told myself I had to capture my feeling with a camera,

I must put this shot in my next film.

I came back a few days Iater with a camera and film

with Pierre and other friends: Therese and Catherine, Isaac.

I no longer found the same impression at all.

Yet the same beauty was there.

I gave up on filming

and went back to Paris with my unexposed film.

You only want to show beautiful things.

I'd also like to show cruelty.

To recount the cruelty of a little girl, for example.

When I was a little girl

in a village near Moulin, at my grandmother's,

with other little girls, I played by masturbating a cat.

In Sub-Saharan Africa in front of an outdoor screening,

a lion appeared,

holding the remains of a zebra in its mouth.

He stood right in front of the screen in the projector's light,

undoubtedly looking for a quiet place.

He sat down and continued his feast.

Two years ago,

I was on vacation in Greece

on a small island.

I was walking barefoot.

A little girl came up to me,

without a word she took my hand,

brought me to a fountain.

She washed my feet,

I washed her feet too.

We continued to not talk.

We burst out laughing.

I don't know when I'll edit the love scene, it's embarrassing.

Why make it so long? Why did we shoot it so long?

Why did we shoot it at all?

Everything in love has been done in film. Or almost.

And if we go towards pornography, it tends to resemble political cinema.

Rather, political cinema tends to resemble pornography.

Both should take a distance from their object,

otherwise, there's no reason for cinema to exist.

For me, cinema is an art of entrenchment

and distance.

Politics and pornography must be lived

not just shown, vicariously.

Porno-litical cinema is just the fantasy of an erection...

with no orgasm.

I'll edit the love scene last. I'll wait.

It's like you just read a written text, a manifesto.

It bothers me a little. Not what you're saying.

Well, basically, you know, it was written.

Maybe poorly, before I had to repeat it.

There is more force and political virtue

in two shots from Bergman's Persona --

the Buddhist who burns in Vietnam and

the Jewish child in Warsaw hands in the air

in a face-off with the Nazi soldier --

than in the political total, the kilometric total

of every Marxist-Leninist film today.

I also know films made about black people...

the demagogy of the white people, their good conscience, their cynicism...

the hypocrisy and paternalism

that reign in the worst moments of colonialism.

What you're reproaching me for

proves both the vanity and necessity of language.

And since you said you wanted, to make a film based on Sade

Sade knew this very well,

having mixed ethical and philosophical discourse and action.

And Sade was, moreover

a prisoner of storytelling conventions of his age and their contradictions.

I hope the film you make will finally free Sade.

Know that you'll be most faithful to him by betraying him the most.

We are all enclosed in a real or fictional prison, the same

that pushes us to compensate our powerlessness in action and speech.

Most of the time, we don't know how to take the necessary, critical distance

which is our only possible liberation, and our only guarantee of authentication.

I knew a Zen, Japanese speaker.

He was deaf like Goya or Beethoven

and like Bu�uel he had a hearing aid.

And when he was asked a question,

through a translator besides,

he would take off his hearing aid

and only put it back on to answer, and he answered well.

I think film or literature or music painting and even life itself...

must steal from life in order to render it better.

Not through vampirism or abusive possession.

I should buy you a Texan hat,

dark glasses and shoot gangster films.

Gangsters work well in cinema.

They seem to most faithfully represent

every individual in our society.

We are all German gangsters.

I want to put another image in a film.

It's simply a chair,

a rocking chair in motion.

We also must know that this motion was caused just before by a woman,

off screen

who got up, furious, because her lover

off screen

but present by his words, told her his intention of...

In a foreign film, we shouldn't have subtitles.

Those who don't understand should feel the language, a foreign language.

It's fortunate that the Sphinx and Oedipus spoke the same language.

Oedipus wouldn't have known the pleasure of incest.

Hold on, I'll get him.

I think it's the producer.

Yes, it's coming along.

It's coming along.

We're almost caught up.

Yes.

We'll be on time.

There are 8 minutes left to edit.

Yes, it worked out well.

Yes, of course, we'll mix next week as planned.

You can't come see us?

That's OK. You'll see the finished film.

Yes, she'll leave after the last day of mixing.

You should see her before she leaves.

Yes, I think she knows.

Subtitles: Anthology Film Archives, Re:Voir Video