Original subtitles

The film started as a joke.

A bad joke I made during the editing of La Bande des Quatre

because in that film, I don't know if you remember it

there is a character called Thomas and played by Benoît Régent

and when he approaches Laurence Côte

he starts talking about investigating lost paintings.

I had suggested to Pascal this imaginary painting

La Belle Noiseuse by Frenhofer.

And in about a minute and a half he tells her the story by Balzac.

Frenhofer, do you know him?

- One of your guys? - Not at all.

No, he's a painter...

A great painter who lived 300 years ago.

He was Poussin's unknown master...

His most beautiful painting is La Belle Noiseuse...

And after that, we went out for lunch with some friends

who would ask me what my next film would be

I would say The Unknown Masterpiece

because if people don't understand the film

I could say, it's normal because it's The Unknown Masterpiece

That's how it all started.

I thought... Right from the beginning

I was interested in the painter and his model

and not in telling the story of the painting itself.

And then, the more I would say it as a joke,

the more I would think about it...

The bad thing about bad jokes is that sometimes...

they stick in your mind and make you think.

I thought "Why not after all... That could be interesting".

And one night I told Claire Denis about it over dinner...

At the time she was working on our conversations with Serge Daney

two or three weeks before

and we were having dinner, talking about this and that and then she asked me:

Do you have a new film in mind?

So I told her the whole story

and asked what she thought...

I told her the story in 3 minutes

and she got all excited, "you have to do it". And I said yes.

"But something is stopping me".

"Does it have to be a painter playing Frenhofer or an actor?"

And she said "the way you told the story, it has to be an actor".

And I said immediately "if it's an actor"., I can only think of one".

There's only one actor in France who can play the part, Michel Piccoli.

And that's how in about 30 seconds we dedicated to go for it.

Of course I thought about it a bit longer before talking to Martine

so that she could ask Michel Piccoli if he would do the film.

But that's how it all started.

So the film was never called The Unknown Masterpiece

Never, The Unknown Masterpiece was... From the beginning we took...

I often said it and I say it again.

If I say it three times it's even more true

but here it's not three times it's 33 if not 333 times.

I believe that Balzac cannot be adapted to the cinema or TV or whatever...

You end up with a mere illustration of his stories.

On the other hand it's an amazing source of ideas...

And sometimes it's good to go and steal some ideas

and then change everything

I'm not saying you should do Rastignac like on TV, when channel France 2 did it.

But that's the right idea.

Except that they... well... Let's not talk about it.

Even if you immediately thought of Michel Piccoli,

the funny thing is that you still needed a real painter.

Yes, of course.

Bernard Dufour came to my mind very quickly

because I had seen a lot of his work in the 60s

and I had been very impressed by it.

The fact that he deliberately clung to figurative painting

and still with such energy...

I thought there was a lot of energy in his work.

So it wasn't long before we asked him and...

some friends of Martine's just happened to know him very well

so we met him and he said OK.

The making of La Belle Noiseuse went very smoothly.

And as the painter's hand Bernard Dufour.

The interesting thing is how

from La Belle Noiseuse - a 4-hour film right?

Four hours exactly.

Plus the intermission.

...you came to Divertimento, the 2-hour short version.

- So Divertimento is... - The thing is it was edited long after...

The film was finished, we had been to the Cannes Festival

where the film was extremely well received- we got an award-

but then there was still that contract somewhere

And so I worked with Nicole throughout the the summer - we weren't in a hurry.

It must have taken us four or five weeks.

We did it slowly when we felt like it.

And we dedicated to work from the outtakes only.

That's why there's practically nothing of the sittings

because everything was in the 4-hour film.

When Bernard had drawn something or started something

there was only one take, a second one would have been pointless.

So everything in Divertimento was edited from different takes.

With no exception.

And the editing is entirely different.

Whereas in the long version we have a lot of cuts,

here we keep the whole duration of the shot.

There's one example I always like to cite. It's the scene...

at the beginning, the first night

the different characters have just met

and Frenhofer invites everybody to stay for dinner, they are all eating outside

and on one side of the table we have Frenhofer and Marianne,

Michel and Emmanuelle

and on the other side we have Jane and David

and at the end of table we have Porbus.

I had shot the scene in a very classic way.

One side of the table, a 3-minute scene, something like that

with Michel and Emmanuelle

and then the other side with Jane and David

and of course a few shots of Porbus

whom we see turning pale as the conversation unfolds

and in the long version we have lots of different cuts.

We cut to Porbus then on the others, and so on...

The children went to agricultural college.

There were 12 of them.

So you love Nicolas?

And he loves you very much too, it's obvious.

Don't get upset, he's always like that.

I'm not upset, I'm listening.

Would you agree if he was to put his painting before you?

Would you agree to...

to lose him for a painting?

Anyway...

if Nicolas wasn't going all the way, I'd lose him because I'd leave him.

Why should we lose each other?

We painters are after the truth and truth can be cruel.

Hubble bubble toil and trouble, you never lost me.

I almost did.

And in the 2-hour version

we have the camera closing in on...

We have a wide shot of the table

closing in on Michel and Emmanuelle

and for two thirds of the scene it's only the two of them

Jane and David being off camera

and then after the two thirds we go to the other side of the table

and the others are off we only have one cut.

We come back to the wide shot when Porbus faints.

...children went to...

an agricultural college.

There were 12 of them.

So you love Nicolas?

And he loves you very much too, it's obvious.

- Don't get upset, he's always like that. - I'm not upset, I'm listening.

Would you allow him to put his painting before you?

Would you agree to lose him for a painting?

Anyway...

if Nicolas wasn't going all the way

I would lose him anyway...

because I would leave him.

Why should we lose each other?

We painters are after the truth and truth can be cruel.

Hubble bubble toil and trouble you never lost me.

I almost did.

It seemed to me that Jane Birkin's character was more important...

in a way yes because we cut a lot of...

it wasn't cut because there wasn't any material left!

I had used everything.

I couldn't show shots of Emmanuelle without the drawings.

So I kept very few of them.

A few at the beginning of course.

We had a few shots left...

A few times he had started drawing something and he didn't like it so...

he would start again and we used that.

That's very funny.

You have to have fun when you do that because editing can be so boring.

Either you do it very quickly like L'Amour par terre,

or you try to have fun by trying something totally different.

How did you find the title Divertimento? With Nicole during editing?

It was a bit of a whim.

It's because...

Since I was 14 I have been a huge fan of Igor Stravinsky

when I heard the The Rite of Spring on the radio for the first time in my life

during the Occupation

it was a shock and I never recovered from it.

His entire work.

And here for the film

for the first time I dared to have Stravinsky

for the opening and end credits.

It was Agon's Prelude and Postlude.

One of his most beautiful ballets, the last one he wrote for Balanchine.

With a little bit of Petrushka.

Stravinsky wrote several orchestra suites based on long ballet scores

and one, not my favorite, written for...

the Ballets russes in the 20s I think

...in his neoclassical phase was the Fairy's Kiss

based only on themes by Tchaikovsky

because he was a great admirer of Tchaikovsky.

He made a short version of it for orchestra and called it Divertimento.

It's a reference to Mr. Igor

the Great Igor as Claude Chabrol used to say.

And he was right.