Original subtitles

You look at the images of this film and you ask yourself...

where does this go on your scale of film knowledge?

And yet, just like a romantic comedy or war film,

an instructional film is part and parcel of cinema history.

Just like the two other genres,

instructional films used to suffer from rigid ideas

on how they were to be produced

and tight limits on the actors.

A Study of the Basic Techniques of Tennis

was produced in 1966 by Gil de Kermadec,

first national technical director of tennis,

who, over time, wasn't really convinced

that the film was that relevant.

Incredible, huh?

Gil was also astonished

that he had to organize these demonstrations

before matches at Roland Garros.

Famous players would come on court,

in front of the spectators,

and take up fixed positions,

and were told not to move.

Players who are doing demonstrations

always think they are making the movements that they make in a match.

But, actually, film has the power to show how impossible that is.

Armed with this knowledge,

Gil de Kermadec asked in 1969

for the camera lenses to be turned on the Roland Garros tournament

and the reality of playing.

The thrust of his films are about competition

and soon lead to a new level of awareness:

No, the French way of teaching tennis is not at all universal,

nor applicable to everybody.

From 1977,

de Kermadec begins to use the technique of the portrait.

He becomes more concerned with what makes each player unique,

and after that,

he starts to analyze the type of tennis which he or she can produce.

In 1985,

the last work from this highly original series of instructional portraits

is dedicated to the American John McEnroe,

world number one for four years.

♪ To the extent That I wear skirts♪

♪ And cheap nylon slips♪

♪ I've gone native♪

♪ I wanted to know The exact dimensions of hell♪

♪ Are you for sale?♪

♪ Fuck you♪

♪ Does "Fuck you" Sound simple enough?♪

♪ That was the only part That turned me on♪

♪ But he was candy all over♪

♪ Come on down to the store♪

♪ You can buy some more And more and more and more♪

♪ Come on down to the store♪

♪ You can buy some more And more and more and more♪

♪ Come on down to the store♪

♪ You can buy some more And more and more and more♪

♪ Come on down to the store♪

♪ You can buy some more And more and more and more♪

In 2011, my friend Nicolas Thibault

was coming to the end of making a film about Gil de Kermadec.

This tennis player-filmmaker had spent his entire life

watching the development of the best players in the world

on the clay courts of Porte d'Auteuil

like others would follow the development

of emperor penguins in the Antarctic.

Nicolas wanted to make room in his film for Gil among the archives

and asks me to take him there.

Dazed as if we were standing in front of an installation by Christian Boltanski,

we are confronted by a heap of metallic boxes,

each of which contained fragments from his life.

Watching Gil lovingly scan these images from the distant past,

I imagined him navigating back into a strange otherworld of worries.

Our inventory continued,

and I am stunned to find that there was so much material on John McEnroe.

The rushes are more than 20 times the final length

of the film that Gil had made about him.

I spent several months editing together

hundreds of little reels that had been scattered all around.

If the wastebins from yesteryear

quite often provide the treasures in today's archaeology museums,

then I had the feeling

that these bits and pieces could yield something precious,

something that could reveal some forgotten truth

to whoever would be willing to listen.

Viewing these rushes,

I was rapidly struck by the camera movements, the clapper board...

I was struck by a feeling of immersion,

an incredible sensation of immediacy.

We were not in the process of watching John McEnroe,

nor a film about John McEnroe.

We were actually the cameramen on the set of a film

which was in the process of being made.

If you two can't hear that, there must be something wrong.

There's something very wrong if you can't hear a ball two inches in front of you.

No, no, perhaps-- Perhaps I'm 20 times better see

and 20 times better hear than you'll ever be.

What the hell are you? Who are you?

Picked your name out of a hat.

Perhaps it's the easiest point of the match, you know?

Ever think of that?

Time.

Here's Nicolas, collaborator and Gil's friend.

Let!

Let's relive the sequences which are shot in three-quarters profile.

We're not really spectators.

We're invited to discover, with a certain empathy,

what is actually needed to win a point in a tennis match.

- Oh!

Of course, we're frequently shown this shot in three-quarters profile

in the film Roland Garros 1985 with John McEnroe.

Come on, come on!

Gil de Kermadec was fascinated by slow motion,

by how movement is broken down.

He was fascinated by everything that allows you to see what the eyes can't see.

You ask yourself while watching a horror film,

"Where do these phantoms and hordes of ghosts come from?"

That's before you realize

that it's unwise to build your house on an old burial ground.

A cemetery of a kind lies hidden

underneath the red clay of the Roland Garros Stadium.

It's called the Station physiologique du Parc des Princes,

and it is where EÉtienne-Jules Marey and Georges Demeny

took their chronophotographic pictures.

In other words, what the eyes could not see.

The specter of these first forays into capturing movement

haunts the films of Gil de Kermadec.

And it is in these supernatural images,

created with the trick of slow motion,

that he paradoxically finds a form of truth.

The ball is on the line.Look at the mark.

It's my decision.

Let's play.

Using up to three cameras

to film sequences that might not even offer up any technical content,

the people who used to crave control by placing footprints on the ground

were now like fishermen.

They had no idea what the day's catch would bring.

Let. Fault.

The film critic Serge Daney used to say...

"It's the advantage of clay.

That's why I prefer this surface.

It's because it creates fiction.

There are the players and what they know they can do.

There are the fans, who also know their role in the proceedings.

There are the officials, who are ready to get into everyone's bad books.

But more than all of that, there is time"--

The film critic Serge Daney used to say...

"Unlike football or rugby,

tennis is based on relative countdown.

The length of a match depends on the ability of the players

to create the time that they need to win."

When you watch a tennis match,

you don't really ever know what you're watching.

The intrigue which pitted Jarkko Nieminen against Bernard Tomic in Miami

was resolved in 28 minutes and 20 seconds,

about the same time as an episode from the series Hitchcock Presents.

Equally,

you would have to watch the threeGodfather films

with an hour's break between each one

before you knew the winner of the match at Wimbledon

between the American John Isner and the Frenchman Nicolas Mahut.

So why did Serge Daney, the editor-in-chief ofCahiers du cinéma,

agree in the '80s to write an article about tennis

in the newspaperLibération?

What common denominator between tennis and cinema

would be able to get Daney's juices flowing?

Uh...

The length of time.

Explanations.

"Cinema for me

isn't at all about being amazed in front of a moving image.

It's more about the sounds you hear, the sense of time,

the race against time and fate.

It's about telling stories about countdowns.

There's also the underlying question:

How much time is left before the end credits?

In other words, what possibilities are there

to create an extra bit of time?

That's it.

In my opinion, the thing that makes a great film

is the invention of time."

McEnroe is not a filmmaker,

but he excels in the area of inventing time.

Thanks to his dexterity on the tennis court,

it is he who dictates and who, as the attacking force,

allows himself the right to say, "Cut!"

by coming to the net and shortening the rally.

McEnroe was a master of concluding rallies,

but he also loved being able to decide how they begin.

He found it difficult when someone else wanted to take charge of exchanges,

and he doesn't hesitate to ask the technicians under his orders

for what reasons the film of the match has been interrupted.

It was a serve. There was no point.

No. So if there's a serve, there's no point.

Because if you saw the ball out, there's no point.

Okay, then it was out.

The serve was out.

No, you said you saw the serve out.

-There's no point then.

This serve.

Why didn't anyone call it?Hmm?

Why didn't anyone call it?

Okay, then it's a second serve, right?

What? What-What's the problem?

It's a second serve. If the ball was out, the serve was out.

I don't understand.

Can you bring the referee out, please?

Oh, now you saw the ball in?

Can you show me the mark, please?

Why not? Come on, Johnny!

Can he show me the mark? That's all I want to see.

I just want to see the mark. That's all I'm asking.

But I'd like him to show me the mark.Mr. McEnroe, please.

Can't you show me the mark? Why not?

Why can't you show me the mark?

Why can't you show me the mark?

Why can't you show me the mark?

Can you answer me the question? Why can't you show me the mark?

But all I'm asking is to see the mark.

Everybody in place?

Rolling...

Action.

Fault.

Fault.

When you're making a documentary

and your camera confronts real situations,

two possibilities come before you.

In the first, you try to make people believe

that the people you are filming are acting exactly as they would in real life,

and that the presence of the camera isn't changing anything.

In the second, you accept the fact

that the presence of your camera alters how things really are...

Fault.

...and that the subject of your documentary

goes through this change of reality.

The people with the cameras. Okay?

Have someone do something before we play again.

Over here, over here.

Everywhere.

They keep coming back.

They keep coming back.

Time.

Come on, you jerk piece of crap.

You come out here--

Come on, you jerk piece of crap.

You come out here--

Fault.

Hello? Yes?

Keep that thing away from me, you understand?

You see this? Your mouth.

Repeat that in French to the people, okay? You're gonna get it.

Can you-- Umpire? Can you ask to keep this away from me, please?

That microphone?

I want it turned off, please.

Ask him to turn it off.There's nothing I can do about it.

Why not?Because it's perfectly--

Oh, okay. Yeah. It's perf-- perfectly all right

that he sticks it in my face, right?

If spectators quickly realized

that McEnroe had an unusual style

and a rare feel for the game...

...very few of them understood that he was also

a man who played on the edge of his senses.

Fault.

His entire body was capable

of reacting to the slightest noise,

or the tiniest change of atmosphere.

Out.

I'm not in the Actors Studio.

I'm a professional tennis player.

Fault.

Oh, no!

Excuse me? You fucked my wife?

30 all.Excuse me?

You fucked my wife?

30 all.Excuse me?

Just tell me.

Please play now.Tell me the score and I'll play.

You're very smart, Joey.The right score.

You give me all these answers, but you ain't giving me the right answer.

30 all.

I'm asking you again.40-15.

40-15.The ball was called out.

Did you or did you not?

Here, the film crew captured quite a rare sequence.

It's a bit like the flowering of thePuya raimondii,

or a comet passing near Earth.

It is John McEnroe on a practice court.

Of course, exercises and practice are what hard workers have to do.

The talented don't really need to do such things.

But I really think that McEnroe did not like pretending.

He preferred to play in the white heat of competition

rather than go through the motions of a training session.

Throughout all his career,

McEnroe played in the doubles at tournaments,

the true basis of his physical preparation.

He often played with his younger brother Patrick,

who we see here.

No, McEnroe didn't like pretending.

If he didn't like training sessions,

he liked photo sessions even less.

Look at how much he just loves getting ready here.

John McEnroe didn't always know how to play upon his image.

First he needed to understand,

and then accept, just like each of us,

one of the great misunderstandings of our lives:

The image we have of ourselves

rarely ever tallies with the image that others see.

So, okay.

All these ambiguities are sorted out.

The stars of the day are on the tennis court.

The stars of the silver screen aren't in front of the cameras.

They're in the stands.

But while I'm struggling to destroy pretenses,

because I don't think McEnroe is an actor,

I learn that the actor Tom Hulce prepared for his film as Mozart inAmadeus

by watching McEnroe play.

Not on the stage, but on the tennis courts.

Show me the mark.

Can you show me the mark, please?

Can you show me the mark, please? Why not?

Why can't he show me the mark?Because I saw--

You can't see your own shoelaces. How can you--

The ball is out.

Where's the mark?

What mark is that?

Come on.

-The ball is out.

He made up the mark. He just made it up.

He just put his finger like this.

There was no mark. There's only a mark on the line.

He didn't-- There wasn't-- He couldn't find a mark.

He never found a mark.

No, but he never found a mark.

It was right on the line.

No, no, it wasn't out though. It was on the line. He said the ball was--

You saw it on the line and you called it in.

You called the ball in. You never sent anyone there.

You called it in. How do you know that's the mark?

You didn't send a line--

But, no, you called the ball in. Youdid.

You didn't call it in?

How good is he, this Mozart?

-He's remarkable. -He's an unprincipled, spoiled,

conceited brat.

I'm a vulgar man.

But I assure you, my music is not.

♪ Hurt me, break me, kill me♪

He is divinely inspired.

He is arrogant, vulgar, obscene.

He creates music for the gods.

- He is passionate. - He burns with fire.

- He is an angel. - He is a devil.

And I'm able to get involved in things like this

and to still be able to concentrate well,

which is something that not too many other players seem to be able to do.

That's what the players are afraid of,

because they know when you get angry, you're not going to destroy your game,

whereas if they get angry, they've had it.

Well, you know, that's something that I've practiced over the years.

That's something that I've practiced over the years.

That's something that I've practiced over the years.

Is there a rule against asking?

Huh?

What's the problem?

I think things would be easier if people realized that it's me making a statement,

like, "You do your job and I'll do mine,"

rather than me just complaining for the hell of it.

That hit the line.

He didn't even see a mark.

He asked the guy in the chair if he saw a mark.

He's not-- There's--

There's not one mark outside the line.

There's not one mark wide. It was right on the line.

So how can you call the ball out then?

He didn't even-- Just ask him if he even saw it.

Well, he couldn't find-- The mark was right on the line.

But he asked this guy in the chair if he saw a mark.

So why don't-- I mean, the worst--

First of all, the ball was on the line. The worst I get is a let.

I mean, the ball was right on the line.

Allez, John! Come on, John!

...just complaining for the hell of it.

I think things would be easier if people realized that it's me making a statement,

like, "You do your job and I'll do mine,"

rather than me just complaining for the hell of it.

I saw it was out.

Why doesn't he-- Show me the mark. There's no mark that's out.

The ball is out.

No, no, no...

There. It's out.

John, it's out.

Take your glasses off.

Take your glasses off.

So what?

What does that mean?

You speak English?

Take your glasses off, so you can see the ball, all right?

This? Take these off.

Serge Daney wrote about John McEnroe...

"One thing interests him:

the eternal injustice that afflicts him and him alone.

A single passion motivates him:

to owe his victories only to himself,

to seize them from the rest of humanity,

and share them with no one else.

Bjoörn Borg puts the ball in the spot where the other player is not.

McEnroe puts it in a place the other player will never reach.

McEnroe only plays well if he feels that everyone is against him.

Hostility is his drug.

The referees, the lines,

the net, the net cord judge, and the spectators

must all threaten him.

They must force him to win

while he keeps giving the impression that his back is against the wall.

In truth, it's a ruse.

He follows a golden rule

which is that he must never seem to be happy with what he's doing.

Consequently, there is a whole range of gestures,

from a shout of despair

to the pout of a child bottling up his tears.

He can also throw in that look of unending fury.

Is he a spoiled brat, impulsive, or just a bad seed?

Probably all of those things.

But my guess is something else.

All this acting and theater of absurd self-destruction is a technique.

It's a ploy to transform this hostility which he feels is bearing down on him

into wonderful tennis. It's sublime."

John McEnroe always finds a way to win.

Vince Lombardi, the late coach of the Green Bay Packers,

a master of motivation, this is what he said:

"Life's battles don't always go to the stronger or faster man.

But sooner or later, the man who wins is the man who thinks he can."

John McEnroe always thinks he can win.

Vince Lombardi would have loved John McEnroe.

Nice guys don't win in this game.

Well, there might be a few of 'em around, but basically, it's a sport for killers.

This is kill or be killed for millions of dollars.

Nobody buries you if you lose. They just forget you.

And that's what the fear is.

It's a competitive life where we all have to fight for whatever we get:

living space, jobs.

And when we get 'em, somebody else wants 'em.

And that's what's happening.

That's what McEnroe is showing you out on that tennis court.

"I want it. I'm grabbing it. It's mine!

Try and stop me."

Is he a reflection of our times?

Is he violence personified on the tennis court?

Yes, McEnroe does disturb us.

He's a genius who worries people

because he's a reflection of the times we live in:

harsh, violent times.

We can see in him what society has done to us.

In life, as in tennis today, you're either a winner or a loser.

We live in a rewards system,

and John McEnroe is a pure product of it.

He is a winner.

Drama, noun.

Comes from the Latindrama, which means "theatrical performance."

McEnroe leads 1-love in the first set.

Nothing must stand in his way from taking control of his final.

See that microphone underneath the court?

That's it, underneath.

Turn it off.

Time.

After only 21 minutes,

the American has his first break point.

3:52. McEnroe is in command.

The American leads 5-2.

Ivan Lendl tries to dig.

How can you overrule right now? There was the serve, but you didn't overrule it.

I overruled. The ball is out.

Why do you do everything in his favor? Are you afraid of him?

Are you afraid of him?You are to play.

Are you afraid of him?No.

So don't do everything in his favor, okay?

4:01. Set point for McEnroe.

At the beginning of the second set,

McEnroe appears keen to press home his brilliant start to the match.

Another break point to the American,

who is already 3-love up.

4:22.

The match commentators are scrambling

to recall someone who had ever played with such authority.

After only 29 minutes in the second set,

McEnroe has a set point.

Fault.

Turn that thing off.

God, you people really bug me.

Fault.

Shut up!

The spectators no longer support McEnroe,

who is trying to win as quickly as possible

by coming to the net at every possible opportunity.

Ivan Lendl manages to take a 3-2 lead

thanks to a slight lull in the American's game.

Back in a match which had been one-way traffic,

the Czechoslovakian manages to conjure up a set point.

5:46.

It is time for McEnroe to regroup in the final.

After two hours and 24 minutes of play,

the American clearly doesn't want a center-court marathon.

McEnroe is within sight of the crown, leading 4-3 in the fourth set.

But Lendl gets a break point and takes it.

Lendl! Lendl!

Four all, fourth set.

McEnroe gets a break point on Lendl's service.

6:33. Lendl leads 1-love in the fifth set.

It is the first time in three hours and seven minutes of play

that he is ahead in the match.

Two all, fifth set.

It is crucial not to lose their service.

Fault.

Fault.

There's no mark where he just did it.

That was right on the line.

No, but he didn't-- No, but he didn't say--

There was no mark.

There was no mark where he did it.

No, but, Jacques, he didn't-- There's no mark there!

There's no mark where he did that.

You can't look?

Where's the mark?

Where's the mark?

Where's the mark?

Can you ask him?

There's no mark. I see the mark.

Ivan Lendl. Game, McEnroe.

Ivan Lendl. Game, McEnroe.

Ivan Lendl...

Ivan, congratulations.

This is the first time you've won the grand slam in Paris.

It's your first grand slam victory.

That's correct. That's correct.

Cinema lies, not sport.

♪ I'm about To have a nervous breakdown♪

♪ My head really hurts♪

♪ If I don't find A way out of here♪

♪ I'm gonna go berserk 'Cause♪

♪ I'm crazy and I'm hurt♪

♪ Head on my shoulders♪

♪ It's going berserk♪

♪ I hear the same old Talk, talk, talk♪

♪ The same old lines♪

♪ Don't do me that today Yeah♪

♪ If you know What's good for you♪

♪ You'll get out of my way 'Cause♪

♪ I'm crazy and I'm hurt♪

♪ Head on my shoulders♪

♪ Going berserk♪

♪ I won't apologize♪

♪ For acting outta line♪

♪ You see the way I am♪

♪ You leave anytime you can 'Cause♪

♪ I'm crazy and I'm hurt♪

♪ Head on my shoulders♪

♪ Going berserk♪

♪ Crazy! Crazy!♪

♪ Crazy! Crazy!♪

♪ I don't care What you fuckin' do♪

♪ I don't care What you fuckin' say♪

♪ I'm so sick of everything♪

♪ I just wanna die!♪

Please.

Please.