Original subtitles

Reichenbach's film proves that despite robotism, depersonalisation

the threat of plural over singular, invasion of the barracks

and a symmetry equal to death

there lies everywhere surprises, excesses, wonderful disorders

an instinctive disobedience to rules which saves us from boredom

and preserves for the world the strange asymetrical beauty

of the human figure

America as seen by a frenchman

I traveled America for 18 months

I was allowed everywhere even in prisons

Nothing of what you will see has been reconstituted

I wanted to show America's rules and rituals

this appetite for youth and freedom

without which a film such as this could not have been made

San Francisco, August 30th

We enter America throught the golden door. The Golden Gate Bridge.

They say it stretches the city like the virgin�s thread

The thread is sturdy It is also workable

A million cars move across at a regular pace

We drive

This bridge is a starting point

that we chose, perhaps because of its great size

the size of the country it pours onto

Here begin all journeys to all possible Americas

And all are possible

The one that produces

the one that thinks

the one that worries

or the one that tempts

It�s the moment of decision

to wander in a setting which

as beautiful as it is is only distraction

or to close our eyes

give up all ready-made ideas

and let ourselves fall into the deep American body

And then, only then

open our eyes

and wait for men to appear

This is when we rode across some men and horses

a strange carriage that seemed to come from a childhood dream

When dawn came, they were there

they filled the horizon

Where are they going to, who are they?

They are simple folks from Houston

Most of them work in offices

but once a year they rent horses borrow carriages from the museum

and begin a sort of pilgrimage

on the old route of salt

Nostalgia for a time of adventure drives them

For three days and nights, they will be pioneers

Indians have almost disappeared

but their memory is still alive

Their history started here

In these camps where men braved cold and fear

So that their kids might come and kiss here

in a night without ambush

One spring morning, very early

On an empty beach of Santa Monica

models have to suggest the pleasures of summer

They don�t know each other

an agent brought them together

And suddenly, a secret accord

professional sense or are they caught at their own game?

On a record cover

they will be tied forever

To glorify a certain view of happiness is the first rule of American publicity

This is why so much work is put into it

Photographers are the Sunday painters of modern America

Cigarettes, camping gear, toothpaste, cars are portrayed

just as donators in primitive paintings

Another principle of publicity: recreate life with movement

In a flash the photographer will design

the cover of a calendar intended for GIs

It is in studios that America creates

tall women painted like pharaohs trained like horses

will fix for the entire world the universal canon of beauty

and of the year

This skier is also a model

We are in Cypress Garden paradise of amateur photographers

They don't seem to mind taking the same picture

which is by the way also available on postcards

For a moderate price, we can also photograph world beauties

or harvest unattended the forbidden orchid

In each American there is a photographer

And in each photographer there is a tourist

Don�t be surprised to see them travel

without looking around

Their Kodak is their memory

Back in their living room album on the knees

they will relax

they will begin to love the world

they will start to travel

When they travel in their own country Do they see the same America?

These frozen landscapes?

Those odd inventions which make us feel from a different planet

Do they still smell this wilderness?

Or do they share the impression that those vast horizons

are still waiting for something?

The invasion of Martians or the return of pioneers?

Half machine half insect

with this abiltiy to hover above ground

and ponder with their mandibles

Pioneers have come back

The plain is not countryside

but an immense desert

that let itself be tamed by those engineers of the earth

America has 9 millions farmers

but not one peasant

Tender Mississippi of musical boats

Walt Disney recreated it at the scale of children

25 000 people per day visit this universe of automatons

Here Indians don�t scalp

Fire doesn�t burn

At once history book, farce, fair and zoo

It is a reduction of the world, of fairy tales

where fake hippos scare real children

And at night, the boat comes obediently home

escorted by rails

America has thousands of artificial worlds

Close to Los Angeles is a museum consecrated to the heroic Far West

Your rail ticket includes a masked robbery

and an attack on the postal wagon

Hollywood Extras play their role assiduously

and animate this ghost town

We ride across the dream of a town

breathe in a dream of adventure

and sit with a dream of adultery

Here everything is reconstituted

but this woman is of the period

She�s the last survivor of the civil war

She�s 104 years old

Old fiddlers have also come back to relive the spirit of the past

And become without knowing the truest characters of this museum

Real faces start to resemble cartoon characters

Drawing artists have nothing left to invent

You want the real grandmother keeper of the bible and the apple pie?

Here she is

Walt Disney has only to sign her

We are in a cell

This man committed two murders

He is in for a hundred years

In the prison of Huntsville, Texas

is the convicts rodeo

Guests arrive

They are inmates from nearby towns

all wearing white from cotton they weaved

We arrived in this strange ceremony

where the most dangerous criminals were searched right in front of us

The stadium is in the prison�s perimeter

It seats 25 000 people

They come from far to assist to this rodeo, known to be fierce

The most fanatic spectators are recruits from military school

And the game starts

There is probably no game in the world with such high stakes

The prize is a remission of sentence

Like the matador killing death

the prisoner rides his own freedom

After the show each one regains his cell

Under the collar is inscribed the number that identifies them

Last generosity of Huntsville

for each, a hot dog in the right hand and in the left a hamburger

Part of the profit will go to their relief fund

the rest to the construction of churches

Provided for, in the present future and eternity

prisoners regain their cells

Each brings back from this event a strange souvenir

First prize won a year in remission

the second a week with his wife

What did he win this one?

The memory of being clown for a day

Huntsville

unbreakable prison but without filth or rust

A prison without contempt

A small America behind bars

where they can bank money or buy from the drugstore

Life goes on with its perpetual need to produce

For the prisoners world this weaving

For the world of freedom these car plates

Here hope is never completely lost

This giant ice cream adorned like a bride

is this American boy�s first love story

the centrifugal pizza also has its ceremony

it dances in the air the ballet of seduction

Not far from there Tom Dick and Harry

celebrate their common majority

together, they are 21 years old

They were three little children

that ate more than elephants

There will be left of those days

Only this song by Michel Legrand

These little twins without malice

have their future in publicity

We are driven to optimism

When we see them eat their meal

It seems to you a funny career

In America it's mighty well paid

Because in that foreign country

You earn your bread by eating away

My little sister is not happy She won�t have any dessert

Sometimes a meal becomes a party or a competition

The first to finish their Myrtle pie

will do the melon contest

On every sunny weekend there is a giant barbecue

At Christmas, 53 million turkeys

and ten times that of chickens are walked to the consumer

And yet sometimes a miracle

Look at this hen. It is unique.

A breeder's publicity

trained to play bowling

The gist of the game is that grain will only come

if all pins are up

The hen knows when it's useless

to go get the grain

Pins first

This hen saved by publicity Will never find its prey

but through its shadow

This is what we call a conditioned reflex

This gracious person is she pin or grain?

We will not decide

She is anyhow a good example of conditioning

Her role is to advertise for rescue equipment

We count on the client�s subconscious

to put away the girl with the apparatus

and vaguely expect her to appear on our stretcher

in case of a fire

hence our trust

hence a few callings of incendiary

But we need to specify that she has a husband

and he's a wrestler

Here publicity is more solemn

Even so, it is only the opening of a gymnasium

where this golden athlete is a teacher

And as always, majorettes join in

Majorettes are a national institution

No publicity parade no electoral campaign

no manifestation without them

Their role is to raise crowds

If in every girl there is a Majorette

In each young man there is a musician

Each university, school, sports team

has an orchestra that parades in uniform with military precision

Here, two sports come together

football and insurrection

Cheerleaders are here to direct the crowd�s uproar

Every gesture has a clear significance

and motivates the public to motivate the team

The same energy leads them

whether to defend the team�s colors or the colors of America

On an aircraft carrier close to Hawaii

we were left alone with those men of the future

drunk on space and science fiction

Those young men who are taught to conquer fear by playing with death

Go back with a simple joy to the events of daily life

At the Red Cross

the same men take free classes to prepare for fatherhood

Don�t think they're serious

they�re as amused as you are to be in this situation

Americans never miss a chance to go to school

Any age is good to learn It�s the best way to stay young

After three weeks of classes they will graduate as fathers

Technicians and space travelers learn the careful handling of babies

Cheerfully

perhaps finding there a reality

that no progress can change

Because according to Dr. Von Braun

it would be wrong to assume that with nine women

we could get a child in one month

Everything is ready to welcome this baby

which shows up in America every eleven seconds

To prove it, let�s count together: eleven, ten,

nine, eight, seven, six, five,

four, three, two, one, zero

An American has been born

On the hospital�s television

he comes to his father like a news flash

the latest news

We are in a hospital of Hialeah, Florida

Only just born, he will be filed according to weight and height

kept from germs in one of those incubators

where he will ripen like a melon

until he has gained sufficient weight

Newborns go rapidly from being watched by television

To watching television

which by the way has special programs for babies

What is the name of the river going through Paris?

It�s the�the Seine. It�s the Seine.

Name the colors please

Yellow, orange

purple, chestnut, grey�

And so begins the golden age of American life: childhood

As soon as he walks, a child spends all day with neighbors

He is given full independence so he doesn't become a cry baby

obsession of all American parents

The first Hula Hoop contests

happened under police care

For a while now parents were worried

A whole generation in front of television

heading towards anchylosis

Their only effort was to choose between a western and a cartoon

And here comes this novelty

Police took matters into their hands

and started to distribute records and Hula Hoops

Kids followed the lead

the race was saved

A golden age is this moment when wonder has come bare

when believing in miracles makes them come true

when pigeons fly

horses fly

angels fly

humans fly

After the golden age: the nickel age

A child, no matter his parents wages must win his own pocket money

After school, he distributes the evening paper

It is a scene which occurs everyday

in all provincial towns

Newspapers are deftly thrown other kids collect them

eager to know the latest news

Not about those imaginary characters called Ike, de Gaulle or Khrushchev

But about the real heroes of this world: Pogo, Superman

Dick Tracy or little orphan Annie

For children, the national event

is the Soap Box Derby fought every year in Acron, Ohio

The day starts, of course with a brass band and majorettes

Then comes the long-awaited moment

the race begins

Boys between 8 and 14 built these cars by themselves

from identical materials

planks, wheels and nails that the tire society gave them

Preliminaries selected two boys in each state

The winners will get a scholarship and a job when they�re twenty

as engineer in one of the tire factories that sponsor the event

Here come the holidays

As in any country, boys love to run after what�s forbidden

But here, they won�t be punished

Parents let their kids get bruises

to avoid those lumps of the soul: hang-ups

The fastest runner, the most daring will the the most admired

Waiting for real life to begin the brain takes a rest

And as blindmen think with their hands Americans think with their bodies

The beach in Santa Monica is called Muscle beach

In french, la plage du muscle

He is trying to cover his shadow

Beaches facilitate transitions

As from childhood to adolescence

From the chaotic world of children

to the ones called teenagers, 13 to 20

For whom childhood gestures suddenly change meaning

On summer afternoons

adolescent bodies seek each other

and give themselves

We talk very little

Verbal language is not how boys and girls communicate

They have a more secret, more heathen language of their own

Summer gone, college begins

Free college where rich and poor meet

and blend in American democracy

For boys, there is a future to think of, and exams

For girls also, of course

But they must put other aces up their sleeves

up their legs and smiles

Friendship made them fond of boyish games

of a reality that will give way to love

and America is filled with young girls running to happiness

Majorette school teaches the scales of seduction

which resemble in a way the rituals of birds and insects

On school ground without seeming to

begins the offensive leading to marriage

each sides are watching

The lucky girls will not be the most learned, pretty or clever

but the ones most resembling Miss America

who resembles all American girls

To be chosen, Miss America must have all the virtues of a young girl

She must also be strong

In Judo school, defensive strategy

is the last step in a liberal education

Defensive strategy which may just be a disguised form of offensive

To find a parody of seduction

we go to a striptease school in L.A.

Of course, Americans did not invent naked women

But they were the first to give them academic training

Here we learn with great skill

the complex rules behind this solemn frustration

Students learn of the subtle line

between bold moves and those sanctioned

We are always weary of a border incident

of an unclear boundary a disputed territory

If we dare say, of a no man's land

Striptease has a code

And so depending on the city

limits of shamelessness lie on different rules

Who takes this class?

Beginners or professionals in want of perfection

who thought of Luther's say that to conquer evil

one sometimes needs to steal its weapons

Baffling America

No other country has as much respect for marriage

And yet we find in a parking lot

a chapel dispensing for couples in a rush

a fixed rate ceremony

For small fee, a lady standing in for family

will throw good luck rice on the newlyweds

Honeymoon

Baffling America

These concrete tents those motels that proliferate

make it hard to believe

that Americans are traditionally bound to the intimacy of home

Like attracts like

America produces enough twins

to hold a congress every year in Huntington

For the pleasure of assembling

and resembling

Stilt houses and boardwalks

This surprising place is Fire Island

Where cats and dogs are holding their own congress

Here are the major races of American society

The dog race: kind, sociable a little too excitable

And the cat race: secretive righteous and dark

whose watchfulness reveals a hoard of movement and violence

These sons of violence those felines have an ideal

To escape from everyday life

They are American Gypsies

They ride the country following seasons like migratory birds

The world of bikers created heroes, myths

Leather, boots and guitars

are both emblem and gathering call

Elsewhere, fanatics gather

to wait for Hot Rods

In french: piston brulant

With old frameworks

junk parts, boosted engines

lovers of speed and mechanics

made these machines that reach a 150 mph

Racing is a tranquilizer for those young men

reduced all week to 50 mph

Faster than the wind faster than blood in my veins

faster that sap in a tree faster than Mississippi waters

said James Dean

America resonates with games of violence

mechanical violence

Across the country, cars flame up motorcycles fly

roller coasters spin

Thin line between pleasure and torture

In other days, these would be instruments of pain

In all these activities accidents are accidental

but they had to make it deliberate

the ragtime of dead ends, of catastrophes

defying the devil

a game for Hell Drivers

To boost our national pride

these men from Kansas call themselves The Parisians

Here's one of those Parisians

from fair to fair doing the same number

As if this society based on comfort found genuine pleasure

in seeing baffled and destroyed

the symbols of that comfort

Here

the ceremony is over

Kids learn that cars can die

They say she's an Italian princess

We'll never why she was there going through waste

looking for souvenirs perhaps

We'll never know precisely what she was doing

We'll know nothing also of these drowned vehicles

At dawn, by the Mississippi in New Orleans

While fog dissipates

Characters wait for the boat of a Negro king

That will open the black carnival

Nearby is the white carnival

We saw blackmen dressed as negroes Here's women dressed as naked women

But if bodies have fake skins

souls are bare

Far from worn-out carnivals

where we dress up out of habit

All of its violence is there

A travesty, a mask is a confession

All day the carnival played its obscene lament

In a few hours, Ash wednesday. Everything must be back to normal

At nightfall

the strangest characters began to appear

In the dark, adolescents wait

Waiting that sometimes leads to stealing and crime

as if to feed something inside

with the only thing they've never tasted: punishment

At Houston police station: identification of a suspect

Six boys are suspects in a garage theft

In the shadow a witness will single one out

There

That's him

Each night a dozen boys line up

guilty of mild crimes

but also of irrational, violent ones

Here they have all vices

laziness, brutality and worse of all: sadness

In obstinate silence they tell their parents

That all is not well, not simple

Their gang tells of a need for community

their cruelty, the need for a loved one

In a void that they couldn't fill men raise these absurd animals

Those too tough to go home spend time in a cell

It doesn't touch them

They have the patience of a rock and it's indifference

Our presence doesn't seem to surprise them

or irritate them

They are elsewhere

On the road

But the prisoner's dream is short-lived

It dissipates at daybreak

with the strange ceremony of a meal for guilty children

America believes in prophets when they speak the bible

But the muteness of these youths

within the clamor of those speaking God's name

might just be His silence the only language left

In this country that seems so content with paradise on earth

We sometimes felt a desire to be elsewhere

the call of the unseen

of a new America to be discovered

This America, is it at the end of the desert

or at the end of life?

Infinite are the roads leading to God and to salvation

Holy Rollers are Christians

Temples of this sect are open to all

Followers are believers wanting to chase

with this Holy rolling a demon from their soul

Elsewhere, other cults light up

This need to give physical form to religious fervor

created in America this ballet of lights

We had found it in the world of advertising

Commerce seems an excuse for the creation of beauty

And beauty itself is more than pleasure

It is an offering to the Gods

The American night with its comets and imaginary zodiac

is full of these offerings

And we ride to Las Vegas with its galaxies of Casinos

That our speed animates like a procession coming to us

Las Vegas, a city made of lights

born in the middle of the desert

is the capital of game and chance

Chance: a prisoner in its cell the little boy with an ice cream

the negro during carnival the young girl with her plans

Chance. Their chance. Given to all citizens at birth

That each one carries with him like a token of happiness

always within reach whatever happens

In Las Vegas where gambling is legal

8 million people every year speak directly to chance

where a dollar is its sign and slot machines are praying mills

San Francisco, Louisiana, Texas

America, if I didn't loose myself in your maze

It is because I didn't try to understand or deduce or explain

It is because, in a way

I have loved you, simply

New York, they say you have no heart or past

In your reflections I found treasures, cathedrals

New York, November 18

We leave America

The one we saw. Because there are as many Americas as people

Each one discovers something that they keep for themselves

And we almost consider this country a superstore

the slogan of which would be

If you don't know what you want come on in, we have it

But it would be easy to say that America is strange

This way of life, so criticized but so imitated

Is the art of giving to man's will what he though was his fate

It might be all of Europe in twenty years

And if it is to be ours perhaps was it worthwhile

to consider it well