In January 2000, we proposed to Claude Sautet
to make a documentary about his career.
Though he was seriously ill, he agreed to meet us.
From those conversations, during 7 months, we made 20 hours of tape.
On July 22 of 2000, Claude Sautet left this life.
It's his voice that you will hear in this film.
There's something that strikes me
about "making spectacle".
It's exactly what has always struck me in music,
that's music that isn't spectacular.
Django Reinhardt wasn't spectacular at all, and yet...
when you hear the music it's really dazzling!
Pastorius, let's not even talk about it!
It's nothing, nothing at all. But when you listen to it,
it takes on a very special dimension!
I think I've always had to
love the things that are hidden.
Which move me profoundly.
I've never denied myself to be pleased by a spectacle,
but I feel there are things that move me more, that are more enduring,
that are more profound...
that aren't perceptible...
not immediately perceptible. Absolutely.
He had a passion for...
people who were artistic giants
but who had the good manners
of not exhibiting their virtuosity.
He's a man who was strong and discreet.
So, he doesn't show that it's very difficult.
But he know that it's very difficult.
In my case, I think that...
I take pleasure in creating invisible magic.
That you can't see how it was stirred up.
That isn't important at all.
And which yet, radiates a fascinating atmosphere.
How to radiate that fascinating atmosphere, in a way that it isn't seen?
When I was an assistant, I was...
for a long time I was assistant to Édouard Molinaro.
Well, for a long time... working on his shorts.
The day he started to prepare a feature film,
Molinaro told me
that he couldn't keep me on because
he needed a really experienced assistant,
"a guy by the name of Claude Sautet".
Ah, really?
Well, I was quite disappointed... and furious too!
And that Claude Sautet represented a kind of enemy, at that time,
without knowing him.
Claude had quite a career as an assistant
in which he witnessed some mistakes,
incapability of such and such directors
which by the way gave him good laughs.
He told me some very juicy
anecdotes about it.
About some of his "works" with...
with some directors.
I didn't set out to become a director at all. It's funny...
I really liked trying to help
to improve gigs that were so bad,
that I was ashamed of it! Let's say that that was it.
I worked a lot with very mediocre directors.
With really poor scripts,
which satisfied the producers who didn't read the dialogues.
And... all one had to do
to make that work more interesting,
that forced me to participate,
more or less in the script, little by little.
And that was my ambition. How to say it:
"It's always a little bit less ghastly." That's it.
And then, little by little, he found himself working with Lino...
who worked in a film with Maurice Labro.
And Maurice Labro quit his...
He argued with his producers, hi quit...
The producer and Lino said:
"Sautet will finish it".
And he finished the film.
It's Lino Ventura.
Jacques Becker had given Ventura
a book named "The Big Risk".
Ventura had read the book.
And he had told me: "Here,
"if you accept, I'll be the protagonist."
On that subject, he asked me if I knew a director,
if I could find a director who could do this.
Me, I didn't know anybody. I didn't have anybody to propose.
That was in 1958,
me, I got out of prison 18 months before.
He told me: "Listen, I know somebody
"who never made a film, whom I've had as an assistant,
"but I'm sure he has the talent needed."
He gave me an appointment that night, at Bois de Boulogne,
where Edouard Molinaro filmed a scene in which the taxi drivers
turned on their lights in a half-circle and stalked Ventura.
So I got there, I saw a guy who smoked, he smoked a lot, Claude,
he was there, with the collar of his overcoat turned up,
and I said "Are you Claude Sautet?", he said "Yes".
He told me "I've read your book". That's how it started.
What encouraged me, is when I worked with Becker,
yes, inevitably. And Franju.
With Franju, when I made "Eyes Without a Face".
I saw how he started out, with a subterranean tenacity,
to make the film he wanted to make.
That really encouraged me, I told myself:
"Oh yes, it could happen that I could make a film."
Even with a script made by someone else.
That's how I ended up telling myself: "Yeah, really,
"I can make The Big Risk".
What I liked in this film, was its physical character.
"I'll work it out with physical presence".
I told myself, this physical presence sets off a density
which I almost never see in French cinema
in which dialogue is the main mover.
And I told myself: "It's a film in which
"I won't move almost nothing by dialogue."
- Anyway, you don't have a choice. - Perhaps it's worse in Turin.
And that's why we said: "We have to reduce speech to 33 phrases
"in order to let the physical anxiety of characters speak for itself."
All through the start of the film,
one feels the excitement of that setting.
It was that emotion, which I feel myself,
to show by means of what I call "pure cinema",
meaning in which I'm only influenced by music,
sculpture, choreography, the body, the mystery of faces
which has its eloquence and its lyricism. By itself.
That interested him on the level of degeneration.
Because he didn't want to defend the underworld.
He wanted to make... He wanted...
He was interested to trace the story of a lost character,
who, whatever he might do, lost in advance
- and will end up going down. - Thanks for everything, hey?
Do you know? You sleep here... But deep down, you're at home.
The more actors get, let's say, in the destiny of the principal character,
it means it's a person who descends till "point zero".
I'm telling you this because one thinks of himself always as very clever
and when you can't boast your strong points any more, you're nothing.
Every day you go down a bit more.
Until...
until nothing any more.
He'd been a big shot! And he was reduced to petty thievery.
This notion of abandon, there you have it.
I realized very well that that went much further
than a simple cops movie.
It was perhaps even influenced by Italian cinema
by this kind of bareness in which this person lands.
Ventura... he needs action.
He had even been a wrestler, he needs action,
he also knows how to be nasty in action, he knows that.
What has helped me a lot in "The Big Risk",
is his sense
of clean violence.
That is great!
That takes 3 seconds, right? It's done with extraordinary swiftness.
And in that way, I think
that my meeting with Ventura was very profitable to me.
You won't do that?
What I felt, I have...
He enriched me, and I profited by casting him in all my films, after that.
I've always looked for short scenes of violence.
Scenes of relief, how to call it.
As I often say: the purpose of powerlessness.
The Big Risk is still, when you assess the sixties,
where people only talk about New Wave films...
it sits among the unknown films.
The films where...
most of the critics...
The films which a big part of the critics has...
ignored. Didn't know how to watch them.
When the film came out, it went nowhere.
When it was released again 1 or 2 years later, it sold.
The producers got their money back
plus 3 or 4 times that and are crazy with joy.
Totally unforeseeable.
Well in the meantime, I had decided to leave the cinema.
Not at all frustrated by not filming. Not at all.
Because his life was full to the brim.
Claude is a guy...
well, it's the one artist I worked with
who best knew his music,
be it classical or jazz,
who was very profoundly...
cultured.
Who loved to eat, drink, live,
who loved... women, who loved life.
He was no workaholic at filming.
He was happy when he didn't make films.
He wasn't unhappy, he was overjoyed!
It was me who pushed him, always
telling him: "Listen, you have to do something!"
Those producers were only open to make films
about gangsters or adventure guys.
No women. So...
that was limiting. All that led to
me being reduced to making an adventure film, "The Dictator's Guns"
which was at first sight an exercise...
which I thought would be very easy to do
and what turned out to be a very difficult misadventure.
When I needed to have Lea Massari and when on a misunderstanding I got
Sylva Koscina
who was lacquered like concrete
and that...
shooting scenes on the high sea was very difficult.
I had to beg for a boat in Spain
where we lost at least,
I don't know, 4 to 6 weeks...
That cost a fortune, there were 60 Spaniards sitting
on the beach.
With nothing to do.
It was a mistake.
Firstly because I didn't know... Then they told me that...
filming on a sea that doesn't move, that's out of this world.
It's impossible to do and, when the Americans do that,
They send two teams filming for 6 months,
They wait and see the material...
and after that they need some perfected swimming pools
to make all the effects, all that, we didn't have.
Result: enormous expenses.
Well, that said, there are parts of that film that I love.
I like it, anyway.
But I realized that I was part of what they call
the thing to avoid, to make a "imitation American film".
Something I had avoided in "The Big Risk".
So, I represented Claude even though he hadn't...
he only made 2 films,
The Big Risk and The Dictator's Guns.
The Dictator's Guns didn't have the expected success
and Claude didn't want to film any more.
He said he wouldn't film any more.
After that, it's true that he had become
a consultant-scriptwriter who straightened out scripts.
Often, he was credited. Just as often, not.
He told me that Gabin called him often
telling him: "OK, Claude...
"that script I'm going to do is OK, but the dessert's missing."
It's a real nice expression.
I believe that Truffaut consulted him regularly.
Regularly.
You can't say that he was writing.
He dictated or he supplied sufficient ideas
to change
the structure, the dramatic construction of the film.
He had worked with Malle, with Rappeneau,
with... long time before,
with other directors whose names I forgot.
I asked Claude Sautet to read the script.
He read it, he was taken by the story,
He told me: "That's an extraordinary story! It's great!
"But obviously, it's not funny.
"It could be much more funny! It's got all the situations for that!"
So.. so, he...
"Is it OK with you to talk about it?
"To work with me? To be really a bit, the co-writer?"
"Well yes! Sure, yes!"
So he came in and we started.
And the same scenes,
through our moments of crazy laughter
in which he pushed the situations to their extreme,
- in the dialogue, right? while talking with me -
"Why doesn't he do that?"
He pushed me forward unconsciously, I hope,
and which wasn't there yet, written in the text
which I had made.
About his own films,
he was, at each turn, full of doubts.
Yet about the films of others, he had no doubt at all.
And there...
I talked with Claude about contracts,
in general, he didn't want to be named.
Besides, he was always hoping... He'd say:
"But no, it has no importance, just consult me,
"and make sure not to pay me a lot because I don't want to be paid a lot."
One time in the cinema, something I liked, it's that, it's...
him telling himself: "It's funny,
"I can say something, the person is happy and I help him."
Ah! That's great!
No need to be paid because people are thankful for your help! That's it!
There's something like that. Makes you feel you exist, or what.
Means for a long time, I didn't feel I existed at all.
I said to myself, what am I doing on earth? It's a... normal thing.
That led by the way to a kind of frenzied,
blind militancy, joined the Communist party at 21.
Especially since there were always those people
who make me think of the Max character, who always had
irrefutable reasoning about the goal, the means, the twisted,
the Trotskyites, the corrupt...
that disgusting talk after which you can't even open your mouth, right!
On one side, the filthy, on the other, the stupid.
And that has frightened me. I had big trouble to get away from that,
because there were so many nice persons,
simple persons, workers.
People who put in all their heart.
You got the impression you had to pluck yourself out of the Party.
I suffered a lot, of that.
Ever since, I've remained on the left,
but I understood the limits of engagement.
The engagement of the masses, as they say.
Before The Things of Life, he passed a long time without doing anything.
Almost 5 years.
I wrote 70 pages, based on the book by Paul Guimard.
I call Claude and told him: "I know you don't want to film any more,
"but since you know everybody and me nobody,
"tell me to whom can I turn."
Because the script had been refused by...
well, the script, my 70 pages, by 2 directors
well known and whom I admired profoundly, and who had turned me down.
He went out one evening,
I didn't want him to go out, but he went all the same,
and Jean-Loup Dabadie had slipped that under the door,
the subject of The Things of Life.
And Claude came back, it was 1 AM,
I told him: "I have a script for you".
I threw it at him, he set himself on the couch.
And next morning, waking up, without even telling me a thing,
he called Jean-Louis Livi, and told him:
"You know, Jean-Loup sent me a script, I'm going to film it."
He replied: "What, The Things of Life?"
He answered "Yes." He said: "Are you sure?"
"Listen, there's an accident, I find filming an accident very interesting."
The very strong fantasy here makes me scared.
The accident in The Things of Life, it's because...
it's the fear of the accident!
Not of death.
The horror of the accident.
He came onto me out of nothing. I saw him the moment he appeared.
Mostly when he stepped on the brake, he speeded at least 100!
Because...
to film an accident, it's quickly done. A guy runs into a tree, that's it.
Or, when you're afraid,
you imagine twists of smoke, dangerous things, twists and turns.
It takes on grand proportions... The imagination runs very quickly...
Fear generates imagination. Suddenly,
I have wings to describe it. My imagination helps me to describe it.
Hence, I feel free. Filming it liberates me from fear.
This herd instinct
of folks who rush to see
a person who they think is gonna die...
who are in summer clothes and who rush to it in a ridiculous way
leaping from their vehicles, though they see something very serious,
At the same time, the nurses are soaked...
So I feel there's something pathetic in...
life that I can show thanks to a rain shower.
Not a shower in the same sense as in euphoric showers,
which I show in "César et Rosalie", for example.
Do you think he hears you?
Doesn't look like it.
I think that Michel is really
the cinematographic portrait of Claude. And another part,
Romy.
Because Claude is a feminine / masculine man.
When you're on Ré island with Catherine, that will change.
The evenings will be merrier.
I hope so.
When I'll be with you elsewhere, how will that be?
We'll never be elsewhere.
First of all, those were two professional comedians. As it turned out
Michel became good at cinema at a certain age.
It's that before, he wasn't at ease with himself.
And he has a sensibility, how do you call that...
mimetic, I think.
And Romy was very sensitive to intonation.
She always wanted me to read her own scenes,
in my intonation. And right away, she got it.
She had a musical ear.
You love me because I'm here.
But if you need to cross the street to catch up with me, you're lost.
When I saw The Things of Life for the first time,
It seemed very silly to tell him:
"The accident is splendidly filmed." That's ridiculous.
I told him: "Romy Schneider is so good!"
And that...
brought tears to his eyes.
I found that Claude...
he didn't have...
didn't make good films with women.
As if they were objects.
And it was when meeting Romy
that he understood women
were very courageous persons,
very alive...
Tell me, what's the word in French for...
"Lying"? Well, not lying. "Making things up"?
Ah! Money! Money!
What drove you away from me?
Fear?
Are you afraid of me?
I don't know what I'm doing with my life.
I bump myself...
I'm clumsy.
But it's true, she was... She's given him...
a portrait of women...
which impressed him and which he kept
in all his other films.
I made "The Things of Life" with the idea,
thinking that I'd make "Max" after that.
Knowing that it'd be
a demystification of all those 'good mannered' appearances
of "The Things of Life".
"Max", to start with, isn't so much an anti-police film.
But the police setting was useful to me.
It was more against Stalinism.
The theoretical obstinacy to be right clearly leads to perversity.
He began to fall more into place when I met Neron,
I hadn't made the link yet,
he told me that the person
who was his model for Max
was a cop who had been member of the Communist Party.
I told him: "That's too good for words!"
After all, it's all his treason, all that manipulation.
To meet someone,
who is a childhood friend and feigning not to recognize him...
Do you have a light, please?
Max.
You don't remember? Abel!
Abel Maresco, 41st RIC.
The Cintra restaurant in Lyon!
Oh, Abel!
The pleasure,
as always, to show manipulation in the horror, in the perversity
is his vulnerability.
From that moment on, I was very much at ease
because I wasn't making a film anymore, a documentary about the police,
I was doing a stylization.
You could say that Claude's only stylized film
is "Max".
There, he took this...
Germanic part.
The setting makes that you are... You're living through...
sadness, a nightmare,
an anxiety and you have... you put a color
to the general setting: shades of grey, of green,
of dark grey, of light grey, and so on,
so that colors which could distract you won't interfere.
What's difficult, is to define this form of stylization
which really attracted me and gave me enormous liberty.
That liberty made sure I've always loved the film,
Ever since I got close to a kind of realism,
I start to feel uneasy when I see those films again.
This one, never.
When you get close to a certain...
a certain realist appearance, you're saying "Wait, here...
"I'm wrong, I've been had. What's true, and what's false?"
Here, in "Max", I don't get into that problem.
What's that guy doing here?
The fact is that... Max's dress, it's the hat!
That's already a theatrical stylization, let's say.
Even the fact that he tries to create an image for himself.
And the fact that Lily is a prostitute
and dresses as a whore, as they say.
Those are already representations.
That means, they give representations of themselves.
How much do you want?
As much as possible!
- How much is that? - There's no limit!
A million, if you like. The minimum is 10.
Thanks.
No, no need.
Of what?
To undress, no need.
You don't want to make love?
There's clearly a puritan game that I love to go into.
Because I find that eroticism has a strong hold on
puritanism, that's what I think.
The notion of desire has an even stronger hold on puritans.
I won't try to understand.
The puritan is not aiming for the act.
There's nothing to understand.
He takes delight in desire, that's it, the puritan.
Do you suddenly like me? Did you decide?
I liked you from the start.
Leave her alone, Rosinsky.
"Max", we didn't know how to finish it
and that's how we got the idea to say:
"And if Rosinsky absolutely wanted to arrest her!"
That girl will pay!
I'll take down her statement and with what I know,
she'll sleep in prison tonight,
like the others.
Are you crazy?
And instantly, Max is obliged to kill Rosinsky!
And at that last moment,
he passes by in front of a bistro, and she's there, behind the window.
There, we have an ending out of limits. The exact ending.
The music was very important.
So Philippe Sarde, his musician, played a big part.
He was there all the time, for instance in César et Rosalie,
I remember seeing Philippe all the time, he came to screenings,
He really immersed himself in it
and, with Claude, they had already thought out a variety of themes
and sites where the music would be situated.
Love at first sight or Rosalie
So I told him: "Mr. Becchino,
"by the time you get the call, I'll have 10,000 marks."
Becchino's face...
Montand, he has clearly a... childish side.
Oh! The cute bottom!
as to the image...
of an engaged men... feet upon the ground...
What really touched me,
is this something, taking us back to his childhood.
This Southern side of him...
macho...
I'll tell you the truth, Cesar.
I love Rosalie.
That's normal... everyone loves her.
No, but...
- Are you serious? - Yes.
I noticed that, in the roles I made him play,
he falls into all the macho traps. Nothing you can do about it.
Exactly what went on between you two?
Nothing.
Everything.
Nothing.
Don't give me that, you get on my nerve!
It's either everything or nothing!
I ask a question, you answer. That's life!
In any case, I don't give a damn.
If you don't give a damn, why yell?
I'm just asking you.
I warned you, you little bastard!
I told you to leave us alone and stay home!
Well, I am home!
So, he touches on a certain ridiculousness
which he himself doesn't really perceive, yet,
- he likes to play it. - Have you seen my shoes?
No, but I see them now.
27,000.
You should've left the price on.
But for example with fear of weird ridicules.
She says to him: "You have red shoes".
which don't go with his blue pants...
But he didn't want his shoes to be red.
'Cos he feared to be ridicule. Yet, he played the situation.
I don't have time to go back home.
So go like that.
What are you doing?
I have a pair in the car.
He told me: "You have to describe the looks to me."
I had to remember it all the time. Now, I find that normal!
But at the time, I said to myself, "Come on!
He's the director!"
OK, so I wrote:
"She casts down her eyes."
"Yes, but that's only the first look.
- What about the next look?" - What next look?
So he told me: "She lowers...", he was playing me Romy!
He was playing the character to me!
He told me: "After her first look,
"she casts down her eyes, while tilting her head a little."
"But you know that! You're the director and you will tell the actress!"
He told me: "Write her!"
In the end, we wrote a bit about how she is,
yet when shooting it was different still.
There's a thing we arranged very precisely, it's that...
David, Sami Frey, looks at Montand who looks at Romy.
It's clear to see that Sami cedes his place there.
The fact that she comes back with this kind of expression, you think:
"Ah! That's fun to her!"
So, that bears on the spirit of the film
it makes it a cheerful drama.
I always thought that the director
is the first interpreter of the films we write.
Claude, he'd read you scenes of César et Rosalie!
I read that to you, in the evening, with intense emotion!
I didn't see
Jouvet in the theatre as my parents promised,
I was too small.
I haven't seen Raimu at the Comédie Française in...
in The Would-be Gentleman. But I've seen Claude Sautet!
In all the characters in all the films
that we've made together.
I've seen him, all by myself. One ticket...
and each time, it was the same: he went off with the text...
in a... the manuscript...
in a shirt,
and he went home, Gobelins Avenue.
And I knew that he went there to interpret our work
with Graziella.
And Graziella...
sweet, loving, favorable...
she said all that had to be said.
If it wasn't good, I saw Claude arrive next day, saying:
"Heu, my dear, heu...", I knew it was Graziella!
It's silly to say, but I was a bit...
what they call a...
"doubter".
When he came and said...
I told him: "Listen, it's great!
"You didn't talk to me about that!"
"Why didn't you tell me all that?"
He told me: "You think it's good?" I said: "Yes, it's good!"
And he was happy.
He said: "I talked with Graziella, yesterday,
"she was shattered, it's great, don't change anything!"
I knew I could move on to the next scene.
Script-writers thought they had...
thought they had Claude's consent on such or such thing...
and 1 day, 2 days, a week or 2 weeks later,
Claude said: "Ah yes, but no, dear!
"Ah, can't be like that, no! Damn! Can't be!"
That was the sitting man, brooding,
puffing on his cigarette
with long silences,
interminable, with me sitting farther in the room.
The key moment was when he became the "upright man",
"the standing up man" who went up and down the room.
He was agitated by something that crossed his mind.
And contradicting him was almost impossible.
So: "Right, sorry, but..."
I wouldn't say that he inspired fear, but there was some of that.
She needs a young 'un, like herself...
"Vincent" is a strange film...
I saw the ending before the script was conceived.
This gets on my nerves, they always say that it's a film about friendship.
It's not about friendship, it's about a gang.
I mean it needs to show they're half failures,
and because they're half failed they are in form.
And I said to myself: "Because of talking about those 4 guys"
I told myself: "What'd be nice, is if at the end,
"unknowingly, the cross the street
"and suddenly they're blocked..." there you have it...
Without knowing exactly what was going to happen.
And that's odd.
I think that it's because this image was muscled in
that we decided to call it "Vincent, François, Paul and the others".
The book's title was "The Big Laugh".
And it was an awful story.
Really awful, with characters ending up all bad.
The women were horrible,
especially the women, as I remember.
And the men weren't much better,
as they all had really sad fates.
And Claude turned that around wonderfully
into a story about men, well...
really optimistic, in the end...
He told me that happiness and misfortune, it's the same thing.
It' true, he told me that several times.
But I think he was more talented at happiness than at misfortune.
There was a book by Néron
with 7, 8, 9 characters who all died, except one.
We had to say right away: "Vincent won't die in chapter 1,
"That'd be the end. We need to get to the point where they meet."
That's how we made up Paul's country house,
which didn't exist.
Free clinics for worker's suburbs.
Free medicine for the poor.
Science is not for sale!
We're here to serve the world, etc...
That was his tune in the 1950's.
Then suddenly, the record changed.
Instead of free clinics...
a fancy clinic in a chic locale.
Still serving society... high society.
That's how to adapt, you get it?
It's always the same crap!
Forever preached to by misfits!
A non-writing writer, a non-fighting fighter...
...and bed hopping women! Damn!
And when we go, he'll stay...
with his peg-legged dancer!
- Listen, François... - Shut up, you!
You make me puke! All of you!
That was funny, 'cause... Montand wants to chip in,
and the other says "Shut up!"
You can feel he was relieved!
Shut up, you! You also make me puke!
Cut!
Those were guys who had been young and weren't any more!
That's the subject! What they were and what they've become.
And we saw Piccoli come in.
With his cigarette, his tie and blue shirt...
and his contained anger.
To us it was as if Claude was unloading on the screen.
The main thing is to remain calm, obviously.
Claude Sautet is always very calm when directing.
Like yesterday, I had to say "Good morning, madam." It was in the script.
Say: "Madam, good morning!
It's written "Madam, good morning", it's in the script!
The sewers run under your windows!
Silly stupid reasoning!
You're not in the cinema, get out!
Sometimes I get worked up. I find that funny at the same time.
I'm a bit of a comedian.
I overact for 15 seconds. I pretend to be really angry.
One part of that is me, my character an my natural anxiety,
yet there's something else, it's cinema itself.
For me, cinema has always been a luxury craft.
And I can't stand it when all those involved
aren't concentrated.
And when I felt things are getting loose,
I had to remind them right away of their privileged position.
Well, you're too low, I don't understand what's up.
Not to me, children! What's happening there?
This choleric side that you hear of...
what's credited to Claude, and it's true
that he often went into a rage.
It was protection against...
against not always being on the verge of sensitiveness.
Which he often was, when he told you a story,
because his eyes filled with tears
and he cried.
It's a trait of Claude's that always shattered me.
The methodical way this comes about, when he listens to Jean's brother,
like something that can't be stopped, it's...
Even when I see that again, it's good.
If I had to do it again, I wouldn't improve on it.
The staging itself. The way in which the focus moves
from Depardieu's brother to Depardieu.
You move from a subjective viewpoint to an extremely active viewpoint,
- in the same shot. - What's the matter, Vincent?
Vincent? Vincent!
I wasn't thinking about that when writing that... it had to be played!
And on agreeing to have Montand play it,
I found out what that meant for the character
which Depardieu played. Well, I felt something profoundly
moving. In that scene, I identify more with Depardieu
than with the one with the attack, naturally, because he's unconscious.
Which brought
tears to his eyes, at that same point we're talking about, it was...
when a man was torn between his life and the other's.
That's to say... we live our life in the river that carries us
and at the same time, you swim, you row
and sometimes you go against the stream, then to on bank, the other.
It was the individual...
battle. By sheer luck, I found the word!
He always said: "Have to find the word! Have to find the word!"
If I'd be writing that, I'd have put: "personal battle".
"No, my dear! Not personal! It's not personal!
"The person, that's another thing!
"- Egoist battle? - No! It's not egoist!
"- Individual battle? - That's it! Write it down!"
He always said: "That's it! Write it down!"
Individual!
Sure, I wrote it down.
But it's not there any more... to read it again.
"Mado" was from the start a story about a venal relationship.
It's a film about venality, no doubt about it.
How many clients did you have this month?
Would you like a commission?
It's part of a souvenir of Buzzati
who'd written a book entitled "A Love"
which described the relationship of an architect, I think,
with a dancer
who was an "occasional", an occasional hooker.
To accept that you do with others what you do with me, that drives me crazy!
There he showed that egocentric
and machisto behavior very well.
I talked about it with Néron,
we went on about it, and then we said:
"But what does he do?"
That's when we came up with: "Property developer".
Still no sign of Julien?
That's good, property developer.
A cultivated type, who moreover wants to be honest.
If there are any.
And at the same time has foul relationships with little ladies.
I prefer we won't see each other again.
As you like.
But quickly, we fell for the wish to describe a state of society
which grieved us. You can say it's my blackest film.
"Mado", while I made that film I never had the urge to laugh.
You're an art lover,
look at that beauty.
Sturdy...
and beautiful.
I love sculpture so much
and when I realized that I couldn't make it
without a studio, I ground to a halt completely.
I told myself: "I won't touch it anymore".
And in fact, I didn't relate to sculpture any more
other than by shots
which probably, unconsciously, influenced my way of filming
and even was an influence on the operators,
by way of my demands on them
as a way of filming the individual related to background, environment,
to body movements, to expression, to body language.
All that must've been related to that voluntary amputation of sculpture.
Well, that's it.
- It's not too long, is it? - What?
Antoine's monologue.
My impression is that it's always the same scene.
- How many times was he on? - He never writes.
He meets
his co-scriptwriter.
He discusses his idea.
And he says: "OK, now we'll try to see
"who are the characters. So write down for me
"and you put all what I've said and all what you think I haven't said."
But he himself, he never took a paper and wrote 3 pages.
He never made it to 3 pages.
I've always considered myself
as incapable of writing.
If I had to write down all what happens in the script
with Piccoli, with all that precedes it and comes after,
in literature, it's a whole field of mastering language that I don't have.
When I have to film, I can control everything:
the lighting, the movements, the compo- sition, the expression, the vibration...
a 1000 things you don't see and which also exist in writing,
but there, in the image, I feel it.
What we call
the moving physical portrait,
that's what I'm always good at. That's what I like.
I love films which I can end
without dialogue! Then I'm totally in shape.
It's very hard to summarize the plot of Sautet's film because in fact
there's no plot, there's a confrontation of characters
who will create, little by little,
a dramatic movement and a series of emotions.
On that score, he doesn't only go against classic French cinema,
which was designed around a plot,
but he goes even more against
the Hollywood principle which always lays down a construction in 3 acts.
I had promised to make a film with Romy Schneider.
She told me: "You need a film with less of those old chums!"
So, I said to myself:
"OK, I'll make a film with Romy Schneider at 40 years old,
"with les old chums in it".
And that's how we started looking for the subject of "A simple story".
He said it was a boy-scout's film!
Woman boy-scout!
He said: "I got carried away a bit by poor Romy, because
"she said: you'll make a film for me alone!"
So later he told her: "Here it is, I have film for you."
And after she'd read the script, she said:
"But there aren't any good old girls!
"And me, I'm worse than the others!
No, she didn't like the scenario.
But many women did like
this scenario enormously.
What do you want from me?
Answer.
Let me through, Serge.
Answer, I'm asking you where you're coming from!
Where did you go?
Ever since my earliest childhood, I was
ashamed of the behavior of men towards women,
very early, very early!
Each has a right to have a chance. Is that what you're saying?
Perhaps.
I'm going. Don't be afraid.
Even the behavior of my father... My father,
whom I love tenderly,
but I said to myself: "Women, they don't get so much fun out of life!"
And even when you're young, when you relate to young women,
that came very early to those lads.
And when the historic movement found a voice, it grew sharper,
it had to go faster, become popular!
You think I don't know how he sees me?
It's just that when he's interested and I call him, I'm happy he responds.
But if he leaves me with the 2 kids, I'm not up to it, I'm not ashamed to say.
We try to explain that a woman isn't...
What, a woman?
Me too, I'm a woman!
It's for this good reason,
good or bad, that I made "A Simple Story".
But it isn't my best film.
Because in fact, the messages accumulated a bit too much.
That said, I still think the film
has really nice elements and that Romy is extraordinary.
- What? - Nothing, you know...
- You make me laugh. - I laugh at myself too, sometimes.
I can't seem to have a man and a child at the same time.
And as time passes, it seems less important.
I realized that
it's that it's exactly that what I wanted to avoid in contemporaneity
and there, I fell in the trap.
And this decision, did you take it by yourself?
Yes.
But you're already 2 months pregnant. Did you want it?
Yes.
And moreover, for good reasons.
When reasons are bad, you can poke fun,
while when reasons are good, you're not tempted to poke fun.
Because...
Because I live with someone.
He's 42 and...
I can't explain it in one sentence.
But...
I'm going to leave him.
I think that A Bad Son
is perhaps more autobiographical than his other films.
Patrick, in this film, has all the strangeness,
the sense of modesty,
the difficulty of expressing himself
that Claude has in life.
May I?
You shouldn't ask from actors
things they don't have talent for.
They won't make it.
To make up for that, you have to find things
which they can do and which show their vulnerability.
Then you know it's beautiful.
You know there's resonance. You can feel it.
And that resonance communicates itself to me,
but you can feel it will communicate to others.
All you can do is trust the actors.
You can discuss with them doubts about their recipes,
But trust them on their personality!
Dewaere...
There's something that strikes me, a kind of aristocracy of language.
You can feel he's seized a world where a few words are enough.
It's not so much the words,
it's the way of pronouncing them, the intonation.
Because... ever since I came back here,
something happened to me...
which hasn't happened since...
a long time.
All the time I feel like holding you in my arms,
to touch you.
I'm in love with you. That's it.
Me, I was... in love with him while we were shooting!
It's beautiful, all the time.
Beautiful all the time.
Excuse me! Andouillette for the lady.
One côte d'agneau. A Gamay!
"Garçon" is a choreographic film, no doubt about it.
The group treatment leads to the choreographic treatment, for sure.
The Saint-Pierre is for...?
There's a choreographic pleasure.
That's the simplest word to describe it.
Demi Brouilly!
Philippe!
There are moments with the actors
in which I lose control of some scenes.
Very difficult to restrain Montand with... his tricks.
Ah! Good morning! How are you?
That was hard, to have Montand in a film. Oh, la la!
Always had to struggle, put him back in his place...
The relationship you maintain with comedians
makes that afterwards you always have a sense of failure,
of treason, when you're not in control, when you don't watch the rushes.
Especially since,
when you watch them, you always have the impression that they're waiting
for their next role.
And when you don't have that, you don't know what to do!
I had promised to make a film with Romy,
I agreed with Montand
to make a film, but, I was held up by...
dreadful social contracts
in which, as victim of personal relationships,
you are held by promises you must keep!
The energy you put into having strong ties with them,
you pay for it afterwards.
When I made "Garçon", I told myself that by always focusing
on characters of my generation,
I ended up "sticking" to that generation.
And I said to myself: "I can't go on like that."
I find that in the mimicry between me, the comedians
and the characters I invented, I don't see a way out any more!
And I said to myself: "Wait! If they tell me I'm Montand,
"that I'm Piccoli, I'm no longer who I am, in that mix-up!"
Claude Sautet had a desire for renewal in his own way.
With Garçon, he thought he went
to the end of something that defined his success...
His public, sociological success,
since that's always a keyword for Sautet.
And one senses perhaps a bit of fatigue... he himself felt that.
Well, he's been...
he hasn't even been filming for 3 or 4 years...
he kicked the can around certain subjects.
And then there was this novel by Jean-François Josselin,
a short novel, of which, in fact, they kept...
the title, plus the main subject,
that's to say: "Would you like to spend a few days with me?"
as the protagonist says to the young woman.
Philippe Carcassonne, the producer, helped me a lot.
He really wanted, besides the script...
"I'd like you to change the whole team."
I had the impression that suddenly, I could fly!
He was a man of that time and...
he was used to...
being surrounded by actors and technicians of his generation.
So, the characters were of his generation.
He started out with Piccoli, Montand, Ventura...
Ventura was older than him, but still, people of his generation.
Moreover, he realized that...
He was very lucid on that fact,
that in order to make his kind of film, he needed at least some money,
or even a bit more!
Hence, the need to speculate on significant sales,
and that, to make a film that would attract crowds,
in which the heroes would be 60 years or older...
would be difficult, and at the same time he
didn't feel at ease with characters 25 or 30 years old.
"A few days with me"...
hinged on that very preoccupation.
They tried to mix genres, in "A few days with me"
genres he had never done.
And he was tempted to let himself go,
to throw himself into something...
different, which was perhaps more comical, more scathing,
something which he had not allowed himself before.
You know? What's really funny, is that...
It's a film I made in a delightful way.
Delightful and lucid enough on the change of tones.
At the same time, I think that I didn't have public success...
precisely because of those changes in tone.
For me, it's my favorite film, together with "Max".
There's an enormous ambition in "A few days",
it's a kind of "Ship of Fools" in which everybody is in confusion.
In which there is
a derisory and pathetic view of life.
My God, Martial! But what have you done?
A view which was Claude Sautet's, too.
In A Few Days With Me, everything seems normal...
but everything is insane!
Everything! From the first scene to the last.
Everything is crazy!
And in fact...
what brings this film to life for me, it's like...
a pleasure...
pleasure in each moment, every minute!
Because there suddenly is... It's Claude!
It's Claude in this life. He's like that.
Do you know that you look good, at last?
Yes.
In most of the dialogues,
very often, I zoom in on commonplaces, which please me by the way.
It's in places like this
you can really take the a people's temperature.
- So they'll see the change, too! - Oh yeah, right!
Sure I condemn terrorists.
Well, they have a coherent life, they push a conviction until the end.
The commonplace, what we call stereotypes,
is part of spoken conversation.
And I don't like looking for strictly literary solutions.
You've redone it all, it's...
- Really, really... - It's original.
Do you like it? Really?
I like to use raw elements,
knowing that the organization of timings
and intonations will give them their different and unique colors.
That's wonderful, Irene, to contribute a clear note.
Sunlight for those old residences, dusty with the force of tradition.
This recital of worn-out commonplaces has me all interested.
It's true! It's a form of art to recite something really new.
The speed of reply, the tone of voices.
That becomes a kind of reassuring music.
Well, from the start you understand
that there's a saturation of language.
And you get the impression that it relieved him, Auteuil, to say it!
Wait, I can't find the words...
How to avoid commonplaces in order to express...
Well, then don't say anything.
Marielle, he was unique!
I wouldn't know with whom to replace him if he hadn't accepted.
For me, it was a supreme achievement! For me,
it was a high point to give him a supporting role of this quality.
Marielle is, from the start, an innocent swindler.
Not even a swindler. An innocent man.
Tell me, Mr. Fonfrin, is it correct that you have 12 cash registers?
Yes.
Because while scanning the documents you gave me,
I noticed that often, one was missing, that there were some holes.
Yes, that's possible, I have a cashier who was on sick leave a few times and...
And you also told me about a warehouse keeper you're not sure about.
- Yes, that's right! - Why?
It's a man who... drinks!
We asked ourselves: "If we don't have Marielle, who to take?"
I said Jean Poiret.
And Jacques told me: "Careful! Poiret doesn't have the innocence!"
And that's true. Poiret is brilliant.
If you let him play a crook, he really is a crook.
While Marielle has the innocence! He's unique at that!
And here's another one.
I took out a small loan, but... I planned to pay it back, of course.
Of course... Another one!
We always met on the same spot.
We had breakfast, talked about music, very little about film.
We talked mostly about Miles Davis,
Dexter Gordon, Charlie Parker.
That's what we discussed... very little about cinema.
I think he observed me and he knew right away where we went...
He anticipated, like that...
He stole things form me...
while I didn't notice, that's how great directors are.
Most directors...
who got the right to call themselves directors are like vampires.
And I thing that's alright.
'Cause this vampirization of other people's ideas,
which brings them to their own ideas,
only serves to enrich their own ideas.
Claude was extremely curious about others.
He listened, very well.
He posed questions whenever he got interested,
you could see his eyes starting to shine.
Even with people about which you couldn't imagine
that they had a special life
or romantic or whatever. No, any one.
That interested him.
And in there, naturally, he gleaned many excellent things.
He was a real peep, you see?
He had this accuracy...
of life... with only that small discrepancy...
and... even when the actors
are a bit extreme,
it's 'cause the situation requires it and it's spot on!
Very much spot on.
He told you very little, but it was...
essential.
He got you going right away, it was...
essential.
There are plenty of directors who talk a lot,
who tell you heaps of things.
But...
but which don't always get through to the actors.
He, he knew exactly what had to be said to the actors.
So that they'll be...
like that. Exactly spot on.
What I don't like is to 'explain' to actors. I hate that.
So I have to find any means to...
take him, make him move, guide him to a position
which he won't take consciously.
Once the actor accomplished what I wanted,
I demystify.
I tell him, after I influenced him that way,
in a way that our relationship will be healthy.
I tell him "I told you that,
"but I wanted you to do this, or else, we'd have spent 3 hours on it!"
I ask myself how they do it, 'cause I have a dirty mania,
of mimicking the scenes. In fact it's very funny,
since I'm very nervous! But the actors understand perfectly.
I think there's a mimetic thing at play here,
with all the actors I've filmed with. I believe.
The "Heart in Winter", that one!
An extremely negative subject, from a commercial point of view,
Because it's a man who refuses love.
And you say to yourself: "If this love is proposed...
"by Emmanuelle Béart,
"you'd have to be completely crazy to refuse it!"
Yet, that's the subject,
and for me, it's one of the most beautiful films I've produced
and of which I'm most proud to have produced.
The starting point of "A Heart in Winter",
is a novel by Lermontov, "A hero of our times",
which Claude and Daniel Auteuil had read
and which we had discussed while shooting "A few days with me".
Then Claude came up with the idea of violin building.
A film playing among violin makers.
I never understood why, but that's how it is.
And, the whole of it...
with an additional parameter which was his interest in Othello,
but Othello, the jealousy drama not viewed from the jealous Othello's...
viewpoint, but from the viewpoint of Iago,
the character who causes the jealousy
and who puts the poison in the brew.
I've met someone.
Go on.
You're facing her.
That is the most beautiful one!
I'm late, we have a meeting at Lamberti's.
So?
It's very beautiful.
We could talk all night long.
I remember, in a hotel room in Rome, we decided to...
- I can feel your attention slipping. - No, no.
I'm listening.
I'm seeing you.
I love to watch you talk.
You don't decide on things, you live them!
You don't understand, Camille.
You're talking about feelings I don't feel, which don't exist.
I don't have access to them.
I don't love you.
The only one who can... perhaps because he's close to him,
even though he's much older,
because he feels, deep down, because he's a victim of the same
affective deficiencies, the only one who can pierce through, smoke him out
and describe in some form, the "Stéphane case",
is his teacher, his mentor, played by Maurice Garrel.
You wanted to create disorder?
The pleasure of demystification?
But we cannot demystify feelings.
The pitfall of "A Heart in winter" was that it had a terrible abstraction
and that the character was terse, silent, biding his time,
that he talked little. And so...
the word couldn't rule, not immediately anyway,
as a kind of supreme seduction for him.
You had the impression that with this character,
you couldn't blunder much.
We didn't have liberty
with the character who was self-monitored,
who controlled himself at all times,
to retain this power which seemed unique to him.
So he was situated as a manipulator.
And the dialogue gets more and more tenuous, I tell you.
Very studied, very concentrated. You really have to pay attention.
To get out of his confinement,
he had to be capable of a gesture...
a gift! As it happened, it's something terrible!
Since someone asks him to give him death
And he gives it.
When he arrives and...
he understands that he has to commit euthanasia,
there's no one but him who can do it.
He's been asking me for 3 days.
But me, I cannot.
But I can't.
I sincerely think that,
if I didn't have the euthanasia of Lachaume,
I wouldn't have the end of the film. It's that simple.
The shots with him and Dussolier are beautiful.
Very beautiful.
The fact that Dussolier is there at all.
We really hesitated when filming that.
What's strange...
is that his greeting repeats at the moment of Lachaume's death.
And finally he is, what I call free.
He's a free misogynist.
In fact, I have pleasure in showing misogynists
who get a lesson, there you have it.
Very simply, that would be it.
Misogynists who didn't get a lesson... get out of here!
A misogynist who got a lesson, that's interesting.
The first time he talked to me about "Nelly and Mr. Arnaud",
he said: "I want to do the story of an old man and a young woman."
And I told him yes, right away. I liked it.
I liked it because I think that...
when you say an old man, that must be a man from the past,
and a man from the past, for me that's someone...
attractive to write about.
So, it's an attractive person, somebody exotic
for a young woman.
He talked with me about it, long before...
We'd been to a restaurant, he'd seen...
a very beautiful young girl, who looked very much lost.
And there was a man there. Old.
And he asked her if she needed money.
She told him yes.
So, he wrote her a check.
In "Nelly and Mr. Arnaud",
we wanted to suggest a vast apartment.
The lay-out was pretty narrow, a narrow set.
Ah, Nelly! Come in.
We invested a lot of time in that. The height of the seats...
the size of devices...
We spent a lot of time designing things that lend image to a Mr. Arnaud,
not that he was rich... that he had the means.
- I have some more things to correct. - OK, I'll leave you to it.
There was a level of
requirement about the locations which was...
which I've rarely seen, in fact... That's to say that,
when we arrived at a set...
he was first of all obsessed by the length of shots
he was going to take on this set.
So, the dimensions of the set
should be appropriate for
what the actors had to say.
Then, he started to walk through the set
speaking the actors' text.
5/6th of the film takes place in this apartment,
and how to arrange that this place will be very simple?
And that we don't make a mistake with a corridor, a door, a glass door?
It's formidable.
For instance, when she's at her desk, when she looks at the door,
she's met by several obstacles in succession,
one of them a glass door, which is half open
showing some reflections of the exterior,
another is the main door, and even the elevator.
This axis is repeated often. And he is very often on that side.
See you, Miss.
So we had to put that together very meticulously,
almost to the millimeter!
There was the inverse axis
which is what he sees when he's near that glass door.
His position towards her, who can't move.
Look at you! Planted behind that pc like a vegetable!
Can you cut it out? Who do you think you are?
You pay me for a job! That doesn't give you any rights to my life!
- Yes! Tell me about it! - You're a bore!
You complain about everything! About me, about your book,
about your wife, and I understand she left you!
About your children who reject you... I'm not a garbage can!
I'm not here to listen to a wailing old fart!
Great. Go get screwed.
That kind of shrinking of the library
in the set, it was anticipated, but yet...
step by step, that's to say that...
The stagehand knew that on a certain day,
he had to take out this book, that book, and that, it wasn't...
those things weren't taken out accidentally, right? It was always...
premeditated, and so it was... the characters
lived by means of the shots.
The characters are unveiled,
by the place in which they live, and by their relationships too.
A kind of relationship which becomes more and more...
strained and stronger, at the same time.
If he wouldn't have lived through a little bit of that,
in his own life...
no way he could have made this into film.
He wouldn't know how to do it.
And generally,
it would fail at the cutting table.
You felt very well that this went really deep.
I mean, it wasn't... he wasn't just telling a story...
it went much farther than that.
He got things out of his system every day.
And that had its price.
He was always very tired after shooting,
he was exhausted.
Physically, after each day of shooting, he was exhausted because...
he had got rid of so many things!
I think the key scene, in which she comes...
to see him, in which she sleeps at his place.
He goes to see her sleep and...
she wakes up. It's the key scene, yes.
You can't sleep?
No.
It's a thing from my youth, when I was 16...
when there was a girl friend, a niece or my sister's friend
who slept in my bed.
And that emotion... it's something I couldn't achieve,
and I pasted it, as if it was my imagination
or a recent thing.
Just one moment.
What's odd is that scenes which seem like scenes of old age
or of old characters,
are in fact reminiscences of childhood.
Memories from before sexual life.
So, perhaps there really are
things from childhood that show up again with age.
That's where you get embarrassed.
I think that indeed, you reconcile
with yourself, more or less consciously.
If you take Eustache or even Truffaut, I'd say...
He is himself from the start, so that's the opposite case...
In my case, no. I think that indeed,
I noticed that little by little, I got closer to myself,
with less masques.
What film Sautet could have made after this one?
That was it, effectively.
I said to myself: after this film, what can one make?
"What other film can one make?"
And...
well, he didn't make another.
And he didn't make another 'cause he didn't feel like making another.
OK, he was very ill, but...
He told me one time: "I don't want it any more...
"I don't feel like making film any more...
"I want to read and listen to music."
He told me that, one day, on the phone,
I don't know, 1 year after "Nelly"...
The last lunch,
well, let's keep it quiet, because...
he was already ill.
And he wanted to see me because he'd heard it said
that I had a new project. That was, there was...
a film I had just finished...
that I had finished the day before!
Which is called "Good trip".
He wanted to know! He still had the curiosity to know.
"- So, can we meet? - Of course, Claude!"
We had lunch.
And after a while: "So, what's your project?"
So, clumsy as always,
I tried to say: "Well yes, that could be, I think that...
"it could start like..." and then, I went on
to recite...
then, he heard it... I saw him paying attention...
and at a certain moment he said: "So, what then?"
So I told him: "At that moment she could... and then at the end..."
"Stop! Go on and make it!"
And that "Stop, make it", well...
I hadn't told all, but I felt...
and he had given me the green light for the film.
That fact that Claude Sautet told me, that day:
"Stop! Make it!" perhaps enabled me to make the film.
I hope it would have pleased him...
It's a peculiar man, Claude, very peculiar...
he had a personality which was...
I'd say, special... everybody told me, but...
"It's great that you can live with him, as he is...
"with his angers, with his anxieties."
But me, I loved him!
I don't have any idea of the films I've made, you know?
I don't know how to explain, it's very difficult to talk about one-self.
I'm not saying that out of false modesty, since...
I tell myself: "It's odd,
"they're very good, very unusual,
"very correct, these films."
I tell myself, but deep down,
I'm born in France, but...
I was interested in American literature, in American cinema,
so I'm an American film-maker who makes films in France.
Yet, the films I've made,
they really play in France, with French people!
And at last, it's incredible, I ended up in my small garden
which makes that I don't know any more who I am, there you have it.