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But why?
Is it so difficult to sell the oranges?
There!
Do you want my seat?
No way!
- It's, it's... - Yes, I know, shut up.
Start here. He already has his mouth open, but it should work.
It's better with his mouth open, just this once.
Twenty-six.
- Is this good for you? - Yes, but be careful with the "N".
Yes, the "N" is in there.
Eighty-two.
- It's better?! - Are you sure? He blinks. Did you see?
Yes, but I...
That's nervous tension
because he's ready for his big speech and the violence and all...
You're serving stones in gravy. Now it's a question of where to cut.
There's fine.
That's what I would suggest, what do you say?
I don't trust your fanaticism in cases like this.
- So, here's my solution. - All right.
So, fasten your seatbelt.
Much better...
In terms of what we see, yes, but I'm afraid that you...
Give me a break, Straub.
You'll cut out some preliminary harmonies of the "N".
This is you...
This here.
And this is me.
What?
A one-frame difference.
- Between us? - Yes.
So?
- Don't spend 100 years on it. - I don't need a hundred, just seventy.
They are eaten in salad.
- In America? - No, here by us.
Here by us? In salad with oil?
Yes, with oil. And a little garlic, and salt.
- And with bread? - Surely, with bread.
I always ate that as a boy.
Ah, you ate that?
It went well for you then, too?
So- so.
You never ate oranges in salad, did you?
Yes, sometimes. But there is not always oil.
It is not always a good year.
The oil can cost a lot.
And there is not always bread.
If one doesn't sell the oranges there is no bread.
But why?
Is it so difficult to sell the oranges?
They won't sell. No one wants them.
Abroad they don't want them.
And the boss Pays us this way, he gives us the oranges.
And we don't know what to do. No one wants them.
We come to Messina on foot and no one wants them.
We go to see if they want them in Reggio, in Villa San Giovanni,
and they don't want them. No one wants them.
We go back and forth, we Pay the way,
we don't eat bread, no one wants them.
As if they were Poison. Accursed oranges.
You cannot expect form before the idea...
...For together they'll make their appearance.
WHERE DOES YOUR HIDDEN SMILE LIE?
I haven't told you, my Kabyle friend
is the only guy I have met so far who knows this song.
He does not sing: "Unhide from the mine THE guns,
THE automatics, THE grenades."
He sings: "Unhide from the mine YOUR guns, YOUR automatics,
YOUR grenades." And I think he is wrong.
I think so too.
At best you could sing: "Unhide from the mine YOUR guns,
THE automatics, THE grenades." That you could say...
But my version would be: "THE guns, THE automatics, THE grenades."
Buñuel tells a frightening story in his book.
One day his son told him that there was this guy he should meet,
Nicholas Ray.
And so he went to dinner one evening with Nicholas Ray.
And Nicholas Ray told him the most appalling story
he had ever heard about film-making.
He said that, in the system, if you wanted to have a career,
it was absolutely out of the question that the film you were going to make
could cost less than the one you had just made.
There had to be growth, development, and all that.
So Buñuel listens to that and for him it's like the end of the world.
Do they have eyes?
I am from Leonforte,
uP in the Val Demone between Enna and Nicosia,
I am a landowner with three beautiful daughters,
one more beautiful than the other,
and I have a horse
on which I ride across my lands and then I believe I am a king.
But it doesn't seem to me to be everything,
believing I am a king when I mount my horse,
and I would like to acquire some other knowledge
and feel myself to be different with something new in my soul,
I would give all that I Possess
and the horse, too, the lands,
to feel myself to be more at Peace with men,
as one who has nothing to cause self- reProach.
Not that I had any Particular cause for self- reProach.
Not at all. And I'm also not talking in the sense of the sacristy.
But it seems to me that I am not at Peace with men.
I would like to have a fresh conscience
and that would require me to fulfill other duties,
not the usual, other, new duties and higher,
regarding other men, because in fulfilling the usual duties
there is no satisfaction and one remains, as if one had done nothing,
discontented with oneself, disaPPointed.
I believe man is riPe for other things.
Not only not to steal, not to kill, etc. And to be a good citizen.
I believe he is riPe for other things, for other duties, new ones.
That is what one feels, I believe,
the lack of other duties, other things to fulfill. Things to do
for our conscience in a new sense.
I believe you are right. Are you a Professor?
Nothing to laugh at, little GrandPa. Nothing to laugh at.
Ah, I believe that is just it. We feel no satisfaction any more
in the fulfilment of our duties. To us the fulfilment is indifferent.
We feel bad all the same.
And I believe, it is just because of this,
because these are duties that are too old,
too old and become too easy,
without significance any more for the conscience.
But really you are not a Professor?
Have I the air of a Professor?
I am not ignorant,
I can read a book, if I want to,
but I am not a Professor. I was with the Salesians as a child,
but I am not a Professor.
Thank you.
Did you get that?
"Giovanni, I will never forget you."
You see, freedom had come to him. Like the freedom of the musician,
it comes when he masters the mechanics.
Freedom doesn't come just like that.
Things don't exist until they have found a rhythm, a form.
The form of the body gives birth to the soul. I've said it a thousand times.
There was this Thomas Aquinas who discovered that,
and as he was Neapolitan, he knew what he was talking about.
When someone says:
"Yes, the form, it's the form, the form, never mind the idea."
That is a sell-out. It's not true. You have to see things clearly:
First there is the idea.
Then there is the matter and then the form.
And there is nothing you can do about that. Nobody can change that!
The idea, that's what Eisenstein had
when he organized his sequences. He had his montage of attractions...
Then there is the matter. He has to determine
the duration of the shots he has stringed together, that is the matter.
What we are doing here is the idea that was on paper,
the construction of the film, and that is working on the matter.
We work with a matter that resists us and you just can't cut anywhere you like
between shots. I already explained that before coming into this joint.
And through this work, the struggle between the idea and the matter,
and the struggle with the matter, gives rise to the form.
And the rest is just filling material. I want that to be quite clear.
You can't just stand here and say: "Yes, but you could also say this,
and then there's this too, and this is also true, etc." No, no, no.
The same goes for a sculptor.
He has his idea and gets a block of marble
and he works the matter.
He has to take into account the nervures in the marble, the cracks,
all the geological layers in it. He just can't do whatever he wants.
My blood boils when I hear things like that...
That the idea doesn't exist because there is a form.
But where does that form come from?
If it hasn't been worked, if it hasn't come out of the matter,
there is no form, it's formless.
In the beginning, the Earth was without form.
Your formless form, your infamous form,
formless, infamous, invertebrate.
If you are working with nuance, condensation, expansion, deflagration,
you cannot say that it's all in the whole, that it's all one.
Those are people who no longer have morals, can no longer feel emotions,
neither restrained nor violent. - Are you done?
Neither restrained nor violent. - Are you done?
- Have you calmed down? - I am always calm.
I was in the cafè on the station platform with a homeless
because I had to wait for the crew
who had gone to the supermarket and kept me waiting for hours...
He was telling me all sorts of incredible stories. Had been all over.
He kept asking me: "What are you doing here?" I told him: "I'm just waiting."
And I fiddled with my framing.
You will Permit me, won't you?
By God, why not?
It seemed to me I had seen you get off in Catania.
Ah, you saw me?
But I accomPanied a friend to the train for Caltanissetta.
I got back on at the last minute. In the last car.
I hardly had time.
I was PreoccuPied for my valises!
Yes, you never know.
True.
Eh? You never know, with these nasty fellows going around.
I am an emPloyee at the Land Registry.
- That's good, it changes frequency... - Of course, it does.
The sound is more muted in the second shot.
When shooting, I thought we'd never edit this sound.
It's working out better than I thought.
It's nice because one can feel the high frequencies of the train coming across.
But no one does this kind of work. Even Duret, the sound man,
told us we should edit with a train track running.
So that everything blends together like a sauce.
The soup!
There are lots of masterpieces in the history of cinema
which we admire very much
but which obviously hold together because of the soup,
musical soup in particular or sound soup, etc...
I'm not saying that
that's not legitimate or always ugly but nevertheless...
Here, we are restricted. If there is no music or background sound soup,
you have greater precision. Otherwise we'd say: "Yes, great."
"A bit more sound here,
more music there and then everything will be nice and smooth."
One, two, three... "Would you like a little more?"
So...
...what's that "Would you like a little more?".
What film is it?
So, you don't know? It's "My Uncle"!
There's this little old man with one eye and he is in a street,
painting the white lines for the drivers.
And as he is dutifully painting his lines, a Buick drives past -
it really is a Buick. I don't know anything about cars, but it's a Buick.
Olive green and strawberry pink, two clashing colours.
So he sees it go by, he turns up his nose, pick up his brush,
and shoots. When it has passed he says: "Would you like a little more?"
When we see films like that, that the people who made them
have not shied away from even the most basic demagogy,
we look at each other and say: "Would you like a little more?"
Some people have the impression - because we reject
verisimilitude and TV-style cinema,
Dallas and all that shit, and even Woody Allen
and Cassavetes, etc.
That there is no psychology in our films. But that's not true.
All this is psychology.
There is no psychology in terms of the performance of the actor
because there is a dramatic abstraction that goes deeper
than so-called verisimilitude.
But it's there, in between the shots,
in the very montage and in the way the shots are linked to each other,
it is extremely subtle psychology.
Eh? You never know, with these nasty fellows going around.
I am an emPloyee at the Land Registry.
Oh, really?
Is this mark tighter than the one you did before?
No, it's the same. But I'm wondering if it's not too tight.
Let me think for a second.
There's the start of a smile lighting up in his eyes but it's difficult...
If you could keep it, it would be better.
It's not easy! Very hard to see!
I'm sorry, but if you want to bring out this smile a bit better,
you'll have to go back to the clap.
Really! Do it for me, please.
There!
Don't start "thereing" me. There is no "there"!
When you finish your refined work you'll discover a noise to deal with.
- That's it? - Yeah...
You see. It's your fault that I missed it.
Will you ever understand
that being disrupted while concentrating fucks it up?
It's something! After all this time we've been editing films together,
how come you still don't have the discipline?
The guy relying on you to jump would fall on his face at every attempt.
- Just imagine... - Shut up!
An acrobat!
Yes, the acrobat would be dead on the spot.
I've something to say. I'll wait for your permission. But if I don't get it,
I'll say it anyway. - Spit it out!
Right, I think it's not worth searching for an intermediate solution.
As in democracy, it's a dead end.
If we want to see that there is a smile, we should have frames
where he looks at him like a fish as if to say: "I don't believe a word."
That's crap! There's no smile.
Something is going on in his eyes but we don't see it.
Yes, but we have to see it grow.
You can't start here because it doesn't show.
You have to see it grow!
His reaction is: "Liar, I don't believe you" and then he smiles to himself.
I've said all I had to say.
There, that's how I'd like it.
You see, he knows that he doesn't work at the Land Registry.
He should slap him and say:
"I offer you a seat and you tell me a bundle of lies."
See what he does with his mouth?
- He does nothing in particular. - Yes, he does...
No, he shuts his mouth, that's all, as he shakes his head.
- Well, do you want this tight? - Yes.
Now, let me work in peace!
- We can't... - Shut up, please!
You're afraid, aren't you?
I'm not afraid! I'm looking!
You're bold! I'm always afraid!
You must understand that if we linger on the man who says:
"I am an employee at the Land Registry"
then we're stuck because we have to... Or we stay on him
for a relatively long time, then it's us,
the viewers, who are "contemplacing"...
Contemplating.
Contemplating a man who has lied, who has just lied.
Whereas if we stop on the "O" of "cadasto", on the exact frame,
then the lie passes over to the other side, it's sent over.
That way, it's the other man who contemplates the liar
- it's completely different.
What we're doing now, we're not sure it's going to work.
That works, does it?
And they'll say he dared too much, but his audacity was beautiful.
Why? Shall we leave it like that?
Yes, I would leave it. You see the stupid things we do?
- But we didn't. - No, we didn't.
We've done enough stupid things
without having to think up some that we could have done!
It's hard not to talk bullshit.
Not at all. You just have to shut up.
Yes, of course, that's radical!
When you make films, you try not to say stupid things.
You work hard to avoid them. You destroy clichès, go back, correct,
abandon or add things...
And then, in real life, you do talk nonsense...
You end up destroying some of the work you do and the films you made.
So, go to the maximum here...
- What do you mean by "maximum"? - Take that out.
All of it, if possible.
- I want to see it. - What do you mean by "maximum"?
The maximum. The "Gia", his mouth open, anyway...
It's not difficult to be clear, you know.
What's well thought out can be clearly expressed...
...and the words one needs... - Come easily.
No, gently.
I would do this and no more.
I'd like to know why.
Well, just look!
To distinguish it from the preceding cut...
- The preceding one was tighter. - Yes, exactly.
This is a little longer.
I don't want to cut anymore, because... what shall I say?
Just look! Look, look!
No need to be afraid here.
Cutting a film is cutting time.
Things happen between two shots.
Because I don't want him to reply "Gia" immediately.
I don't want it to be an enthusiastic gesture. There's enough of that already.
I'd like to see the end of the preceding shot to see what happens.
What is he doing? There's a light in his eyes.
- I would like to keep that. - It's not him. It's the light from outside.
Yes. I'd keep that.
It's good.
There's a problem with the sound of the train. It's not the same, so...
Well, here...
It looks like a matching shot, which is the most idiotic thing in film-making.
Do as you like and I am sure that we will cut it, not 100% sure, but...
- Don't put the light on, please. - I'm not, I'm leaving!
You don't want me anymore! So long!
This is the end of which film by Mizoguchi?
Tough luck, it works perfectly.
- You didn't understand what I said. - What?
Tough luck, it works perfectly.
Shit!
This bloody matching shot gives rise to the suspicion that we had a script girl,
but we never had one.
What works? Not the script girl, that's for sure.
No script girl for me, no way.
Script girl is a proper job. It's not something just anyone can do.
There was only ever one script girl one could take seriously.
Hitchcock would have had a hard time without one.
What's her name, the one who worked with Hitchcock?
Sylvette Baudrot or Baudot?
Yes, he really needed one
because he wasn't into modern cinema.
"Mama, Mama, what's that: Modern people?"
When you see a continuity error in a good film, it's rather fun, amusing.
But when it's just SchlamPigkeit... what's the word?
Yeah, sloppiness.
No, but when you do a series of close-ups
of the same character like Fortini and you intercut
with black film, no matter how long,
you realize that it's not possible.
You can never create the exact same framing.
You have to put marks on the wall and the next day the light is different.
What was meant to be absolute continuity turns out false,
and vice-versa. It's just not possible.
For "Cèzanne", for the first time in our lives, we searched
at the centre of each painting. We often spent half an hour...
More...
While the others were fiddling around,
we were looking at the centre of the painting.
So that the camera was not looking from above or below,
but truly the way it should be, with a tripod or an Elemac.
We had to draw the arcs of the circle, triangles in the frame.
It's surveyor's work, back-breaking hard work.
Jean-Marie, take a look at the beginning of this shot.
And, you can't turn your actors into statues.
Impossible, even if we have precisely defined positions,
which they gradually discover for themselves,
you have to leave a margin of freedom of movement,
otherwise we would be there constantly screwing them to the ground,
moving their feet and then driving nails into them...
Let's go!
Didn't you know that?
Oh, as for knowing, I know it.
Naturally.
You could not have lived till today without knowing.
Too bad that you are an emPloyee at the Land Registry
instead of singing.
Yes. I would have liked that.
- So? - So?
I'm afraid you've won.
Men!
In Falstaff, in Rigoletto, on all the stages of EuroPe...
Or even on the street, what does it matter?
Always better than being an emPloyee.
Oh, yes, PerhaPs...
We are in Syracuse.
I believe I will get a connection right away.
But what will you do in Syracuse?
"Tales of a Pale Moon."
Peasants have no history.
Workers...
...have no history either.
There was a writer like Pavese who fought like hell against it
until he committed suicide, and Vittorini...
And Fortini.
There were also people in France. Someone I like very much.
His name was Charles Peguy.
He said: "Making a revolution
also means reinstating old things."
- Very old things... - "Very old but forgotten".
He was wise; he said: "Also". That was Pavese's dream.
The myth, the unwritten story, that is the history of the peasants
weighed as much
on the scales of contemporary history,
the history of so-called contemporary struggles.
And when he realized that things were mad,
that his party was not capable of bringing the two poles together
and balancing the scales, Pavese committed suicide
in a Turin hotel room in July 1950.
At the same time, Vittorini, who had the same publishers,
Einaudi, sat down on the stairs at the office and wept.
He lived on and kept on writing
and there was a bond between them. They were old friends.
Pavese means a lot to us because he was an intellectual,
an Italian petit-bourgeois
who didn't indulge in his own complacency.
Without being in the least masochistic,
he was someone
who reacted constantly against the flow, so to speak.
And that's important because
there comes a moment when enough is enough.
Did you see that?
A butterfly.
Yeah, I saw it when we were shooting, but I forgot about it.
- There, see? - Yes.
How did you recognize me?
I ask myself that, too.
Come, I have a herring on the fire.
Aren't you cold?
- No. - What?
- Are you hungry? - I don't know.
He was a great man, Grandfather?
And how! Didn't you know that?
He was a great man. He could work eighteen hours a day,
and he was a great socialist, a great hunter,
and great on a horse in the Procession of St. JosePh.
He rode in the Procession of St. JosePh?
And how! He was a great rider,
better than all here in the village, and also in Piazza Armerina.
How do you think they could have had the cavalcade without him?
But he was a socialist...
He was a socialist.
He could neither read nor write but he understood Politics
and he was a socialist.
How could he ride behind St. JosePh if he was a socialist?
The socialists don't believe in St. JosePh.
What a beast you are! Your grandfather
was not a socialist like all the others. He was a great man.
He could believe in St. JosePh and be a socialist.
He had a mind for a thousand things together. And he was a socialist
because he understood Politics. But he could believe in St. JosePh.
He said nothing against St. JosePh.
But the Priests, I imagine that they found him contrary.
We won't get it any better.
I told him: "That's a good take, do one more for me."
That works every time.
Not true.
- What take is that? - Fourteen, I think.
Did we do more or did we stop here?
All I know is that we have number 11 in version 1, and this is 14,
so, if there is any more, they're probably not as good.
We'll trash them.
But this film was full of ups and downs.
Not like "Empedocles" where the last ones were always the best.
Because, nevertheless, they had worked less...
They're also much more extroverted. "Empedocles" was introverted,
so the concentration was intense.
There is another element at play here.
"Empedocles" was a project that took a year and a half, but not every day.
This was a three-month project, working every day, no comparison.
It's better to work a year and a half, but not every day, to master the text,
than to work three months, having to work every day, even on Sunday.
There is nothing you can do. Time is not money.
They also discovered that what they had
was a text and that it was literature.
That's what everybody...
They didn't know where it was taking them
because they realized it was hard work.
What were you saying?
It's too much work, too long, too difficult, etc.
It really is popular culture. These are people who worked all day,
who arrived at rehearsals at six, or five thirty at the earliest.
It was a huge effort and we had to get them interested in it
because otherwise they wouldn't have held out.
And then, it's also a question of trust, I'd say. Straub meant nothing to them.
They didn't know what we were about because... it's not in the papers.
And on TV, they show our films in Italy at one in the morning.
These people work, they can't watch TV at one in the morning.
Let's say they discovered Vittorini, not theatre,
because they already knew that.
They discovered cinema and slowly we became friends.
But the Procession was a matter of the Priests!
If you want to know, the actor makes a little mistake here.
It's not serious, but a mistake all the same.
In the first and second versions,
he does what we had rehearsed and agreed on, that is to say:
And not...
But the Priests, I imagine that they found him contrary.
But of what imPort was that to him, the Priests?
But the Procession was a matter of the Priests!
How ignorant you are!
The Procession was horses and men on horses.
It was a cavalcade.
The cavalcade deParted from over there.
There is a small church that you don't see on the mountain
but they lit it uP inside and out and it became a star.
And the cavalcade deParted from the church with lanterns and bells
and descended the mountain.
It was always by night, naturally. One saw the lanterns
and I knew that my father was at the head, a great rider.
And all waited on the Piazza below, and on the bridge.
And the cavalcade entered the woods,
one saw the lanterns no more, one only heard the bells.
It took a long time and then the cavalcade aPPeared on the bridge,
with all the noise of the bells
and with lanterns and with him at the head
as if he felt like a king...
It seems to me I remember.
Nonsense!
You were three years old the only time you saw it.
The problem with a shot like this, if you want to know, is getting it done.
Most of us begin with a clichè - not always, but most of the time -
and that's fine but you have to look at it from all sides and clarify it.
So you start with the idea of a discovery...
Showing a mountain without the window, without anything.
A torn curtain.
Then you ask yourself, but why?
It will inhibit the viewers' imagination
instead of opening it up and you say to yourself:
"Yes, after having filmed Mount Thebes in "Moses and Aaron",
after having filmed Mount Etna, Mount Sainte-Victoire,
why add another one?"
And so you renounce, slowly.
Then one fine day...
One fine day you realize that it's better to see as little as possible.
You have a sort of...
reduction, only it's not a reduction-it's a concentration and it actually says more.
But you don't do that immediately from one day to the next.
You need time and patience.
A sigh can become a novel.
This is the way that everybody should be editing.
It is part of what I call cinematographic rhetoric,
in the positive sense of the term.
If you don't edit this shot the way it should be edited...
There's an absolute rule, one can say that Chaplin invented it not Eisenstein.
There is a movement. It's very clear.
If it's not edited the way we're doing it now, then the film isn't edited at all.
Which means that the editors just couldn't be bothered.
- Have a good look. - Stop it.
Because your movement doesn't start here. It starts there!
And these are the little details that Chaplin saw in his 10-minute films.
He saw them-not on a Moviola,
he didn't need machinery and buttons and switches...
He used his bare eyes!
And he would see an open eyelid, a closed eyelid.
He'd see the beginning of a movement and its end.
And his 10-minute films from the Essanay series were like that.
Not only those, but those in particular.
So, are you ready?
And he didn't do it because he was a great artist.
Nobody thought he was a great artist.
He did it because he had found out it was absolutely necessary
and a simple question of effectiveness, that's all.
You gave me this cold, didn't you?
Don't tell me I've been coughing for the last 40 years.
And yet...
Karl Rossmann only said one true thing when we were working with him.
- No, he said quiet a few. - He said...
And, in terms of the way in which he'd look,
we never had anyone able to look in the right way immediately,
without us saying anything.
Of course, he was a young spirit.
He had a young brain, his brain cells weren't destroyed yet
forty thousand cells a day.
- What age was he? - Sixteen.
Right... Sixteen...
But the true thing he said was...
Every time you said I had been coughing for 40 years, he would say:
"Well, the day he stops, that'll be the end of him."
So, I'll just have to go on.
Mercy on the rest of us.
Especially when we need our ears and our brains.
"Death to the old and senile".
"The Golden Coach".
"His Excellency the Archbishop is very stern."
What does it matter to see the line?
I meant without ever hearing a train Pass?
What does it matter, to hear a train Pass?
I believed it would matter to you.
You went out and stood with the flag
at the barrier when it Passed.
Yes, if I didn't send one of you.
There was a Place, where we lived near the station.
Serradifalco, I believe.
We didn't see it, but we could hear the freight cars
bumPing one against the other during the shuntings...
Cut the melon!
- There... - Can you shut up for a second?
- Listen... - Yes.
I think you have to go with the action, like in Essanay Chaplin once more.
And here, the action, as you'll see,
is not that hard to find, though it's subdued.
There's another reason for this.
He drinks as if he were sleepwalking,
he moves like Bresson dreamt of actors moving...
Coming home, switching on the light without knowing what one is doing,
not like a bad actor making a point of looking for the light switch, etc...
One makes unconscious, mechanical gestures.
That's more or less what he does... he drinks.
But at the same time he...
Because he is sleepwalking and unconscious he has already...
He has that meditative look
of someone who stares at the coffee grounds in his cup, into his glass.
But it wouldn't make any sense to prolong it,
that would only dilute the sauce.
What is she doing?
Shifting about. We won't be able to keep a lot of this because she simpers.
She thought that was enough,
she didn't keep the tension up until the end of the take...
No, it's a pity!
Look at that bent wrist there...
There...
That's something precious, because it is...
It's also something extremely difficult to get from professional actors.
Look at Vernon, who is a good actor...
When we began to rehearse, we said to him: "Right, now lower your eyes."
"You look down, down to the ground." So we're rehearsing and we say to him:
"Where are you looking?"
"I'm looking down at the ground." Jean-Marie asked him: "Where?"
And he said: "Not there, because if you look too far down,
you'll have your eyes lowered too much and the camera won't see them.
You have to look down so that one can still see your eyes!"
That's what they're taught!
As he is not the vain type and he liked us a lot,
he ended up looking where we told him to.
That's what they learn as actors, tricks like that...
Instead of learning to breathe,
to co-ordinate a gesture or a look or a syllable
and to move without it looking as if
it were straight out of the romantic magazines,
they learn tricks like that, clever little things,
crafty tricks, Scapin tricks...
The two actors we had who weren't from the Schaubühne
were from the Gorki Theatre, from East Berlin.
And we never had any problems with them. Never!
Brecht had spent some time there, so they did learn something.
And the first time we were with the oldest one from the chorus,
we were rehearsing at his place because we didn't want to put him out too much.
In a suburban flat on the 20th floor with only one room
which he shared with his wife...
They opened the door and there was a piano!
Which in itself is unexpected for an actor.
We had brought the long chorus text, the longest text,
which tells of all the miracles man is capable of
and which ends in catastrophe.
And we asked him, a little timidly - it was our first meeting -
if he'd be so kind as to do a reading rehearsal.
After two or three cups of coffee and German cake.
And he began to read.
He read his text and I think Jean-Marie changed three details.
We were a little surprised and said to him:
"There are no miracles, how did you do it?"
"First of all, I always asked myself
"why one recites verse without respecting it as verse.
"I've been asking myself this question since my beginnings as an actor.
"Then I saw 'The Death of Empedocles"'.
What he meant was not to link every verse.
"And then I found that in your films, verse is verse and metre is metre..."
- And he was 65 years old! - And he played the piano.
He worked all alone, he understood it all! He practised and practised.
He understood it was all about practising like a musician
and not like an actor who says: "I don't practise, it kills my spontaneity!"
Bullshit! Let's move on.
What I have to tell you about "The Death of Empedocles"...
It is the second of our 22 films
that has a message. And the message is not ours.
It's the message of the man who wrote the text... in 1793.
He was German but had travelled in France. He'd gone to Bordeaux.
He had travelled the whole of France just after the revolution
and then he returned to Germany.
And his message is quite simply a communist utopia.
Which says: There is only one thing that will ever save the earth
and the children of the earth: Communism.
And you will see
that it is not any old communism but a very precise communism
that will be necessary one day, if we don't want all to perish,
in nothingness and ruin, well, we will have to reinvent it!
And you will see how he defines it. It begins with:
You have always thirsted for something new, so go for it!
You have learned only what your fathers have told you
and he develops that and only if you don't forget
this and that... as kids say... children telling stories
only then will there be a communism that can save us
and not just us but the only precious thing we have,
namely the ground we walk upon! Not the ground as such but the earth
the children of the earth. So, good evening and...
...thank you!
Excuse me.
There are those who stick close to reality
and do not put their imagination in there,
their limited imagination of limited creatures.
And then there are those who distort reality
for the sake of the so-called wealth of their imagination.
The result is, and this is controversial on my part,
that the imagination is much more limited in the work of the second family
than in those of the first family.
That of the first...
Because there is less patience in the work of the second family
and...
...as someone once said,
genius is nothing more than a great deal of patience.
Because if you have a great deal of patience,
it is charged with contradictions at the same time.
Otherwise it doesn't have the time to be charged.
Lasting patience is necessarily charged with tenderness and violence.
Impatient impatience is only charged with impatience.
Beautiful autumn is here again.
Holy shit!
He's mad!
Straub! Can you tell me why the door is open and the light in my face?
I thought we'd done the marks.
Yes, but I check them before cutting all the same!
Here, the problem is deciding if we should have a see-saw movement:
He lowers his nose and immediately, in the next shot, raises it again.
Or if we should have him lower his nose, cut then,
and hold it for a few frames before he raises his nose again.
We can't do that!
Why? What would be the reason for that?
The reason would be that the clap is in the picture.
- That's the silliest of reasons! - Well, it's not my fault!
That palm tree is annoying.
That's the most difficult thing in working with professional actors.
We'll start like that.
It's getting into their heads that all the time after the clap is their time.
And it is luxury, but they must by no means rush things.
They must use this time to collect themselves, concentrate,
think, meditate and be at one with their body.
We don't do huge productions, it's better to waste 3 or 10 meters of film
than to start all over again
because you started too early and weren't concentrating.
You know... This guy is such a hothead!
Did you check if there was any parasite noise...
No, there's no noise, no problem here. The problem is in the length of time
I need here, given that in the other shot he starts immediately.
What's more, what's going on up there annoys me too.
So, for it to work, I'll have to cut early, here, that is.
Here, he's just finished lowering his head. And I'm not sure that that fits,
him having just lowered his head and in the next shot lifting it immediately.
On the other hand, I don't believe putting in a pause
will fix things because he lifts his head immediately in the other shot.
A cut serves to condense something
that one doesn't necessarily do in real life.
But in life we do that too. Up. Down.
- So? - That's not the same thing.
In real life, you don't make film shots.
See, I don't want to... up, down.
Yes, here you see that editing has nothing to do with life!
Even though we work with elements...
...of life.
- There! - Yes, perhaps it's better.
You see that there is no sense in a close-up like that
if it isn't shot from the same perspective as the preceding shot.
Because otherwise you flatten the space,
turn it into rubber... and you end up with a shot
one doesn't know where to place oneself, there's no reference at all.
Where to place oneself?
Does one place oneself full face or in profile, or a bit more frontal
but that's a bit like the hair in the soup.
Whereas this is a matching shot that has a meaning.
The close-up, instead of being purely psychological matter,
is a spatial discovery.
The way he's shot here
is the same point of view as when we see the two of them,
and it's always the same point of view.
It's the lenses that change and it's the principle of a pan
or a crane shot sliced into several pieces.
Here.
That's it.
It's much more interesting this way than if you said:
"Now, to cut the other character out,
we'll have to move a bit left or a bit right."
But if you respect the same perspective, it's a lot more interesting.
There, you know that it's something clear and logical.
It's not chewing-gum.
We won't do any better.
You must excuse me.
I believed I could do it because you are a stranger.
Oh, that is nothing. Two soldi more or two soldi less...
The question is one does not know how to comPort oneself
with strangers.
There are PerhaPs scissors sharPeners
who charge eight soldi in other villages,
and one risks damaging them in charging six.
It is beautiful, the world.
Light, shadow, cold, heat, joy, non- joy...
HoPe, charity...
Infancy, youth, age...
Men, children, women...
Beautiful women, ugly women, the grace of God, roguery
and honesty...
Memory, fantasy.
What should that mean?
Oh, nothing.
Bread and wine.
Sausages, milk, goats,
Pigs and cows.
- Rats. - Bears.
- Wolves. - Birds.
Trees and smoke,
snow.
Sickness, recovery. I know, I know.
Death,
immortality and resurrection.
That palm tree is a nuisance.
Let it sway.
And what about this?
It was alright. It worked relatively well.
Relatively because you don't see clearly, but it's still there.
It was in there, but just for a moment...
I saw it very well, I looked closely.
It's just out of frame. There's something...
No, it's not out of frame.
There are bits of it still here, but out of focus, so...
- We'll see if we can do that. - But most of it is out.
What you need to know is that, if you have a palm tree swaying like that,
immediately there will be eager, helpful and friendly assistants,
or even the cameraman...
Fine! They'd be here straight away
to cut the branches with clippers or to put cord
or rope to stop them moving.
And that's the kind of things that sticks out.
And then you do a large shot and you realize you have
to take off the rope and you regret having cut it.
In "En Rachachant",
there was an old wooden platform in a school in Saint-Ouen.
It was hard to find because they don't make them anymore.
And the cameraman already had an axe in his hand.
I held his arm back.
That's cinema. You can't trust cinema.
The little birds.
There are the birds and the wind in his hair.
- We could try to... - To keep some of the wind.
Let's keep some of the tall, dark and handsome bit
as if he'd finished his thing. He's quite happy with himself.
With the wind playing with his tuft.
I don't know if it will work, but we'll try.
- Scrutinize the wind. - Yes, I will scrutinize it.
And the tuft.
In a sequence like that,
it would be absolutely wrong to have shots like we had in the dialogue
between Robert and Schrella in the billiards room
at the end of "Not Reconciled",
in which there are high angle shots
of Robert leaning on the billiards table
responding to Schrella. There was a reason for that.
It's a dialogue that goes from one extreme to the other,
in which the feelings of each other constantly swing.
Here, we have two characters who meet,
first in mistrust, and suddenly, something happens between them
and we must stay at their height. That's all one can do.
All the more so because at the end they come to be on brotherly terms...
They are both...
...on the edge of a kind of invisible abyss...
It ends like that.
When you finished drifting, Straub...
Well, let's see.
It is extraordinary.
I suPPose.
- Too bad... - Listen.
... to offend the world.
Excuse me, if someone knows another
whose acquaintance he has made with great Pleasure,
and then takes from him two soldi or two lire more
for a service he should have rendered gratis
due to the great Pleasure it gives him to know him,
what kind of thing is that one,
isn't that a man who offends the world?
Thank you, friend.
I don't know... There's something that doesn't work.
Can I just point out that it's my hat?
I've had it for ten and a half years, no, 15, but it had a hole there...
That's two frames less.
I gave it to him...
- Two days later, I bought this one. - Now listen, Jean-Marie!
In "Diary of a Country Priest",
they greeted "from one side to the other of an invisible road."
And then, I asked "what kind of shirts have you got?"
He brought his shirts and trousers.
And he had pink shirts and stuff like that...
So, I had to give him that shirt.
And the trousers too.
And I found that shirt in the rubbish in Rome.
I found it 4 or 5 years before in Rome. People throw away all kinds of things.
But they're very nice about it, they have them cleaned first
and then put in plastic wrappers
and they either put them straight in the bins or well to one side.
I found that shirt in the rubbish.
That's not true. You're mixing up shirts. I bought that shirt.
In fact, I didn't buy it. I stole it. I stole it from a supermarket in Rome!
It was what they call a bargain and I said to myself "What a shame!".
The one you found has got a big cigarette burn in it.
It's a tartan shirt. Red and green.
- Isn't that tartan? - Yes, but not red and green.
We can't go further
because there's a car door slamming, which is rather unfortunate.
- But there's another solution. - What's that?
We keep the slam of the car door and use it for the beginning of the music.
I'll try but I don't think so.
We did something like that when we were young.
First of all, we're not young anymore and also, the noise is not very clear.
But one can make out it's a car door.
What else could it be? It's not a gunshot.
I've made quite a mess of your work, haven't I?
- Happy now? - Now, you're going to sigh...
I think we live in an age of betrayal, that's all.
I'm 97 years of age and even older; I am older than Baudelaire
when he said he was a thousand years old.
I've survived in a world in which
the life of the artiste en Plein air was somewhat difficult,
especially when you wanted to do what Cocteau described as:
"Nourish that for which you are criticised, it's your real self."
We see ourselves as privileged all the same...
Because in a world in which 90% of the people
have a job they're not interested in,
we've been able to do a job we are interested in
and to do it the way we wanted to,
and not the way others would have wanted us to do it, thus changing it.
When we did "The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach", our first project,
we spent 10 years trying to get financing but we got there...
People'd suggest names like Curd Jürgens,
a famous German actor of the time,
who would have pretended to be playing or conducting the music...
"Everything is possible in cinema" they told us, "it will all be dubbed anyway".
Then someone else suggested... What was his name?
Herbert von Karajan. I asked: "Who's going to pay him?"
He said: "I'll pay. It won't be in the film budget. I'll pay Karajan."
So I told him: "I'm sorry, we don't want Karajan,
we have known Gustav Leonhardt for ten years and nobody knows him
- he has made 2 records."
And everyone asked: "Who's that?" He didn't have the market value
neither in box office, nor for musicologists,
musicians and even less the cinema crowd.
So I said to him: "Then it wouldn't be our film."
"Go ahead and make a film with Karajan" and he said:
"Listen, if you accept, I will not only pay him
but also give you a certain amount for your film." And I asked: "How much?"
We have a budget, we only need half, so keep the other half,
fuck you and give us the half we need
and let us do our film with Gustav Leonhardt."
To which he said no. We ended up doing it anyway.
Well, you end up paying the price.
We haven't any retirement insurance and all the crap.
But we're still happy and we're still privileged...
So, in an age of betrayal,
I don't see any harm in recalling a little bit of faithfulness.
"Sicilia!", if it was love at first sight and if we wanted to do it
was because in '72,
when we were looking for locations for "Moses and Aaron",
which we shot in '74, in Italy
- we travelled 30'000 km at snail's pace, searching...
And during the search, one day, we were on a bridge and we said to each other:
"What a strange smell, not unpleasant but very strong. What is it?"
And so we had a look around and saw hundreds of kilos of oranges
lying in the riverbed below.
That stuck in our minds
and when we read the beginning of "Conversazione in Sicilia",
it came back to us as an extremely strong memory...
That being said, how can a man and a woman stand;
stand-that really is a good word - stand together?
It was also worth it for the oranges!
Old print, old film but...
...forever young!
A little powder, a little rouge.
An artist is forever young!
So, at the end of the last shot there is nothing to cut out?
I'll tell you when I've finished, but I don't think so.
You know, she always talks like that.
When we met in 1954,
I was attending the Lycèe Voltaire, but only for eight days...
- Three weeks. - Was I?
- Three weeks. - Yes.
Well, three weeks. Then I left...
You didn't. You were told it would be better to leave...
I was kicked out.
I was even told why:
I knew too much about Hitchcock and that disturbed the class.
I was watching her from a distance
we weren't sitting that close to each other.
I didn't know her... I was just watching her.
And every time she uttered something,
the others would ask me-why me? - what she'd said.
I had to translate, it was taken for granted that I understood.
And did you understand?
Ah! That's a mystery! One will never know.
They must have noticed that I had fallen madly in love
at first sight, so they thought: He must understand what she says.
Here it's the idea of convalescence.
After this call to violence
comes what Beethoven called
the convalescent's thanksgiving to God.
The thanksgiving of a convalescent who comes back to life.
It's the idea of a little ointment on a wound, if you like.
Let's say that humanity has no other way out than violence...
That's exactly what I think, and that...
That's very bad
and one day something else must happen.
In any case, one will have to heal the wounds...
Here, on the contrary...
That which emerges slowly and grows and grows and grows,
has nothing to do with an ointment.
It's the opposite.
It's the trees of the forest beginning to march...
- Have you fastened your seatbelt? - Let's go.
Thank you, friend.
Sometimes one confuses the Pettinesses of the world
with the offences to the world.
Ah! If there were
knives and scissors, awls, Picks and harquebuses,
mortars, sickles and hammers, cannons, cannons, dynamite.
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