THE BFI SHOWS
TWICE FIFTY YEARS
OF FRENCH CINEMA
BY ANNE-MARIE MIEVILLE
AND JEAN-LUC GODARD
WITH THE PRESIDENT OF
THE FIRST CENTURY OF CINEMA ASSOCIATION
MR. MICHEL PICCOLI
and employees of the Hotel du Lac in X.
My child, my sister
Imagine the sweetness of being there together
loving at our leisure
loving unto death
in the land that resembles you.
Are you coming?
Is anyone there?
Tea, please.
And for you?
The same.
When Mr. Piccoli arrives, tell him that I am here.
Yes, sir.
This way, Mr. Piccoli, someone is waiting for you.
- Michel! - Jean-Luc!
Mr. Piccoli, will you be drinking something?
A weak coffee, please.
A glass of water.
Your room key, Mr. Piccoli.
That's three Piccolis in three seconds...
...this is like the Piccoli Teatro.
Are you OK? Where have you come from?
Fine. From Lyon.
Oh yes, the inauguration.
Yes, the inauguration of the celebrations...
...of the first century of cinema, in Lyon.
Yes, you are the President, aren't you?
I am President...
...but nobody has called me Mr. President yet.
And you are inaugurating what exactly?
Let's say announcing: Bertrand Tavernier, Chardère and the Mayor
announced the various projects: the building of a new cinema...
...the preservation of the brothers' workshop.
"The Exit from the Lumière Factory."
His hangar. Do you know why they were called Lumière (Light)?
No.
It was the grandfather, I believe. Didn't Bernard tell you?
I think it was Auguste and Louis' grandfather.
He was the candle lighter in a church in the Haute-Saône.
We have a project in that valley. It is the valley of the image, Lyon.
Invention of cinema, Niepce, Châlon, Beaune.
I can't remember who invented cinema in Beaune. I don't know.
The valley of the image. That's one of our ideas.
Would I "reelly" make love with memories?
Reel.
And this presidential work, does it take up much of your time?
A lot of time, yes.
Simply being called President doesn't interest me all that much.
What is a presidential day actually like?
Do you have an office and secretaries?
We have an office, a secretary, an administrator...
...two representatives whom you know.
Crombecque and Toubiana...
...and we try to imagine how one could celebrate cinema.
Yes, but let me explain. That's why I asked you to come here...
...to do me a favour.
Why celebrate cinema? Isn't it famous enough already?
Or not any more?
It has been diverted, so to speak.
What exactly are you celebrating?
We are celebrating the first century of cinema.
We took 1895 as the starting date.
The first public screening with an audience that paid to watch a film.
So you are celebrating the first commercial exhibition...
...not production.
The Lumières' first commercial exhibition of their invention, cinema.
You don't celebrate the fabrication of a camera.
No, not the fabrication of a camera.
But we do intend to involve the industry, the technology...
...what about cameras in the future, digital imagery, synthetic imagery?
I'm trying to understand more precisely.
Recently we celebrated the liberation of Paris.
What does that mean, to celebrate?
To celebrate means to show, to explain...
...what the invention of cinema actually was.
...one of the greatest inventions of the late 19th century.
To restore films, showing films the public never saw.
Like Méliès films, everybody knows.
Sorry, but one could, for instance, not have any festivities...
...but use fifty television stations, or the ten French ones at least...
...to show Méliès films if you want to show them to a wide public.
If you only show them to 3000 people once every hundred years.
I don't want to be rude, we are all very nice people...
...but to celebrate something...
...perhaps that is in some way to exaggerate...
...the value of something one rather neglected of forgot...
...a way of redeeming oneself, of making amends.
For instance, with Méliès' films, he still had offices in New York.
He wound up in a shack by Montparnasse Station.
But he had offices in New York...
before the Americans pinched his business.
Now, if you wanted to show that. Restoring films is all very well.
It takes time and passion, and indeed...
...only the French are doing that, the French State.
But afterwards, why not show the films on television?
But anyway, why not show them all year long on television?
Like for the Warsaw ghetto. That you can celebrate every day.
The liberation of Paris too. Every single day.
As Lewis Carroll said: "Happy unbirthday!"
Where we differ is that you say happy birthday...
...and I want to say "Happy Unbirthday" every day of the year.
Exactly that is why, on television, we will be showing not Méliès...
...because we are at war with his inheritors...
...but all Lumière's films, not just "The Exit From the Factory..."
...everyone has seen that...
...but the 1400 Lumière films, one minute per day.
For how long?
For 355 days. There is no problem since there are 1400 films.
There will be one minute of Lumière films on television every day.
One minute in 24 hours of programmes.
That is less than the ads.
Of course, everything is less than the ads.
No, they should be shown all day long. That's what I call celebration.
Don't misunderstand me, feasts are honourable things...
...but if cinema had become what it should have become...
...there would be no need to do that.
But what should it have become then?
You too celebrate cinema because you make film histories.
No, I don't celebrate.
I do make film histories because I occupied a little bit of it...
...and no one ever told me what I was doing there.
And I still do not know what I am doing here on Earth.
The British Film Institute asked us to do something.
Tavernier was asked to do something for the hundred years...
...but he couldn't...
...so we told them, rather than showing some clips...
...that we wanted an argument...
...like you have an argument with Méliès people...
...because they want money for this and for that.
Roughly, our idea is that we do not remember.
Ask anyone. Just now I asked the head waiter about "Remorques."
A blank. Grémillon? Nothing.
So I said: "Gabin." He had a vague inkling. Michelle Morgan too.
But if you say: "Dalio," nothing. So it was impossible and...
I thought it would be a good idea...
...to invite the President into this little story, since this is a piece of fiction...
...but do ask them, since you will be spending the night here.
I am curious. I bet that 3/4 of the names...
...even those from your generation, will have been forgotten.
This is France, and France is a very interesting country.
I would like to say, but there is no time...
...that French cinema is the only one that had critics.
Even in the early days there were critics.
Delluc, Germaine Dulac, Jean- Georges Auriol.
There was this critical dimension.
In other cinemas, it was business right away.
In America, Edison, was commercial exploitation from the start.
In France too, but there was this other dimension.
There is so much to say about that. For instance...
...when you show Feuillade today, people call it an old film.
They don't talk of an old book. An old book is a book in poor condition.
You do not say that "Don Quixote" is an old book. Not even an old novel.
But when you take Griffith or Gance's "Napoléon,"
...that is called an old film.
Cinema was mortal and it is normal that it should stop.
But when you restore these old films and you show them...
...they are no longer old, they become marvels of cinema.
Sure, but that is like a festival, like the Van Gogh exhibition...
That doesn't get shown in every village...
...so you can see it only once, if you live in Paris...
...and you queue in the rain for three months or you can't see it.
So from time to time, every 50 years, like for the concentration camps...
...this gets shown, but Resnais' film isn't shown every night on TV.
Take the Pathé exhibition that is on now. I have this funny document...
...don't think I'm being rude, from the brochure you published...
...the one with the two brothers.
Let's show it to the camera, like they do on television.
Can it be seen like this?
More or less. Fine. Please look at it and tell me what is missing.
What are the brothers holding?
A camera.
No.
A phonograph and a projector, no doubt a Pathé Baby.
Isn't it amazing.
I make films so I see that something is missing, the camera.
And that's the difference with Edison, who didn't want a projector.
It is Louis' and Auguste's father who told his sons: ...
... You must get the image to come out of the box.
And they said: no way, but then they copied him immediately.
It would be interesting to show Alice Guy's films on the first channel.
But what I wanted to say was that...
...with the Pathé brothers, people don't tell the truth.
They were the very image of French colonialism.
Their company was bigger than Gaumont.
They were known in China, they had the whole world.
Max Linder was an incredible megastar.
By the way, did you know that Max Linder died around here?
To paint your delicate elegance...
Your slender waist...
I will appeal to the soul of Watteau...
Oh my Columbine
So you read Shakespeare...
Yes, he missed some fine things...
That animal.
Pathé never made anything.
First, he copied Edison, then the Lumières...
...and then he went into business.
In all honesty, we are celebrating the commercial exhibition of films.
But that is what we are doing.
Yes, but you have to say so.
You don't say: it's marvellous to project a dream onto a wall...
...and to make people pay 3 dollars.
You should say: 3 dollars, wonderful.
Instead you say: a dream, wonderful.
Three dollars is wonderful, but that shouldn't hijack the other marvel.
You must not point to one marvel and forget the other...
...because then it isn't a marvel anymore but a crime.
I do not deny that crime exists...
People have to live...
You can't take absolutely everything away from...
...the poor things...
...the poor bastards.
You saw nothing in Hiroshima.
Hitler, don't know him.
It is a little like opera.
France did achieve that with the New Wave, for Langlois and Franju.
I brought you this beautiful book about Langlois imaginary museum.
You are too optimistic.
It's a pity that all this has become like a mini Olympics for cinema.
...ly superficial.
And the President...
...decided to check.
Excuse me. What? May I ask you a few questions?
Can't you see I'm working?
Just a few questions?
A photograph, do you know what that is?
Of course.
And do you know who Nadar was?
No.
A cartoon, do you know that?
Don't be so patronising.
Not at all. Do you know who Emile Cohl was?
No. I don't care. I don't want to know.
Gérard Philippe: "Le Diable au Corps".
Yes. No. It rings a bell.
This time, the awareness of their guilt leaves them speechless.
Their speechlessness makes them very aware of their guilt.
Did evil exist?
Man's voice, incorporated into the weft of the universe, did not reply.
And it almost seemed, there should be no response before the dawn...
...as if everything was waiting...
...once again waiting for the dawn star...
...as if nothing else really mattered.
Yes, I have finished. I spent the day with Jean-Luc.
I am not really acting in this film.
And the ghosts...
He is making a film for the BFI on 100 years of French Cinema.
No, it is not part of his histories of cinema.
He is still working on those.
We discussed the Association for the first century of cinema...
...what are you planning and so on to celebrate the century of cinema.
He thinks nobody remembers what happened anymore...
...because nobody has ever really told the story of cinema.
Maybe they still recall Michèle Morgan or Jean Gabin...
...but nobody remembers Le Vigan, maybe not even von Stroheim.
No, I came mainly because I like to see him...
...and he makes me think about my role as President.
It isn't only about memory and the 100 years of cinema...
...but I would have like the association to have been called...
Keep your candle straight.
Mirrors should reflect before sending an image back.
Good evening. Can I put that here?
No, here please. Thanks. What is it?
Videos. Some guests like them for the night.
There are some very good ones.
You never go to the cinema?
There used to be a cinema here, but it closed a long time ago...
...before I was born. Can I have an autograph?
Yes, but let me first ask a few questions. Ever heard of Annabella?
No sir.
Or of Dita Parlo?
No sir.
Albert Préjean?
No sir.
You do not know Albert Préjean?
No, but I do know Arnold Schwarzenegger.
And "La Grande Illusion"?
No, but I do know Madonna.
Intelligence is...
...to understand before you assert something.
It is, within a given unity, to push things to...
...the limit, to find the opposite; so it is to try to understand others...
...or between one's self and the other, the pro and the contra...
...little by little to find one's own modest path.
I know this intellectual ethos is not very popular nowadays...
...today people love clear distinctions...
...and something in between black and white is a very grey business.
But it is the fanatic and the dogmatic who is boring...
...because you always know in advance what they are going to say.
Not sceptics, but people who love parodies are amusing...
...and a paradox is...
...when facing the obvious, to look for some other idea.
Today people dislike compromise...
...but compromise is a beautiful and courageous intellectual operation.
It is regarded pejoratively in the sense of compromising oneself,...
...in spite of all that, I will go on...
...thinking that one should aim for a sensible synthesis...
...and I will go on saying that the world isn't as simple as all that...
...and that the world is not totally absurd.
Intelligence is to try to put some rationality into that absurdity.
Max Linder... ...77 times 7 years of misfortune.
Help...help.
Max Linder's last words.
Help...help...help.
I would like a newspaper, please. "Le Monde"? "Libération"?
"Le Figaro" then, and breakfast. Only tea, please.
Is Mr. Godard there? Please tell him Michel Piccoli called. Thanks.
It would have been a film. It is a film. Yes.
Good morning. This has been left for you.
Thanks. May I ask a few questions?
Does the name Jacques Becker mean anything to you?
Boris Becker, not Jacques. He's a great server, like me.
Have you heard of a film called "Les dames du bois de Boulogne"?
I know "Beverly Hills Cop" and "Natural Born Killers", "Pulp Fiction".
Do you like that kind of film?
Yes, a lot of violence, real butchery. I know "9 1/2 Weeks".
You like that too?
Oh yes. Lots of naked thighs.
It's me. Are you new? I am the President.
Listen, there is an idea for a Baudelaire Charles Cros evening.
So tell Toubiana to reread "The Voyage", "Païni" too, and CNC...
Sorry, I will come back later.
Go ahead...
...because at the CNC they never noticed,...
...The Claw Necklace, yes, the necklace of...
...Agfa, of Kodak, the claws of Arriflex, of Panavision...
...so that's it.
Anyway, I am not going to play my death for a tragedy.
Have you heard of "Lumière d'été"?
Summer Light? In winter? No Sir.
"La môme vert de gris"?
"La môme vert" what?
"La règle du jeu"?
No.
"Les dernières vacances"?
No.
"Le Paradis Perdu"?
Never heard of it.
"Sylvie et le fantôme"?
Sorry, no.
"Touchez pas au grisbi"?
No.
"Les anges du péché"?
Nothing.
"Adieu Philippine"?
Mirrors should reflect before sending an image back.
Mirrors reflect too much...
They invert images...
And think themselves profound.
Thanks for the books.
Remember that story about that guy who, all alone in the cinema...
...kept mumbling to himself 'Incredible' but stayed till the end.
Which film was he seeing?
"Pickpocket".
That does indeed stay close to the ground.
The hell with the whole thing.
Horrible, horrible.
Charles Cros. 1886.
Times are hard. He is living hand to mouth.
They all died in misery.
Charles Baudelaire.
We want to travel, without steam, without sails.
To entertain us in our tedious prisions,...
...project onto our minds, taut like a screen,...
...your memories within the frame of their horizon.
It is true: that does foreshadow cinema.
Say, what did you see?
We have seen stars, waves and deserts,...
...and in spite of shocks and unforeseen disasters, we're bored.
Do you know E.A. Poe's famous poem "The Raven"?
The cab is here, sir.
...And its melancholy refrain...
Let me take your suitcase.
...Never more...
Please sign the Visitor's Book.
It is the theme enounced by the lugubrious host...
...his only burden of knowledge as Baudelaire says in his translation,...
...and the word with only a few sounds, but so rich in meaning...
...signalling a negation of any possible future, with only 7 sounds...
...because Poe insists that the most 'producible' final R be sounded...
...and yet the refrain is capable of conveying us far into the future...
...even into eternity.
Oh. You haven't always been so fatalistic.
Hurry up, I will settle the bill.
I am coming.
-What are you reading? -That is my business. I am coming.
If you want, the result is the same.
Mr. Piccoli...
Mr. Piccoli,... ...do you have a moment?
The lethal tedium of immortality.
Dominique Coedel.
Good morning.
You may have known my father, Lucien Coedel.
I remember...
They never talked about him in any of his films...
...but the critics always ended their review with: ...
'Let us not forget the excellent Lucien Coedel'.
Goodbye.
-Dominique, hurry up. -Yes.
I do not like married women. I hate cowardly men.
Lola Montes.
-Jacques Natanson. Goodbye. -Goodbye and bravo.
Is the cab for you?
The Visitor's Book, Sir.
Oh, leave it in peace.
And the President celebrated something or other French in...
...what the powers that be called the first century of cinema...
And the ghosts went away also, forgetting...
...to thank for their contributions...
"Letter on the Blind"
All I have gasped of light and shadow...
For the world to be according to my wishes...
It would have to unfold in a circle around me...
With me in the middle, in an easy chair...
So that I may admire what is rare and beautiful.
Art history.
"The spirit of forms"
By turning to the thin layer of rich and lazy do-nothings...
...French cinema lost its international audience.
"The intelligence of a machine"
...Avant-garde et Rear-garde.
The art of cinema is to make pretty women do pretty things.
Outline for a "Psychology of Cinema".
When I admire a film, I am told:
...yes, it is very beautiful, but it isn't cinema.
...so I started asking myself.
"Notes on the cinema".
Perspective was the original sin of western painting.
Niepce and Lumière redeemed it.
The opposite space seems to be the general form...
...of its most essential sensibility...
...to the extent that cinema is an art of vision.
French cinema is croaking under the weight of false legends.
On the screen, a deliberate curve outlines without fixing it...
...the most lively colour, a broken line, though unique...
......it encircles the most miraculously living matter.
Alternative cinema
The written image
The other cinema
The cinema has great difficulty accompanying the present era...
...which it, in part, called forth and nourished.
Perhaps this is normal.
The god sighed and said, sadly:
I will always cry over you.
You will always cry over the others...
...and you will feel solidarity with their pain.
The End