02  Winter 2025

Jean-Claude Guiguet

François Truffaut’s remark leaves me perplexed insofar as I’m not sure I understand its exact meaning. Should we see this as a private expression of well-being? Is it one of the possible forms of happiness according to François Truffaut? I suppose cinema experienced as a full-fledged professional occupation must, indeed, allow the most flexible schedules to be planned.

Belonging to what must be called ‘the third world of French cinema’, I find the notion of ‘best possible schedule’ strange. I must above all care about tomorrow, in the most prosaic sense of the term, and, to put things without romanticism: I must first earn a living outside of cinema. This complicates things a little sometimes, but it’s not tragic at all, since I would be very unhappy to see the earth only from the moon. Material difficulties, probably inherent in most cases of those starting out, are an excellent test of endurance. Without wanting to make it a vital principle, they put the desire to make films to the test. Many young people want to make cinema; moreover, today everyone wants to make it because it shines — well, we think it shines. To know that it is sometimes as hard as being a pit miner is not entirely useless. I have only made one film to date. The existence of this film was never self-evident. All the same, it’s the positive result of a struggle against a certain number of obstacles and time constraints which, since this notion is at stake here, are never negligible in terms of how a final result turns out. It was 1978 and, at the time, there was still the prospect of a final result. Today I am convinced a film like Les Belles Manières would have no chance of passing through the chicanes in place and the new interests at play.

Marie-Claude Treilhou

Truffaut is a certified filmmaker. Few are. I’ll skip over the obvious wonder that is the realization of a dream. The drudgery of all kinds one has to endure beforehand are obvious. Let’s just say I’ve spent my entire life trying to be as little of a slave as possible, at least mentally, to the managerial and intellectual villainy you can’t escape if you want to ‘earn an honest living’.

It’s worth noting, however, the convict treatment film interns undergo, almost identical to that of apprentices in the 1920s (see Mort à crédit), especially if the dazzling proximity to high society doesn’t cloud their judgment.

Paul Vecchiali

My schedule could have been more enjoyable if I didn’t also have to take care of the distribution of certain films or their after-sales service. Taking films to the provinces, holding debates, seeing firsthand a representation of this audience that we’re often told about in such abstract terms is quite fascinating, but during that time, you’re not doing anything else... This ‘something else’ has to be done when you return home, and sometimes the days are too short. François Truffaut is an ‘established’ filmmaker. He should be able to devote the majority of his energy to making films. If that were the case for me, I would say the same thing as him.

Nevertheless, I consider myself happy 80% of the time.

Jean-Claude Guiguet

It’s very difficult to say. First of all, I won’t be a ‘filmmaker’ until later, after several films, if one day people think I merit this title. So how did I learn the basics of this trade? How did I learn to breathe or walk? These mechanisms are all natural reflexes. So, as I breathe without thinking, I can say I loved cinema without dreaming that I would one day make it. In a small town in Haut-Var where I was a boarding student, every Sunday afternoon for three years, I saw one or two films. There was something to suit all tastes, and I liked these films depending on the stories and the actors. The most vivid memories are called: David and Bathsheba, Vengeance Valley, Manon des sources, The Greatest Show on Earth, Miss Sadie Thompson, Pandora, Roma ore 11, La Provinciale, ^[1] ... etc. The actors, but above all the actresses, were part of my family. I collected their portraits, which I then drew during school hours. Time passed... Suffice it to say I was one of the most mediocre students.

When I arrived in Paris, at the start of the sixties, I discovered a theatre which in turn was another magical place: the Studio-Parnasse, a true Ali Baba’s cave where an incomparable selection of films of all genres was programmed without any discrimination. There I came to know the true grandeur of cinema and learned to see films. I understood that there was a morality of cinema, of nobility in certain looks and abjection in some others. Today I know there is something sordid about filming a blood spurt in slow motion when a man suffers or is about to die. Surely I would have learned this someday, but thanks to Studio-Parnesse, I understood it more quickly. This is only one example among others... This is to say how much I owe to Jean-Louis Cheray, who animated this meeting place with an enthusiasm, energy and fervor which for me will forever remain unforgettable. For him, cinema was not a function exclusively turned towards the immediate profits of a business. His role was invested with true dignity. He had respect for films as he had respect for the spectator. Today the theatre has been chopped into three points of sale, three spaces as cramped as rat traps. The sound is inaudible and the projections constantly blurred. Dear Mister Cheray, I do not know what has become of you; men of your caliber are not given any key post, they are not on any commission nowadays, in case their skills put to shame those who have none. Wherever you are, know that you have meant a lot to me.

I accord to know-how the importance of an elementary politeness. It’s a way of presenting yourself that you owe to the spectator and to yourself. In principle, you should not undertake a film without being sure of possessing this quality. Beyond this function, I’d tend to be wary of it. Know-how has nothing to do with style, tone, elegance or the acuity of a gaze. A certain skillfulness will not conceal the absence of otherwise necessary merits. Unfortunately, we are too often victims of appearances and, by the same token, too often susceptible to the immediate effects of know-how. Examples abound in which this seductive façade is only a parade to mask nothingness. Whatever the case, it should be remarked that this minor quality always impresses much: however low the capacity of the ship, we regularly lower the flag as soon as she exhibits herself. It’s strange.

Marie-Claude Treilhou

I don’t consider filmmaking my profession, after one film won through the lottery of the Advance. A profession is regular, something you make a living from. So, we’ll see about that later. As for the little I ‘know’, I learned it on the job and in theaters, mostly through the horror of what’s being done: people who don’t know what they’re doing or who are doing things they don’t know how to do. Since I have no filmmaking skills, it’s to that which life has taught me that I owe the ‘strong impression’ that drove me to write Barbès, then to direct it.

Once the relative innocence of the early days is over, I imagine everyone exudes a know-how in which they recognize themselves, and through which they will be recognized. It’s a question of identity and conduct. There are a thousand methods; everyone chooses where they delegate some power and where they remain sovereign. I don’t think you have to be a technician to make a ‘true’ film, or even a ‘good’ one, thanks to the extreme competence of cinema technicians, if you find a good terrain of communication. There are also artisans who have mastered the entire system; they are surely the most admirable and effective in terms of cinematic language. When the strength of an artistic or moral identity comes into play, you get the greats — Tati, Godard, Rivette, Vecchiali, to name a few. Incidentally, they’re the most genuinely modest people.

Paul Vecchiali

I learned my trade by watching films at Studio Parnasse with Jean-Louis Cheray, whose importance cannot be overstated for the filmmakers you’re interviewing, and no doubt also for those of the New Wave.

Know-how is the safeguard against impotence... Formula or not, I’ll leave it at that.

Jean-Claude Guiguet

To respond to this question, it’s worth rereading issue 1837 of Film Français. It’s a special on producers, with supporting interviews. The model to which today it is important to conform yourself, if you want to make a film within the limits of a reasonable budget, is described without a hint of hypocrisy: It is necessary to make films that reach out to the public. This leitmotif is reprised in chorus by the ensemble of the profession. Not a false note in the symphony. It must be said that the score is flawless. In the age of photocopying, every risk of error is staved off.

It is necessary to make films that reach out to the public. This makes me think of this guy who said, on the day following the liquidation of Libération: ‘We have momentarily stopped coming out, because we are going to make Libération a great morning daily paper.’ When I bought the latter, I was always certain that it was a great morning paper. Well, I was wrong: I have been mistaken all these years! In a while, I will finally be able to read... a paper that reaches out to the public. It is necessary to go through this obstacle course and avoid the crossfires of a cinematographic structure that stands guard to better maintain order. It’s very perilous, since the terrain is unaccommodating, strewn with pitfalls. You could set off a mine when you think you’re stepping on a flowerbed. Above all, it is necessary to be wary of all the good apostles who have given themselves the mission of saving French cinema. French cinema does not ask for that much. That we help it without ulterior motives would already be quite good; that we let it live would be even better. Only now we want to save it. And it’s the most dreadful trap. Behind the official safeguarding declarations, there is an administrative, economic censorship and a mercantile morality that closely monitors almost any misdemeanor. Of course, we hear only praise, we exhibit only triumph or its substitute. Everything is just solicitude, smiles, seduction, benevolence. ‘The generals who kill the most soldiers want them to be well-fed’, said Marcel Proust. This remark is astonishingly relevant.

I’m done with the mold of conformism and rereading once again the French producers’ proposals. I understand their legitimate concern with making their enterprises profitable, I willingly admit it is important to gain commercial success, but it is sad to establish that the only important thing is ultimately the moral of profit. The stupidity of the greatest majority is gambled on to reach box-office heights. A new offensive is taking shape to better bring down dissidents who resist widespread flattening-out. The few independent producers who don’t break out in hives when they spot a glimmer of intelligence in a film project will definitely be reduced to silence in the very near future. Today they appear as the worst enemies of professional organization, the ones responsible for the scandal: not only do they manage to make films whose production involves no waste, but these films also have the insolence to cut a fine figure and often to be better than the others. Rest assured, everything is now returning to normal. We will be able to bask in the joy of the coming boom years of French patrimony!

Marie-Claude Treilhou

The issue with a model is that they can trap you in imitation. Generally speaking, it’s better to know your cultural roots, so you can be more concrete, more in your own place.

Paul Vecchiali

No, no, no and no. French culture has always been the work, by and large, of a few fanatical individualists.

But it’s true that critics and distributors would be happy to see that there is a French ‘school’.

Jean-Claude Guiguet

I wrote the script and dialogue for Belle Manières. It’s an original story inspired by various circumstances or intuitions from my personal life. But this notion of the author is of no interest nowadays. It is enough to look at who the ‘authors’ are. When I see Claude Sautet considered a great author today, ‘horresco referens’! (‘I shudder as I tell’, Virgil, Aeneid). True authors of a bygone time didn’t know that they were. Their name was written in small print on posters. It was later recognized that they were great talents.

Marie-Claude Treilhou

Of Barbès, yes. If I continue, then yes again. At the moment, I feel like I have a vision that shouldn’t be discussed, or it will escape me.

Paul Vecchiali

I’ll answer in a few decades. Who is the author of what? An old debate, started by Cahiers du cinéma a quarter of a century ago. If it’s the screenplays we’re talking about, then yes, in whole or in part, I’m the author. And I’m not happy about it. How else can you do it? You need money to pay a scriptwriter.

Jean-Claude Guiguet

We can touch the public. But reaching them does not depend on our will. Not mine, in any case: too many intermediaries and various uncontrollable interests. This question is quite derisory. Derision can probably provide a semblance of a response: Le Parisien libéré reaches a larger public than Le Monde. Should we be pleased about that? Julien Gracq, one of our greatest writers, sells ten thousand copies. In cinema, wouldn’t he be the disgrace of the profession? This question is elusive. So if I reach the public... by attrition, perhaps. In time, surely, and too bad if that seems very immodest. Films are like wine: some withstand the test of time, which deepens their secrets or puts them in a special light; on the contrary, others — the majority — are to be drunk on the spot before they turn into vinegar.

Marie-Claude Treilhou

Barbès didn’t reach it, in my opinion. It remained in the tertiary ‘arthouse’ arena, ready-to-wear Nouvelle Vague. It’s something. We were quite happy. I believe it could have done as well as Extérieur Nuit, which had Philip Morris backing it. A question of cash. Independent distributors, what’s left of them, are walking on eggshells, between life and death. It’s a whole system that a good film magazine should examine in detail: the completely disproportionate commercial failure of a film like C’est la vie, for example. Or even Passe-montagne, or even Les Belles Manières.

Paul Vecchiali

Let it show itself first!

Jean-Claude Guiguet

Criticism is too general a term to seriously signify something. To pronounce upon criticism as a given social or cultural body is to expose oneself to quite a few errors and many injustices. There are critics. Excellent critics and much less good ones, the worst not always being the most discreet.

Criticism has never given the slightest favor to French cinema. We can say at the same time that it has always been extremely indulgent towards everything that comes from elsewhere, according to majoritarian and conformist infatuations that sometimes go beyond all measure. There was a time when the most insipid films were revered simply because they were Canadian or Swiss. Then came Italy’s turn… until weariness got the upper hand. For some time now, French cinema has been returning to the good graces of criticism. It must be said that it is very thankless work. After a few years of activity, how can you not run around in circles and repeat yourself? I was a critic from 1970 to 1978. It had become hell, an untenable situation. You’re very quickly a slave to the same tricks, to mania and, whether you like it or not, to all sorts of influences, fashions, momentary adorations, groundless ecstasies.

That said, criticism does not have, or no longer has, the importance we believe it has. It has largely discredited itself among the public, who no longer make much of it. Too much abuse has been committed in praise and enthusiasm exceeding all proportions. How many very average and often downright poor films have been paraded triumphantly, to the great detriment of cinema? If you underestimate the public too much, they’ll end up crossing the street or buying a VCR.

Marie-Claude Treilhou

Criticism comes first of all from papers of record, from whom we expect a certain rigor based on political and ideological criteria. There’s a serious shortfall in this area, including at Cahiers. There’s disappointment, without demonstration, about the leveling of Loulou, Duras, Straub, Godard, Apocalypse, and Kubrick, in a special issue with the air of a cult of personality. Militant support is fading for what should be supported come hell or high water, against the high water of the stars in Pariscope. Everyone’s whining in their own corner, but no one is doing it together; it’s the reign of liberal fear. Intellectuals are no longer doing their job, while a national culture is on the verge of disappearing. A lot of arrogance and not much dignity.

Paul Vecchiali

Criticism have been extremely unfair to French cinema, but that’s not the worst of it: its laziness has provoked a refusal of curiosity on the part of viewers.

Today, the limit has been reached. No slightly ambitious French film (whether successful or not) attracts an audience. The damage is too great.

I say damage. It might be a good thing if the few spectators who dare to come were disappointed. That’s not often the case. So it’s a case of divorce before marriage... What is to be done?

Jean-Claude Guiguet

Paul Vecchiali’s Femmes Femmes. Because this film is situated beyond beauty and its categories. It is immune to reproaches of reason as well as those of taste. This work describes, with terrifying lucidity and an unforgivable ironic smile, the agony of a world falling victim to its own lies, its subterfuges and its idols. Here a spectral light unites, within the same convulsion, laughs and cries, while reason wavers before the prospect of a near horizon bounded by a definitively funereal space. It’s perhaps not completely by chance that a scene from Femmes Femmes is cited in a sequence in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò.

Marie-Claude Treilhou

There would be two: Sauve qui peut and C’est la vie — two films that bear witness to a terrific labor at work within the cinematic fabric, crucially immersed in their time. One trundled along on its own, while the other was given a first-class burial. Bravo once again.

Paul Vecchiali

I’m more impressed by French films as a whole than by any single one. Godard and Bresson don’t impress us any more; we know every time that their films are events. As for the others, which one should I mention and why? There are no masterpieces left. But there’s such vitality...

Jean-Claude Guiguet

I haven’t seen any important event that has stood out spectacularly over the last ten years, but a host of small concrete details, of discreet positions being taken, of apparently insignificant declarations, which are far more pernicious and effective than a resounding coup. I see all these contradictions between a given word, a stated discourse and the reality of the facts that stem from it. Today in France, actions never consist of a thought or reflection put into practice, but their living contradiction. For example, for the last few months, we’ve been speaking only of saving the French language, yet it’s Joan Baez who comes to sing in English at Christmas on the Parvis of Notre-Dame! I like Joan Baez, but then we forget the French language a little, when everything around us indicates American colonization: of our walls, our cities, our mentalities. People who go on about the French language don’t give a damn, like those who want to save French cinema. We can well see, and today everyone can surmise without difficulty, that the merchants have seized the temple. Here is the important event: the slow asphyxiation of our living, moral, cultural identity, and the absolute triumph of a mercantile state of mind, cynical and vulgar.

Marie-Claude Treilhou

It’s common knowledge that everything’s going badly, except Business. To a bad question, a brave face, ^[2] because What to Choose? ^[3] The pathetic slide of intellectuals to the right, or the stubborn despair of those on the left? Since we’re nearing the end (at least the end of the line).

Paul Vecchiali

The popularization of the VCR. I love rewatching films so much... As for the rest, I don’t know. I don’t feel like I’ve lived outside of cinema.

Jean-Claude Guiguet

I haven’t the slightest idea. On the other hand, I am much more certain about what I detest. Cinephobia is probably more important for me in terms of the orientation of my choice. Taste is, all the same, made of a thousand distastes. What can we do about what we love? The lineage of great filmmakers is always doubtful. There is nothing to imitate because they have made the most of their major qualities. We can only imitate what they lacked — imitate their faults, for example. The other day Robert Bresson said to Gérard Blain: ‘It’s bizarre, every time there’s a bad film, they quote me!’ Indeed, Bresson is inimitable; if we forget this we are condemned to caricature. We can well see this result when viewing Paul Schrader’s American Gigolo. Unfortunately, columnists label as ‘Bressonian’ anything that isn’t a rough draft, as soon as they spot a certain demand, a form that affirms a certain clarity of line, a timbre of voice that stands out against the convention in force. Nine times out of ten the adjective ‘Bressonian’ that pops up is, thus, not to be taken as a compliment but an insult. But all this does not matter, it’s a contemporary trend of thought that will pass along with the rest. The convention today is ‘the filmed any old way’. As soon as we try to control things a little or to approach a certain condensation of them, people are lost. It must be said that the deluge of images and sounds that submerges us does not help us see very clearly.

Speaking of which, French criticism has come to discover a new subject of ecstasy: the great filmmakers of tomorrow will come from commercials. Some convincing examples are already cited. I went to see the result… It promises happy mornings!

Marie-Claude Treilhou

If it’s about encyclopedic prestige or an obsession for the shabby, zero. If it’s about a good culture of diligence instilled from a young age, zero as well. I only ‘understood’ Godard around the age of 30: his subtleties seemed like luxury to me, and I only saw them as repulsive bourgeoiseries. Later on, one learns to appreciate the work, wherever it may be, and the Trouble. I love some films madly, ones I’ve watched over and over again. I’m a cinephile of Ozu, for example, because he gives me a sense of the grandiose in the minuscule. I couldn’t name any of his actors.

Paul Vecchiali

Unconscious and primordial, because it’s primordial in my life.

I don’t think it troubles the stylistics: it plays with them, it seems to me.

Jean-Claude Guiguet

When I have to sell my film abroad.

Marie-Claude Treilhou

Since I’m French and firmly rooted in my southern past and present, the question doesn’t even arise.

Paul Vecchiali

Abroad, where they envy our cinema... Here too, of course, but it seems we should be ashamed...

Jean-Claude Guiguet

With Jean Grémillon, Jean Renoir, Max Ophüls, Robert Bresson, Marcel Pagnol. However, the light they project must not make us forget the countless successes that surround them. I like very much this notion of inheritance that implies a scattering of assets. The living history of French cinema cannot rest on principles of exclusion. It’s a collective memory that deposits a very fertile silt, where I haphazardly pick up names that have come to mind as of today: Autant-Lara, Becker, Demy, Resnais, Rohmer, Truffaut, Chabrol, Franju, Pialat, Blain, Vecchiali, Miller, Téchiné, Jacquot, Straub, Biette, Eustache, Azimi or still more recent ones, who have directed only one film and from whom we should expect a lot, like Jacques Renard (Monsieur Albert), Marie-Claude Treilhou (Simone Barbès ou la vertu), Jacques Davila (Certaines nouvelles). And then I’m certainly forgetting some people, I’m probably being unfair and surely biased. Yesterday I watched Boisset’s film Allons z’enfants, which is also a very beautiful French film.

Marie-Claude Treilhou

Since the series of nanars ^[4] at the Actions ^[5] , 35-45, because it was lively and engaging, and my little family knows them by heart without having to spend a dime. Nothing beats, as we almost agreed, good company.

Paul Vecchiali

Heart in the thirties, head in the New Wave.

Jean-Claude Guiguet

No.

Marie-Claude Treilhou

I don’t, as you know.

Paul Vecchiali

It happens. Too bad!

Jean-Claude Guiguet

Technology is just a tool. I find nothing exciting about it. It enslaves us more every day and will end up destroying us if we continue to worship it like an idol. Technology is a lure. Shakespeare didn’t need an electronic typewriter to be Shakespeare.

Marie-Claude Treilhou
Honestly, no. But I think it’s also a matter of a small circle: recently I was doing construction work, and at first I couldn’t even hammer in a nail. When I got good instruction and was put in a place where I had to find my footing, I became relatively skilled at installing floors, which has become almost a passionate pursuit. There’s such a technique of mystification to preserve privileges ‘in the film industry’, especially given the scarcity of prestigious positions (just look at the credits), that it can be quite off-putting. This eagerness to make a good impression, made worse by overly tight budgets, turns hellish what should be a paradise — and sometimes is one, depending on the quality of the people involved.

Paul Vecchiali

Editing, of course, but other fields stimulate me just as much.

Jean-Claude Guiguet

The stories that French cinema tells are often less silly than many American stories they try to make us swallow.

Marie-Claude Treilhou

Jaurés said, I think, something like: ‘A little nationalism leads away from internationalism, a lot of nationalism leads back to it’.

Paul Vecchiali

Its suffering. Its suf-french.

Jean-Claude Guiguet

Pardon?

Marie-Claude Treilhou

I don’t see. ^[6]

Paul Vecchiali

I don’t think so.

Jean-Claude Guiguet

I don’t know. We can only respond to this question based on a specific example, to give to the response a satisfactory concrete reality. Purely formal declarations of intention are of no interest, as everyone knows.

Marie-Claude Treilhou

As much as possible, to avoid catching things and people off guard. Let everything play out. In any case, something more will escape, but it will have been an exercise of freedom.

Paul Vecchiali

No. I forbid myself from filming in a certain way.

Jean-Claude Guiguet

Lots of special effects and very little human reality. It must be said that Mankiewicz, Cukor and Kazan no longer shoot. And the films of Paul Newman, were they not admirable? His last film is not even released in France. Not profitable enough, probably…

Marie-Claude Treilhou

I don’t know it well enough to speak about it in general. Everything I’ve seen for a while now, except for Firestone, seems perfectly integrated, without that perverse spark that once undermined both a set of conventions and a moral order from within, by slily gnawing away at them, as people in the past did when they were more overtly restrained by laws.

Paul Vecchiali

A parody. Except for Monte Hellman.

Jean-Claude Guiguet

I don’t do television.

Marie-Claude Treilhou

It must be the same thing.

Paul Vecchiali

I’m currently trying to create this link. I haven’t had much time so far. Besides, I didn’t want to ‘force my talent’, as, in my opinion, Godard did with Tour-Détour...

Jean-Claude Guiguet

Le Mirage. It’s a script I adapted with Sylvie Luneau ^[7] from a novella by Thomas Mann: Die Betrogene. The main character was written and created based on the personal influence of Gina Lollobrigida. She agreed to play the role, on condition that the production ensured her a return to cinema that would not go unnoticed. Things were clear and it was very good that they were.

To date, I have not managed to find funding. It must be said that my skills in this matter are, to say the least, rudimentary. I’m trying to learn a little in the absence of donation, but progress is imperceptible. This project is dear to me — but not costly compared to the exorbitant prices charged today — the story of Le Mirage, in broad strokes, tells the swan song of a woman who does not see death coming amid the splendors of life. This woman, still beautiful, who wants not merely to last but to be born, becomes enamored of a young American, her son’s English professor. Behind the plot, a larger drama looms, like a mortifying decalcomania: the drama of the superb and aging but secretly sick Europe, thunderstruck by the face of America.

I didn’t get the advance. It seems they found this story too thin and not spectacular enough. I have such a desire to make this film, which will take place in Thonon, by Lake Geneva, in a radiant light, that I decided to present it one more time to the Committee. ^[8] For that, I need to modify the script or enrich it. I asked Thomas Mann for permission to ‘flesh out’ his story a little!... But I’m still not sure about having a shark pass through the waters of Lake Geneva.

Marie-Claude Treilhou

Something like kindness and dignity. Which is more about life and its communication than about its deterioration.

Paul Vecchiali

On a professional level: to finally see the emergence of a real distribution niche that would allow us to ‘exhibit’ these French films that are being stifled, without worrying about short-term profitability.

On a personal level: to make En haut des marches with a little more money than usual, with Danielle Darrieux, Héléne Surgère, Françoise Lebrun and Jean-Claude Brialy. And then a co-production with Italy.

Jean-Claude Guiguet

The actors of today follow, more or less, the clearly naturalistic evolution of cinema. They reproduce countless minute events that are quotidian and often pointless, lacking the ability to spotlight, in a singular manner, those that would have remained unnoticed and which give cinema its strength and grandeur. They almost all present the banal, puny and pitiful photography of life instead of giving it a deep, dense and striking vision. Still there remain, despite everything, a few major figures whose names it’s best to keep quiet about, so as not to irritate anyone.

The actor has also changed in his relationship with the media. He has become commonplace. His image has largely been devalued and distorted. Here we are falling into one-upmanship, as elsewhere to demagoguery, and we have never seen so many stars as in our time. Today it is enough that an executive secretary has charm, a minimum of allure or whatever passes for it, for her to be immediately presented as a star. Yet in this crowd of faces, we can discern nothing comparable to the stature of Danielle Darrieux, Edwige Feuillère, Martine Carol, or Jeanne Moreau, but more modestly, only the ‘great gentle vedettes’ ^[9] , as Charles Trenet puts it so aptly.

Marie-Claude Treilhou

Actors are the living embodiment of the representation of an era. The dominant representation, created by those who have taken on the privilege of representation. A heavy responsibility. Actors are not responsible, in any case, for the context in which they are watered down to the point of being destroyed. With the new societal structure that isolates social classes more than in Metropolis, we find ourselves represented by this middle class, always haunted by a guilty conscience that leads it to treacherously naturalize the rest, resulting in those vast, falsely social frescoes that have filled French cinema since the end of the New Wave. Actors, their dialogues, their problem-laden psychology, inherit this burden of clichés that were dead before they were even born. Consider the difference between Isabelle Huppert as a lacemaker and Arletty as anything at all. To speak bluntly. Who can today pick up on a word or an expression from an actor? All of this is due to extreme ignorance, slipping into indifference and naturalistic betrayal, betrayal of the site where the life of a language is created, at the very bottom. So, for convenience, we conclude that it no longer exists, that it has all ‘bourgeoisified’, or that you’d have to be a militant voyeur not to mind your own business. There’s business and there’s Business, there’s seeing and there’s seeing.

Paul Vecchiali

André Luguet said on a show dedicated to Gaby Morlay: ‘French actors have become a little bourgeois... timid.’ That was yesterday, let’s hope.

Indeed, let’s forget those who pretend not to act and rely on their know-how (see above). Some believe that a chic, sophisticated sobriety will save their brand image. Others base their ‘distancing’ on ‘naturalness’ with pointless endings like ‘ask your motherrrrr’.

Fashion trends have emerged based on quirkiness or the refusal to be seen as an object. These are all evasions from the responsibilities of the profession.

As for me, I prefer that the actor remains himself, as he is shot by shot, imposing on the character the variations of his mood and sensitivity, thus stripping away what might be ‘conventional’ within the situations, restoring authenticity moment by moment, even if it comes at the expense of initial coherence, in search of a new coherence that will ultimately be that of the film.

I would like the actor to once again become the fundamental medium.

As for your questionnaire... all too often, the questions asked leave you with no choice but the quip or the banality, and forgive me if I seem to be quibbling again, but the selection of directors resembles an IFOP poll... Given the obvious mix of names, why not Azimi, Van Effenterre, Simsolo, Leroi (Serge and Francis), Arrieta, Barge, Barjol, Belmont (Charles and Véra), Collin, Chérasse, Davila, Davis, Dubreuil, Drach, Faraldo, Fleischer, Gainsbourg, Gilson, Giovanni, Gion, Girod, Hanoun, Hartmann, Jessua, Kaplan, Karmitz, Leterrier, Mitrani, Moreau, Pirés, Pigaut, Pollet, Robiolles, Rollin, Ruiz, Séria, Serreau, Trintignant, Vautier, and all those I’m naturally forgetting?

Cahiers du cinéma, 323–4, May 1981, pp. 70–71, 76, 78, 80, 87–88.

1. What is the job of a producer today? Do you consider yourself primarily a financier of films or a businessperson?

The job of a producer, as we think of it, is to set the ‘climate’ for the film: its financial landscape, its relationship with the central administration, the affective conditions in which the crew will work.

— to be available for any requests from the director, to be able to dispel doubts, to solve technical problems and avoid overruns.
­— to open, whenever possible, an ongoing dialogue about what we might call the substance of the film.
— to fiddle with the money, and with the financing plan, so that this money benefits the film and the film alone.
— to ensure the comfort of the technicians and actors.
­— to scrupulously pay salaries and bills at the end of each week.
­— to visit the set, the screening of rushes and the editing only on request.
— to ensure, when the film is finished, that it is distributed in a manner commensurate with its nature and potential for profit (the choice of sales outlets is becoming increasingly important: reading Pariscope, one can without much risk of error give the verdicts of exclusivity just by seeing which film is released where).
­— I’m aware of the prosaic nature of the above, and I think it’s only fair to detail these daily tasks, which require more rigor than you might think, and more vigilance than may be evident. Cécile Clairval and I see ourselves as financiers and film businesspeople in the sense of ‘project managers’.

Diagonale contributes salaries, services and overheads, as well as the financial support provided by its commissioned films. We are not understood by all our directors, especially those who need to create relationships of power. But that doesn’t mean we’re changing the way we work.

2. What part do you take in the making of a film (casting, script, choice of locations, technical decisions)? Who should be responsible for the final cut?

As said above, the part of technical consultation ready to intervene at the slightest problem. We don’t care to know, or to check, if our advice has been useful, or if it has been followed.

The responsibility for the final cut, at least with the people we’ve been working with up to now (by which I mean author-co-producers), must in any case rest with the director, which doesn’t rule out ‘chitchat’.

3. Who is the author of a film?

The one who leaves a mysterious, indelible mark: the one who has most provided the signs to this unique, irreproducible tongue [langue], which spectators will try to turn into a language [langage].

It’s sometimes difficult to decide that this language exists. It’s sometimes difficult to work out who established it.

4. Directors are said to be more aware now of the economic conditions of their business. Is this a desirable development? How does it affect your work?

We believe that this evolution is desirable in our case, since, as directors ourselves supporting other directors, the dialogue is fairer if each of the parties knows what we’re talking about, whether it’s art or finance.

5. When you produce a film, to whom do you feel committed: financial partners, distributor, director, actors, audience, film history, survival of your company, etc.?

Financial partners: yes. Distributor: yes, if they are committed to us, and there aren’t many ways of doing that. Director: obviously. Actors: jointly and severally, yes. Audience: who is it? Who knows? History of cinema: written by whom? Survival of our company (whatever form it takes): yes, above all, insofar as it is, has been, and will be an instrument for our work and the work of others.

6. Do you think the films you produce have anything in common?

Rejects, no doubt, whether ideological or ethical... the actors... the technicians... This may be important... it seems to us that it’s up to you to answer this question, but please, not just in any which way.

7. Is it possible for a producer to extend the amortization period of his films, or should he look for a quick return? In other words, is it possible - and desirable - to move towards building up a catalog (or portfolio) of films?

Up to now, we’ve built our productions so much on affectivity that our answer can only be theoretical: yes, we think it’s desirable to move towards building up a portfolio of films, but isn’t it the films themselves that decide? We try to start out covered, or more precisely, to have the money we need to make our films, without any illusory hopes... So profitability is not our criterion.

It’s our strength to be able to wait. It’s our weakness to have to wait.

8. How do you assess the importance and consequences, as a producer, of the emergence of ‘new technologies’?

We haven’t really thought about the question. We hope that people who have the time to reflect and explore will bring us some insights, and, as usual, we will apply our own particular methods to them.

9. Can we speak of French production (i.e., a French style or genre of production)? How can we characterize it? What is its future?

Yes, and precisely due to the absence of style, the differences in professional behavior, and the range of concerns. You can see both good and bad in that. We wouldn’t like it if, in an attempt to improve the bad, ‘artistic disciplines’ were imposed on us. Its future? For the past few months, I’ve had enough problems dealing with its present (P.V.).

10. What is the role of producers in the current organization of cinema in France? Are they able to fulfil their role?

I think the producer has always been closer to a guarantor (with all the financial responsibilities that entails) than a real financier.

Why shouldn’t he have a role to play?

We believe that when a film can be made, it should be made by forcing the odds if necessary, by any means possible, provided they don’t harm the nature of the film as a whole or its elements.

Who else could take on the role of promoter?

11. What is your relationship with your partners: exhibitors, circuits, distributors, specialized financial institutions, actors and agents, television channels, the French government, the Centre National du Cinéma?

Who do you want us to upset?...

Each partner pulls in different directions, which is a bit unfortunate. We try to spare our directors from these complications because it’s really not productive: again the subject of power struggles, unspoken, sneaky, but... courteous. Let’s go:

— Exhibitors: we can only speak of the independents (the others are too often bureaucratized). Excellent relationships, without false modesty, without resentment when things don’t work out; a community of thought, if not taste, which sometimes leads to genuine friendship.
­­— Circuits: out of reach. Phone calls to check if the film is holding up; slips to learn just how much it hasn’t held up, and unnecessary fuss when the film is pulled and doesn’t deserve it (in terms of numbers).
— Distribution: it’s a matter of people. The rest is a matter of circumstance: if the film pays off, the bonds intensify; if it doesn’t, they loosen, but nothing more. A matter of people: the love of cinema and sense of tradition, combined with genuine moral elegance, in the case of Jo Siritzky (Parafrance). The courtesy and availability of Monsieur Chéron (Parafrance). The laughter and favouritism of Tony Moliére, which doesn’t rule out serious programming with Mima and Pierre Ange. A similar understanding of problems from Marin Karmitz, warm cinephilia from Jean Labadie (MK2 Distribution). The good-natured rigor and flair of Alain Sussfeld (UGC), etc. Examples and impressions that come more from the heart than from the head.
— Specialized financial institutions: currently too expensive for us.
— Actors: privileged relationships.
— Agents: we don’t deal with them very often; our methods surprise them at first, but then they get used to them.
— Television: we don’t have excellent contacts with the networks. We always find competent, open-minded, cultured, smiling people at all levels...
And then? That damned competition?
— State: no relationship.
— CNC: the best relations; there were a few issues back when the State Controller had its whims — the grim days of the ‘delay on receipts’… Mademoiselle Pelletier always points out the flaws in the dossier, Madame Florès is very vigilant about the circulation of documents, and Monsieur Durand’s services (the support fund) are very understanding and efficient... The overall process might be a bit rigid? We understand the administrative constraints and try to be punctual, which is appreciated. But to say that the regulations aren’t sometimes absurd...

12. Do you foresee any changes in the way French production is financed in the coming years? Do you think that in the future cinema will rely more on the market or more on grants and subsidies?

We hope that, like in America, television will become an increasingly cooperative partner, both in quantity and quality. Grants, advances, subsidies — all the parts of the chicken are good as long as we’re not forced to choose between the wing or the thigh.

13. How many films can you and/or would you like to produce each year?

Our maximum is three per year. So far, our average is two. 1981: nothing yet apart from the classic industrial films. This doesn’t worry us so much as it relaxes us.

13a. Have you already produced (or are you planning to produce) a first film?

Yes: Le Théâtre des matières (1977), Les belles manières (1978), Simone Barbès ou la vertu (1979), Cauchemar (1980). And some short films… It’s kind of our vocation, it seems. Yes, we’re ready to continue. But…

Cahiers du cinéma, 325, June 1981