"While still very young I worked as an assistant ...as an intern, on a Jacques Becker film, Casque d'or." "In those days the cinema was a strict hierarchy like the army ...its top brass the director and the cameraman." "But the thing about Becker was that he talked to people on their own level even the very young, asking for their opinions, inviting their input." "We were quite a number of interns on the set." "Then the same thing on medical documentaries and short films." "Then a chance came up to work as third assistant as an intern on a Max Ophuls film Madame de..." "I was twenty, twenty-one and in those days it seemed they did their best to disabuse kids of their passionate yearning to work in the cinema." "But if you had real passion, you put up with the... not bullying, exactly..." "For example, I found myself on the set of the jeweller's shop... where Madame de comes three times to sell her earrings" "Each times she arrives in her carriage and my job was to clear up the horse droppings." "To me it was far from degrading, this was cinema and it was wonderful." "Basically, I did a footman's work, occasionally showing showing an extra what to do in the back row; the front wouldn't have been allowed." "But it was great, just the same." "The extraordinary thing about Ophuls was his Jekyll and Hyde aspect." "During filming he'd become Hyde, a huge stage fright lurked within him erupting from time to time as the fear inside him emerged as aggression." "When things went wrong, Hyde ruled." "But after the lights went out Dr. Jekyll returned, a kindly man offering Scotch to the technicians chatting to me." "With Ophuls, I was for the first time allowed a real glimpse into the art of film-making." "There was something very modern then about his direction of actors." "Take Becker, for comparison." "Becker, like Renoir, was an admirer of actors would be full of admiration for his casts telling them they were wonderful, but we'll do another take." "That's how Becker was." "Why don't we do this, or why don't we try that?" "He worked on the sound of a sentence, had them modulate it in different ways." "Ophuls' method was very different and, interestingly, more modern." "He arrives on set." "As often, but not always, it's for a long sequence take." "He has everyone leave the set." "Then, as now studio work was done from midday to seven-thirty." "On the empty set he would rehearse his actors." "No one else attended the rehearsals, just him and his actors." "When he had everything ready he'd summon his chief technicians, and I'd slip in, too so I could see how the sequence was building up." "Then we'd set up the lights the tracks for these complicated sequences." "And then, after 2 or 3 hours of preparation, we were ready to shoot." "This initial work with the actors... was a great influence on me later" "You can get what you want from an actor ...provided you remain alert to their needs." "Often conflict arises because actors feel they aren't treated with respect." "I've often imagined ways of doing a scene with a specific movement but landed with an actor who just couldn't do that move because it clashed with his personality." "What Ophuls taught me, in fact was to study the actors." "Before an important scene he'd always work with his actors" "As in theatre, he would take them aside and explain his choreography." "He had an extraordinary privileged relationship with Danielle Darrieux." "I think Ophuls mattered to her more far more than any other film-maker" "You can see it on the screen, the complicity, the mutual admiration it was wondrous to behold." "They had the same sensibility." "Max brought a lot to her, but she gave him a lot, too." "I've been a novelist for five or six years now." "What I miss on a modern film set is this bond that used to exist between director and actors." "Working with Patrick Dewaere on his last film was the cerebral love affair you have with your actors or actresses." "Truly wonderful." "Exactly, I imagine, what an orchestra conductor feels for his soloist." "And that was exactly how it was between Max and Danielle Darrieux." "With Charles Boyer and Vittorio De Sica... he got on well but those are the easy roles" "Madame de... is the very heart of the film an incarnation of the coquette, frivolous Parisian woman but also drowning in a love affair." "Complicity is essential in achieving a performance of that order." "You could say that in the blink of an eye she'd anticipate his direction." "It's wonderful when you happen on complicity at that level." "Whether director or actor, you can be sure you're on to a winner." "In this, Ophuls was way ahead of his contemporaries." "You find directors today who run into trouble with actors by giving prime consideration to questions of technique." "Actors can't stand it in a big scene if they are forced to make moves for reasons of technique." "It was something Max never did letting technique anticipate the actor in this way." "Yet despite the sequence shots and camera movements his technique always left the actors free." "There would be imperatives, of course, but very few." "I also believe the camera movements were designed to aid the actors." "He'd never use a movement the actors couldn't feel." "Never, and that was a rule I never broke." "That's just one thing in my inestimable debt to him in my work" "Come back soon." "I don't love you, I don't love you..." "Come back." "The great originality of Ophuls' technique lay in his use of these sequence shots" "Coming from the theatre he was very sensitive to continuity in performance" "But the sequence shot also afforded proximity with the actor's every movement, a closer relationship with them while the actor's every movement contributed to the dramatization of the scene." "He needed this bond." "But one mustn't forget that at times cutting within a sequence shot would be necessary so closeness to the actor was essential that also underlaid the sequence shots." "Also a sort of musical movement." "Ophuls, don't forget, started out as a flautist." "The element of musical form... is clear in the sequence shots in Madame de..." "De Sica's love for Danielle Darrieux through a series of balls telescoped into one by Ophuls' sequence shots so that the music as they waltz is never broken" "Ophuls adored the waltz and in a sense" "he conceived Madame de..." "as a waltz" "Among his close collaborators taking off from what was essentially his creation were d.p. Christian Matras and his cameraman Alain Douarinou" "Christian Matras... like so many directors of photography" "...tended to be fond of his comfort a bit fearful, not keen to stray beyond certain limits." "But Max pushed him into taking risks and Matras loved it." "There was a real communion between them." "But that sort of thing went on before filming with Max and Christian Matras discussing the photographic style to be adopted." "After that, Max might look on wielding his tinted glass making a few interventions, very rarely." "On the other hand, Ophuls had permanent discussions with his... closest collaborator on the set cameraman Alain Douarinou" "Their conversations would remind you that Ophuls was a man of the theatre with Douarinou forever complaining:" ""Monsieur Ophuls, you can't have a close-up of the suitcase here!"" "Max wanted the moving camera to show everything and yet stick close to the actor" "But he was right it could be done in one shot pulling back from the suitcase for example and then show everything It worked" "You could see everything and stay close at the same time" "The moving camera fitted gracefully into Ophuls' fluid style" "So Douarinou became Ophuls' closest collaborator on the set because he was Ophuls' eye" "Another very important collaborator was his art director..." "Jean d'Eaubonne who shared with Ophuls ...a love of the baroque, rococo." "Once again there was a sort of complicity between them." "Similarly with his set decorator, Christides who found wonderful furniture and trinkets for the sets... things that perfectly matched Ophuls' taste" "So there again, you had a great complicity." "And on everything to do with the costumes... there was a man Max loved working with Georges Anenkov" "He was the costume designer an extraordinarily talented man" "A fine painter in his own right" "Working closely with him was Rosine Delamare." "Their role as interior designers was to deal with both sets and costumes." "All of this created an artistic entity." "As with every fine director, there is the homogeneity at work." "There is something you can feel." "You find the same style of interior design in Madame de... and in Lola Montes." "The same mould." "Max adored one musician in particular who embodied the camera music I mentioned earlier:" "Oscar Straus." "Straus wrote these tunes." "He was a very old gentleman." "I remember one day Max was to meet Louise de Vilmorin and Straus at the Eiffel Tower restaurant." "He arrived puffing that we'd end up killing Straus." "But he found his themes." "He got on well with Georges van Parys, too who mostly orchestrated the Oscar Straus themes." "It was filmed musically as though it were a waltz." "I think Straus was complicit in that." "Georges Auric was in on it, too." "After all, Madame de..." "was a slice of Viennesery." "Therein lies Ophuls' style." "The music was the cream on top." "I was lucky, having asked Ophuls to be present at the whole process of completing the film." "So I attended the dubbing the mixing and the editing, in effect complete by the end of filming since I guess it contained only some three hundred shots many of them vast sequence shots." "Eight days later, sound and pictures were strung together." "It was wonderful." "Max ran the film all night cutting, editing, always cutting." "This was something Max taught me:" "cut until you get down to essentials." "While these cuts were being made I had an extraordinary education in cinema, walking or driving with Max." "I was also privileged to be present at the mixing, which could be the most moving thing because after months of work you see the result for the first time." "At the first screening for the producer ...he wanted a change in the duel scene and he had his change made with the agreement of Ophuls." "The first shot is felt by Madame de as a bullet in her heart" "That was the producer's idea" "They knew their stuff, those producers, truly professional." "More like how a book editor collaborates with a novelist." "Their wishes would be perfectly valid because they were skilled in the techniques and loved the cinema." "This producer, Deutschmeister, looked like a caricature big cigar, pretty awful accent but he was a very good producer and a man who loved his job." "The ending was shot at St Julien le Pauvre near the Panthéon" "There were hardly any technicians in attendance for this great scene in which Danielle Darrieux offers her earrings" "Then the film would end on a long tracking shot through the church ...with the earrings." "I was the only assistant around then terrified that people would be unable to read the words on the plaque... which I kept as a souvenir." "I had the plaque engraved and the whole team was kidding:" ""No one will be able to read it"." "And I felt responsible." "Especially as it had to be done in one single sequence shot." "Afterwards, I kept in touch with Max." "There was a rather sad episode when he asked me to be second assistant on his project with Fernandel, Mam'zelle Nitouche." "It was a magnificent script, one of the best I've ever read written in collaboration with Nathanson later presented by me to the Insititut Lumiere so if you're ever in Lyon you'll find it there a record of a year's work by Max." "It's sad for a film-maker." "An architect can leave his plans and another architect might make the dream live." "Of a film, only a few pages survive." "So I was to work on Mam'zelle Nitouche the main thinking behind it being... an attempt to get Fernandel away from "his usual thing"" "Three weeks prior to shooting Fernandel went to see the producer saying "It's him or me!"" "Well, Fernandel was a big international star." "So Ophuls was fired." "I was next asked to be his second assistant on Lola Montes." "But the remarkable thing about this man was his understanding of, and attention to, younger generations." "When he died, it was really a great loss for me." "Although my own films were completely different from his." "We had very different tastes." "But I think he's the only person I'd have asked for advice before starting one of my films." "For me this is very emotional" "I have lost several people who were very close to me" "Max belongs with them." "This was him... a wonderful human being." "This is very painful for me." "One of the great losses of my life, a man I felt extremely close to."