"Jean Renoir the boss" ""Here, it is really good"" "Yeah, it smells of petrol, and work, too" " Think we'll be happy, here?" " Of course, my dear" "Under your balcony, my beloved" "I will sing to you tonight" "I am leaving for France" "And shall never see you again" "And when I am travelling" "And have left to go there" "I wlll never return to see" "Full of melancloly" "Goodbye, Anne-Marle, because I'm going" "Goodbye our sons and mothers" "Anne-Marle, don't cry if I am leaving" "Before I go, I wlll send you a kiss" "I'm told you let rooms" "Yes." "Have you got a job here?" "Not yet, but I will have." "Come inside" "Anne-Marle, don't cry If I am leaving" "Before I go, I will send you a kiss" "END OF THE PROLOGUE" "First episode:" "the search for relativity" "This is a film that should seem like a documentary and yet not be a documentary." "It should seem as if it were filmed carelessly, without paying attention, by putting the camera just anywhere, very freely." "But in fact the film had to be extremely well prepared, extremely well composed." ""BLONDE VENUS"" "...Here is Vénus..." "Count Muffat Chamberlain of the Empress" "What was your perspective on the character of Nana in relation to the American films that you admired?" "Nana seemed like a character who was sufficiently haphazard, sufficiently rough around the edges, sufficiently " "I don't want to say primitive - to allow us to approach our ideal, which at that time was," "we must admit, American film." "I think that Pierre and I got into film because we admired   of course we also admired Swedish and German films   but most of all we admired American films." "Isn't that right?" "That's right." "Moreover, we met because I had just returned from America," "I had just worked, in a small capacity, on the film by Valentino called Monsieur Beaucaire." "But I think our admiration for " "I'll name them - the Chaplins, the Griffiths, the Stroheims, the Fred Niblos, the Clarence Browns, to name a few." "in short, the directors of the period," "I think our admiration went beyond reason." "Our admiration was a kind of cult that was probably not always justified." "And as a result, my God, we had very little desire to see French films." "French films at the time, which were called artistic films, bored us." "They seemed sort of monotonous, slightly gray, slightly slow." "The truth is that our dream, which was very ambitious, was to contribute to French film, which we loved, and to France, in which we were thoroughly immersed, to contribute the possibility of more active, livelier filmmaking," "and our model was the American motion picture." "Isn't that true?" "Basically, I consider Nana to be one of the first modern French films." "It's a very important film." "There was a great reaction against it, but I think one could argue that it served as an inspiration" "I think I remember one reaction to it." "There was a preview of Nana at the Moulin Rouge, with the Moulin Rouge orchestra accompanying the film with some airs by Offenbach, if you remember." "The audience seemed to follow the story very well, but the people who were in the business were not at all pleased." "And one very important person in the motion picture business..." " Madame Perret." "...at the end of the screening, got up and said," ""This is a Kraut film."" "I had just returned from the war, and I was really hurt." "After all, I was anything but a Kraut, and that made me laugh." "But it's always like that." "The truth is that we wanted to contribute something to French film, and we thought that, as in all arts, to contribute something you had to search elsewhere, you had to search abroad." "After all, think of the Renaissance." "The French Renaissance came from the desire to imitate the" "Italian Renaissance, but that didn't prevent the French Renaissance from being purely French." "Nothing is more French than Ronsard, than Rabelais, than Montaigne." "Obviously, though, in their minds, they accepted the idea of seeking inspiration abroad, even in different centuries, in antiquity." "The Italian Renaissance is Greek and Latin antiquity." "That's right." "Of course, we discovered the French genius little by little." "In any case, as far as I'm concerned," "I discovered that we could feed off ourselves in France." "But at the same time, I believe this period of wild admiration for foreign films was useful." "It helped sweep away certain routines, certain superstitions, that were then a part of French cinema." "That said, there were French films that I really admired." "You can never form an absolute judgment about anything, they just don't exist." "Just the same, the great French productions were mediocre, there's nothing left of them today." "The great French productions were above all very boring, extremely "artistic."" "The word artistic was our enemy, we hated it." "Just the mention of the word art gave us goose bumps." "We didn't want to produce art, we wanted to produce films with a fresh spirit that would attract the public's attention." "The Count wantes to be introduced to Nana." "Don't be surprised Monsieur Count, she is a bit shy." "There was much talk of an American influence concerning Nana, especially Stroheim's." "It's obvious." "Stroheim influenced me in the beginning and he influenced you." "It's obvious that he was the master." "Our teacher." "Which may explain Nana's reception, the people who called you a Kraut." "Maybe." "That's possible." "I believe mainly that there is a kind of fear in people who can be labeled reactionary, a fear of what they're not used to seeing every day." "Coffee comes with one lump of sugar, give them a coffee without sugar, or with two lumps, and they're outraged:" "It's Kraut coffee." "Francis, pass me the comb." "I don't think that the audiences were against it, it was the producers, those who believed they had an interest in this profession or who actually did have an interest in it." "That's possible, but I think that it went even beyond people's personal interests;" "it was a kind of religion." "It's the same thing when we explain to believers today that mass can be said facing the congregation, instead of turned away from the congregation." "Many believers don't accept this and consider it a dangerous revolution in the Church." "I think that man is a creature of habit, that's his role, and that's why, from time to time, God creates artists, and my God, it's a difficult role because you have to bear the wrath" "of all the people who don't like to change, that is, the majority." " Who can't change." "Or who can't change." "But Pierre, you shouldn't be sorry about it; that's the way it is." "It does us a lot of good." "I think that having opposition gave us strength, and the only danger is if we now consider our contribution to be the rule." "The greatest danger for all innovators is that their innovations seem like gospel to them." "Personally, I know I have one fear, and that's of becoming rigid." " Cocteau used to say that the problem with youth was not a problem of age, but of always being ahead of others." "And the middle aged one will enter, covered with gold." "Want a bonbon?" "Be good, beg for it." "On all fours." "In any case, one thing is for sure:" "You carry on your profession, you continue, you try to make films." "The important thing is never to do anything concerning the details that is against your true beliefs." "I'm starting to think now that the main theme of a film isn't terribly important." "I believe more and more in the inspiration of the art of the Middle Ages, or of traditional Indian art, for example, in which the frame is somewhat fixed;" "it doesn't change much." "Within this structure, you're free, and within this structure you must be innovative." "We can tell the same stories as do other directors, whom we didn't like in the beginning." "We thought these stories were pitiful, but we were wrong." "It wasn't the stories that were pitiful, but the way they were told." "Still monkeying around with those paints?" "You were out for a walk, my love?" "I don't have time to play around." "I was collecting my dividends." "You mean, 'our dividends.'" "MY dividends." "Nothing here is yours." "Our dividends." "Ours." "Ours." "I had just worked with Michel Simon in my earlier films, in Tire au flanc and On purge bébé, and I was very enthusiastic." "I found him to be an exciting actor, and it seemed to me that the male role in La Chienne would allow Simon to do some new things." "At that time, the American influence was wearing off, but the Americans still continued to amaze me," "and I thought that Michel Simon would surpass the Americans in this movie." "And in fact he did surpass them - not all of them - but many." "Details, details, that's what counts the most." "I heard his voice, you see," "I heard Michel Simon interpret this character with a slightly monotonous voice, with the voice we hear in the film now, a voice that avoids outbursts, highs, and lows." "That's why I was very happy to run across..." "I didn't choose Madame Berubet for the wife," "Michel Simon brought her to me." "He said to me, "I see what you want, you want me to have a slightly somber, slightly dull voice, and opposite me you want a wife with a loud voice." "In that case, I'm going to bring you Berubet," and he brought Berubet, who is, in any case, an admirable actress." "But this question of Michel Simon's voice was one of the driving forces in the film." "The beginning is synchronized?" "The meal..." "Everything is synchronized." "There was no postrecording." "There was no sound mixing either." "No." "There was no mixing at the time." "You had to splice the tracks together end to end without combining them." "Of course you could overlap the sound when you spliced it, and I did that several times to try to mask the passage from one shot to the next, but it doesn't fool anyone." "Why so sad?" "What's the matter?" "Troubles?" "Don't you recognize me?" "You must have seen me someplace." "I'm sure... she's got a picture of me on the wall... if I know her... just to get your goat." "It's the moustache that throws you off." "Sergeant Alexis Godard..." "your wife's dead husband." "Alexis Godard!" "You're not dead!" "Of course I am." "That's why I want to talk to you." "But not here." "Let's go to a cafe and I'll explain." "Michel Simon had just played Clo-Clo, for which he used a booming voice, and it seemed to me that this man could give the dramatic intensity of the greatest actor in the world, simply by using these seemingly drab methods" " the contrast between the exterior means and the effect, the dramatic effect." "Now, as far as the other characters went," "I think that little by little, not in the beginning, but as we shot," "I realized that I needed other characters with loud voices." "And I also thought it was good to bathe this so-called realistic story - that's a ridiculous word - what does realistic mean?" "It means nothing" " this story, such as it appears - what people call true to life - it seemed necessary to bathe it in a kind of slightly hazy poetry." "I counted a great deal on the actors' diction to help me get this effect, and I think they helped me a great deal and the effect was achieved." "This question of voices obsesses me terribly in film." "I may be wrong, but I took great care with this question of voices, and I still do." "It made me notice that accents, bad accents, the bad ways of expressing oneself on the screen or on the stage, are the same in America, where I worked sometimes, and in France." "It's the same, especially with girls." "The girls who come from acting school, or from a conservatory all have the same obsession:" "They finish their sentences on an upswing, the ends of sentences are always interrogative." "They don't say "It's nice out" affirmatively, they say "It's nice out?"" "as if they were asking if it were nice out." "I think it's a kind of coquetry, a way of offering oneself." "They say "Isn't the sun shining today?"" "as if they were saying "take me"..." "I like people to say "Isn't the sun shining today,"" "and for the end of the sentence to drop, and that's my great struggle with beginning actors, and especially with beginning actresses." "Excuse me for jumping to another topic and for going back to La Chienne." "I just saw something that I found delightful." "I have an obsession, when I shoot films, which is that I try to make the viewers think that the main characters shown on the screen are not alone in life, that there are other people who live as well," "who love, who suffer, who drink, and who have joys and pains." "I hate the idea of isolating the main characters, and when I did the meeting between Michel Simon and Warrant Officer Godard," "I didn't know..." "I couldn't add anything since it was in front of a boutique, and I couldn't have it in front of anything but a limited setting because it had to be raining, and my means for making rain were limited." "I had only two or three waterhose nozzles, and that was all." "Consequently, I had to keep a rather limited field, a wall and no depth." "So I had an idea, that I'm so pleased with because when I see the film, no one sees it but me:" "It's the curtain going up." "I said to myself:" "Keep that move, that will give me a backdrop, people may imagine that there's a shopowner on the other side, who's living, who has his own problems too." " And at the same time, a curtain being lowered is still a curtain." "You like curtains." "There's a hint of the theater that suddenly hits you when the curtain goes down." "But why did you have to have rain, since it wasn't raining?" "Oh!" "there's no reason for it." "It seemed to me that a meeting like that could happen only in the rain." "There is one thing that stands out in La Chienne, which is its relationship to other films, not only silent films, but other films of the period." "It's a film that was shot with many long takes, with shots that follow the actors for a long time." "There are two reasons for that." "One is that I already believed in the necessity of not cutting the actor's inspiration by making him work with short takes." "I still believe that." "I believe that once an actor gets started, you have to let him finish his race." "The technique of shooting this race bit by bit is therefore dangerous, in my opinion, because you also risk cutting the actor's inspiration." "There is also the fact that I was still influenced by the techniques from the beginning of the talkies, in which, because there was no mixing, you tried to work with several cameras and only one sound track." "In fact, you tried to avoid sound editing." "So the idea of not doing sound editing meant not doing too much picture editing, either." "It wasn't just a question of style, of a sought-after style;" "it was also a question of habits" "I had acquired while shooting On purge bebe, which was still when one had to be careful to not cut up scenes too much." "But if I remember correctly, On purge bebe is a film that was shot with several cameras." "La Chienne was, too." "I often used three cameras in La Chienne, and I like working this way now once again." "I've always come back to this technique for the same reason:" "so as not to cut the actor's inspiration." "In La Chienne, when two people had a conversation, for example, the conversation between Michel Simon and the warrant officer in the bistro," "I had one camera for the master shot, one camera on Michel Simon, and one camera on Michel Gaillard who played the officer." "And after that, you work things out by means of sound editing, because the sound is the same." " But you also had scenes that were shot with only one camera, or else if you had several cameras, you kept the shots from only one of them." "That happens, too, and I also had many scenes in which I moved the camera, not to create a stylistic effect" " I never believed in that." "I'm the slave of the acting, and I don't ask the actors to work for the camera." "I ask the camera to work for the actors, and you can see that I already had many shots in La Chienne in which I moved the camera so as to follow the actors, just so I wouldn't cut off the acting." "I used this technique later, and to a much greater extent, in Grand Illusion, for which an acrobat like my nephew Claude, the cameraman, was required in order to film certain shots like that of the "Marseillaise."" "Seeing him shoot that scene, you really would have thought he was a pretzel, or an ivy vine curled around the foot of the camera." "I started to work this way in La Chienne." "But nonetheless, if we're talking about my concerns in La Chienne, my main concern was above all with the actors," "even more than in On purge bébé." "It was mainly a matter of expressing a certain character, of bringing him to life, of making him digestible for the audiences." "I'll go a step further, it was a matter of making the audience love this character, who is basically a man who cheats on his wife, who behaves in a dishonorable fashion and who winds up being a murderer." "So it was a matter of making him likable, and in order to make him likable I had to follow the slightest detour of his thoughts." "I also had to show the people around him, to show that if this man became a murderer, it was because those around him were insufferable and that when you have people around like that, you become a murderer, like it or not." "I thought that Wallstein..." "Oh, you know those art dealers, they promise a lot, but..." "Anyhow, right now I'm broke." "Alright..." "I'll see what I can do." "We were talking about the character of Michel Simon who, despite what he is, makes himself likable to the viewers." "He builds a bridge." "All great actors are bridge builders." "They build a small bridge between themselves and the audience." "In my opinion, Michel Simon is one of the greatest bridge builders." "The bridge he builds is a boulevard." "It also has to do with your technique." "The fact that we follow him continuously means that we're always close to him." "But you can't follow all actors." "With many actors, if you follow them all the time, you wind up getting very annoyed because they're empty, their heads are like little bells with nothing inside, whereas Michel Simon is so stuffed with thoughts," "with doubts, even with unpleasant thoughts, often with a lack of confidence... is so stuffed with questions, with introspection, that following him is exciting." "So the character that Michel Simon brings to life, or even that your other characters bring to life, are never condemned in advance." "They're nasty characters, but one realizes that they're not as nasty as all that or that they have other sides." "Of course." "When I joined the cavalry," "I learned something essential essential to film, to literature, and to art in general." "I learned that there are no black horses and no white horses." "Only civilians or infantrymen say "a white horse" or "a black horse."" "A true cavalryman says "a chestnut bay horse" or "a light gray horse,"" "because there are always a few black hairs in the white and always a few red hairs in the black, for example." "That's my answer." "Nothing is absolute, there are no absolutely mean people, and there are no absolutely good people." "Good people are often very mean, and mean people very good." "I think that Gorki says something like that." "I vaguely remember a sentence in my film The Lower Depths." "It's that murderers are not murderers every day, that there are times when they are not murderers." "That's my money you've got." "Never mind, make free with it." "Don't kill me!" "It's not worth it." "You just need a good lesson." "Albert, don't hurt me!" "I'll work hard for you." "I'm so wretched." "You're stupid to think you'd get away with that trick." "I hope you've learned your lesson." "Josefa, leave that alone!" "After all, I haven't done anything to you..." " If it's her..." " Get off!" "Don't kill me, eh?" "If it's her, I'm not sure if I'll let you go" "Toni, let me go!" "When you shot Toni, you had already worked with Pagnol?" "Yes, I had shot a film called Jofroi and another called Angéle." "And this is exactly how it happened:" "I turned up in the courtyard of the studio in Marseilles, at the Peupliers, and someone named Bourelly said to me," ""The boss wants to see you." The boss was Pagnol." "I went up to see Pagnol, and he said," ""Look, Jean Renoir is working on a film, Toni." "He's looking for a lead, and I told him you had the part."" "At that point I was stunned, and I said," ""It can't be." "What?"" "and the light in the room began to dim." "It was simply Jean Renoir who had entered the room and who was standing in front of the window." "Gabi has gone." "He's gone?" " He's left me!" " He's left you." " What did he say?" " Nothing much." "It's horrible." "He wouldn't desert an animal like this but he leaves me with this dead man." "What am I to do?" "Did you really kill him for the money?" " Too bad I didn't kill him myself." " It's nothing." "The trouble is that people will find out what's happened." "I'll be arrested, they'll take away my daughter." "We'll put him in the cart and pile dirty washing on him." "People won't be surprised to see us pushing it." "Remember that day with the wasp?" "I remember that." "I'll leave him in the wood with the gun beside him." "People will think he shot himself because of his debts." "If we meet anyone we'll pretend to be lovers." "I can do that." "Toni, why are you doing this?" "You're risking your life." "I gave my life to you long ago." "It's you." "Toni isn't Blavette, it's Jean Renoir." "You're joking!" "Yes it is, it's your method, Jean!" " It's a marriage." "You take an actor, whether he's an actor or not." "He acts like this and you make him into that, and when he's finished, he doesn't even realize it." "I don't either." "Because I ask the actor to teach me my profession, as you say that you learned yours from me, but the actor gives me as much as I give him, probably more." "When I start, I don't know a thing, my friend." "There are some guys who are really lucky." "They come to direct, and they know exactly what they're going to do, they know everything." "They say, "Here's the script, I'm going to follow it," "I'll do this, close-up, that, like this... and the feelings are this, that."" "As for me, I admit, I don't know a thing, not a thing." "And you know everything." "You're joking, I don't know anything." "I know nothing, so I start with the actors." "We talk, I explain the idea, and then suddenly the actor has a kind of flash, a kind of inspiration." "He says to himself, "That's it, here it is," "I've found it, we'll start there."" "And once you've found the point of departure, you're set, but you never find the point of departure on your own." "Happy because I love you" "Dear Maria" "Happy because I love you" "Passionately" "Your beauty has wounded my heart" "Happy because I love you" "Passionately" "But look inside my heart" "Our love" "Its beauty has wounded my heart" "The truth is that what happens with me is that I'm not always able to understand the meaning of a scene before I've actually seen it." "I find the true meaning of the acting, a scene, even a word, only after the words have materialized, once they exist." "As Sartre would say," "I believe that the essence comes after the existence." "Let's exist first, and then we'll see." "I have to see something that exists in front of me, and then I begin vaguely to understand the meaning, but deep down I'm really an exploiter." "I ask the others to give me all the elements;" "I try not to bring anything to it myself;" "I want everything to come to me from without." "Yes, but you manage just the same, and I find that extraordinary, because I see progress from the third rehearsal to the fourth." "But I would be truly incapable of transforming that third one into the fourth and of making improvements in it." "Yes, but there is also another thing I believe in, which is that the benefits of rehearsals are superficial and mean nothing." "It's the famous Italian method that is often talked about, which is reading lines but not letting yourself give them any expression." "You read it as if you were reading the telephone directory, and then, little by little, a spark flies from a word, and from this spark a good scene may follow." "That's also called hypnotic suggestion." "It's also called suggestion, yes." "But the important thing is not to start off believing that you know the meaning of the scene." "You have to start off knowing that you know nothing and want to discover everything." "Each scene has to be an exploration." "It's like Picasso always says," ""When I paint, I start and I don't even know what I'm going to do."" "That's very important." "And I think that's the number one rule in art, whatever art it may be." "You must allow the elements of the act to conquer you." "Afterward you may manage to conquer it, but first it has to conquer you." "You have to be passive before you can be active." "Pass me the bottle." "Let's have a sip." " Hello, Mrs. Cardes" " I've told you not to call me that." " My name's Valentine." " Mine's Amédée." "That's funny!" "I mean, it's a nice name." "Shall we dine one evening?" "Would you like to?" "Goodbye for now..." "Amédée..." " Well, what is it?" " Nothing." "I see, you're in love, eh?" "Don't make a face like that." "There's no need to be so sad about it." "I'm in love too." "Hello, Mrs. Cardes." "Could I have a word with you?" "Pretty little thing!" "Extraordinary eyes." " Sweet!" " Yes, but not for you." "Go round there." "Is it true what they say?" "That the boss and Mr. Batala once..." " So they say, but he's not bad." " I can't stand him myself." "Then say no more..." "I just thought... an old friend in a moment of difficulty..." "An old friend who's interested in my savings!" "But you're saying goodbye to a wreck." "Yes, but one still capable of floating." "Very nice cloth." "These'll keep your head above water!" "I'm not worried about you." "You came for a first-class ticket, eh?" "You don't want me to travel third!" "I'm keeping my money... to buy dresses to look pretty." "Because you see, Mr. Batala..." " I'm in love." " No kidding?" "So in love!" "You always make me laugh." "In love!" "Want money for a taxi?" "That's it..." "You're understanding." "And I've a dinner this evening with influential people." "I don't want them to pay." "I'm always borrowing from you old man, but I'll give it back." "Why are you locking the door?" "You have the eyes... of a child." "At that time, and even now," "I was absolutely convinced that technology was at the root of intellectual changes in a profession, of stylistic changes." "I often tell the story of the impressionists and paint tubes." "I claim - and I talked about this with Reichenbach who thinks the same" " I claim that one of the reasons for the impressionist revolution in painting is the invention of tubes of paint." "Before they were invented, paint was sold in little pots, and when you put them in your pocket, they turned over, they weren't very practical." "You couldn't go outside." "But with tube's, you could put them in your pocket, you could put them in a little box and carry a palette, the tubes, a little bottle of oil, and a little bottle of turpentine," "and you could go outdoors and paint there." "This purely technical invention probably determined all the nontechnical stylistic discoveries of impressionism." "Any fish?" "Maybe there is, maybe there ain't, you must know how to catch them." "This is just the place." "We can eat at that little restaurant, do you agree, Madame Dufour?" "We'll make our way round to it." "So shady and cool." "With swings too." "What fish we'll catch!" "We'll have a real feast mark my words." ""Restaurant Poulain, fish dishes a speciality parties catered for, swings, luncheon 2Fr 50."" "Now just you stop that Monsieur Dufour!" "Any fishing rods?" "Don't you lend out fishing rods here?" "Fishermen bring their own." "Let's go somewhere else." "Here I am and here I stay." "Quite right, my dear." "We'll eat here." "Send your master to me." "Are you happy now you're here, grandmother?" "We'll have a good lunch." "Oh no, I'm hungry." "I think there is a relationship among all the arts." "After all, it's a question of expressing oneself." "The big difference between film and an art like painting is that many people express themselves in film." "The actor has to express himself, the technician has to express himself, the director has to express himself," "There is also another big difference, which is that the means given to film directors are complex, whereas the means given to painters are extremely simple." "The truth is you can paint with a piece of charcoal on a white wall, or at least draw, whereas to make a film you need a camera, film, sound, so many things." "This is not to film's advantage, because I think that technical resources are against what we generally call art." "The more technical resources you have, the more difficult it is to express yourself." "You wind up drowning in wealth." "I believe it is a great advantage for a painter to be able to paint anywhere;" "he doesn't need much equipment." "Second, when one's technical concerns are limited to the essentials, these essentials become much more profound and become more special as well." "I believe that a good painter is harder to find than a good filmmaker, because a good painter, since he doesn't have very advanced technology, since he is limited in his means, has to be more clever." "You know the expression "Don't spread yourself too thin."" "I think that this is extremely important in art." "The painter has the advantage of digging into the same little hole, and he can go very, very, very, very deep." "He can even go so far as to find the relationship between eternity and the instant, between the world and the spirit, between the body and the mind." "Painting can go very far." "I believe that right now, painters are the great philosophers of our time." "There are a few filmmakers who have at times come close to something like that but in film, let's be frank, we're limited by the immensity, by the magnificence of our means." "I hope, I believe, I have tried in all my work" " ever since I started to make films " "I have always tried to make films because it was fun." "My main goal was my own joy, a joy that exists during the fabrication." "The truth is that the result doesn't really interest me." "I have several films that were successful," "I have some that were notoriously unsuccessful... but it's all the same to me, the important thing is to create." "I think it's the same in all aspects of life." "I think that all people who are hooked on results and who pursue goals," "I'm convinced that they are extremely unhappy and that when they arrive at their goal, they realize that the goal wasn't worth all the effort they made." "Whereas the joy of working, the joy of creating an object" " once the object is created, you put it aside - the joy that the sculptor has in pushing the clay with his thumb or in chiseling the stone with his hammer, or the joy the painter has in guessing the relationship between a blue and a red" "and in expressing a little piece of eternity with this relationship...." "It's while you're doing it that it counts." "After that people say, "It's good," "It's not good":" "So what, that's their problem." "Let's go and find your father." "She's a very nice girl." "She's a smasher." "If only she knew how to dress." "I've made you a tarragon omelette." "How about pig's brawn today?" "Have you seen the Parisians?" "The woman's all right." " The daughter you mean." " No, she's too skinny." "You fancy the mother?" "What a woman!" "Something to get hold of there." "Elegant, too." "You're making my mouth water." "I'm too busy, but if I were in your shoes..." "Listen to the old widower." "What strikes me when I look at your films is their experimental side" "You experimented with photography," "With the choice of lenses, with the choice of actors." "Yes, of course." "Often it backfired." "It's not always a good thing." "I really believe that to succeed in anything in life, you have to persist, you have to dig in the same hole, and I personally spent my time digging in twenty different holes, and I wonder whether I wasn't wrong in doing that." "But don't you think that this experimentation..." "You have to go very far with it?" "Of course, you have to go all the way." "It's because I'm extremely wary of the abstract." "I'm terribly wary of my own reactions." "I don't believe that the world I may create will be as good as the world as it exists now." "I believe in surroundings, and believing in surroundings," "I obviously believe in technology" " not just because it's technology, but to the extent that it's a hurdle, maybe." "It's a good hurdle, one that you have to get over, and in getting over it you acquire spiritual wealth that has nothing more to do with technology." "Because in the end, when the film is finished, the photography may be good or bad, it's not all that important." "Some very great films have bad photography or bad sound." "Certain films with magnificent photography and magnificent sound are nothing at all." "But I repeat that this technology is necessary." "Because if you're not careful, if you don't try to arrive at a kind of perfection in the form," "I think you lose it." "Could we have our picnic here?" "It's nice and shady but what about ants?" "There aren't any, but there are cherries." "Could we eat some?" "We ought to ask permission." "You'll frighten the fish." "Don't you ever think what you're doing?" "What a lovely caterpillar." "Don't touch it, you'll get a rash." "It's not dirty, it eats grass only." "How amazing the country is." "Every blade of grass hides tiny, living things." "We may kill some with every step." "If you worry like that, you'll get nowhere." "I wonder if such things are happy and sad like us." "Of course not, they're not people." "Anyway, they're too small." "But they are born and die like us." "I must say, I wonder how caterpillars have their young." "They don't have young." "That one will become a lovely butterfly." "You see some strange things." "When you were young, I mean when you were my age... did you often visit the country?" "No more than you." "I wonder if you felt as strange as I do today." "Strange?" "Well, you see, I feel a tremendous sort of tenderness" "..for the grass, the water, the trees." "A vague sort of yearning." "It's like a catch in the throat." "It almost makes me want to cry." "Did you feel like that when you were young?" "My dear child, I still feel like that only I'm older and wiser." "Come and see!" "There are some capital boats." " Your hat!" " Leave it." "We'll picnic here." "My skirt is caught, how messy the country is." "They're skiffs, Anatole." "I know all about them." "The motion picture is way behind painting." "What's done in painting is done in the motion picture fifty years later." "Fifty years later." "Obviously, some of my fellow directors and I are preoccupied with considering the world to be as one, if you like, that things are not separate, that there aren't people, and then animals, and then trees, and then ponds." "No, we think there is a whole world and that this world, each element in this world, governs the conditions of other elements and that we can't think of a fly without thinking of the bird that will eat the fly." "So that in the end, the setting is essentially pantheistic in your eyes." "I think so." "Of course it's a question of temperament." "It's extremely difficult for me not to see divinities all around me and not to imagine that nature is alive and that the trees are speaking to me." "That's a bit pretentious, because the trees are much more clever than I am, much wiser, but I do try to listen to them and learn their lessons." "Leave my kids alone!" " Why?" " You're teaching them bad habits." "Laurent, your thumb!" "Alice, blow your nose!" "Luc, don't scratch yourself!" "Philippe, stop biting your nails!" "Alice is old enough to blow her own nose!" "Go on, blow!" "Say, are those your kids or mine?" " They're yours." " Come on!" "Help me hang these sheets!" "And you go on and play!" "And leave Nénette alone, or else I'll get angry!" "Listen to your mother." "After, if you're nice and clean, we'll play cops-and-robbers." "Hi, Titine!" "Hi, Nénette!" " Here." " Is that all?" "What were you expecting?" "The jackpot?" "He loves to make a racket with his motorbike!" "Catherine, do you remember when we met for the first time?" "It's something I'll remember all my life!" "Where?" "It was at the Cinematheque, on the rue d'Ulm." "You were presenting Flaherty's Louisiana Story" "and there was a little cocktail party, and I saw you there." "I was so shy;" "I had just arrived from Marseilles and still had an accent." "I was a redhead, and I had a big hat on my head." "A fur hat..." "Incredible!" "That's right, a white fur hat." "I came up to you." "A friend introduced us, and you said," ""I'd like some pictures of this little lady."" "The first thing that surprised me was that this southerner, who was such a typical southerner, was wearing a Russian fur cap." "I said to myself," ""That's really strange, something's out of place."" "So I looked again and I found" " and by the way, the impression I had could perhaps be helpful to you in certain roles " "I found that you had a 1900s look to you." "You made me think of a character, one who was magnificently acted by Simone Simon, in fact, in one of my films, the character of Séverine in The Human Beast." "You made me think of Séverine." "I said to myself, "Well here's a Séverine."" "And I like Séverine very much, and I liked you in turn." "That's fantastic!" "I didn't know all that was going to happen to me." "I simply know that I turned red and" " I was shy" " I hid in a corner, I backed up as much as I could, and I didn't see Louisiana Story!" "That was just the beginning." "After that we worked together." "Yes." "You wanted to do a test for Cordelier." "A little test that I didn't keep." "I didn't leave it in the film, it wasn't very good, but it did allow me to get to know you." "And after that we rehearsed Picnic on the Grass together using a method that I'm entirely against now." "You remember my method at the time... describe it." "It amazed me." "I wasn't at all familiar with television, as I had never done any." "We rehearsed with markers, you had drawn some things on the ground." "That is, I had drawn with a piece of chalk the outline of the exterior set in which we were going to shoot," "so that the actors could get used to the distances." "That's something I'd no longer do." "We're young at any age." "I was a baby then, now I'm young." "Yes, but it allowed me to get used to television methods, and afterward, thanks to you, I was no longer surprised." "When I worked on the "Colettes," I knew where I was." "That's it, that's exactly why I don't like this method." "I don't like it." "It's practical, it allows you to shoot with a certain security, it permits you to avoid spending too much money, to avoid going over schedule, to shoot the number of shots planned for the day," "but in my opinion, it kills one extremely important thing, which is the actor's surprise when faced with the set, and in my opinion this surprise is very interesting." "I think that the actor must assimilate the set himself, and not through a director who draws some chalk lines on the ground." "If I were a dictator" " let's pray that I never will be, because I wouldn't like it!" " but if I were a dictator, I would start by forbidding all pieces of chalk on stages and on sets" " because theater directors work only with chalk now, they mark the spots where the actors' feet should go." "I hate that," "I think that actors must have freedom of movement." "What's really important is to bring to life a certain character" " it's the marriage of Nénette and Catherine" " and the rest is a joke, it's not important." "But it allows you to work more quickly." "It allows you to work more quickly, but I'm no longer a partisan of working quickly." "Not really." "I've learned a great deal since, while I wasn't shooting." "I've filmed very little since, and I've learned a great deal." "I've learned, for example, that the hurdles of the film are useful." "Say you have a shot that's difficult to light:" "It takes a long time and the actress's mind goes blank because the lights are so hard to take, but during this seemingly wasted time she plunges into a world that allows her to become more familiar with her character." "I think that inconveniences wind up being advantages," "I'm convinced of that." " I think that most of all you get into a climate, you swim in this climate because anything outside it is a matter of indifference." " It disappears." "You're surrounded by lights, by familiar faces." "That's why it's very important that no visitors be on the set, not even friends, if they're not part of the film." "The face of an electrician you know is the face of a friend, it's part of the world to which you temporarily belong, whereas even the face of your mother who has come to visit is extremely dangerous." "So next time, no visitors." "We'll get rid of them all." "Shouldn't the viewer be added to the list of people who are active in the birth of a film?" "Obviously." "It's impossible to have a work of art without the spectator's participation, without his collaboration." "A film must be completed by the audience." "That's why absolute precision is dangerous." "On the other hand, however, intentional imprecision is dangerous as well." "I think that one of the ingredients for success is to have a lot to say, to have too much to say, so that you do say it, but you don't say it all." "There are certain parts that you cannot manage to formulate, that you forget, or for which you simply can't find the words, the terms, the camera movements, the lighting, or the right expressions for the actor to express it." "The audience compensates for it." "What's interesting is that each person in the audience, each viewer, compensates in his own manner." "The truth is that a film is as many films as it has viewers." "If there are a thousand viewers, you have a thousand films, if it's a good film." "If it isn't a good film, it's precise, and it's the same film for each viewer." "We could therefore define the success of a work by the many interpretations it allows for?" "I think so...." "You see, the big mistake in commercial filmmaking right now is the search for perfection." "Often people say to me, "Oh!" "producers are disgraceful people, disgusting people, they think only of money, they think only of how much they'll make, they think only of what's financially successful."" "It isn't true!" "I claim that producers are the most disinterested people in the world, they are people who really love film." "My only criticism of them is that they want to make good films, which in my opinion, is completely ridiculous." "It's not a matter of making good films, it's a matter of bringing in a little piece of humanity." "It's a matter of opening a little door onto what we think we have discovered about the human mind or about a situation, a situation that leads us to characters." "It's a matter of getting to know people, and that's all." "When producers seek technical perfection, as they often do, with the earnest desire of producing a work of art," "I think they are making a huge mistake." "What happens is that these absolutely perfect products, these products to which nothing can be added, wind up being boring, and audiences wind up getting tired of films because they've been shown too much perfection." "Day after day" "Night after night" "Always the same hopelessness" "Always waiting" "Hurry up, Natasha, you lazy girl!" "There's work upstairs." "Why aren't you in school?" "Resting, Pepel?" " Yes, I am." "Lucky you, with nothing to do." "What business is it of yours?" "Beat it." "Watch how you speak to me!" "You forget I'm the boss around here." "You owe me respect." "Why take that tone with your fellow man?" " Have you got my money?" " What money?" " For the watch." " What watch, my son?" "Don't play games with me." "Yesterday, you promised me 10 rubles for a watch." "You gave me three." "You owe me seven." "Hand it over!" "Stop blinking like an old owl." "Don't get mad!" "That watch was " "Stolen." "You knew that yesterday." "I don't buy stolen goods." "No kidding, holy man." "Hurry up and give me my money." "All in good time, Pepel." "What crude people!" "Well, well." "So it's all gone?" "Your house, clothes, cognac?" "Gone, even the memory." " So you'll stay here?" " Yes." " lt isn't so bad." " You'd leave if it was." "That's another story." "Come on, I'll find you a bed." "Good old baron." "Here's a new lodger." "Who is he?" "Just passing through." " For the night or longer?" " We'll see." "You have any papers?" "Lots, but they're all worthless." "You have any money?" "I'll vouch for him." "He's a friend." "Come on." "The audience's collaboration is even a necessity now, because there are many people whose lives are not much fun." "These are people who live in big cement apartment houses, and every morning they go to an office or to a factory and they do the same thing, make the same motions." "They drive their cars on highways where they stop and start" " they stop for the red light and they start at the green." "It's rather disappointing, isn't it?" "Other periods had their disadvantages as well." "I'm talking about the disadvantages of our times without suggesting that they are better or worse." "But our period has its disadvantages." "One of the disadvantages is solitude." "Everything leads to solitude, and in addition, people want solitude, they think solitude is good." "Someone who tells you they bought a house in the country says," ""I have a marvelous house." "Just imagine, there isn't a soul around me, not even a mouse, only fields, nothing."" "They don't realize that human beings are the interesting part of life." "What's interesting is meeting people, not meeting trees." "Trees are magnificent if they exist in relation to a human being, but I couldn't care less about trees by themselves." "In any case, they don't interest me." "They excite me as soon as they bring me closer to the people who planted them, to the people who created the civilization around them, or when they bring me closer to the people in my area, to emotions I've felt, when they bring memories to mind," "but trees by themselves don't interest me." "So one of the ways of fighting against modern boredom is art." "Art is a little bridge that you erect." "The director of a film, if he has a little talent, sometimes succeeds in creating a little bridge between the screen and the audience, and then we're all together, and we create together, we build the film together." "The audience makes this contribution, and this contribution is very important." "Please don't be angry with me." "If I get violent, it's because I love you." "Give me a kiss." " Never again, you hear?" "Whenever I look up at your face, it makes me afraid." "I see you back in the train." "What you told Lantier was right." "I haven't gotten over it." "I'll never get over it." "I can't forget it either." "But if we don't, life will become unbearable for the two of us, here in this place." "I'm going out." "Where?" "The café." "I'm meeting Cauche and the others." "If they're going to the cafe, why shouldn't I?" "Please forgive me, Severine." "What was the matter with Roubaud?" "Oh, he's just been a little jumpy lately." "He's not hurting you, is he?" "I don't think you should stay here." "Why not come with me?" "I love you." " You love me?" " Yes." "I've loved you for some time now." "Why don't you come with me?" " You love me?" " Yes." " This is terrible." " What do you mean?" " You mustn't." " Why not?" " You mustn't." " But why not?" "I'm incapable of loving anyone." "Are you saying you could never love me?" "Jacques, I love you as much as I'm able to love anyone." "Don't be angry." "My life hasn't been a happy one." "My childhood was so horrible." "I'm still afraid sometimes." "It's not a lover I need but a good friend who I could talk to about my troubles, my disappointments, my hopes." "I need trust and tenderness, and I can give them in return." "But not love." "You mustn't ask for that." "I understand, Severine." "Perhaps it's better this way." "I could tell you a few things as well." "It's better this way." "We'll just be good friends." "You said in Cahiers du cinema that films are not eternal, that reels of film deteriorate, so where does the importance of this art lie, since one hundred years from now there may be no more films?" "Of course." "But would you ask me where Homer's importance lies, because between you and me, no one has read Homer." "Suppose there were six thousand of us here, and we asked the question, "Has anyone here read Homer?"" "If the people are truthful, they'll say no." "Homer is very important, nonetheless." "Something strange happens with a work of art:" "It outlives its existence." "I don't know why, but it's a fact, there's an indirect influence." "Think about it, let's be honest, take any great work of art, take the best painting in the Louvre." "How many French people have seen it?" "A tiny proportion, maybe one in a thousand, I don't know, yet its influence is obvious, the influence of French works of art on French civilization." "Take, for example, something we have all around us:" "good architecture." "After all, we do still have a few prodigious houses in Paris, we have a few old houses in the Marais, we can see doors with sculptures, columns on each side, and it makes us feel happy, ecstatic." "But not many of us are walking around ecstatic." "I believe, in the end, that a work of art works mysteriously." "I believe a great deal in radar in life, in human radar." "There is a kind of radar that causes the work of art to influence people, but not directly." "I think that going to the Louvre and saying," ""Ah!" "I'm going to look at the Mona Lisa!"" ""Ah!" ", I'm looking at the Mona Lisa, how beautiful!"" "I don't think that does much for you." "But if you feel the presence of the Mona Lisa, and if you know..." "You have to hang paintings on your walls at home, not so much to look at them, but so that they can influence you." "It's like throwing a stone..." "In the river, into calm water, and the circles, even the farthest away, reach you." "CONCERT AND DANCE NATIONAL RAILROAD BALLROOM" "So it's all over?" "You won't be seeing her again?" "Everything has to end sooner or later." "You had some good times together." "Love is best early on, before you know each other well, when you're both on your best behavior." "Take me, for example." "I don't care for dancing, but she does." "So I take her out because I'm a nice guy." "I guess I owe it to her." "Her brother caught us in bed the other night." "I barely had time to jump out the window in my shirt." "Then he slapped her around." "Does that make sense to you?" "Not to me." "She's his sister, not his wife." "What's it to him anyway?" "The poor kid." "Look at Roubaud's wife." "She looks just like a princess." "Not bad for the wife of a stationmaster." "In the end, a work of art is not made to be looked at, it's made to permeate living people, people in the street." "Permeate, you've found an excellent word." "So that goes against all current practice, which is to create a monument, a sound-and-light spectacle, or whatever." "Oh, let's not talk about all that!" "I'm completely against these things." "First of all, to begin with," "I find the lighting of monuments to be very ugly, it flattens them, and you can't see the difference between a picture postcard and a monument, when it's lit in this way." "Everything is flattened;" "you can't see the difference between a good sculpture and a bad sculpture when they're harshly lit." "Of course I'm against spectacular art, except if it's the art of the spectacle, which by definition has to be presented as a spectacle but which also acts not so much as a spectacle but as an influence." "It's like the paintings that are lugged all around." "They lug paintings all over the world at the risk of damaging them, of seeing them slashed, stolen, only to show them to people who say," ""My God, it really is beautiful,"" ""Oh yes, the hand is very well drawn, and there's a faint expression in the eye."" "They don't get anything out of it;" "they would get a lot more out of a painting painted by their neighbor or their child." "You can get very good paintings just from children." "Until the age of six, children generally are good at painting, so all you need is a drawing on the wall done by a child, and you'll get a lot more out of it than from a three-minute stint" "in front of the Mona Lisa." "(to be continued)"