"Good evening, everyone." "Friend and foe, good evening." "I am here to... to talk about the script of a film, Passion on which I worked recently." "Though rather than talk I'd prefer to see." "What was unusual about this film, I think, is that I tried to see the I didn't want to write the script I wanted to see it." "The terrible thing about it, as I realized is that it goes back to the Bible." "Can you see The Law?" "Was The Law written or was it first seen and then written by Moses on his tablets?" "I think that you see the world first, and then write." "So to film the world of Passion it had to be seen, to see if it existed." "I believe in fact that the first written signs the first traces of writing, the Mycenae before Athens were the invention of merchants." "The first writing was not Madame Bovary or L'Espoir or The Brothers Karamazov." "It was merchants noting three kilos of carrots one and a half kilos of plums." "Then people got the idea of writing more of writing a novel." "So the cinema which copies life which came from life, represents life began like that with no written script" "You just set out in a car, like Mack Sennett, and started filming" "You'd have a pal disguised as a cop, a girl dolled up as a bathing beauty a young man playing Romeo." "You had a success, so you elaborated" "Each day cost money" "The accountant wondered where the money went" "So he wrote:" "Bathing beauty, 100 francs" "Cop, 50 francs;" "Sweetheart, 3 dollars." "Then gradually this became:" ""A cop falls for a bathing beauty, being chased by her sweetheart."" "Book-keeping gave rise to the script originally just a note of money to be spent." "Before that, they saw." "And I wanted to see... the story of Passion there were certain given facts but the business of the script was to see them to see if this world could exist." "Not creating a world, but the possibility of a world" "The camera will do the work of... making the possible probable, or, rather, the probable possible." "The script creates a probability:" "the camera makes it possible" "Creating this probability is to see  what might be seen if the invisible were visible." "See a script." "See, and you find..." "I find myself... and I find myself seeking..." "You find yourself faced with the invisible." "A vast, white surface, a blank page... like Mallarmé's blank page..." "A beach in a blinding sun..." "All is white." "No trace of anything..." "It's an odd feeling" "Like finding a gap in your memory" "There you are, in the very furthermost corner of your memory" "You have a writer's job to do" "You could write:" ""I go to bed early"" "Or, like Rimbaud:" ""A black, E white, I red"" "Or, "Love and kisses from Marseilles."" "Or, "I love you, I love you."" "Or, "Where's my ten francs?"" "But you don't want to write, you don't want to do this." "You want to see, you want to re-see-ve (re-ce-voir)." "A white page confronts you a white beach..." "(page / plage)" "Like a dazzling beach, but there is no sea." "So you invent waves," "I invent waves." "You imagine a wave" "Merely a murmur..." "There is a wave, wavy, hazy, only an idea... but already there is movement." "I have a vague idea:" "a girl running" "A young woman in the flower of youth." "Here just a faint disturbance which the film will make a storm." "It comes." "It goes." "Just an echo" "On television you can't..." "The people who talk, the announcers never face the screen." "The image is always behind them, never in front." "On TV they never see anything because they turn their backs on the images instead of facing them" "The image is behind them." "They can't see it." "The image sees them" "So does the director, shoving images up their asses." "That's how you get buggered." "Your ass is behind, remember your sex is in front." "The work..." "The work to be done is seeing." "Seeing the invisible become visible, and describing it." "There was a starting point:" "the world of work." "The film was to be concerned with seeing being concerned with work." "Working men a working woman." "Just one would do." "And what I was trying to do working with Isabelle was not for her to find a character but a movement." "The movement was in that blank page." "White is purity." "Isabelle would be a factory worker, pure and dour." "But I was Isabelle's boss." "She was my employee." "And I had other employees, the whole crew" "I remember when we all met on the first day of shooting" "I was trying to tell them that we had to set out from an image in mind" "I told them traces already existed" "The film would show great moments of humanity as painted by the masters" "Tintoretto..." "I talked of a love scene saying the conception I had was Tintoretto's that there would be some connection with the film's three characters" "But they saw a finished image whereas I hadn't reached that stage yet" "So showing them the picture didn't help." "And Isabelle didn't understand, she got the two images mixed up" "Like when I talked of Goya, for example." "It was difficult with the others, too." "It was difficult." "I'd talk of something I could see but they really saw themselves." "What would the audience think?" "And there I was..." "Isabelle couldn't see that Goya had any connection with her." "Oppression, the world of oppression..." "I was trying to get that" "But it didn't go too well, because there I was..." "Always alone, confronting that purity, that beach with no sea" "Then one day a sound came" "The sound of Mozart, bought at an airport" "Someone comes." "The action starts" "The script proceeds" "But by mistake, Jerzy put on a Léo Ferré cassette instead of the Mozart" "Sitting in the car alongside him and hearing Léo Ferré instead of Mozart I wondered what was happening to me." "Someone comes" "Like in a Hollywood movie, no one knows who he is... or where he's from." "And he's an actor, there'll be action" "This I see, working on the script with Jerzy" "He arrives somewhere" " Not very sunny, is it?" " Unfortunately." "Are there mountains over there?" "Yes, but you can't see them" " Where do you come from?" " Poland" "Sit down for a little bit." "Someone." "There would be someone and there'd be somewhere." "Near this somewhere, there'd be another place to which Jerzy comes as well looking for work on a film one of those big-budget, super-productions" "Like me, Jerzy is an exile a foreigner looking for work" "Like Wim and me, one of cinema's outsiders" "Wim, Chantal, Anne-Marie, Jacques..." "Exiles." "On the road to exile which turns on itself... he is echoing the Léo Ferré song." "Brother humans, harden not your hearts against us" "Jerzy, my brother" "If you were you'd be a director." "Because an actor suffers humiliation" "A director has certain power" "Over love, especially" "And sometimes in rehearsing his text" "This I thought in scripting" "'Dust and ashes we become;" "no one grieves for our hurt'" "'Yes, brothers, you whom justice has slain cry out in scorn'" "Words are words..." "And images... images are images." "Pray that His mercy will not be exhausted, sparing us an infernal screwing" "We are dead, but let us pray" "Using words." "Using images" "One linked with the other" "As love could be linked with work" "This would be the main theme." "work and love..." "'Never can we be at rest'" "'Harassed by winds that ceaselessly veer'" "'Pecked at by savage beaks'" "'Pray God that those who come after...' '...harden not their hearts against us'" "Oh, spectator harden not your heart against me" "As God will pity you." "Seeing a scenario this is a specialized sort of job" "And since Isabelle is playing a worker in the film which copies life, research work has to be done which... no one bothers with these days." "Filming a thriller, Delon doesn't research police methods" "Nor Spielberg the universe before filming extra-terrestrials" "But with Isabelle playing a worker..." "I had to do research, to go and look at a factory." "To see the movements" "To see if this working woman's gestures had some connection with the gestures of love I planned" "In the film would there be a connection between the gestures of toil and the hand movements of the Blessed Trinity?" "Love, work and something between the two." "And Isabelle..." "And love." "And work." "The labor of love." "And the love of labor, loathing of labor" "Loathing of cinema, love of cinema" "And work" "Having reached that point I could begin to construct the script really imagine it." "We had seen... things" "When I see something like that, composing an image creating a movement within the factory well, in the factory I had seen almost the same movement in a machine." "So this love and work isn't just one of Jean-Luc's silly conceits" "It really exists, you can see it" "I begin to see" "To see not the story but two or three things in the story" "Places, people" "People moving." "Movement" "And places where this movement takes place moves from one place to another" "Work." "The first place" "The blank page" "Strike some sparks" "There could be a strike movement" "Get back to work!" "Shit!" "I really had you there." ""I really had you there"" "Or, "I love you, you love me"" "Really" "Really you'll have." "I had you." "The boss." "He has things" "Have something in the bank" "Have to do with someone" "Have someone" "Refuse to be had." "The boss has a wife" "The wife refuses to be had" "How's business, Elisabeth?" "Don't make fun of the working class." "Don't talk to my employees." "What are you doing here?" "Getting gas." "I suppose you asked at the hotel, too?" "It belongs to me" "Stop bothering them!" " Who do you mean?" " I know what I'm saying" " Ich weiss auch Ich denke?" " I know you know what you think" "We'll see tonight, get your ass ready." "Yes, boss." "So it falls into two places geographically" "There's the boss and his wife." "There's the factory and the hotel she has" "And there's a locale, the locale" "And the actor enters the dŽcor" "This dŽcor is a bit of a factory, a bit of a hotel" "This hotel is somewhere" "Now we see it, some small provincial area" "Factory, hotel, work, sleep" "And between the two what will become love, money, passion" "And the people." "A little place but around it a big film is being shot embracing big themes:" "love, money, war" "The filmmakers live in the hotel" "The actor, the director, Jerzy who can meet the boss's wife there" "And the film people here talk only of money and sex" "As always in the cinema" "What's wrong?" "She wants to quit." "Why?" "We're nice to you." " You signed a contract." " I don't feel like it anymore" "If it's money, no problem" "I found that cassette I mentioned" "Let me talk to her" "What's wrong?" "It's all of you." "What's she talking about?" "Your factory and the film set are just the same" "What does she want?" "I want it to be calm and pleasant" "It's different when one's working" "See what I mean?" "I'll get someone else." "What are you trying to prove?" "Don't push me, you two." "We've got to finish it." ""Stop!" the character says, and as scriptwriter I have to foresee it" "I am between the two;" "I am searching" "So am I." "I can't do a Picasso" "I can't just seek, I must find." "Malraux said that art is like fire born of what it consumes... in images that burn your eyes to make you see." "I must see Jerzy, see Isabelle see the bosses invariably backed by the police." "It must be good-humored, too even in despair." "Why go back to the factory?" "Stay with us." "Why do I still want to make films?" "Tell stories?" "Fill it up with incident" "People have the courage to live stories, but not invent and tell them" "That's what I'm here for." "Music..." "Music offers its support" "I am blind." "I see nothing, and music is my Antigone" "Magnificent romantic music, this little-known Dvorak piano concerto" "Perhaps it will help me to see, and say, the there is romance in work" "Study my characters in this night full of light" "Jerzy, in search of his art" "There's a sort of double image here:" "The sound and the image, and they always go together." "The screen is a wall" "A wall is for jumping over" "Playing leapfrog with yourself" "The cinema's like a factory;" "the boss..." "The workers," "Workers asking for work and wondering how to do the work." "In films, the girl always loves the boss" "And since Jerzy is looking for himself there is in fact a duality throughout: the passion the factory, the house work, love." "At grips with himself he wrestles, and to wrestle with oneself is to wrestle with the angel." "Isabelle, too" "There's duality in her" "She wrestles against suicide after being sacked" "And the camera echoes the movement of Dvorak's piano" "Here are the film extras the cannon-fodder of cinema who will be the image or even the echo of the image of factory work." "I begin to think these masters..." "here it's Delacroix describe reality, but metaphor must be described as well" "The arrogant knight" "Like the overweening employer who so often circles aimlessly" "Delacroix said that." "He began by painting warriors, moved on to men" "Then lovers, tigers and at the end of his life, flowers" "Some day I'd like to paint flowers, too" "Simply a bouquet of flowers" "There you are!" "It's the girl I started with" "But now I know where she's going" "And that it's her husband, boss in the car" "What do you want?" "To love you passionately, too" "See a script... see the movements and the gestures the process of discovery..." "And see..." "See a script." "See Isabelle and Jerzy finding their dialogue" "See the characters so as to be able to find their dialogue" "Why did..." "Why did you ab... abandon me?" "I realize that Jerzy will speak two languages and that Isabelle must have two to reply." "She will stammer an inner turmoil matching that outside" "I owe it to you that I realize it's my home" "You are there in the shadows... searching sound, searching language" "It was an act of grace." "The first time we met we talked of that." "Talk of grace." "Of grace." "To find it, of course first it had to be heard." "Movements had to be seen, characters seen" "To be able, to be able to make the movement there and back again" "To hear a sound" "You are still in the shadows, stalking" "Mozart again." "Gravity and grace" "Turn a camera movement into a prayer" "There... and back." "You are home again" "The film will be about people deserting each other and going home" "It's possible now, he says, to imagine sequences" "Possible to... probable, rather" "It's probably possible." ""Graven in memory," he says." ""I note," he says." "Note of music." "Nothing major, I don't think" "Just a little working girl dreaming of a little justice..." "yet not quite true." "A little about rights." "Finding the right words isn't easy" "The dream is too big" "So Isabelle stammers..." "The others laugh." "And God abandons her." "But Goya offers her comfort." "The lighting follows the music" "The fall of bodies..." "Light..." "The restraining soldiers..." "The script proceeds" "Graven in memory." "He says, "I"... he says:" ""We seek the image's reality."" "He says, "We stumble on the image of reality."" "He says... he says he's listening to the music" "The music... you are its father" "It is your daughter" "It tells you of paradise and catastrophe all bliss and pain that will befall your children." "Your children, my children my characters." "Would killing myself teach me a lesson?" "Would there be blood?" " Try it and see." " Try it yourself!" "The story runs off in all directions" "And you run after it, as if it were a ferret" "It comes and goes between the two" "Slowly you create" "Between love and work." "Passion." "Slowly you create." "A script?" "It yields nothing, it takes nine months." "Quite a story, love and work." "You're between the finite and the infinite" "You're between... black..." "and white." "Passion." "Between black and white" "You think of finishing it, this infinity will end in metaphor attended by reality." "You know the film can be made" "At the crossroads between reality and metaphor" "Or between documentary and fiction" "You seek elsewhere and fiction leads back to documentary" "You are there now." "Then..." "No more need to be graven in memory..." "Because it is there, all white, the empty screen" "The blank screen, the white canvas" "...like Veronica's handkerchief." "The body of the film, like Christ's body..." "You had to go back in time to the Bible do forbidden things." "And now memory is here, dictating to you" "A factory girl is sacked by her boss" "She falls in love with a foreigner, come to make a film" "Then the boss's wife also falls in love with the foreigner" "He, for his part cannot find a subject for his film, although there are dozens around him." "That's it." "Your script is finished." "The video level needs adjusting." "Now you're in the very heart of it" "You can invent the sea for your white beach" "Like a mother, she waits..." "you are her child." "You can return to her arms" "You can tell her everything" "And here is the light... the soldiers... the boss... the children" "Here is the light... joy..." "war... the angel" "Here is fear, here is light" "Here is the universal wound, here is night." "Here is the Virgin." "Here is grace." "And here is light." "And here is light." "And here is light, and here is fog." "And here is adventure and fiction." "Here is reality." "Here is documentary and movement and here is cinema." "And here is image and here is sound." "Here is cinema, here is cinema here is cinema here is work."