Cahiers Du Cinema 11

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8/6

No. ll

cahiers du
in english
Orson Weller
lngtnar Bergman

Alain Jessua
Robert Flaherty

$1.25

From The World's Most Creative Film-Makers


new feature releases
NFBC's
Connell and
Jersey's
Bert Haanstra's
Georges Rouquier's
Jean Vigo's
Chris Marker's

and shorts
Alexander Alexeieff's
Ole Roos'
Jan Lenica's
Sandy Semel's
NFBC's
Peter Whitehead's
Derrick Knight's
Tamas Czigany's
Jiri Trnka's

Marcel Pagnol's MARIUS,


FANNY, CESAR and others
to be announ ~ed
MEMORANDUM
BUSTER KEATON RIDES AGAIN
A TIME FOR BURNING
ALLEMAN
FARREBIQUE
A PROPOS DE NICE
KOUMIKO MYSTERY
LE JOLI MAl
THE NOSE
NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN
MICHEL SIMON
RHINOCEROS
SUNDAY LARK
THE RAILRODDER
WHOLLY COMMUNION
TRAVELING FOR A LIVING
ST. MATTHEW PASSION
THE HAND

CONTEMPORARY FILMS, INC.


267 W. 25th St.,
828 Custer Ave., Evanston, Ill. 60202

. Y. 10001
1211 Polk St., San Fran., Calif. 94109

Robere Enrico's

AN OCCURRENCE AT
OWL CREEK BRIDGE
The 27-minute French short Grand Prize-winner at Cannes
and winner of the Academy Award.
Based on the short story by Ambrose Bierce, it re-creates
the tense atmosphere of the War of Secession.
A spell-binding drama of a condemned man- with an incredible denouement.

CONTEMPORARY FILMS, INC.


Dept. CDC

267 WEST 25TH STREET


NEW YORK, N. Y. 10001

cahiers du

in english
Number 11

September 1967

ORSON WELLES AND JACK FALSTAFF


Welles on Falstaff, Interview by Juan Cobos and Miguel Rubio
(CdC # 179, June 1966)
.

Luis Bunutl: Belle tit


j our, CHhtrine Qe.
ntU\'t.

Grnevirve Page.

Welles in Power, by Serge Daney (CdC # 181, Aug 1966)

16

The Other Side, by Pierre Duboeuf (CdC # 181, Aug 1966)

18

Jack le Fataliste, by Jean-Louis Comolli (CdC # 181, Aug 1966)

20
22

Sacher and Mosoch, by Jean Narboni (CdC # 181, Aug 1966)


lNGMAR BERGMAN (CdC # 188, Mar 1967)
The Serpent's Skin, by lngmor Bergman

24

The Pha ntom of Personality, by Jean-Louis Comolli

30

ALAIN JESSUA (CdC # 188, Mar 1967)


Meeting with Aloin Jessuo, by Michel Delahoye

36

SADOUL-FLAHERTY
A Flaherty Mystery, by Georges Sodoul

46

CAHIERS CRITIQUES
Bresson: Balthazor, by Rene Gilson (CdC # 182, Sept 1966)

54

Lewis: Three on a Couch, by Jeo n-Louis Comolli (CdC # 186, Jon 1967)

57

Groulx: Cat in the Sock, by Jacques Levy (CdC # 187, Feb 1967)

59

Goldman: Echoes of Silence, by Jean-Claude Biette (CdC # 11?8, Mar 1967)

60

ODDS AND ENDS


Council of Ten (CdC # 185, Dec 1966)

Luis Bunuel's 'Belle de Jour'

34

Editor's Eyrie, by Andrew Sarris

62

CAHI ERS DU CINEMA IN ENGLISH, PRINTED MONTHLY


Administrative ond Subscription Office: 635 Madison Ave., N. Y., N. Y. 10022, USA
Editorial Office: 303 West 42nd St., N. Y., N. Y. 10036
Publisher: JOSEPH WEILL
Ed itor-in-Chief: ANDREW SARRIS
Monoging Editor: JAMES STO LLER
Contributing Editor: RA LPH BLASI
Translator: JANE PEASE, ROBERT STEELE
Photo Acknowledgement: French Film Office, Museum of Modern Art
Porent Pub lication: CAHIERS DU CINEMA. Revue mensuelle du Cinema. AdministrotionPublicit6 8 rue
Marbeuf, Paris 8. Redaction: 5., ClementMarot, Paris 8. Comiti de redaction: Jacques Donioi-Volcroze,
Daniel Filipocci, Jeanluc Godard, Pierre Kosi, Jacques Rivette, Roger Therond, Francois Truffout.
Redacteurs en chef: Jean-louis Comol li, Jeanlouis Ginibre. Mise en pages: Andrea Bureau. Secretariat:
Joc~ues Bontemps, JoonAndri fieschi. Documentation: Jean-Pierre Biesse. Sicnitoire general: Jean
Hohman.

Space Soles Represen ta tive: Cl Associates, 49 Morton St., N. Y., N. Y. 10014, AL S-4n1
U.S. Distribution~ Eastern News Distributors, Inc., 155 West 15th St., N. Y., N. Y. 10011. All rights
reserved. Copyrig ht 1967 by Cohiers Publishing Company.

LE CONSElL DES DIX (Council of ten)


COTATIONS (Ratings)
e Inutile de se d eranger (No use bothering) * a voir a Ia rigueur (see if necessary)
**** chef-d'oeuvre (masterpiece)
*** a voir absolument (see absolutely)
** a voir (see)
La Prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV (Rossellini)
Le Chat dans le sac (Cat in the Sack) (Gilles Groulx)
Torn Curtain (Alfred Hitchcock)
Cul-de-sac {Roman Polanski)
Du courage pour chaque jour (Kazdy den odvahu)
(Evald Schorm)
Le Deuxieme Souffle (Jean-Pierre Melville)
Les Coeurs verts (Edoua rd Luntz)
War and Peace II (Natacha) (Serge Bondartchouk)
The Bible (John Huston)
Le Voleuse (Jean Chapot)
Alvarez Kelly (Edward Dmytryk)
L'Espion (The Defector) (Raoul Levy)
One Million BC (Don Chaffey)
Hitler (Stuart Heisler)
The Russians Are Coming (Norman Jewison)
Tonnerre sur !'Ocean lndien (Sergio Bergonzelli)
Les Enquiquineurs (Roland Quignon)
La Nuit des adieux (Jean Dreville)
Othello (Stuart Burge)
Soleil Noir (Denys de La Patelliere)

Jacques
Bontemps
(Cahiers)

Jean-Louis
Bory
(Arts)

Albert
Cervonl
(France
Nouvelle)

Jean
Collet
(Telerama)

***

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**** **** ***


**** *** ***
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*** *
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Michel
Delahaye
(Cahiers)

Jean-Andre
FleschI
(Cahiers)

Michel
Aubriant
(Candide)

'

Michel
Mardore
(Pariscope)

Jean
Narboni
(Cahiers)

Georges
Sadoul
(les Lettres
Francaises)

***
**
***
**
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Welles on

~a/staff

Interview rvith Orson W elles

Orson Welles: Falstaff, Orson Welles.


b

QUESTION-In the reading, the scenario of Falstaff seemed much Jess trag.ic
than the .film that it bas become ..
ORSON WELLES-Yes, oow ir is a
very sad story. Perhaps that is a mistake on my part. Moreover I find the
film funnier in English than io Spanish.
The Spanish version is very well done,
but there were difficulties io translating
the jokes. In any case my character is
less funny than I had hoped. But the
more I srudied the pan, the le~s funny
it appeared to me. This problem preoccupied me during the entire shooting.
I played the role three times on the
stage before filming it, and Falstaff
appeared to me more witty than funny. I don't think very highly of
those moments in which I am only
amusing. It seems to me that Falstaff
is. a man of wit rather than a clown.
I directed everything, played every
thing, in the perspective of the last
scene. So that the relationship berween
Falstaff and the Prince is no longer the
simple comic one that one finds in
Shakespeare's Hettry IV Part I. It is a
foretelling, a preparation for the tragic
ending. The farewell scene is. foretold
four times in the .film. The death of
the Prince, the King in his castle, the
death of Hotspur, which is that of
Chivalry, the poverty and illness of Falstaff, are presented throughout the entire .film and must darken it. I do not
believe that comedy should dominate in
such a film. Yet Falstaff representS a
positive spirit, io many respeCtS courageous, aod even when be makes fun
of his cowardice. He is a man who
representS a virtue in the process of dis,.
appearing. He wages a struggJe lost in
advance. I don't believe be is ~ccking
anything. He represents a value; he is
goodnes;. He is the character in whom
I believe the most, the most entirely
good man in all drama. His faults are
trivial and h e makes the most enormous jokes from them . . . His goodness is like bread, like wine. That is
why I lost the comic side of his character a little; the more I played him,
the more I felt that I represented goodness, purity.
The film speaks too of the terrible
price that the Prince must pay in exchange for power. In the historical writings, there is that balancing berween the
triangle (the king, his son, and Falstaff,
who is a kind of foster father) aod
the other plot, that of Horspur, which
is much longer and intricately constructed, and very interesting. It keeps
the triangle from dominating the simacion. But in the film, which was made
essentially in order to tell the srory of
that triangle, there are necessarily elements that cannot have the same existence as in the original works. In the
face of Falstaff, the king represents responsibility. The interesting thing, in
the story is that the old king is a
murderer, he has usurped the thron e,
and yet be represents legitimacy. The

Story is extraordinary because Hal, the


legitimate prince, m ust betray the good
man co become a hero, a heroic and
renowned Englishman. . .
QUESTION - The film becomes a
kind of lament for Falstaff.
WELLES-Yes, perhaps that is true.
I would like people to see it that wvy.
Although it was not made to be that
alone, but alro, a lament for the death
of " Merrie England" - which is a concept, a myth chat was very real for all
who speak English, and which, to a
certain extent was present in other
countries in the Middle Ages. In a general way, it was the age of chivalry,
of ~implicity, and on on. That which
dies is more than Falstaff, th e old England, betrayed.
QUESTION - The Magnificent Ambersons, too, was a lament for a vanished age. . . .
WELLES-Yes. Not so much for an
age as for the sense of moral values.
that has been destroyed. In the case
of The i\!aguificeut Ambersom, they
were destroyed by the automobile. In
the case of Falstaff there are others that
are becrayed in the incere~.t of power,
of duty, of responsibility, of national
grandeur, and so on. I put a more personal feeling, a deep emotion, into these
two films than into the ochers. People
think that my films are violent and
often cold; but I believe chat The Magtli/icellf Ambersons and Falstaff represent more than anything, what I would
like to do in cinema. Whether I have
succeeded or not, I do not know; but
that is the closest to what I have always
wanted to say.

QUESTION-Do you think that there


is a difference in style between Falstaff
and your earlier .films?
WELLES - People have always at
tributed a great deal of importance to
the sryle of my films. Yet I do not
think that they are dominated by s.cyle.
I have one, I hope, or several, but I
am nor essentially a formalise. I am
most concerned with rendering a musical impression. Music and poetry, more
than merely visual imagination. The
visual aspect of my films. is that which
is dictated to me by poetic and musical
forms. I do not start from forms to
try to find a poecry or a musical rhythm
and try to plate them on to the film.
The film ought on the contrary to
follow that rhythm effordessl y. People
tend to think that my first preoccupation is with the visual, that only the
visual effects interest me. With me all
that comes from an inner rhythm. There
are many " beautiful" things that I see
every day in this film and tbat I had
nor even tried to do because they bad
nothing to do with it. I do not stroll
about like a collector choosing lJeautiful images and pa>ring them together.
I consider a film as a poetic means. J
do noc believe that it comperes with
painting or choreogqphy, bur that its
visual aspect is only -a ''ke}' giving access
to irs poetry. It does not justify itself
in itself. No film justifies itself in itself,
no matter whether it b e beautiful, striking, terrifying, tender . . . It signifies
nothing, unless it makes poetry possible.
But the difficulty comes from the fact
that poetry suggests things that are absent, evokes more than what you see.

Orson Welles: The Magnificent A mbersons.


8

And the danger in CtDema is that, in


using a camera, you see everything,
everything is there. What one must do
is succeed in evoking, in making things
emerge that are not in fact, visible, in
bringing about a spell. I do not know
whether I attained that in Falstaff. I
hope so. If so, I have reached my artistic maturity. If not, I am in decline,
believe me.
Now, I try co bring about an effect
in films, not by technical surpr ises,
shocks, but by a very great unity of
form; the true form of cinema, inner
form, musical form. I believe that one
ought to be able to enjoy a film with
one's eyes closed; a blind man ought
to be capable of enjoying a film. We all
say "The only true films are the silents."
But, in fact, cinema has been talking
for forty years; ro we ought to say
something in it, and when something
is said, when there is sound and music,
that ought to have rechnically-I speak
now, not of poetry, but of techniquean absolutely recognizable form, so that
one sees that everything subjects itself
co that form. The idea, the perro nal
view of the auteur of the film, ought
co rend co a unique, total form.
QUESTION -During the filming of
the battle in Falstaff you made shots of
considerable duration and then you
shortened th em in editing. . . .
WELLES-Yes. If you remember, at
first I wanted to make brief shots, bur
I had to extend them because I realized
that the actors would not give a good
performance if they did not have something connected to do . . . One would
not have had the impression that they

Orson Welles: Falstaff, Welles, Margaret Rutherford, Jeanne Moreau.


were really in the midst of fighting, if
they had not had the time to warm up;
that is why the shots were very ex
tended. But I knew that I was going
tO use them only in short fragments.
For example, I filmed the battle 5::enes
with a crane that shifted position very
quickly at g.round level, as quickly as
poss.ible, to follow the action. And I
knew exactly what I was doing to do
after that-to cut and edit the fragments so that each shot would show
a blow, a counterblow, a blow received ,
a blow struck, and w on . . . But I
never thought to use more than a
short portion of the field covered by
the camera. Now the battle lasts about
two minutes longer than I had thought
beforehand. Maybe it is too extended; I
do not know.
QUESTION-The fi lm was to begin
with the murder of Richard II . . .
WELLES-We had shot the scene,
bur then that did not seem clear enough
tO me. Instead of explaining the political context, it ran the ri.k of confusing it. Then too, in order tO finish
it, it would have been necessary to

work on it for four or Jive days and


I did not want tO involve the producer
in that kind of expense. It was that way
with the debarkation of Henry Boling.broke, which I had also begun tO shoot.
It was an interesting thing, and I was
plea~.ed with that scene, but I believe
that a director ought absolutely to be
able co reject some of his shots, even
the most beautiful. To my mind, an
autettr who cannot bear the idea of
ridding himself of something, under
the pretext that it is beautiful, can ruin
a film. That a shot is beautiful is not
enough tO keep it. You remember .the
two old men walking in the snow?
.i\1arvelous images, but I took them out.
I could have been self-indulgent and let
the audience see those shots. Every cineclub in the world would have said
"How beautiful that is!" But they would
have compromised the internal rhythm
of the film. One ought to be implacable
with one's own material! A film is
made as much with what one takes
away as with what one joins to . it.
QUESTION-Does it often happen
that you have to sacrifice scenes?

WELLES- During the shooting I


sacrifice what in my opm10n will not
work out, because it is roo difficult,
or unnecessary tO the film a5 a whole,
or boring. I am very easily bored, and
I think that the audience may be too.
You cinephiles do not feel that boredom. If I were to make films for those
who love cinema essentially, r might
be too long drawn out. To my mind,
one should be able to tell a stOry by
cinema more quickly than by any other
means. The tendency in these las.c
twenty years, esp ecially in the last ten
years, bas been to go more and more
slowly, and, for the director, to delight
in what people call visual ideas. For
me, one of the strengths of cinema is its
speed and its concentration. For example, at the end of the film, ther e is
a scene that is not quite the same in
Shakespeare, when Henry V gjves orders
that Falstaff be s.et free, with, at his
back, the two traitOrs, the most relent
less opponents of clemency. In Shakespeare the scene does not happen with
Falstaff, nor are the two men there.
Their attitude is typical; they are poliri9

cal connivers of the palace, the eternal


palace schemers. I do not know whether
the audience notices this detail, which
I thin k important. I do not like verbiage
or lose time; I like what is concentrated
and swift.
I know that I lose a gr eat deal that
way, and th at the audience risks letting
som11 things pass unobserved. 1 hope
that some will see those d etails, and
ochers, d ifferent ones. If everything is
clear, precise, the fi lm ri!ks being very
thin. 1 do not want to criticize certain
contemporary directors whom people
consider very great, but often they film
one effect and only one. You can see
the lilm teo times; you wilL admire exactly the same thing, without discovering anything else.
I think that a film oug,ht to be full of
things, details that one does oot see the
firs.t time. It ought not be entirely
obvious. I do not Jike thin films . . .
QUESTION - Sometimes you shoot
the same scene several times, on several
days, and yer you scarcely look at your
.rushes.
WELLES-Rushes are not important
for me. And 1 do not r eally shoot a new
take in th e sense in which one understands that in America; that is to say a
shot that does not work for primarily
tech nical reasons. ln America one does
ir most of the tim e for that reason;
as for me, I do it because perhaps m y
purel y personal work is not good
enough. If I r emake a scene, that is
because it does nor appear p erfect to m e,
and 1 can do that only when I work in
the same setting. I never come back co
a setting where 1 have finished shooting.
T hat is a luxury that I cannot permit
myself. But when I have the same actors
and 1 realize that something does not
come off, it is ben er to start again. At
Cardona, w e did not do many takes. because I had John Gielgud for only two
weeks. I kn ew when we felt that a
great deal of work remained-which,
moreover , we did Iacer in Madrid. I
knew that I would use stand-ins, because
John Giclgud played a role that lasted
almost as long as mine. Moreover, Falsrnff is the m o~.c difficult role that I have
ever p layed, and l a m still not convinced
that I rendered it wd l. As an actor, I
should like tO redo three scenes at least.
One must be se,ere with oneself, when
one is at the s.ame time actor and director of a film. And as I said, falsraff is
a role char demands an enormous
amount of work, a very difficult role.
QUESTION-When you work, on the
set there is what one can call a kind of
"ord ered disorder," for exa mple when
yo u pass from one scene to another in
the same clay of shooting.
WELLES-There are several reasons
for thar. first, what seems disordered
h as in face sometimes a perfect logic.
For one to explain everything to the
assistant and to th e others would r equire
ten minutes each time-to say why one
must move a floodlight, w hy I do th is or
10

Orson Welles: Falstaff, Beatrice and Orson Welles.

II

that. I do nor do so, and that is why


I seem capricious. Bur there are many
other reasons. Out of doors, for example, the position of the suo determines everything, so that 1 pass suddenly
from one sequence co another, or even
to a sequence char was not planned for
char day, if the light seems suitable co
me. You see, I do not begin co work
saying ro myself "Today we will positively make this or that ~,equence," because if suddenly the sunlig,ht is suit
able for another, and if it is the most
beautiful light in the world, rhe only
way ro make my sequences beautiful roo,
is ro shoot at that exact moment. There
are the two technical reasons for that
"ordered disorder."
On rbe other hand, it happens that
the actors are nor at their best on the
day planned. You feel that they would
be another day, in another atmosphere.
Things are nor coming off. Then you
muse change; chat is co ever yone's advantage. When all the lighting is in
posicion, co change everything in order
to pass to the next scene causes considerable Joss of rime, and you know
that I like to work fast. Therefore I
jump about in the work schedule, and
I sow confusion. In the end I lose less
time; the "disorder" does nor necessarily
mean that I work slowly. I believe on
the contrary that it is desperately necessary to work quickly.
QUESTI ON-What place do you give
to improvisation?
WELLES-In films we are always
beggars, in a way; we stand, hands outstretched, hoping that manna will fall
from heaven. At times one shoots tbinkipg that God will put something into
ope's plate; rometimes He does and then
one seizes it.
Sometimes things are not in perfect
working state and I shoot all rhe same.
I do not think that that makes a great
difference. As you know I am in a certain way a maniac, a "perfectionist," but
in many other aspects, not at all. I always leave some things uoelaborared;
I do not believe chat a .film is to be
made like those pictures in which people
paint the leaves of a tree one by one.
I can work and work still more on an
actor's playing, wair until everything is
perfect. Bur in general I shoot more
quickly and I am satisfied with it. I
work much more crudely than many
directors. It may be that an assistant
is still running about. That is all the
same to me. I go ahead. I believe that
that contr ibutes toward keeping irs livi n'g aspect for the film. The terrible
danger for a .film is co ~ay "Very wellsilence-long pause-" with all those
gesrures, - all that ceremony. I try to
I keep a little of the feel ing of improvisa. tion; of conversation. Ordinarily, I have
music on the set. Not here, because
I had difficulties with the technical
I aspect of the organization, on account of
1
the dimensions of the film and the dif. fieulties of"my own role, of the' costumes,
._ and so on. I had to be much more
12

austere than usual. Bur almost always,


when I am on the set, there is music,
to try to make people forget that they
are in the process of making a .film.
During the shooting I eliminate everything that could slow it. On my films,
the sound engineer does nor have the
right ro ask that a shot be remade.
T he only thing that he is co do, is to
catch the sound. No script girl, however
good she may be, has che r ight to speak.
If, without speaking, she wants to shift
something, all right, but she mus-1 never
speak. Sound, makeup, take an hour
every day. If one does not Jet people
speak, one gains an hour of shooting.
I warn my collaborators at the start that
they are not going to like the film because the> will nor be able to do their
work on it, that I will not lee them do
it. I say to rhero-"Scay, but you know
t hat you are going to be 'second clas.s
citizens' and that nobody wi ll ever ask
you 'Is that all right with you?'"
There is almost no makeup in my
Jil.ms; I do not give it a thing. I use it
only to change the appearance of a face
or someone's age; otherwise, no makeup.
In fact, I believe chat I was the firs.t
director not to use it. There is none in
Citizen Kane, except for the character
that 1 play. That was the first time,
I believe. Perhaps too in The Grapes of
W1ath. I think that makeup is bad for
films. That is what rhe cameramen
think, roo. If you take a referendum
among all the good cameramen in the
world asking them whar they think of
makeup, I promise you that ninety-eight
percent of them will be against it. But
the cameramen do nor want to cake the
responsibiliy of attacking the occupation
of the makeup man. That is why they
do nor go find the director and ask
him: "Why all that makeup?" They Jet
people go on smearing. themselves,
which is pointless.
QUESTION-Did you w ork a long
time on your project before shooting
Falstaff?
WELLES-Yes, I did a stack of research. Besides, I had already worked
on that period earlier. So I know that
period rather well. But when you have
done that research, then . . . The elements of the research are only a preparation. You muse nor make museum
pieces; you must create a new period.
You muse invent your own England,
your own period, starting from what
you have learned. The dr ama itself
fixes rhe universe in which it is going
to unroll.
QUESTION-What importance do
you give to the setting in your films?
WELLES-Very much, obviously. But
a setting ought noc to appear perfectly
and solely real. In other terms, one of
the enemies of the .film is the simple
banal fact. A tree, a rock, you know,
are the same for the roan who takes a
family photograph on Sundays and for
us. So we must be able, thanks to the
photography, to the lighting, and to all
chat can transform the real, to charge it

witlt a ''character," sometimes with a


"glamour," sometimes w ith an aruac
tion, a myscery, that it does not possess.
In this sense, the real must be treated
like a setting. There is, too, an aesthetic
problem that is almost never resolved in
period films. I do not know why 1 say
"almo~.t"; I {)ught to say never in the
history of cinema, with the exception
of some Jilros of Eisenstein. Films that
I do not admire particularly in themselves but which resolved that problem.
The external world, the sky with its
clouds, the trees, and so on, have nothing
to do with the settings; therefore it mat
rers little whether the Jaccer are convinc
ing,
papier-mache
or
magnificent,
whether the actors are in period costume or nor, because then they mount
on horseback, go off coward a place dis
closed to view and suddenly everything
is banal, modern. Suddenly you feel
that at wme moment a jec p lane can
cross the sky. I do nor know why, but
I am always aware of the inautbenticiry
of a period, from the fact that the actors
are in costumes and have a false look,
when they are in a natural setting. But
I believe that that can be resolved, and
I resolved it, I think, in a way in
Othello, and still more here. \Vhat I tr}'
to do is co see with the same eyes rhe
external real world and chat which is
fabricated. To create a kind of unity.
You see an actor correctly wearing a
perfect costume; everyth ing is right; he
goes out and suddenly it becomes a
rented cosruroe. The only films in which
that comes off are westerns and Japanes.e
films, which are like westerns because
they belong to a tradition. A thousand
samurai films are made every year, and
a thousand westerns, but they are founded on a tradition in which costumes and
nature have learned to live in juxtaposition, and one can believe them. Bur see,
on the contrary, in Het~ry V, people
leave the castle on horseback and suddenly they meet again on a golf course
somewhere charging one another; you
cannot escape it, they have entered an
ocher world.
QUESTION- Ten years ago, in Edinburgh you said chat perhaps a happr
marriage between Shakespeare and the
screen was possible . . .
WELLES-When I made that remark.
1 was trying to please my audience.
That was surely demagogy. I had to
give a two-hour lecture to an audience
that had not liked my Macbeth. So one
had to make friends with it and the
first thing that I could do was to admit
chat I agreed with them in pare about
Macbeth, and in a way, that was true.
That is because, besides the period
reconstruction, there is another problem
" 'ith Shakespeare, that of the text, of
course. When he wrote as one did in
the time of Lope de Vega, or rather in
the time of Shakespeare-because English is richer from that point of view
than a Latin language-he did so for
an audience which did not see, but
which was able to hear. Just as the

' ... the real must be treated like a setting.' Orson Welles: FalstafF, Keith Baxte r, John
Gielgud; Baxter, Welles.
13

Falstaff, Orson Welles.


cinema audience today sees everything,
bur hears nothing. Shakespeare wrote
in that sense, and there is in what he
says a close cexrure that one cannot
change. That is what can make him
difficult for che audience of coday . . .
For example, one cannot expect that a
popular audience will appreciate in a
film the King's speech on sleep, unless
one is dealing with an English audience
. . . In English, the cexr posses~.es a
power, a magic able to transfix cwo
thousand G.I.'s in Vietnam. But translated into French or Spanish it can fail
irs effect completely. Nothing can be
done about it.
WELLES--What is fine, in the
character of the prince, is that he is
always Falstaff's friend, but char at every

Falstaff, Jeanne Moreau, Margaret Rutherford.


moment something Jecs one foresee his
disgrace ...
WELLES--That is where the fundamental idea lies, and I have show n it
more clearly than in the theatre. :Many
theatre critics find that the banishment
scene, at rh e end of Henry IV part 2,
is roo much, a little abrupt and improbable. That is merely because the play
is often badly performed. I hope that
in che fi lm people will understand better
what the prince is going to do, that
he muse betray Falscalf . . . I do nor
believe that his speech will affront the
audience. Of cours.e che problem of the
language as a whole rema.i os, bur happil y the film includes only one speech
of chat kind. One cannot cue it merely
on cbe pretext chat it will nor be effec-

Orson Welles: Falstaff, Tony Beckley, Jeanne Moreau, Keith Baxter.


14

rive other than in English. Even if it is


not a high moment of the film, it is
indispensable for understanding what is
happening in the mind of the prince.
Perhaps one should cut it in versions
other chan the English. I do nor chi nk
char the rest of the film poses similar
problems, ac lease I h ope nor. The
Spanish version is very good, the translation and the dubbing are excellent;
I am satisfied with it. To return to the
famous speech, perhaps it would be
mo re effective in German or in Russian
or i n Swedish. Shakespeare translates
badly into the Latin languages, and
when one comes to that speech, what
to do? (Interview taped by Juan Cobos
and Miguel Rubio. With the aurhocizarion of the review Griffith.)

Orson Welles: Falstaff, Jeanne Moreau, Orson Welles.


15

16

Welles

tn

Power

by Serge Daney

1. Of Falstaff, \\7elles said that "He


wages a struggle lost in advance." And,
too, "I don't believe he is seeking
something. H e r ep resents a value;
he is goodness." That strength and
genius- unanimously recognized -celebrate only hopeless causes or majestic
downfalls, that a man like \\7elles, exert
iog an undeniable influence on those
ar ound him, incarnates only the defeated (disappearing, certrunly, at the heart
of an impres-'\ive machinery, but still
worn by life, betrayed by their own)tbat is a very surprisin,g thing. Strange
malediction- that a man coo strong can
only end badly. And yet, from Kane to
Falstaff, from proud display co bareness,
from a corpse that one does nor see to
a coffin that is carried, it is really the
same story, that of a mao who makes
ill use of his power.
Cinema tends to recount bow this or
that character (and behind him, often,
the do easte) bas obtained some power,
that of speaking, or acting, of making
a choice, and so on. Those are perhaps
the noblest films (like Le Heros
sacrilege, Le Caporal epbzgle, or l.e
Coetlr d'mze mere), the strange r oads
on which the d oeastes lead their charaCters, because th e simplest road is not
always the most natural, because there
ace detours more rich than straight Hoes,
defeats more noble tha n v iccories, and
so on. The winning of one's poweraiming at it. meriting it, snatching it is precisely what Welles speaks of least.
It is the witches who shape Macbeth,
ad hi~. intuition that pushes Quinlan
forward. T he films of Welles begin
where the others end; when everything
is won, nothing more remains but to
unlearn everything, unto death, once
Quinlan, today Falstaff.
2. The work of Welles, in that way
fruthful to Shakespeare, is a reflection
on the very idea of Power, that excessive freedom that no one can follow
without seeing in it, in the end, degnldation and derision. Power is an evil that
beings life only co those who do not yet
have ir. Theirs the bold enterprises, the
efficacious and aston ishing actions, the
well contrived plots men of the
future, born to trample on king.s, to
whom it is give n, at least once in their
lives, to rock the world. Kings have

other cares; their vicrory is automatically


without prestige, like a repression, a
useless recall of the past. Defeat is the
only adventure which r emains for them.
Absolute power destroys real power,
condemns it co futility. "If there is a
sense of the real," Musil said, " ther e
muse be also a sense of the possible."
And a little further, ''No doubt God
Himself prefers to speak of His creation
as potentinl." In coo extensive a power,
the possible gnaws away the real, condemos it in advance; one action is never
more necessary than anoth er; good and
evil, interchangeable, are equall y indifferent. He who is master of the possible at twenty, like Citizen Kane, ends
as slave ro his caprices, surrendered
graduall y to a power without object or
echo to an arbitrary and mad activity,
usele~s and expensive, which never involves him completely, but which separates him always more and more from
ochers (like the career of a singer without a voice, or the collections heaped
up in Xanadu). Who can do the most,
does the leasr, or aces at the margin
of his power. Comedy demands then
that from a prodigious expenditure of
power th ere results a rigorously useless
life.
From film to film, to th e extent that
his work proceeds, that W elles ages, the
sense of the derisory grows stronger, ro
the point of becoming the very subjeCt
of the film (Ihe Trial) that Welles
considers his best. Always, everywhere,
power is in bad hands. T hose who
possess it do not know enough about it
(Othello who believes, !ago, Macbeth
victim of a play or words)-or know
much coo much (Arkadin, Quinlan,
Hastier th e lawyer), each committed ro
purely destructive actions by an excess
of naivete, as of intelligence.
3. The life of John Fal~taff is a
commercial failure. Shortly before dying, be observes that his friend-the
feeble but prudent Robert Shallowhas been more successful, and be promises himself co cultivate his friendship.
No doubt only his sudden death, which
no one had foreseen, spares him the
last disillusion. Falstaff was born, not
to r eceive, but co give-without discrimination or hope of return-or, if he
has nothing, to give himself as an corer-

truomeor. \Vel!es calls this waste the


goodness of Falstaff (and rbe latter himself remarks, "Not only do I have wit,
but I give it to ochers." Which is a
good defi nition of genius.) That Falstaff-whom Shakespeare bad ioreoded
mostly ridiculous-has become, imagined, then incarnated, by W elles, a moving character is not very surprising. His
death is not the disappearance--mysterious and legendary-of a Kane, but the
drab naked event in which one must
read, although nothing is underlined ,
the end of a world. "If one amused
oneself a ll th e year," says the young
prince, "amusing oneself would be fore
ed labor." Of what is Falstaff guilty?
Nor ~o mu ch of having ill used his
power, for he has scarcely any, being
a character of comedy, moreover without real courage or authority. Perhaps
of having used without r estraint speech ,
that power of parody, of having made
from it an interrilioable histrionics, useless and tedious, in which talent, if there
is any, asserts icseH for nothing. More
certainly still of having so long survived
so scandalous a waste of his energy (his
puns on ''waste" and " wrust"). And
what is still more serious, victim more
than culprit, if he makes ill use of his
affections roo, when he chooses as his
friend the very person who will betray
him.
4. The work of W elles is singularly
rich in abuses of trust (The Lady from
Shanghai) or in friendships betrayed
(Othello). T he strang.e and scandalous
complicity that for some time links
Falstaff and the young prince makes
more and more evident what it passes
over in silence, the difference in their
natures. Bur ther e would be no fascination between them if each did not precisely feel that they are radically different, symbols of two complementary
and inimical worlds, like face and reverse of the same coin. On one side,
Falstaff who lives on his past, on what
be is already, in the entropy of a
freedom deliberately ruined. On the
other, the future H enry V, who is
nothing still, who will p erhaps be a
gr eat king, if be discovers that exact
relation between the eifort to supply
and the end co attain, the austerity and
the rigor that makes power utilizable.
17

Orson
18

The almost monstrous egocentnclty


of the characters whom Welles, has incarnated in his past Jilms fascinated
only because it was accompanied by a
more or less perceptible proportion of
vu lnerability. Beyond self-assertion, a
few scattered but explicit signs betrayed uneasiness and weakness; a certain irritation in the movement of his
eyebrows, the somedmes extreme tension of his gaze, or some hesJtarion in
the character's behavior, gave him a
pathetic dimension and aroused that
sense of fragility that the most instinctive Strength gives. The .flaw, the sensitive part, once perceived, the fascination was as irresistible as the first repulsion bad been strong.
Of this moral image chat Welles has
bent his mind to r etOuch from film to
film, Falstaff offers us the inverted reflection. Not chat the film witnesses a
change in the proceedings of Welles
or a new orientation of his arc, but
rather because, through the same mode
of iovesdgadon, he makes a kind of
moral discovery. The primitive s.trength
that stirred him has lost its cutting edge;
that is enough to change the components of his portrait, not so much in their
respective natures as in their apportionmeat. In the past, strength by its obtuse pres.ence crushed the underlying
virtues of the character; today devalorized, made ridiculous, by age it lets
appear more clearly what was latent
and scarcely perceptible- vulnerability
and a certain goodness, the ultimate
form chat strength or w eakness assumes,
and which decides the emotional tonality of the Jilm.
From that, to salute in Falstaff the
most accomplished Shakespearean work
of Welles, is nor to envisage it in irs
specific character, in this special position that the film occupies in relation
tO his entire work- a kind of corrigendum, or .rather, of complement, in the
sense in which one says that two colors
are complementary, a marginal film in
which values are reversed as if to make
more explicit the rest of his work by
shedding a new light on it.
For there is a great distance between
chat sombre shot in Othello where the
convulsed face of Welles emerges and
the pure milky whiteness of Falstaff,
between the wilful impetuous, forehead
of Kane or of Arkadin and the full
features and the unreserve tinged
w ith melancholy of Jack Falstaff. In
the exchange Welles has lost his visual
aggressiveness, and if a violent lowangle shot reappears from time to time,
it is rather as a nostalgic recollection
of the past. But he broods with a disquiet like Rembrandt's over his own
face, and it is not inconsequential that
be finds there other acruoements, accents. less brilliant but more human,
which be substitutes for the dazzling
flashes of the past, so that the icy imag,e
of the old Kane, infinitely reflected in
the mirrors of Xaoadu, recedes before
that of a king:s Fool, nearer co life.
19

Orson Welles: Falstaff, Welles, Keith Baxter.


20

Jack le Fataliste
by Jean-Louis Comolli

Words. Like DidHot's Jacques le


fataliste, but with less naivete and insolence than he, Welles' Falstaff appears
ac firSt entirely given to the mania for
speech, actually mad with words, building his dreams on them, mixing life and
dream, trusting enough in th eir powers,
a nd certain enough of their fascinations,
to leave to them the care of repairing
his blunders and his evasions. That is
because this Falstaff, in spite of the
breadth of his waist, and of the space
that he takes up on the screen, is as
much if not more a being of air than
of flesh. His body is heavy but not his
wir, and that body had to be the mou
cumber some, disabled, ponderous possible, in order co counterbalance and sec
off to beSt advantage the agility of th e
wit, the fluidity ana the plasticity of
sp eech.
I n Falstaff th ere are as it were two
orders clearly distinct from each other
and which complete each other, like
cwo Jines that cross each other, oppose
each other, and p ursue each other, rhe
sector of words and the sector of actions.
On one hand the heaviness, the encumbrance, of bodies, with or without
armour, whose awkwardness and slowness of motion, at the same time as their
enormous strength, are emphasized still
more by a choice of short, choppy editing, so that often it seems that Welles
has cur into the image co make the
gestures and rhe movements more jerky,
more clashing, an d by a see-saw ing of
high and low angle shots. The battle
sequence, a lready famous, but just as
well chose of the ambush, of the dance
in th e tavern, or the strolls of FalStaff
and Justice Shallow, witness this concern
ro bring our at the same time rhe coofused haSte and the inertia of bodies,
their r esistance. That is the first space
of the film, r estricted, constraining, firmly anchored at its coniine~, limited.
On the other hand the treacherous
freedom of words. Falstaff owes a ll hi~
power to them, by them he wards off
the fury of the P rin ce, reve rses the
obvious, corrects the true. He is an
obstinate sophist, putting into play, like
Shakespeare's fools, the entire range of
plays on words, witticisms, puns, to get
the better of the other, by laughter or
by weariness. Words a re his weapon~
the snares that he passes his rime setting
around him. Falstaff puts himself on
stage with the minimum of gestures and
the maximum of words.
Thealte. Bur it is within the film that

one must seek tb e th eat.r e, and not in


Shakespeare's theatre that one muse seek
FalstaO. That tavern, wit h its long tables
and its benches, irs common room, the
gallery that runs along the upper floor,
where from time to time some curious
women, scantily dressed, come to lean
over, to dominate the scene, is a kind
of theatre in the round, in which rhe
actors are not far from spectatOrs when
t hey are nor both at once. Other places,
another scene, counterpart of the tavern,
with other actors and other speCtatorsth e throne room, cleverly tiered, lighted
from the side by beams of light that
could be those of spotlights. On the one
hand the tragedy of power, on the
o~er itS comedy.
The parallel between court and hovel
affecrs nor only th e settings and arrangement of the places; the King finds in
Falstaff his doub le and his, reversed
image; Prince H enry has two fathers,
t he noble and th e common, two masters,
one of mire and one of honor. Divided
between both worlds, between these two
tyrantS who are jealous of each other
and hate each other, h e rehearses with
the one what he plays with the other,
all the more proud in the tavern because he is ashamed in the palace. In
which direction docs one's charaCter incline? Where does sincerity bide? Falstaff, the King, the Prince, all three are
equally histrionic, and often with the
same empba~.is, the same hollow maxims,
the same promises and the same abjurations. T he King, th e Fool, and he who
has something of both contrast with one
another Jess than they resemble one another. In this stra nge Trinity, each is
the aetor p laying himself more or Jess
well, and the differences are only those
of technique and of talent. All three
rival one another in pride as in cowardice, and this rivalry leads them to
humiliate themselves through one another and towa rd one another. Everything happens as if Fal ~.taff on rbe one
hand, the King on the other, each faci ng
the prince wh o is an image of th emselves, were ceaselessly bent on exchanging their roks with his, never recognizing th emselves enough in him, and trying to discharge him, so as to supercharge themselves with it, of the noble
side and of the impure side that be
assumes, both equa ll y badly.
Falstaff is not the dance of vice and
virtue chang ing places with each other
that one can believe at first. Falstaff
is. not goodness itself in the midst of

his shame, nor the King purity in the


midst of his hates. Each is the same lie,
the same iiJusion; there is neither redemption nor mercy. This obsession
with humiliation is in every Welles film.
PalstaD is the film of masochism.
Education. The relations between
Falstaff and Henry are those of master
ro pupil. Falstaff is the story of an
ed ucation, but rather in the direction
of Fau st and th e demonic initiation
than t hat of the roman d'appre11tissa1Je.
For here again the roles are transposed.
Guide in debauchery, sovereign at
orgies, Falstaff is nevertheless fu ll of
discretion with his "pupil." Is h e not
rather the accommodating servant, and
is it nor to satisfy the pri nce that be
reaches him to debase himself and himself debases himself? It seems that the
pupil und ertakes the mast er 's game and
defeats him on his ow n g round. H en ry's
ruses, his, machinations - preludes to
other p lots-to sur pr ise Fal staff in the
very act of lying compel him to lend
himself to the role. Here is Falstaff as
object. H e lets himself be led in every
se nse, mindful at the same tim e to be
guilty and to pretend innocence. Double
masoschism, strange satisfaction, to yie ld
to the other while appearing to want
to escape him. This perverse duel between master and slave goes further
sti ll in parody.
To th e nob le sequence of the death
of the King, in which for a moment
H en ry, believing his father dead, has
possessed himself of the cr own and
triumph~, already,
before the King
revives to be humiliated and then to
humiliate, corresponds the farce of the
coronation in the tavern. Pressed by
H enry, Falstaff installs himself on a
grotesque throne and crowns himself
with a 5aucepan. And Henry plays the
humiliated son with a malicious Falstaff.
But very quickly-effeet of psychodrama
-a strange rage seizes the prince, be
drives away Falstaff and takes the royal
crown from hiq1 into his own bands.
It is for him to rake the role of his
father with a r epentant Falstaff. Each
bas what pleases him, and more than
the others, Henry; the son humiliates
the father whether the latter is absent
o r present, whether be speaks to him or
aces a performance of him, as the father
humil iates himself in his son.
Only one person is duped, Falstaff.
But that is precisely where one finds
W elles' imperious obs,tinacy at carr yi ng
his cross.
21

22

Sacher and Masoch


by Jean Narboni

Having dropped down from the sky,


as one said, Arkadin's airplane was
empty. Van Stratten, uninteresting adventurer, established for a moment a
an illusory justiciary, covered with the
colors of scorn by the g lance of Raina,
the daughter, goes off, deceived by the
last stratagem to join the numberless
roster of witnesses. Let us risk the hypothesis that Arkadin is not dead, too
many witnesses seeming still dangerous
for him-among them, to begin with~
the srud Van Stiatten. Under the pretext of an English television ~.cries,
armed with deadly cameras, which, like
a magician, he makes appear from his
coat as weapons, which he leaves scattered about without a cameraman in
the corners of shoes the better to mis,
lead the adversary, he traverses the
whole earth. "Around the World" this
new diabolical enterprise titles itself,
reassuringly. The investigator is enchanted at first with his own lucidity
in managing to find innocuous images
of himself, here, there arid everywhere,
voluntary exiles, ambassadors and heralds, of an independent America, - a
woman and her son in the Basque coun
try, some musicians in Saint-Germrun,
Raymond Duncan ,ue de Seine. Others
marked themselves more disturbingly,
Dominici in mid-affair, old English soldierF, buried alive in a London museum, ~
six decrepit intangible old widows
ready to tell everything. Little by little
in the play of identity and of resemblances, the investigator becomes uneasy; Duncan, with his old Sioux's face,
draped in his celebrated tatters, could
be !ago in a Turkish bath; the F~x
widows recall or prefigure such-andsuch a blind shopkeeper of Touch of
Evil; the old wldiers could dangerously
reveal, ouc does not know, that Arkadin
built his fortune in part by stealing
the identity of a very rich English
officer whom he had struck down from
behind, profiting by the disorder in the
trenches. Moreover are the other tat
ders all dead? The Bernsteins, Lelands,
O 'Haras, who did not bring to its end
a .fine old age, Vargas become in his
turn detective of invented proofs., and
yonder Joseph K. who pretends to understand nothing. Everything becomes a

proof, things, people, everything sends


back to Welles the infinitely reflected
images of himself (it is not the .first
time, but today no more "play" of looking glasses nor necessary mirrors)Rosebud, Quinlan's cave, Sanchez' dynamite, the cafes, of the celebrated Sacher
in Vien na where Franz-Josef had refreshments ju~.t before Sarajevo, the
chocolate
Himalayas
and
bombes
glacees whose dramatic enumeration by
Welles links them with ocher bombs
as disquieting, let us say, as those of
Tbe Trial.
To take upon oneself with impunity
to play the "bigger chao life," is, literally, tO accept taking everything into
oneself, the living and the inanimate,
thing,s, objects, ant~., atoms, machines,
the armour of English knights and the
end of rhe world. Between the "my
name is Orson Welles" of The Magnificent Ambersous and the same sentence in The Trial, there is a world of
distance, "the" world - passage from
the proud assertion of oneself, of one's
identity, to the fear of no longer being
anyone at all, but everyone and no
one. lo the noise of the battle, Falstaff
wanders, Pete Ubtt, in Poland, thus
everyone and nowhere, the mao from
Mars astray on the moors, good fellow
Michelin ready to de-dog himself in
the four winds of combat.
l'ar from crowning the famous "humanism" in a gigantic .fig.ure, Welles
illustrates the non - humani~ro advocated
by the genius of Audiberri, supremely
self-negating attempt to cosmify beings
(the promoters taking upon themselves
to be the first victims).
Borge~, quoting Hazlitr, wrote that
"Shakespeare resembles everyone, except
by the facf of resembling everyone."
Iag.o said "I am not what I am." And
Falstaff-"To banish Falstaff is ro banish the world." Because neither Falstaff
nor Welles exist, because they are the
world, scattered, everywhere present. As
for the man Welles, the paunch, the
genius Orson Welles, be is therefore,
co paraphrase what Audiherri wrote
about Hugo, "only the living place in
which the presence of Orson Welles concentrates, itself most" (an infinitely small
variation benveen the skinny fascinator
Charles Foster and the fat Falstaff).
23

The Serpent's Skin


by IngnUJr Bergman

24

..

..

Artistic creation has always mani


fes.red itself for me like a desire for
food. I observed that need wirh a cer
rain pleasure, bur, all through my con
scious life, I never asked myself why
this hunger had arisen and called for
satisfaction. Now, when in th ese latter
days it rends. to abate and ro transform
iseli into something else, I feel rbe
urgeor necessity ro seek rh e cause of
my "acrisric activity."
I remember having felt, from my
earliest childhood, rhe need ro show
off my talents-a skill at drawing, rhe
science of throwing a ball against a wall,
my first breast strokes.
I remember having madly desir ed to
attract the attention of the grownups
ro rhese manifestations of my presence
in the world. Always I considered that
I had nor awakened others' interest sufficiently. That is why, when reality was
no longer enough, I began to tell imaginary stories, to divecr rho~.e my own
age by rhe prodigious narration of my
secret exploits. They were clumsy lies,
that were dashed to pieces against the
prosaic skeptici~.m of my listeners. Finally, I gave up living in a community
and kept for myself my world of phantasms. The boy possessed by imagination and the desire to establish a contact changed rather quickly into a
wounded, dis.trusrful, and wily daydreamer.
But a daydreamer cannot be an artist
elsewhere chan in his dreams.
The need ro be heard, to communicate, to live in the warmth of a community, persisted. The more the gates
of solitude closed on me, th e more the
need grew.
So it is rather obvious that I bad tO
end by expressing myself cinematographically. This medium gave me the
possibility of making myself understood in a language that surpassed the
words of which I was bereft, the music
that I did nor ma$ter, the painting that
left me indifferent. Suddenly I could
communicate with another with the help
of a language that, literally, ;.peaks from
soul to soul, in expressions that escaped
the control of the intellect almost voluptuously. With all this. hunger repressed
in the course of my youth, I threw myself into the cinema and for twenty
years, without respite and with a kind
of frenzy, I fabricated dreams, sensory
experiences, whims, fits of hysteria,
neuroses, religious spasms, and pure lies.
My hunger renewed itself perperuaily.
Money, fame and success sruck me with
stupefaction, but essentially had no effect on my work. From the preceding,
one ought not to conclude that I underestimate what, by chance, I have accomplished. The fact reassures. me that I
can see the past under a new and less
romantic light. Art as self-satisfaction
lngmar Berg man: Persona, Liv Ull mann.

25

can naturally have its importance, fir& of all for the artist himself.
Today the situation is Jess complex,
Jess captivating, and especially Jess alluring.
Thus, if I want to be totally sincere,
I have the feeling that art (and not
only cinematOgraphic art) is in~jgoili
cant.
Literature, painting, music, cinema
and theatre engender themselves and
are born of themselves. New mutations,
new combinations, are formed and die
out; seen from outside, the activity appears endowed with intense life-grandiose obstinacy that the artists give tO
projecting for themselves and for an
always more distracted audience, the
images of a world that no longer even
cares about their opinion. On some rare
occasions, the anise is punished, an
being comJdered as dangerous and deserving of being sti !led or controlled.
On the whole, nevertheless, art is free,
insolent, irresponsible, and, as I was saying, the movement is intense, almost
feverish; it seem~. to me that it makes
one think of a serpent's skin full of
ants. The serpent itself has been dead
a long time, devoured, devoid of its
venom, but the skin moves swollen with
a vital ardor.
Now, if I observe that I lind myself
one of these ants, I am compelled co
ask myself if there is any .reason for
pursuing my activity. The answer i;;
yes. Although I believe that the theatre
is a dear old cocol/e whose best da ys
are over. Although I li nd, and many
another with me, the western more
stimulating than an Antonioni or a
Bergman. Although the new music gives
one the impre~on of wanting to suffocate oneself in a mathematically rarelied air, although pai nti ng and sculpture
become sterile and weaken, victims of
their own petrifying freedom. Although
litrature has changed iota an enormous
rock of words without profound sig.nilicance or dangerous consequence.
There arc poetS who will never write
verse ro the exrent that they shape
their existence in the man ner of a poem,
actors who wil l never appear on stage,
but interpret their Jives as so many
singular dramas. There are painters
who will never paint, since they close
their eyes, and, in the shelter of their
closed lids imagine the purest maSterpieces. There are cineastes who live their
films and who never will squander their
ta lent to give them materiali ty, reali ty.
The same way, I believe that in our
days people can reject the theatre, since
they live in the womb of a gigantic
drama that never srops breaking out
in local tragedies. They have no need
for music, since at every moment their
ea rdrums arc und er attack by violent
sonorous hurricanes, which reach and go
beyond a tolerable intensity. They have
no need for poetry, since within the

Persona, liv Ullmann, Bibi Andersson,


lngmar Bergman.
26

28

new configuration of the world they


have become animals with determined
functions, subject to metabolic problems,
no doubt interesting, but inexploitable
from a poetic point of view.
Man (I mean myself as well as another) has become free, terribly, dizzily
free. Religion and art are kept alive
only for sentimental reasons, like a
purely conventional politeness tOward
the past, a well meaning solicitude tOwards the alwa)S more nenous citizens
of the civilization of leisure.
I speak without swpping. from a subjective point of view. I hope, indeed
I am p ersuaded, that others are of an
opinion more nuanced and (they say)
more objective. If now I consider the
extent of this desolation and, in spite
of everythi ng, persist in declaring that
I want to pursue the practice of my
art, the reason is very simple. (I exclude
the rnaterial aspects of the problem.)
That reason is called curiosity. An
intolerable cunostty, w ithout limits,
never satisfied, always renewed, that
pushes me forward, that replaces comp letely that hunger for a communion
of the past.
I feel as if, after a long detention,
I suddenly came out of prison and
plunged into this thuriderous, agitated,
shattering life. I am seized with an unbridled curiosity. I note, 1 observe, I
open my eyes, everything is unreal, fantastic, terrifying, or ridiculous. I catch
in its flight a particle of dust, perhaps it
is a film-what importance bas it, in
fact? None, but this particle of dust
interests me, so it is a film. I go about
with this particle captured with my
own hands and occupy myself with it,
gaily or gloomily. I clear myself a way
among the other ants; w e accomplish a
colossal work. The serpent's skin moves.
That, and nothing but that, is my
truth. I compel no one else tO see in it
his truth, and, as consolation for eternity, it is. obviously rather meager. But
as support for an artistic activity for
the few years to come, it is amply sufficienr, at least for me.
To be an artist for one's own pleasure
is not always especially agreeable. But
it presents an extraordinary advantage
-the artist shares his lot with every
living being, who, for his part, lives
equally only for his own pleasure. In
all probability, the whole ends by constituting, a rather extensive fraternity,
which, in this way, exists, thanks to a
purely egotistical contract, on the warm,
filthy earth, under the cold, empty sky.

Opposite page: Bergman: The Naked Night, Harriett Andersson;


Monika, Andersson; A Lesson in
Love, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Eva
Dahlbeck; Smiles of a Summer
Night, Bjornstrand, Dahlbeck. This
page: Illicit Interlude, Maj-Britt
Nilsson, Birger Malmsten; Illicit Interlude, Stig Olin, Nilsson; A Lesson
in Love, Andersson, Bjornstrand.

29

lngmar Bergman: Persona, Bibi Anderson, liv Ullmann.


30

Persona--these are the metamorphoses


of the Double-dizzinesses of the r eflection, disorders of the analogous, mirages.
of the identical, plays of separation and
of connection, bewitchments of similitude, which is the image of which ? Not
only is the theme of the film this quest
of the likeness; a theatre actress (Liv
Ullman) loses-for what mysterious
reasons, by what unexplained block?the taste, or the desire, or the very
possibility of speaking; she becomes
mute, or more exactly, silent, and will
no long.er speak in all the film (except
one word, "nothing"); a nurse (Bibi
Andersson) cares for h er; she will not
stop speaking, wholly giving herself by
her words to this comp laisant confidant,
and soon obsessed by this elusive phantom, prey to a magical po~.~ession,
vampirism by silence, to the point of
losing consciousness of her own being,
little by little, and of believing herselt
the very other, the living, present image
of the other.
And that other, of the terrifying refusal of expression, one sees her, not
"cured," but finding. again her plenitude,
as it were r egaining a part of herself
that had escaped her. A transfusion of
existences, a transmutation of appearances have been effected. One brief
instant even, the screen has given us,
caught in irs passage, the secret of this
mute, perhaps irreversible reversibility:
a .!'.ingle face, but double, half of one,
half of the other, woman.
For not only does this inquiry into
uniqueness and duality constitute the
subject of Persotza, but the film as a
whole, the film in irs parts, obeys these
oscillations between the identical and
the separable, structures itself according
ro these variations, abrupt or fluid from
reunion to bipartition.
At the beginning-the beginning of
the film-and at the end- the end of
the film too--there was, there will be
the same image. The same, but such that
at the end it is the exact r everse of
what it was, at the start; the same, but
reversed, double and returned like the
reflection in a mirror-but this mirror
would be Time. PersotM begins with an
image that is the beginning of all
images- th e black screen, the darkness
that exists before the projection. Very
slowly, very sofdy at first, two gleams
of light appear. Their brilliance increases proportionally as they approach
each other; they are the two carbons of
a film projector, which arrract each
other, as if magnetized, until the jerky
lig.bt. Thus the projection can begin;
but bas it not already begun? One
sees the sprockets that guide the film
strip, that s.rrip itself, that jumps before
running smoothly, and the first images;
but are they not already within the first
images? These carbons, this projector,
this film strip, are they not precisely in
the image of the carbons, of the projector, of the strip and of the very images
that make us see them? Never was the
31

lngmar Bergman: Persona, Bibi Andersson, Gunna r Bjornstrand, liv Ullmann.


screen a more faithful mirror. W e are
in front of it, and what it shows us is
in back of us. It and we-transparent
phantoms.
These fi rst images move p ast very
quickly, as if the speed o f the projection
were no t yet w ell sec-yet they are
really twency-fo ur images p er second
that the other projector (that of the
theatre in which we sit sends to the
scr een, even when one sees a pro jector
turn more quickly; yet it actually req uir es twenty-four images p er second
for one to be able to see the progression
of these images projected cowards us as
if from th e other side of the screen,
a rhythm still jerky, which soon stretches
fiasbes of conscience and of dream, in
32

to merge with the flexible rh ythm of


the real projector. A projector has
brought forth another projector, its
double, then has absorbed it, h as ta ken
it back into itself. During this sh ort
period of split identity this second projector has given rise to a few images
(scenes of slapstick, male sex organ
erect, female sex organ) -images themselves in the images, which, ver y qu ickly,
the projection continuing, have become
the very images of the film. The film
begins real~')!, the time of th e projection
and the time projected merge, in phase.
The double has rejoined the matrix. But
doubt has been cast-is the projector
still within the projector, has the screen
not remained transparent (a boy will

p ass his hand in front of this screen,


as if co assure himself of its realicy-a
pane of glass on the ocher side of w hich
we sit as spectators): Doubt, all the more
because midway through the film, the
film strip r eappears on the screen, again
takes possessi on o f the images, breaks,
bu.rns. And the lilm StartS again, but
this second part reverses the r elationships, deStroys the hypotheses that the
first part had allowed to be established .
There wer e two women whom everything separated at first and who drew
nearer to each other. Ther e will only be
one henceforth, under two faces, m or e
and more distinct.
As for the last images of Pers01uz,
they duplicate the start of the fi lm w hile

reversing it, break once more the


identity between the time projected and
the time of projt:ction; th e images jump,
the sprockets, the film strip, the gear
mechanism, the projector take possession
of the screen again, the splitting into
identical halves cakes place again; there
is a film strip through which light
passes to project on a screen the image
of a strip through which light no longer
passes; there is a light born of the merging of rwo carbons whkh da rts to the
screen to show the image of the carbons
drawing apart from each other and losing their brilliance. It was cinema r eflecting irself; the most beautiful of
Bergman's films is ended.

lngmar Bergman: Persona, Liv Ullmann.


33

Belle de Jour
One of the most eagerly awaited films of the year,
luis Bunuel's Belle de Jour stars Catherine Deneuve
(seen above, left, and be low), Genevieve Page a nd
Michel Piccoli (opposite page), and Pierre Clementi
(below), as well as Jean Sorel, Macha Meril, and
Francisco Rabel. Bunuel appears in several of the
production shots on these pages.

'

35

Meeting with Alain Jessua


by Michel Delahaye

36

CAHIERS-A few years ago, you


spoke of cinema a lirrle clisenchantedly .. .
ALAIN JESSUA-I've changed a great
deal. In any case, I spoke in bad faith.
With me it was, a form of provocation.
Equaliy a form of defense ...
CAHIERS- Due perhaps co your
work as an assistant?
JESSUA-Due to char, yes, certainly.
CAHIERS-From anothe.r point of
view, that kind of work is not a bad
thing ...
JESSUA- It is a good thing. I believe that it is indisp ensable, by as-sistantship, or any other form of apprenticeship, to acquire a technical knowledge
of the profession. In that sense, I owe
it a great deal. Having said that, I believe that a year or a year-and-a-half
of assis,caocship is quite sufficient. It w as
especially with Ophuls chat I learned a
great deal, following Madam e D , on
which I was an apprentice, down to the
editing, the dubbing, and the sound
mixing. That was the most enriching
period for me, for I saw there a man
who no doubt Jo:ved technique, but who
was particularly bless.ed with an extraordinary enthusiasm. I learned much.
coo, with cwenty-six-minuce Flash Gordon-shorts that we filmed in three
months, for American television, in Marseilles scuclios. That was the ultimate in
technical playing. The American m ethod
of the permanent setting Jed us tO
group several films in the same setting,
and it happened that w e would h ave to
shoot three differ ent iilms by the angle.
Once we were aimed at the angle in
question, it was not we who moved, but
the actors who chang.ed costume. That
was really acrobatical. Something that.
for m e, was a little related to crossword puzzles .. .
But the trouble with chis work-in
which I was engaged uninterruptedly
from age nineteen to twenty-four-is
that you no longer have a p ersonal life,
you can no longer reflect. It breaks you
completely. You are no longer able to
invent anything. And today still, I must
make an effort to forget. To forget
certain reflexes that were created as a
result of a certain "profess.ionalism." For
this so-called "professionalism," one
must indeed say it, is nothing.
First, people have realized-the g.reat
cineasces have caught us-that in cinema
there are no rules. For if there wereit is almost a truism- then there would
be nothing more than to apply them,
and that would be marvelous! No, there
are none. People have talked about cinematographic grammar. That's for the
birds. At the time when I started, p eople
were still in the stage of entrances and
exits of field. Now that has long since
been forgotten. All that one can say, i f
absolutely necessary, is that when cwo.

Alain Jessua during the shooting of


leu de massacre.
37

Jessua: La Vie a l'envers, Anna Gaylor, Charles Denner.


38

characters look at each other, they ought


not co look in the same direction. And
still one is not certain . . . However, it
seems to me that a certain minimum of
assistantship is indispensable for the future cincaste. Or then that he follow
shooting sessions if he's lucky enough
to be able to. Thus I would like very
much, later on, to direct in the theatre.
Well, for a year I will find a way to
follow the work of theatre directors as
an u npaid assistant . ..
CAHIERS-In the time that you were
an assistant, did you already think about
becoming a director?
JESSUA- That happened, but not
immediately. At the start, the mere fact
of going to the srudio had something
magical about it for me. When I was a
very young apprentice on Mad<tme D
(that was still the time when p eople
tried to dishearten those who wanted to
work in cinema-somewhat like Army
mechods, and I do not s~y that that was
a bad thing, there was a scene to be
shot with a carriage, with horses-who
left dung. And I had the job of cleaning up the dung. Moreover, I was delighted. Delighted, because ev< rything
that was part of making. a film was
equally magical, and a srudio was-yes,
actually-a dream factory. And then one
day, at the time of Lola i\Io11tes, I realized that I was going to the studio
exactly as I would have gone to the
office. "And there," I said to myself,
"something is not working any more.
It is no longer possible . . ." Then I
had a very serious automobile accident,
during the shooting of La i\leilleure
Part.
That was the complete break. From
then on I thought only of directing
something, in order to get myself out of
the impasse. It was a short. And the
surprising thing is that suddenly I found
myself in back of a camera to realize-yet God knows if that film was simple,
almost naive-that I knew nothing at
all; my four years of work w ere us~
l ess to me. Only one thing stayed with
me-the lesson of exactingness that I
had learned from certain directors like
Becker and Ophuls. So I was exacting
about the shooting, the actors' playingabout everything, what have you! but
all the same I was completely lost.
Now that is a little what I feel today
when I am preparip.g my second filmand it is at once a rich and a debilitating
experience to write alone. A s for the
third . . . there I cbang.e. And that is
hard. But I believe that cinema, like
every arc, must move. One must always
tty something different. Pass through
different experiences. There are no methods. And improvisation itself, if one
made a method of it, would end in
sclerosis.
CAHIERS - But how did matters
stand at the time of your first film?
That one was, I believe, scarcely prem ediated.
JESSUA- Scarcely, indeed. At the

39

start there was, a book of Simenon's,


L'Entarrement de Monsieur Bouvais, the
rights ro which 1 bought with the profits
from my short. One of th e most unusual of Simenon's novels. It is the ~.tory
of a man I?orn of a family of rich spinning-mill owners who r ebels, leaves for
Paris, and joins in the anarchist movement at the beginning of the century.
From one exp erience to another, be
tries to realize himself, and his life
becomes a constant flight, through the
p ersonalities, the successive identities,
that he adopts until the end. And it is
exactl y with the end that the novel
starts-a police inquiry in connection
with a man Jiving on a small private
income, a certain Monsieur Eouvais,
about whom nobody seems to know anything. I was, very attached to this subject, bur I could never bring it tO the
screen. An abortive project, I believe,
must anyway give rise to another that
will express it differently. Thea I re
alized that my scenario based on it was
only a pale pirating of Monsieur Bouvais. Happily I did nor leave it at that,
and when at last it was possible for me
to remain a year withour working-for
meanwhile I had gone back to work as
an assistant- ! wrote something that
was, La Vie n l'e~wers (Life 11/JSide
doum).
H ow did that come to me? I have
always had a passion for adventure
films. But today, adventure is dead. The
only adventure that was left for me to
show was interior adventure. Thereby I
m er again the theme of Monsieur Bouvais, for he was a gentleman who cried
to break the rhythm of everyday life,
and who came to interior adventure, the
only way our for him. But I bad many
temptations-could not my character
have orher adventures? Meet other women? Leave?-But if ir came to leaving,
why nor for Kamtchatka? N o, that did
not work. It did not go with the logic
of the character, I had to lock myself
in, with him, in the subject.
CAHIERS-Did you draw ideas from
certain external circumstances?
JESSUA - There is something in
which I believe very strongly-the ideas
that are in the air and by which one
cannot help but be influenced. Cerrain
themes, certain modes of expression.And that is a good thing. One must not
refuse them. And one must not abandon
oneself to this current either, but to
rebel against it would lead to nothing.
Let us take Picasso, for example. H e
has assumed every fashion. Through realism, collagi!S, negro art, cubism, and
so on, he has r e.flected all the currents
of expression of his time. He r ecr eated
them, of course, but be had first accepted
them. I believe that we are a ll more or
less in that State. At the same time, one
mus.t isolate oneself a little. Thus, I
think that one ought not go too much
to the cinema, if one wants to do
something really personal. One undergoes quite enough in.fluences already,

Alain Jessua: Jeu de Massacre, Claudine Auger, Jean-Pierre Cassel.


40

41

Allain Jessua: Jou de massacre, Claudine Auger.


42

with the press, books, radio, televi


sion, to have no need to receive the
cinematographic current besides.
CAI:IIERS-But the person who is
easily influenced will be influenced anyway, and the person who is not, can
perfectly well go four rimes a day to
the cinema ...
JESSUA-I disagree. Who is the
youngster who, making verre, after having read Lc Cid, will not pirate Lc CidP
CAHIERS-There is the child who
will pirate Le Cid, and the child to
whom Le Citl will open other horizons... That is a matter of each person's
freedom. There is one who, seeing
Wc!Jc~, will say I want co make a film
like W elles, and another who will say
1 want to make films ...
JESSUA-Perhaps we are both right.
But if I tend just now to speak as I
do, that is perhaps because, when one
is writing a scenario, one does not so
much want tO go to the cinema. If you
are working on a certain theme, a certain problem, and you happen upon
exactly the same thing, lilmed by another person, there is a risk char the
coincidence will paralyze you. And chat
is rather what I wanted to say a little
while ago-at the moment when one is
struggling with one's material, the in
fiueoce of cinema can be harmful. But
I do not make char a general rule. And
I do like to go to the cinema- for the
pleasure of going to the cinema. A little
like an ordinary spectator.
CAHIERS-T o go as a spectatorthat should be the ideal of the critic.
JESSUA-Yes, for the critic who goes
to the lilms to do his chore- that should
in fact be the ideal- to find again that
kind of purity of vi~jon, of naivete, of
the ordinary spectator.
CAHIERS-What do you like in cinema at prese nt?
JESSUA-For me, cinema is Chaplin. He symbolizes the very function o f
cinema. A function artistic and popular
at the same time. And that is the dramatic question at present- how can one
please everyo ne while going to the
depth of oneself? Bur I am going to
finish my answer- ! like Bresson's films
enormously, I like Jerry' Lewis very
much, Bergman very much, I like very
much certain films of Godard's, I like
8!12 enormously.
CAHIERS-It is a film that directors
like . . .
J ESSUA- To my mind it is a very
great film. And ]tlliet of the Spirits is
an important film. Wby?- Oh Lord, I
do not think about cinema ro deeply.
What am I looking for in it?- At the
time when I went almost to the point
of saying that cinema was not an art,
I wanted mostly to say something clever.
Tt is obvious that it is an art. But perhaps I will make myself understood if
I say that what I do not believe in is
the entity "the Cinema." And if your \n
terview with Eric Rohmer interested

43

Alain Jessua directing La Vie a l'envers, Charles Denner.


44

me oo much, that is because I found in


it certain things exactly...
Perhaps I do not have a logically constructed vision of cinema; it is an art
that relates to so many disciplines and
different techniques.-But if 1 have my
back to the wall, no doubt 1 will come
to say that what I am looking for in
cinema is creators who have their own
vis.ioo of the world. Thar is the imporranr thing. So rhere is that vision of
the world, conveyed in cinema- in a
certain cinema, but there is oo "the
Cinema." Minnelli for example--! will
go to see his films if they enrerraio m e
- let us say for the srory, for the charm,
and I will like that, because I am a
good spectator, but I will not go to it
for the technique (I do not think about
it a single moment, from the time that
the film interests me), and especially
not, absolutely not, for the vision of the
world, for I wonder reall y where it
could be. No doubt one could find it,
by splitting hairs, one can find everything, and prove everything, but that
becomes a kind of esthetic game that
scarcely excites me. In short, with the
cioeastes whom I have named, there is
a vision of the world. There is one with
J erry Lewis. As there is one with all the
great comics. It may seem strange to say
so when one bas mad e La Y.ie ti l'envers,
but what exci tes me is the comic cinema.
Now all the great comic films (with
very few exceptions.), the films of Chap
lin, Keaton, Lewis are actor's films. And
the mao who can act his own films represents to me the tOtal ciocaste. At the
time when Jerry lewis. was ao ioterp reter only, no doubt he was nor a total
cioeaste, but be was already auteur of
the film. For a film of T ash lin's with
Lewis was already a film of l ewis', and
it was from him, not from the director,
that the vision of the world came. The
drama of the director who wants to
make a comic film? One day h e co mes
upon a character who excites him, but
that character swallows him up... What
I would want would be some day to
succeed in making a co mic film, while
doing without this. intensive presence
of the actor.
CAHIERS-You alluded above to the
interview with Rohmer. I n wh at way
did that interest you?
JESSUA-1 must take up again a little
of what I said a short tim e ago. 'tV'by
have I come to the co mic cinema start
ing from this idea of the vision of the
world? That is, because people like Fellini, Bresson, Bergman, Godard, and
eve n \Velles, if they had not had the
cinema to express rbemselve~ would
have expressed themselves in any case,
I am certain of tbar. While rhe Chap
lins., the Keawns, the Lioders, the Lewises are the only ones who could exp ress
themselves only by cinema. T hey make
total cinema. Now what I make, what
rhe oth ers make, is not that. So there
is, no way w get out of that (and here
I rejoin Rohmer, for I think that he is

entirely right) -it is very attractive


when one directs a film to take cinema
as one's object, but it is a mistake.
For when a cineaste expresses himself what be expresses is a vision of
the ' world. So what matters is not a
question of form; it is one's vision of
the world, and that is what one must
clarify in proportion as one grows older.
And to clarify it, means to go to the
depths of oneself, in r elation to that
expression of th e world that matters to
you. One thing that affronts me is the
passion for cinema as a form of expression, as one sees it in certain films.
The result is a diminution, a thinning,
of the expression even of the chosen
theme. So you can see in what sense
the interview with Rohmer interested
me.
CAHIERS-Your second fi lm must in
deed have some relation to the first, be
it only on mythnn1ania.
JESSUA-1 do not want to brood too
much over the relationships. Starting
from the moment when one starts studying one's navel, all is lost. In my firs.r
version of the film, I wanted moreover
tO go tO the amipodes of La Vie a
l'e,wers. But that was another mistake,
for in the final accounting, I had come
to oomethiog rhat no longer concerned
me. T o sum up, one must not ask oneself questions of this kind at all. One
must only as.k oneself questions that are
connected with the subject that one has
in hand, and that one must treat in the
way that one feels best. That said, yes,
no doubt there are relationships. let
us say the theme of esca pe. That is to
say-how to succeed in accepting one's
life as it is-or in rejecting it-and bow
to express oneself. And it is very possible that whatever I do later on, even
if I adapt a novel, the theme about
which I film will be that of escape.
The story of ] ett rle massacre is a
kind of swindle by dreams. One man
makes another dream, and he profits by
it. The difference from La Vie a l'e,wers
is that I wanted especially to tell a
story. Not a suspense sto ry but almost,
not romantic but almost.
And in this stor y, I used the present
day problem of intoxication by audiovisual means, all the kind of mythology
in which one is immersed at presentJames Bond, the comic strip, advertising.
It is partly that hold on people that
symbolizes my swindle, for there is already swindling in this way of working
on opinion.
CAHIERS- Have you thought about
your third film?
JESSUA-No. There are, of course,
films that one dreams of making, But
these are films that one ca n not make
until much later. Cinema is the present
day, t oo, it is the themes that asse rt
themselves as the days pass, and that
come to one from outside or from
within. In the end, one must live one's
life through the cinema. So I cannot
say that after this film I will make pre-

cisely such-and-such a thing. At the same


time I know exactly the film of which
I d;eam but no doubt I am &ill too
young t~ make it. I will have to wait
four or five year s. It is a film on ana.r
cbists,
CAHIERS--On anarchists, as members
of an anarchist society, or on the anarchist spirit?
JESSUA-On the anarchist spirit,
which is in a way the spirit of escape,
tOO.
CAHIERS-That makes one think of
the banning to minors of Pierrot le fou.
Moral anarchism, or something of the
sort. That was the r eason. . . The other
g,.reat anarchist, Celioe.
JESSUA-Ye~ absolutely. But in our
da ys what are most anarchists? Where
are ' they? Gangsters? They do their
grind or not. If they do, they are job
holders. Artists? No doubt they are concerned with preserving their freedom,
in th e end just what is necessary, but
they are-we are- bourgeois. That is
why the film on anarchists, for me,
passes through the reconstruction of a
p eriod.
CAHI ERS-Tbeo the film will treat
anarchism before the first world war...
JESSUA- Yes. And that was the goldeo age of anarchism. And that anarchism
went very far. Down ro the Spanish
Civil War, the last great expression,
th e last great anarchist achievement.
Moreover that would be another way
to treat anarchism; it would be enough
to explore completely one episode, even
very slig.ht, of the Spanish war. Only
then, one would get oneself abused by
all th e press.
CAHIERS-Yes; the conformity of
the Left has given rise to a new race
of orthodox thinkers]ESSUA-Aod there is the conformity
of the rig ht. And of the center-with
l ecanuet.
CAHIERS-Yet the conformity of the
right is dead. And that of the cente r
actually presents, itself as conformity.
That is not dangerous. It is even honest.
JESSUA-What is terrible, is to think
that rh e worst enemies of the anarchistS, during the Spanish war, w ere
the communistS.
CAHlERS-George Orwell, who belonged ro t he POUM, saw a great many
things in that connection. Afterwards,
he was tO write 1984..
JESSUA-That was frightful; th ey g,o t
themselves liquidated, ripped open,
notably at Barcelona. The anarchists had
suppressed the employers and enterprises
managed themselves. The communists
went tO the point of r einstalling the
employers. Anything was better than rhe
aoarchis.rs. They got themselves treated
as idealists, as utopians.- Yet they had
at least the wisdom of having an em
pirical point of view on politics. They
said, one will indeed see what that will
lead to-(Conversation raped by
Michel Delahaye)

45

46

After rendering homage to ]oris Ivens


and Alberto Cavalcaoti, th e Festival of
Leipzig (R.D.A. ) honored the great
American documentary film make r, Robert Flaherty, w ho died in 1952. Frances
Flaherty, his widow and for thirty years
his dose collaborator, p rerenced for the
first tim e in Eu rope, the Studies for
Louisia1ta Story. She p resented chis fasci na ting film at the Cinematheque.
I first saw t he documentary film,
Lou isiaua Story, which has become a
great classic, in 1949 ac the Festival of
Knokke le Zoute. I had che ho nor
there of meeting for the fuse rime Robere Flaherty- a man of genius. I do not
li ke to put d own lists of honored fi lms
and fi lm makers, bur if a list of the
greatest directors of the w orld was asked
of me, I would certainly pur down
Flahert) alongside of Eisenstein, Vigo,
Grifiitb, Dovjcnko, Vercov, Murnau and
Chaplin- If I may cite a living genius
along with deceased ones.
I was so imp ressed upon meeting a
creator of his va lue that I forgot a ll my
Eng,lisb and d id not dare interview
him. At br eakfast one day ac the Festiva l, I was placed ne-ar him, an d I found
just che few words necessary to tell him:
"It's wond erful co be a film histor ia n.
Because film arc has nor existed for
more than fift)-five years, I have cbe
opportunity co meet you. If I were a
plain hist orian, I should never have met
with King Arthur, Confucius, or Abra
ham Lincoln."
Sho rtly after our meeting I puc down
some noces. I scribbled a half page while
on a cra in that cook me co Paris, crossing the beautiful Flemish landscapes
from which Bru eghel and Rubens had
co me. By chan ce, I found this old scrap
of paper upon w hich I bad written:
" Roberr F laherty, over sixty years of
age, has a very pink face. He is a bit
bald and bas long hair on t he back
of his neck w hich is ver y w hite. He is
a strong-looking man. His ph ysique resembles that of Louis Lumiere. His la rge
face radia te~. good ness and roughness.
His eyes are ve r) blue, small, and reveal
generosit) and goodness. His exp ression
is one of exceptional keenness. There
is something about him that makes me
thi nk of Benjamin Franklin. In a ny case,
he st rikes me li ke a seve nreenth-C( ncur y
man.
" He has an ardent taste for good
wine, good food, and the beautiful
women who wa lk throug h the rooms
of the Le Reserve A lbert Plagc. (This
hote l built in the style of the sets of
Carnival it~ Flaude,s, is const ructed on
the outskirts of the town.) He smokes
a great deal; he is gauche like Charles
Chaplin. He seems to be in perfect
hea lth. In t he fullest meaning of che
ancient and p resent-day expression, he
crubodies, 'the honest mao.' He breathes
g,ood will and genero~.iry."
My nores stop there. I did not cake

Robert Flaherty: Lovisiana Story.


47

any more from our other m eetings. H e


died in the United States on July 11,
1951. There our enco unter ended until
chis winter when in Paris, I was able to
meet his thought and work again by way
of Frances Flaherty.
She seems to have pam:d seventy and
is full of r ema rkable vitality. A fter her
long life, her face an d characteristics
resemble those of her husband. H er expression also is dominated by kindness,
friendliness, energy, love for men; she
also bas a critical spirit. Before th e
screening of th e study films began, sh e
cold me, "This film is the result of
miracles. The first one rook place immediately after the war when a large
petroleum company agreed to finance
Louisiana Story and invited Bob Flaherty co di.r ect it in Louisiana and cake
all the tim e he wished to make the
film. He was engaged under generous.
working conditions, so that he was able
to shoot much more film chao be had
co use for the completed film.
"These rushes or out-cakes were saved
at the farm which he had bought where
he spent the last yea rs of his life. I
did n't know what to do with these
rushes until an American editor, Nick
Cominos, born in Greece, asked me to
get in touch with him. I did and he
came tO the farm in Vermont where he
assembld all of the footage. He was
guided by the editing plan which had
been saved and u!ed by Bob Flaherty
for the finished film. Nick Cominos arranged all the shots according to the
order the acceptable ones had been
placed in the film. When be finished
this job he had puc together footag.e
which ran for fifteen hours. This means
that my husband bad shor fifteen more
times film than was used in the finished

lilm.

" But to make these studies known, it


was necessar) to make prints. We bad
no money to pay a laboratory to do this.
Then a second miracle took place.
George Amberg, a professor at the University of Minnesota, saw the film. H is;
enthusiasm for it resulted in his locating the necessary money to make 35
and 16mm prints. This was achieved
b) the generos.it)' of his university and
the Hill Foundation which was created
by th e heirs of a millionaire.
"The cameraman for Louisim1a St ory
was Richard Leacock, who is kn own for
his fine television films. But a large por
tion of th e shooting was done by Bob
Flaherty, himself. He was always at the
side of Leacock selecting the subjects
and compositions, during the shooting,
unless be was doing the shooting himself. By way of these study films, one
can now see, shoe after shot, as the
direcror saw in approaching his, subject
matter-how he chose details and why
he disrega rded such and such takes.
You will see what be saw for the first
time and what finally resulted."
" But his Ian film occupies a special
place in his total work. It is different
from Nanook, Motma, and Mll1t of Artm.
Before undertaking the directing of the
film, my husband investigated a number
of places in Louisiana. Later b e made
a synthesis of locales." They helped him
to sha pe tl1e sron. Story is the essence
of the film title. H e made a story about
Louisiana. H is story r elates what he bad
seen in his in vestigation of possible locations for the film.
"When he made Nanook, Robert Flab
erty was still an explorer, and this first
early experience of his enabled him tO
understand that what was of most importance was to discover men and their
circumstances. To discover is the essence
of Zen; if one unders.cands the essential

thing, chen one can discover the general


feelings of things.
" Once Eisenst ein said that editing was
a similar act to that of haiku-J apanese
poems made up by a number of set
and limited syllables. Well, you will
soon be loo king at the Studies for LouisiatJa Story, and you will find the exact
spirit and images of three famous
haiku.s."
Mrs. Flaherty told me these three
poems in English , and I noted them,
bur my notes arc now so incomprehensible, that I am not capable of transcrib
ing them correctly. I know only that
it is a matter of ripples, wind on water,
a breeze show n by the movement of the
pine trees, the concentric waves chat
form around the tracks of th e heron in
his course through the marsh.
I find in my notebook a phrase by
way of which Frances Flaherty summarizes her essential purpose in these
studies and the arc of the great, deceased director: " Poetry is discovery.
Robert Flaherty was first an explorer.
He spent his life as a cineaste discovering men and their environments. And
that is wby these films are borrowers of
poetry."
The essential ideas of these statements
I have translated rather loosely in order
to explain this film that absorbed our
attention so passionately for three hours.
The first part of the Studies is particularly fascinating. It corresponds to seven
or eight blocks of footage which is
end ed by the fina l sequence of the film,
running perhaps only a total of four
or five minutes. The theme is. very simple. In the strange swamps, among the
water lilies and the rowering forests
covered with lichens and tropical creepers, tbe fish, birds, crocodile and linal1y
a lirtle boy appears in a Bat boat.
For each of these images used, Flab-

Opposite and this page, Robert Flaherty: Louisiana Story.


49

en) tilmed perhaps twenty versions.


They are all so beautiful, one wonders
why some were eliminated. Simple in
their perfectio_n, they show reflections on
water, and a g iant water lily p etal on
which glean transparent drops of water.
It is in chis acute vif;on of nature,
this means of penetrating the esf.cnce cf
an environment truough smalJ derails
and in turn of the universe, that I find
the spirit of Japanese art, s.uch as I have
experienced in the springtime. The similaritJ prompted me to ask Frances FlabertJ, "Did this great cineaste know
Japan well?" "No, he n eve r put his
foot on Japanese wil." This does not
prevent the Jirsc part of his film from
being an uninterrupted flow of haiku.
Another asp ect of the film, too short
to satisfy, fascinates in another way. One
sees Flaherty direct a little boy or the
workers like nonprofessional actors.
Flaherty rigorously makes the boy repeat a gesture, an expression, or a bit
of action ten times until be bas obtained
perfection from him.
One should be able tO see the sixt een
hours of the film that follow, a~. we
have already seen at Cinematheque the
seven or eight hours, following the same
principle, of Eisenstein's studies for his
Mexican Jilm which was put together
by Jar Leyda. He, . roo, a~.sembled all
the shots according to the episodes
which were begun and begun ag,a io as
man y as cwenty times.
Literary specialists scruumze with
good reaso n manuscripts and proofs of
Balzac or Proust by wa y of which the
corrections and erasures made r eveal
the creative proces-s. By using x-ray
methods, you can get down to th e successive layers of paint, and th ereby,
penetrate under the surface tO see the
stages through which a painting evolved
-from the very fir& sketches don e on
the canvas.
Acquaiorance with the rushes is the
way w e can deepen our understanding
of the work of the great cineaste. I
ha>e written that the work of Jay
Leyda enables us to penetrate the mind
of Eisenstein in the way that Tb e Mystery of Picasso by Clou:wt enables u s
to see how that g reat painter worked.
These observations apply to Studies /or
Louisitnut Story which is a son of Flaherty my&ery. The film enables us to
see the swamps, forest, men, and their
environment with the kee n p erception
of his blue eyes. Justifiably, Robert FlahertJ is called, "rhe father of the documentary film."
The Studies for Loui.fitlllfl Story are ro
fascinating. so overwhelming, and so
passionate that I would ask rhat the
director of the Cinemath eque and Frances
Flaherty make the film available, at
least th e first parr, for distribution. If
the Studies are shown in ninety-minute
b locks, I am persuaded that there is. a
large public that will support it, and it
will make ao exceptional success.
Translated by Robert Steele
50

51

52

Cahiers Critiques
1. ROBERT BRESSON: Balthazar, Anne Wiazemsky.

2. JERRY lEWIS: Three on a Couch, Jerry Lewis.

3. GillES GROULX: Cat in the Sack, Claude Godbout, Groulx directing.

53

My God, Wilt
Thou Forsake Me? )
Au Hasttrd Bttlthazttr French film
of Robecr Bress.on. Scenttrio: Robert
Bresson. Photography: Chislain Cloquet.
1\lusic: Franz Schubert, Jean Wiener.
Decors: Pierre Charbonnier. Editor: R ay
mood Lamy. Sound: Antoine Archim
baud, Jacques Carr ere. Assisttmts: J acques Kebadian, Sven Frostenson. Cast:
Anne Wiazemsky (Made), Fran~ois La
farge (Gerard), Philippe Asselin (the
schoolmaster), Natalie ) o)aut (Marie's
mother), Walter Green (Jacques), J.C.
Guilbert (Arnold), Fran~is Sullerot
(the baker), M.C. Fremont (the baker's
wife), Pierre Kloss.owsky (the grain
merchant), Jean Remigoard (the notary),
Jacques Sorbets (the captain of the
gendarmes) Tord Paag (Louis), Jean-Joel
Barbier (the dean), Remy Brozeck (Mar
eel), Mylene Weyergans (the nurse),
Guy Brejac (the veterinary), Sven ProstenseD and Roger Fjellstrom (the young
hoodlums.) Producer: Mag. Bodard. Produciu.g Convpat1'ies: Argos-Films, Pare
Film, Athos Films (Paris)-SvenskFilm
indusrri, Jnstitut Suedois du film (Stock
holm), 1965. Distributor: Athos Films.
Length: 1 hr. 30 min.
This is not " Prayer to go to Paradise
with the donkeys." But who has been
ab le really to take Bresson for a Francis
Jammes? Since Diary of <l Cotmtry
Priest, the work of Robert Bresson has
sown doubt ro harvest faith, for not
to dare to doubt is that not to
believe not enough? That doubt soon
because becomes strength and not weak
ness, but the harvest is evaded;
thank heaven, Bresson will never take
up the sickle of a definitive message;
there are too many tares in Bresson's
field, and God himself cannot be certain
of recognizing His ow11 there, nor of
considering the ttuteur of Pickpocket as
one of them. Bresson's writing, formally
singular, is more than ever in Au hasard
Baltbazttr chat of a plural work, writing
that opens a poem's truth, a poem, one
must say, without "ineffable poetry,"
without effusion, a geometer's poem, a
paraboJa.and-parable poem. If one asks
que.s tions of this film- some seaso11s in
Bresson's bell-the answer is the very
one that Arthur Rimbaud gave in con
nectioD with his own Sais011 en enfer"I t says what it says, literally and in
every s.ense."
Si11ce Comttry Priest, Robert Bresso11
strikes a lways at the same point, under
the same angle of vision. But it is not a
matter of a point of departure style; that
is conquered, and, vulnerable and fragile
like every conquest, always put again
in quest, as it is in this film, in wh!ch
there is no appearance that is not
refused.
54

Everything began with the Diary. Before that there were strangers, Cocceau,
Pcce Bruckberger, and in th e mise etz
scene, the old theatre foe Les Dames
tltt Bois de Bo11logne, the old ci11ema
for Les A nges d, peche. With the Diary
Bresson begins, and it is by virtue of
high treason, in making of the Bernanos
novel an itinerary of dereliction. If God
is dead, it is in the universe of Bresson
and not in that of Bergman, and indeed
it appears that that death does not move
him. But as be refuses emodo11 in his
aesthetics, it cao11ot be otherwise in his
ethics. So I conu:adict myself, that is ro
say that the work pmhes me to contra
diction, or to conceal again its own con
tradictions. Enough has never been said
of the importance of the repeated presence of the dittry in the Country Priest,
of irs materiality, or that of the lines
written by the young priest in his
~~hoolboy's notebook, which a novel
could not make one feel. I t is to this
diary that the young man gives him
self, too, so to himself, and it is him
self that be seeks, his own fulfillment,
i11 his maladroit aposrolate. The film is
neither mystical nor Christian according
to the norms. Never did one really feel
in it, as sometimes "r:t RosselliDi, an
impulse, a11 elevation of the soul to
God, therefore a pra~ ~ r. The search
for a St>irituality, yes } " f ::veryone passes
by at the side. The d\Jnor professing
atheism approaches a ~pi.o.ua lit). The
old priest pcofe<osing faith h soundness
of soul, ther ~'r e virtue according to
Plato, convicuon, ,;;;pericnce, pcofes
sional knowledge.. All that is well and
good from aD ea.r thly point of view
and clearly Christian. Visibly, it does
not satisfy Bresson. Much has been said
of the spirituality of A Mttn Esuvped
and of Pickpocket. That was the periop
of the eyes' gaze. Then came his Trittl
of ]otttJ of Arc, expected, inevitable. But
one would seek there in vain an image
of mystical love like that of Joan receiving the hose in Dreyer.
The Trial of ]oatt is eDtirely made on
an object-text, and I have had the idea
that that sublime text bad evidently been
written after the trial by a poet-clerk
who was at the trial and who, according
to the old medieval tradition, did not
sign his work. But it is Bresson's film
that made me think of that. His JoaD is
the least saintly of all the Joan~, if one
excepts obviously the Saint-Joan of that
confounded Preminger. Spirituality, with
Bresson, is not saintliness. So his film
is made on an object-the text-and on
faces immobilized once and for all in
only one appearance, that of innoce11ce
or of guilt; a film made on four other
material appearances-feet, bare i11 saD

dais or shod, wood, stone, iron.


Antonia Artaud, whose face was that
of aD exalted monk in the Passiott of
]Otm of Arc, wrote, "Human skin,
t hings, the drama of reality, chat is what
cinema plays with fuse. It exalts matter,
makes it appear to us in its deep spirituality, in its relatioDs with the spirit from
which it is sprung." With Bresson, no
exaltation, neithe.r of the face 110r of
matter. There wood, stone, iron an~
faces are signs, but do not establish
relationships of spirituality. And yet in

Robert Bresson: Balthazar, Anne Wiazemsky.


all those films, as in Bt~ltbaztlr, analogies
with Christ, relationships with the
Scriptures, never cease, bur are more or
less directly readable, for even in the
Di<try, in which these correspondences
accumulate in the end with a kind of
rage, they are neither established nor
coo rdinated.
At~ htJSflrd Btdtbazar is a parable, and
one does not translate a parable clearly.
The donkey came among his own and
his own r eceived him not. At the starr
the little children wanted to come unco

him. Bur people did nor too much suffer


the little children. . . Balthazar exists,
he sees and bears, he is witness and is
silent. He sees and perhaps be delights.
H e sees life; if he "sees it truly," that
is wisdom. "You make bubbles of silence
in the desert of sound~: He bas heard,
one would say, only the silence, and
he has obeyed, he has submitted, perhaps finding the roots of an obedience
antonymous to faith. Balthazar does not
make himself recognized; he is. present
in the world; people load him; people

bear him; a girl loves him, bur o_or


enough. H e dies and redeems nothing.
Facing Balthazar, the film assembles
figures; it does nor unite them. Figures,
signs, not character~. Individual signs
bur nor individuals. No psychological
singularity, but a plural conspicuous in
each of irs Jigures,-whicb is another
road to attain the human. ". . . What
road has been necesmry for me to go
even unto you." That of Bresson to go
even unto mao and perhaps even unto
the Son of Mao is absolutely not that

55

Balthazar, Robert Bresson has spoken


of abstraction or of disincarnation. Fac
ing Balthazar, then, there are the wick of eroticism. H e has used the word.
ed, robber!\, and to give a sign, Bresson People are surprised. Let us make no
has them (among other crimes) spread mistake. The word, in fact, is used, mis
used, abured, in our days. It is one of
oil on the road so that cars will skid;
this is not gratuitous; it is imbecile the cusmrd pies of our time. The thing
wickedness. There is a girl, Marie, who itself, cinema uses it . . . etc., eroticism
will be called Madeleine later , but cer- of the fair, of the parade, eroticism of
tainly without delaying too long. A
the stage, of proclamations, of clfarance
g irl "with the gaze of a lost child." sales. . . _The ground blo~soms luxuri
andy with flowers that are nor even
Marie is t he d efiance after an impossible
poisonous, particularly not. They stink
innocence, the desire foe escap e and then
a lim: escape into sexuality. Bresson or or they perfume, but they are not Apolthe obsession with the flesh, with th e linaire's "Colr:hiqt#es."
It is for that reason that Bresson is
sin of the .llesh obsession and inhi
bition. One will meet Marie again in right to speak about eroticism in cona tumbledown cottage, Marie naked,
nection with his film, for be speaks
from the back. This nude figure is nor about it in the spirit of Georges Bataille.
chaste--the girl is not; it wants to be Between the p r ohibition and the trans
modest, and the girl wants to be. This gre~sion that does not abolish the pro
nude is of a great beauty; it is ver y hibitioo is the place of an eroticism,
m oving. very troubling, and it is im- bringing. up again the question of the
mediately r efused to us. Those who have human being. There is a moral value,
stripped Marie and who run away whether it be value of anxiety or value
throwing into the air the three or four
of accomplishment, value r ejected or depieces of h er clothes are not even obvi nied, exaltation or tabu, value insep
ous. It is satisfied stupidity. "Me my arable from r eligiosity, whatever be the
dialogue that is set up between Eros and
remorse it was the ill-fated woman who
remained on the pavement." . . . Marie r eligion, between prohibition and traqs
gressioo. Bresson's film is at the most
is and will be the "reasonable victim,"
"an animal caught in the snares of secret, the most obscure d epth of this
situation. "Er oticism and religion,"
lovers of beauty." Marie naked, victim
and offering. But this victim is not in Georges Bataille said, "are closed to us
to the extent that w e do not situate
nocent. "At that time, so as nor to pun
ish the guilty, p eople ill-treated girls; them r esolutely on the p lane of interior
they even wen t to the point of cropping experience." That is Balthazar, in part
the girls' beads . ." When people ill at the very Jea.st; it is all of Bresson.
treat donkeys or girls, it is always to On er oticism, be sketches a r estrained,
spare the guilty. Marie with her dress guarded, haughty r eflection, which vt:otorn . . . Marie "uncrowned." "A girl tures beyond the facade. Until then we
made for a bouquet and cover ed w ith had had only descriptions.
black spat dar kness." "And my mother
Now, as it is written in the testament
the woman would be w illing to coddle of Balthazar as Merleau-Ponty, then
that ideal imag.e of her misfortune on Jeao-Luc Godard, transcribed it, Bresson
earth."
knows what he says and renounces deThere are two men who come, uneasy, scriptions. H e says that there is no in
to the cottage where Marie crosses her noceoce. Balthazar, loaded with the sins
of the world and his own secret sins,
arms over her naked breasts. A boy, a
kind of eternal fiance, lily in hand, pro is not innocent. Innocence is not a mat
file of a saintly image. A man, Marie's ter of course, even for Balthazar. A
father, whom Bresson h as move as b e God or a donkey Balthazar, still less
bas him speak, all of one piece. He is than m en, can be innocent. There are
none without guilt. Who will cast th e
honor and probity in motion, piide too,
unacknowledged, and that dignity into first stone? The mo!r guilty, as always,
which the man has sewn himself as into before sroniog one another. It is only in
a covering, once and for all, is, de- a state of gtult that one casts stones.
testable. One does nor love him; more- Marie's father is a proud Pharisee. He
over, one loves nobody; one does not
brings a Jawsu.ir "ro have justice done
love Balthazar either. Only Marie, but him; h e "attacks" legally, as good people
why?
say, so be accuses, he cases the stone.
Again th ere is an ambiguous vaga His own guilts move him thus. H e does
not pardon; h e does nor Jove. "Thou
bond, not simple enough in spirit to
accede to beatitude, somewhat Barrabbas shalt not judge. Thou shall not kill.
Love one another." Bunuel also describes,
perhaps, as peeled and mangy as a don
but differently, the absolute impossibility
key, dedicated to cast stones, to all the of being a Cbri&ian, or, I do not know,
suspicions, to all the sins, of I srael--of
the impossibility of being an absolute
which a fair share mru-.t be his own. Christian.
There is an old-man-who-bas-money, at
Bresson's meditation is traversed, more
whose house Marie is going to rake or Jess without his knowledge, by a
refuge one night, and offer herself; why
Niet:z!chean critical vision of resent
not-it is indifferent to her and she will
meot, and by a Freudian critical vision
be called Madeleine tomorrow, one m ust of human distress-which, according to
begin.
Paul Ricoeur, nourishes all moder n
For the first time, in connection with medita ti on on the Christian faith. To
56

which is added, for Bresson, that en


livening irony, that r esuained humor,
by which he assures, if not the salva
tion of his soul, at the very least that
of his art. A formidable irony, which
is not at all that of certain ties, any more
than it is that of skepticism, an irony
that exerts irself on his. subject, on his
characters, on his writing. Yet it is not
a matter of distance, very simply a way
of staying slightly above his cr eation, of
standing on tiptoe in order to see better,
that is all. And that to the end, to the
moment w hen Balthazar lies down.
Balthazar dies . . . or rather it is " total
and gentle renunciation," it is Pascaliao.
There it is-Bressoo is Pascalian, therefore a mao of contention, one of those
deviationi!.tS always in quest of a straight
line, outside the suaight path of the
J esuits. So it is seduction, perversion.
Like Hitchcock, Bresson is fundamentally perverse, or, if you prefer the expressjoo of an encyclical, the .films of
Bresson are "intrinsically perverse."
They do not breathe virtue. V irtue is
"a health, a beauty, a well-being of the
soul." But that definition of virtue is
not Christian, it is Platonic; yet it speaks
the virtue and the saintliness of Francis
of Assisi. Balthazar is far from that; he
is sorrowful, his soul is sorrowful even
unto death. Besides, many Chris.tiaos,
and those who, following in their wake,
profess the same morality-polluted
morality, far from its evangelical source,
-have called "virtue" only what Marie
was not slow in losing. and they forget
or degr ade the major, the theological,
virtues. Balthazar, like all the work of
Bresson, is a film subtly unhealthy, as
there is something unhealthy in all religiosity, whereby precisely it can be
fascinating.
One must indeed r ecognize that the
best defender s of spiritual values ar e
often misbelievers. To be a misbeliever
is after all onl y to believe amiss, that
is to say, to believe differently, or to
believe something else. Others would
sp eak of heresy. . . Let us. doubt no
longer after Balthazar; Bresson is a
heretic.
Bresson is a sum of refusals, of which
the final term is the refusal of culture.
The famed definition of culture by
Edouard Herriot is radically false.
Godard has forgotten nothin g; he is
quite cultivated. Bresson has paid all
his debts; he owes nothing any longer
tO anyone; he has forgotten everything;
he is no longer cultivated. A gardener
with very little of the Cftmlide naivete,
he cultivates his own garden. A Godard
film is a work of conversation, of rela
tiooships with people; the Bresson film
rises, detached. Bresson has cut all the
moorings; his film rises because it is
lighter than air, than the accustomed
air of cinema. GQdard touches us,
Bresson uproots us. The first moves us,
in both senses of the word; the second
transports us. But one does nor know
where.
His confirmed break with the AristOt

Le M edecin
Malgre Lui
Three on tl Cou ch. American film in
techn icolor of J erry Lewis. Scet10rio:
Bob Ross and Samuel A. Taylor, from a
story of Arne Sultan and Marvin Worth .
Photography: W. Wallace Kelley. Camerama/1: Dick Johnson. M11sic: Louis
Brown. S011g: " A Now and a Later
Love," sung by Danny Costello. Decors:
Leo K. Kuter and Howard Bristol.
AssistaiJt: Rusry Meek. Cast: J erry Lewis
(Christopher Pride, and Warren, Ringo,
Ruth erford
Heather)
Janet
Leigh
(Doctor Elizabeth Accord), Jam es Best
(Doctor Ben Mizer), Mary Ann Mobley
(Susan Manning) Gila Golan (Anna
Jaque), Leslie Parrish (Mary Lou
Mauve), Kathleen Freeman (Murphy),
Jill Donohue, Buddy Lester (the drunk),
R enzo Cesaaa (the ambassador), Fritz
Feld (attache at the embassy). Producers:
Howard Pine and Joe S. Stabile. Productiol~ CompatJy: J erry Lewis, 1965. D isl,ribttlor: Columbia Pictures. Le11gth: 2
hr~.

Jerry lewis: Three on a Covch, Jerry lewis.


lean Probable, therefore with the probabi lity of th e crowd, can be a means
of writing ro make himself r ead by the
grearesr number. For none of his refusals emerges on a negation; the refusals that his writing manifestS lead tO
the mosr real construction. This is not
the admj rable starkness of Fritz Lang
who reduces mise en sci!ne a lgebraically
ro its "simplest" and strongest expres~
sion. Bresson erases completely the backdrop-blackboard of mise en scene. H e
sees aside the blackboard itself. As for
rbe Dunce, the blackboard b ecomes
wood again, under rhe hoots of the
good students, the prize pupils of direction. Lang strips bare; Bresson r eclothes, with a monk's robe, with an
alb. Pure writing. . . Writing thar is a
solitude and a mora li ry, a pride too.
"One must be proud to make films."
A wri ting, that finds again the hairshirt

and the sco urge of the poets of tbe


thirteenth century, thos.e who called
their p oe ms dits, telliags. BaltluJZat is
a dit, a nd its writing is a l iberation, a
blooming, a breath. In the dit of Bal~
thazor th ere is no longer the slightest
trace of that " Phoebus" that teems in
art.istico-realistic writing in th e novel, in
the theatre, and in cinema. Bresson bas
become s.cripturall y the gentleman according co La Bruyere and La Rochefoucauld. There remains for him only
ro keep himself free with respect ro this
writing that he has conquered, which,
tightening in on itself and coiling
around the one who masters it, could
become a bond and hold irs master
captive. One has lirde reason for dis.qujet with Bresson; he has ju.s t affirmed
more admirably than ever a freedom
dearly won that will not yield.
-Rene GILSON

There are fewer mysteries and unsettled zones at the frontier of the spectacle aod of the dream (those rwo paranormal universes whose conju nction
forms perhaps the normal one) than in
The Patsy; fewer lures and tracks offered to Jerry Lewis' inquiry, always recommenced, on himself, the li mits of his
powers and the other side of his magic,
than in The Family Jewels; it is under
the complementary signs of explanation
and of frustration rbat Three on a
Couch places itself. To the double multipliciry of questions (The Patsy) and of
possible responses (The Family Jewels),
this third panel of a true comic trilogy,
the first of its genre, replies only by an
explanation, necessarily frustrating in
that perhaps the thousand questions o f
The Patsy did not call for one, and rhat
in any case the thousand responses
(eight, exactly) of The Family Jewels
could not be brought together into only
one, Three ou a Couch presents itself
as the last and synthetic phase of a dialecrical operation whose first two terms
could appear contradictory and unresolved - The Patsy, birter interrogation on the nature of comic entertainment; The 'Family Jewels, disenchanted
exploration of the very powers and duties of the entertainer cowards his privileged spectator. I n fact, everything happeas for Jerry Lewis as if, after the
double and sublime assertion of himself, in Ladies' M an as inspired manipulator, through the most awkward and

57

wretchedest of his clown characters, of


the power of the dream in time and
space, and in The Nutty Professor as
demiurge of Ills own narure, endowed
with the divine power of metamorphosing himself, of creating himself or destroying himself - everything happens
to Jerry Lewis as if, having come with
these two films to the farthest point of
his character, be had undertaken to start
again from zero (The Ptr.sty narrative of the birth and education of an
actor), then to go through and to try
various incarnations that offered themselves to him (The Family Jewels systematic eJCperimentation with the
most different, the most invas.ive personalities, and their rejection in favor of the
most discreet of appearances, the most
banal of masks), and that since then
he has opted knowingly for this very
banality in Three on. a Co11ch, a film in
which, for the first time, the hero, the
principal character is a perfectly adapted (even over-adapted) adult, lucid,
conscious of his ends and of his means,
being for himself his own patients and
his own doctor (his quadruple pla ying
constituting the most efficacious of psychodramatic cures); in short, normal in
everything, and like Jerry Lewis himself if he were not Jerry lewis.
That is because the hero of lewis'
films since The Patsy is no longer the
actor (spoil-spore of the mise en scette
in Lulies' Mtm, maladroit apprencice-direccor in The rutty Professor), but the
director Jerry Lewis himself, playing
cat and mouse w ith Jerry lewis actor in
The J>atsy, drawing demonically, out of
the shadow in which be stands (his charact er of W illard, occult m etteur en
scb1e of the adventures of a little girl
who is the ideal spectator, that is co say
pure, and menaced by the spectacle),
the strings of all the puppets in The
Pamil,, Jewels, at last openly director of
his three characters in Three Oft a Couch.
It is not to yield to some delirium
of critical interpretation to see in these
three films (or in this triple film),- just
as, with The NtJ.tty Professor, a thematic of the actor had replaced the thematic
of the clown (the earlier .films of Lewis),
a thematic of cbe director substituting itself for that of the actor - a natural evolution, not only of the character of Jerry lewis in his films, but, in
parallel of his style of direction. Claude
Oilier remarked more chan a year ago
that Jerry lewis was one of the few
creators of forms who have appeared
recently in American cinema, and proposed undertaking a crue semeiological
study of these forms, beginning with
Lewis' conception of the gag. Let us indicate some reference points for this inves,tigation.
Since The Patsy, like lewis' hero,
lewis' comedy has changed its narure
and function. I n Ltulies' Ma1~ or The
N11tt'' Professor, the gag had a double
and S)mmetrical appurtenance - co the
mechanical order and to that of dreams.
58

On one hand the series of ge~xures grimaces, falls, breaks of equilibrium


(inheritance from the classical comedy),
on the other the series of signs that are
not gestures - images, languages, sonorous and visual gags, upsettings of
space and time, plays of mirrors and of
colors, and so on, this s.econd series of
comic occurrences having as its principle no longer that of misleading (errors
of judgment chat disturb the surrounding order), but that of perverting systematically the pervers.ion of signs,
the making them sick - sickness whose
symptoms are hallucinations, mirages,
disturbances of llerceptioo and of visual
and phonic expression (one r emembers
faux pas in the dream of Lrdies' Ma11,
verbal crossings and overlappings in
Tbe Nutty Professor).
That was the time of a laughter spacious at the same time by irs, freedom
(no physical or metaphysical curb co
Lewis' invention) and by its power to
set free (the openings that it pierced
in the wall of a dream). But the space
of laughter narrowed from The Patsy
- a rarefaction of actors' makeups, an
awkwardness in the second degree of the
person learning the actor's work. At the
same time, a greater refinement of the
gags, which make themselves almost abStract and avow their intellectualism (the
pure absurdity of the changes of costume
of the aviator in The Family j ewels),
their effects rising less from their realization itself chan from their probability
or from their fatality, from their foreseen and dreaded imminence or from
their delay, - from a certain form of
suspense in which the idea of the gag
takes precedence over its realization and
is enough to s.et it in action.
Bur, especially, since The Patsy (and
perfectly in Three Ott a Cottch), these
gags (less gags rather, than sudden .fits
of burlesque, chilling surges of a
comedy on the tight rope) organize
themselves one in relation to another,
order themselves according to a scale of
mea.n ings, with their gradations and
their variations; - integrate themselves
into the very struCture of the film, n.~
ing and bearing the web of the story,
constituting the means of progression of
the narration. The very nature of the
gag is changed; gags are less and less
chance evencs chat come to interrupt or
co break the course of the story, to
dissipate it and in the end to destroy ir
(as with Mack Sennett) or to comment
on it (as in Our Hospitality of Keaton ). They are now che chance even ts
of the story itself (which is, of course,
never simple and linear), chey are
less and less on the margin of the
dramatic progression, more and more ac
the heart of the movement of the film.
All the gags of The Patsy have this narrative function. With The Family
Jewels they acquired a supplementary
dimension that one could call metaphysical-that of introducing a doubt,
an interrogation, bearing on the very
existence of the characters and not only

on their ''worth." In Three ott a


Coucb, the gag, besides that double narrative and dubitative function, takes
upon itself a third dimension, that of
nostalgia (that is, s.ickness, complexes co
be exorcised)-a critical, therapeutic
function. In giving the comedy to his
wife's three patients, the hero (this
"normal" man, Jerry Lewis, as in himself he must be, charming, sincere,
caught between love and duty), claims
nothing less than co cure them (that is,
to allow them access co adult age), to
constrain them, by gentleness, chen by
violence, to leave their contemplative
stare; what are these three girls, if not
three spectators, each fixed on an image,
until they can see the lies of the images,
their illusory power?
It is lewis himself exorcising his
triple phantom (the cowboy, super
masculine type, Mister l ove; the entO
mologist, su.bmasculine type, Dr. Jerry;
the "sportsman," bell-boy style, who
takes upon himself the essential part
of the few ges,cural or ph)sical gags of
the film), ridding himself of these three
antiquated shadows of himself even as
much as he rids the patients of them,
saying goodbye to them three times in
succession (one time for all?).
It is remarkable that all the gags, all
the comic manifestations of che film
are on the account of these three puppet
characters--equitably distributed to each
of them, concerning the realm of each,
having as their function, first to guarantee each character, then to dismantle
him, with a rigor and a discipline chat
are the system of construction of the
.film. First, the introduction of the
"normal" characters (the painter and
his psychiatrist wife), then constitution
of the drama (three scenes in the
psychiatriSt's office, intervention of the
doctor friend, elaboration of the solution); introduction of the three .fictional
characters (three symmetrical sequences);
three scenes of confirmation (the rendezvous); three scenes of denunciation
(with this remarkable effect, that even
made ridiculous in the specialties chat
they have chosen for themselves, the
three characters keep all their prestige
in the eyes of the girls.) Finally, overlapping of these thrEe worlds, until
then isolated in the construction of the
film, and their interference with the
fourth universe (the normal one) of the
hero, his private life. Scene of the surprise-parry, with its changes with the
characters watching; then murual annulment of the three masques in only
one face, Lewis himself. End of the
cure, beginning of happiness . . . .
Here, then, is the most "constructed"
of Lewis' films, the one in which the
comic system marries best the dramatic
system. One can regret chis coherence,
this substirution of the "serious" for th e
"maniac." The eccentric of the palace
yields place to the coordinator of
intrigues, and the fool actor co troubled
auteur. But chis is a magnificent itinerary, which goes from the actor to the

creatOr, and conJugates the sp ectacle and


the refl ection on itS ends and on its
m eans, sets on the Stage of th e comed y
its sp ectator and presents within the
spectacle the di rector himself; which
knotS as never yet, the giddi nesses of
th e c~rnic co the abysses of the tragic.
For this time again in Lewis' work,
the frontier berween the logic of the
dream and that of the spectacle is a
wandering one; three times, -when the
painter and his wife enter their office
and are surprised by a crowd that remains silent, crouched in the dar kn ess,
and that assails them with itS sh outs
and with irs crush as soon as the light
is switched on; when the cowboy crosses
a n interminable procession of scarcely
clad models; when the elevator pours
o ut another crowd-those are, as it were,
rough r esurgences of a buried past, the
claws of the dream and of the madness
that seize Jerry Lewis for a moment.
- Jean-Louis COMOLLI

Broken Traces
Le Chat dtriiS 1~ sac (Cttt i 11 the Sack).
Canadian film of Gilles Groulx.
Scenario: Gilles Groulx. Ph otography:
J ean-Claude Labrecque. Music: J ohn
Coltrane Vivaldi, Couperin. S otmd:
Marcel Carriere. Cast: Barbara U lrich
(Barbara), Claude Godbout (Claude),
Manon Blain (Manon j'sais-pas-qui),
Veronica Vilbert (Veronique), Jean-Paul
Bernier (Jean-Paul), Andre Leblanc
(Toulouse), Paul-Marie Lapointe, J ean
Dufresne, Pierre Maheu. Producer:
Jacques Baber, ONF Canada, Montreal
1964. Distributor: O.N.F. Paris. Length:
1 hr. 15 min.

Gilles Groulx: Cat in the Sack, Barbara Ulrich.

There are "plastic" geniuses, lovers


o f play and of lights, for whom everything is always at a distance, like an
animal that one does not trap; they are
the princes of vision, the pierrots of
the incelligible, who frolic in their
humor of comed y (Kl ee, Godard, J erry
Lewis .. .). And there are "physJological" geniuses, the damned of couch a_od
o f smell, w ho crawl on the earth like
dogs, on the trail of something, their
noses in the humors of hwnan temperamentS (Miller, Giacometti, Bergman,
Visconti, Losey . . .). To create, for
the first amounts to organizing a system
o f symbol.s; while the second esta blis~
each time a perceptible newness. It 1S
as if the form er spoke with words, and
the larrer with images.
Groulx belongs to the latter, and
even pushes a certain realism tO itS
ultimate consequences, holding audaciously the "p sychological" bet.
One senses well whence comes such
a cinema (which in the end bas imposed
irself, in its essential tend encies, on a
large nwnber of new directors over the
entire world)- th e attempt to cell
" reality itself" (and co tell it, what is
more simple, apparently, than to show
it?) ; the desire no longer co play th e
conventional game of "art" and of mise
en scen e; the intention to re join "life,"
co be directly engaged with it ("It will
be beautifu l if it is human," GrouLx
said; and again, "For me, co create in
the cinema is essentially subjective and
determined by the Jived.") In France,
the teaching of a man like Bresson goes
in th e same directi on.
Now how does the auteur of Le Chat
dan.s /e' sac come to terms with this d eep
choice?
H e takes a young couple, in the
heart of the Quebec winter, and makes
them break to pieces before our eyes;
for an hour and a half, one is pres.ent
at a depressing play of prisms that takes
place in isolation, between th e bony
spines of those two lives that never
cor[( spond. Yet- in spite of stro ng
appearances- the subj ect o f the filru is
not non-communicarion; it is revolt.
T here is onl y one hero-the boy, sick
with v iolence. The love situation is
only the field of applk ati on of r eleased
energies, in the limit, onl y a pretext, or
only a device for r evealing .
A pret ext for what?
For telling the obscure r easons of the
one who apprehends himself excluded.
T o ma ke his voice resonate in spite o f
everything, from the very depth of
solitude. (The retort in which th e boy
says to the girl that h e thoug ht that
she, being J ewish, could have unde~
stood him, is illuminating, from chis
59

point of view.) lt is a .6Jm on the


JDUl Orit y, on the ghetto, and not on
love, nor on a love, be it despairing.
(Tb e ume ot love comes afterwards,
when one is fr ee, that is to say, when
one r eaches ones majority. And the
:film, contrary to all expect ation, ends
on a word of hope.)
That is what calls again in question
the too easy (and, in fact, quite <.mbarrassing) notion of r ealism, oi which
we sp oke above; and perhaps in the
end, all that can lead to thought. Will
such a work, in fact, make perceptible
the traps of the alleged cit1ema d.1rect?
A director-Groulx-suu:ts with the
intention of making a :film in whcn on.:
will see, as if through a magnifying glass,
a couple in the process of breaking
apart, a love transtorming itself to incomprehension, soon, no doubt, to
hatred, or tO 1nditlerence; and 10 .realny
what h e makes, is a :film on a confused
idea that dwells in him. H e w anted to
show something of the world, and h e
makes a portrait of himself . . . (here
let one think of the presence of the
couple of Voyage en Ita/.ie, as Rossellini succeed ed in evoking it, in its very
opacity and laceration; or again of the
couple in Le Mepris; one sees the difference immediately).
When the film is shown, one feels,
.uore or less acutely, this tone of resent

meo t, this rooting in a subjectivity not


yet conquered; and that keeps one's
adherence.
That is because Groulx has shown a
case; and because art (one must, indeed,
designate by som e name what is neither
recording. of a direct d ocumen t, nor
production without inremion), is never
a mere statement; it is always an experience. (Deep words of Godard, declaring
that he apprehends himself on the
model of a scholar who does r esear ch).
Art is life that tries itself, that plays
itself, pursuing an implicit and fundamental course, somewhat comparable
to th e Husse rlian method of "eidetic
variations," after having effected the
epoke, the setting between pa.rentheses
of empirical existence. That is why the
word "realism" is the sou rce of so many
difficulties. ("Realism does not consist
in ~.bowin g how things are true, but
how things are truly," said Brecht. And
a man like Giacometti, for his part,
repli es to th e question by g iving as
ultimate meaning to his work of a
sculptor what he calls, marvelously,
" rfsemblance"; be keeps coming back to
the idea of the whole. It is; something
very close to that which one finds at
the h eart of Bresson's notion of
" unity.") There is neither "the truth"
nor truths; there is only th e attempt,
endlessly recommenced of telling life,

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which mixes inextricably with that of


living.
But let us retu.rn to our cat ...
The example of Groulx shows that
one must not attach oneself to on ly a
sing le cM,e; and want only to bear
wimess, under pain of succeeding only
in listening to oneself talk in a deserted
place suddenly bereft of th e light of
the world. One mus create in freedo m,
that is to sa), one must lose oneself,
" move," not attempt to look oneself in
the face. Cioeastes know that one must
"fake" the object to be filmed , setting it
at the side, on the oblique, for a mi rror
shot; oth erwi~,e it is the image that is
false. Lesson from technique! One does
not save detours. Art-and life-already - is a distOrtion - refraction,
wandering, and jou.rnys . . . Broken
traces th at mark a path.
Grou lx's hero does not exist enough
because Groulx does not come out of
him. On this subj ect, the co mparison
with a film like Prima della rivoluzion.e
of Bertolucci is inter esting. At the very
start, the Italian plays the game (that of
"imaginative variatio ns," which are the
whole of art, its terrible necessity and
its privilege, that obligatory media tion
of sy mbols); he puts his cha racter in a
situation, at a center of convergences,
which h e r ecreates-social classes, age
groups, family ties, ideological marking
cut historied world-Yet, it is a si milar
subject-the story of a young mao who
seeks himself "in doubtful combat." But
in the film ~f Groulx, be struggles; in
that of Bertolucci, he dis;~usses. (Or
p eople discuss for him, but that amounts
to the same thing.) And the latter,
fina ll y, sti rs many more things,-which
is the essential. So, to resign oneself to
the game and tO its rule, to shuffle the
cards, to compose-th ere is an insurmountable truth of mise e1J scime.
-Jacques LEVY

'Echoes
Of Silence )
Recentl y banned by the French
cens,ors, Ecboes of Sile1~ce seems to provoke the spectator not because Peter
Emanuel Goldman shows a somewhat
tarnished g irl who sells herself to a
fat old man, or a boy who caresses the
ch~.t of a male friend , or his hero
Miguel discarding a girl with whom be
no longer wants to make love- scenes
that one could ver y well find again,
with complaisance besides, with many
New York film makers; but because,
pursuing faces obstinately, hesitating
often from one to another, seeking the
slightest traces of muteness even in
dirty bands, grasped pieces of mirror,
hair in disorder, Goldman pushes away
the customary points of support. intrigue,
clarified unfolding of a lived mixture,
commentary by double exposure (only

Peter Emanuel G oldman: Echoes of Silence, J a cquetta La mpson, Miguel Cha cour.
cartoons sometimes designate the situa
tions), and so on.
The order and number of sequences
seem ro matter little, to us as to him;
there exist two different priors of the
film w ithout one's being able co char
acterize them differently than by variations of duration and of lighting. I t
scarcely matters either chat the musical
sequences are r epeated; they are there to
pr olong a sta te, as in the endless drawings-out, fishing for tuna or ascension,
with R ossellini. Each chapter, or canvas,
interrupts. itself by vir tue of continuing

a length of time; the g lances exchanged


by three girls in a little room lead to
nothing and keep within themselves,
latent, a drama chat does nor unfold. To
these beings lost in New York, nothing
ever happens. A forlorn girl cradles a
poor d oll and nothing is resolved, one
ob~,erves only an infinitesimal change.
H ere time is not accountable co the
tumult of everyday life, and the film
progresses by amplification, like a wave,
slow but without r eturn, not by the
addition of actions or events whose exact
path one seek~1 but by the ensnaring

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joining of solitudes. If ever new faces


appear, if one frequen ts surprising
spaces-like the museum--an ephemeral
metamorphosis can be brought about;
Miguel prowling through the mus.eum,
like Nosferatu, is sudden ly caught in the
circle of h is motionless p r ey. But later
when the phantoms will scatter in the
streets of New York, scar cely distracted
by the vehement r eading of t he Bible,
for what reason would the film pace
off the glimpsed desert?
-Jean-Claude BI ETIE

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61

Curtis Harrington: Games, Simone Signoret, Katherine Ross.


62

bl

Curtis H arrington writes us from


Hollywood as follow!; "I'm sorry that
my new film, GAMES, wasn't mentioned
in Varitty's "production round-up," because it might be considered to be a
forthcoming H ollywood-made film of
more than routine interest. I'm enclosing herewith some stills which you might
like to have for the Cahiers files.
GAMES, scheduled for release in the
fall, concerns the strange and frightening evenrs that occur when a European
woman, with a mysterious past, comes
to live with a wealthy young married
couple in New York. The woman is
played by Simone Signoret; the young

couple by James Caan and Katharine


Ross."
We must say th e stills look scintillating and certainly anything that Curtis
Harrington does is of more than routine
interest. We look forward to s.eeing
Games when it is finally released.
We are told also that Samuel Goldwyn, Jr. will produce and King Vidor
direct 111r. n11d Mrs. Bo ]o ]o1Jes this
fall as one of the first film projects to be
announced by the newly-formed theatrical .film divisjon of the Columbia Broadcasting System.
The picture, to be made for Goldwyn,
Jr.'s Formosa Productions, will be an
official production of the CBS film clivi-

"More than routine interest?" Simone Signoret in scintillating stills from Curtis
Harrington's Games. At left, Harrington directs Signoret.

65

sion, Gordon Stulberg, D irector. The


being named to comm ittees may be
picture will go into regular theatrical
inherited or acquired, but it is an ar t
release on completion.
neve rtheless. M any high-principled inMr. and Mrs. Bo ) o )o11es, based on dividuals step on too many roes to be
the r ecently pub1ished novel by Ann considered good team p layers. Call it
Head for Putnam, i~, a modern story of conviction or tactlessness; the end r esu lt
the stresses and strains in a teenage is the same.
magazine. It ran in a recent issu e of
It is probabl y unwise to exp ect or
Good Housekeeping Magazine.
demand too much from the American
So much for the press r eleas.e. The Film I nstitute. Vulgarity and philisdnism
maio point is that King Vidor is work- will not be eradicated overnight. N or
will the awful pressure and power of
ing again, and bow sad it is that he
money. W e have so fa r co go and so
has been idle for so much of his later
1ife. T he Montreal Film Festival brought m uch to do that even a modest begintogether J ean Renoir, J ohn Ford and ning should be considered encou raging.
Fr it z lang, all Pant heon d irectors, and There is much tO be done with archives
all currently without assignmens. Mean- a nd scholarship and fi lm-making, and
while the latest wo rks o f W elles those of us who l ove the cinema should
(Falstaff), Chaplin (A Countess from continue to p romote these activities with
Hong K ong) and H awks (El Dorado) or without the American Film Instit ute.
I am tired of r eading Vivien Leigh
have been treated very harshly by most
of the American critics, the very same obituaries that st ress her limi tatio ns as
critics, in most instances, who ha ve an acrres..c;. Vivien Leig h was a better
made it impossible for J ean-l uc Godard's actress on stage and screen chan most
Pier1ot le fo u to be commercially r eleas- critics gave her credit for being. It was
ed in America, and if that isn't enough her extraordinary beauty that distract ed
reason for Ca hiers du Cinema in English
her detractors from her technical skill
not to be complacent, I don't know as an actress. T erence Rattigan to the
what is.
contrary, Vi vien l eigh's suicide walk in
The American Film Institute has final- Am1a Kareniua is superior to Garbo's,
ly come into existence amid a hail o f but, of cours,e, Ga.rbo was the mistress
controversy. Some of the criticism has of the medium, and M iss Leigh only
been embarrassing ly self-seeking, and one of irs m ost beautiful adornm ents.
everyone has jumped on poor Elizabeth
I first saw Vivien l eig h on a BrookAshley. It's all ver y silly. The arc of lyn scree n in 1937 in something called

"For a cool, p erceptive round-up which substantiates


all is claims, turn to Andrew Sarris, whose film-byfilm analysis is t he best thing I haV'e read on Sternberg.
Only 56 quarto tpages, many of th-am illusoations, but
each one worth its weight in gold . . . Sarris is a must
for any Stem berg admirer."
- Tom .Milne, Sight and Sound
"The best singla volu me of Blm criticism yet written by
an American . .. a degree of sympathetic imagination
that allows him . . . to find within movies profound
correlatives for those human gestmes that are the
guides and blessings of our lives,"
- Roger Greenspun, The Village Voire

THE FILMS OF
JOSEF VON
STERNBERG

by Andrew Sarri s
Museum of Modern Art

66

$4.95 ha rdbo und


$2.95 paper

l:Z S w . 41 st.
"l'C:

Dark journey, but I was more struck


at the time by Conrad Veidt's da~lli ng
U-boat commander. Somehow I missed
Vivien Leigh in Gone with th e Wind
and II'/aterloo Bridge u ntil 1945, but
I made up for lose tim e by falling in
Jove with her screen image. It all came
down 10 something g limpsed sporadically in her purring cat-eyes, something
cruel and vulnerable and h eart-brea kingly beauti ful . I al wa)S thought of
J ean Simmons. as her successor.
The death of Vivien l eigh darkens
another cor ner of my dream world. I
suppose if I had kn own h er in " real"
ille, I might have mourned h er more,
bur I doubt ir. Parenthet ically, I always
thoug ht she cried too much in the lasr
scene of Gon e with the Wind a nd I
never knew whether Victor Fleming or
George Cukor was tO blame for this
d irectorial indiscretio n. Margaret Mitchell's Scarlett was more stoical by far.
1 suppose that was my first directorial
insight, my ftrst critical coup, but there
r emained a lwa ys something in Vi vien
Leigh that was beyond cri ticism, beyond
good and bad, beyond good and evil.
The Sadoul-Flaherty interview translated by Robert Steele in this issue of
CdCiE reminds us that the annu al
Flaherty Semi nar w ill be held th is year
from Sep tember 2nd throug h September
8th at Arden House io H arrim an, N. Y .
After 45 years, Flaher ty is !till the noblest synonym for d ocumentary.

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From Film to Film by Satyajit Ray- Blake Edwards Interview Roman Polanski Interview - Eisenstein on Pot~mlein - JeanLuc
Godard and Henri Colpi on Montage - Politics and Cinema by
Michel Mardore - Marritd Wom"n and Alph11~illt.
Carl Dreyer Interview - Luis Bunuel: Angel and the Beas~ Jerry Lewis Interview and 4 Views of Ft1111ily }twtiJ - Ne"''
Canadian Cinema: 10 Questions to 5 Directors.
Truffaut's Jou rnal of Fahrenheit 451 , Part 1 - Visits With Fellini
by Pierre least - Orson \'17elles: Voyage to Don Quixoteland Leni Riefenstahl Interview - Richard Brooks on In Cold Blood.
Truffaut's Journa l of Fa hrenheit 451 . Part 2 - Allio-Bourseiller
Goda rd-Delahaye Dialogue - Pasolini a t Pesaro: T he Cinema of
Poetry - Testament of Balthazar by MerleauPonty and Godard l\!eetmg With Mai Zcttcrling - 4th N .Y. Film Festival by Roger
Grecnspun.
1rufbut's Journal of Fahrenheit 4~1. Part 3 -Robert Rossen In
tervicw and Biofilmogrophy - Lilith and I by Jean Seberg - Leo
.McCarey Interview - Suuation of the New Cinema - The Affair
of Lll Rtligi~11u.
BressonGodardDelahaye - Joseph L. Mankiewicz - Milos For
man - Lll Gutrrt EJt Finit.
Jean Renoir Interview - Elia Kazan - Joseph Losey - Ernst
tubitsch - Fahr.nhtit 4S 1.
Alfred Hitchcock a nd Tom C11rltti11 - }eanLuc Goda rd - Andy
Wrh()l Interview - TenBest Lists .

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uWHOLLY EXTRAORDINARY!
Aclassic thriller! An astoundingly perfect performance by
TERENCE STAMP! Atribute to
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