« Cinema is better than life »: such is the title of this voluminous work, in the form of interviews with cinephile experts, Jean-Ollé Laprune and Yves Alion, retracing an existence entirely devoted to the seventh art. The preface is not exactly signed by the first comer, as it concerns Woody Allen, for whom Claude Lelouch was the model of his young years: “ In the 60s, when all my aspiring director friends and I cherished European cinema, certain films and certain filmmakers were, for us, at the very top. We wanted to make films like the Italians, like Ingmar Bergman in Sweden and, of course, like the French authors. When A man and a woman was released in our arthouses […] we have seen the film several times […] jealous of the director who had made it. »
“Authors” and “doers”…
Of this “New Wave”, more “ wave than new “, as Michel Audiard joked, it is permissible to think good or bad about it. Nevertheless, it revolutionized French cinema and, in fact, its American counterpart. At the time, Hollywood was trying to ape the Old Continent; the season or mores…One of his favorite things? Sacralize the function of “author”, the better to make fun of the “doers”.
The distinction deserves attention. An “author” is an “artist” whose universe is his own. This is the case of a Jean-Luc Godard, a Jean Rollin… or a Claude Lelouch. On the other hand, a “maker” remains an “artisan” capable of moving from one style to another with the same ease, the same talent. In the USA, there is Richard Fleischer, capable of jointly staging Twenty thousand leagues under the sea (1954), one of Jules Verne’s best adaptations, and Green sun (1973), a most chilling ecological dystopia. In France, Henri Verneuil, obviously, whose polymorphous genius allows him to spend Fernandel’s adventures with The Cow and the Prisoner (1959) au Clan of the Sicilians (1969), one of the pinnacles of the French-style thriller, blending with the same ease into the western, as evidenced by this Battle of San Sebastian (1968), a very high quality film, filmed the same year.
Claude Lelouch? A true “author”!
Only here, Claude Lelouch is an authentic “author”, although having always been disdained by the critics of the upscale areas; perhaps because he was above all a “popular author”. Indeed, from the first images, we know that we are at Lelouch’s house. There is certainly the music, Francis Lai most often, but also the way of filming, camera on the shoulder, generally. And then, the women, whom he puts in the spotlight with passion, magnifying them on the screen as if he were in bed with them. It is true that he was, to say the least, a frenzied consumer of his own female stars. French cinema knew, then, how to be sensual and no actresses with greasy hair and sullen faces, in his country. Yes, in this sense, Claude Lelouch is an author; without the usual quotation marks. And in prefacing this book, Woody Allen, another “author”, was clearly not mistaken.
Claude Lelouch nevertheless started out as a “maker”, knowing that it is to him that we owe the first video clips, the “ scopitones ”, it was said then, which allowed him to make his debut with such youthful beauties as Sheila, Sylvie Vartan and Dalida. But he is even more of an author in his own right by becoming the producer of his first films, expecting nothing from taxpayers’ money, probably believing that an “author” worthy of the name cannot be subsidized. Some of his current colleagues would be well advised to learn from this.
Often going against the grain of his times…
It is perhaps this freedom that allowed him to shoot, apart from the films featuring these sentimental bluettes that he is so fond of, those which were boldly against the spirit of the times. Anthology.
Adventure is adventure (1972). May 68 is not far away; or, for him, the opportunity to dynamite fashionable ideologies: worldly Maoism and emerging societal struggles. Jacques Brel, Lino Ventura, Charles Denner, Charles Gérard and Aldo Maccione form an astonishing quintet whose hilarious slogan is none other than “Long live free Switzerland!” »
The Good and the Bad (1975). Perhaps one of the finest films on the Occupation, a period that he knew well, as a Jewish child born in Algeria. The good guys can turn out to be bad and the bad guys not always good. Or complexity elevated to the rank of fine art.
Each Other (1981). Always a story of crossed destinies – its trademark – this gigantic fresco evoking, once again, the least luminous hours of our History. Fans of Manichaeism, move on.
Les Miserables (1995). After restoring his dignity to Jean-Paul Belmondo with Itinerary of a spoiled child (1988), thus distancing it from “trinkets” that are quite out of breath, here is yet another rereading of the period mentioned above; but seen through a Hugolian prism. Here again, everything is grace, intelligence and beauty. For him, History is written in gray, even among the bastards.
About “bastard”, a new one, for the road, with Bastard, we love you (2014), with Eddy Mitchell, Johnny Hallyday and Sandrine Bonnaire who has never been filmed so well. A sort of Savoyard thriller set against a backdrop of virile friendship and thwarted fatherhood. If there was only one Claude Lelouch film to rediscover, there is no doubt that it would be this one.
To find out more, the amount mentioned above is warmly indicated. For the “Lelouchians” first and foremost; but also for others, perhaps more skeptical as to what should be called a work in its own right and who, upon reading these interviews, might well be tempted to change their minds.
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