The man who held Jean-Luc Godard’s legacy in his hands

More than a year before the death by assisted suicide of Jean-Luc Godard, in September 2022, the Yves Saint Laurent house ordered a short film from the great director, wishing to strengthen its credibility by securing a new work from the the most famous artist of the French New Wave.

What Godard produced – an enigmatic short film based on a long-held idea and titled Funny wars / Phony Wars – was submitted to the haute couture house in spring 2021. But it was only released two years later.

“I hope they didn’t leave it out because they expected Godard to die and so they could make a marketing profit from it,” says Fabrice Aragno, Godard’s main collaborator since twenty years old, during a video call in anticipation of the last screening, at the Vienna Film Festival (Viennale).

Whatever this motivation, Godard died shortly thereafter, en route to an assisted suicide clinic in Rolle, Switzerland, after a long period of illness. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2023.

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On screen, this twenty-minute work is referred to as a “film announcement of the film”, a sort of speculative preview of a longer work that Godard intended to make in the future.

During the interview, Fabrice Aragno expressed his dissatisfaction with the addition of an appendix to the title, by the house of Saint Laurent. It is no longer called the “trailer for a film” but the “trailer for a film that will never exist”. For Fabrice Aragno, “it’s false. It’s the film, it exists… it doesn’t make sense to me.”

More than technical help

This kind of precise, protective, even pedantic statement is typical of Fabrice Aragno, 54, who worked for twenty years with Godard and protected him in many ways, first as a location manager, then as a technician and finally as a true creative collaborator.

His ingenuity and curiosity about cameras proved vital to Godard, and over time their professional collaboration intensified, whether on Socialism film (2010), for which Fabrice Aragno was entrusted with the filming of numerous images in the absence of Godard, or on Goodbye to language (2014), a 3D project made possible by the construction of an innovative device allowing filming with two cameras in three dimensions.

With his training in puppet theater, one might wonder what attracted Fabrice Aragno to cinema, to the technical aspect in particular. “I think I wanted to express myself without words,” he explains. “Cinema is perfect for this. And in fact, the technique of cinema is very simple, as I learned at film school in Switzerland. You can learn the basics in two days. At the time, I was only taught to learn and follow the rules, which I clearly hadn’t internalized.”

Fabrice Aragno and Jean-Luc Godard (seated) on the set of “Adieu au langue”, 2014.

Copyright Kino International / Everett Collection

Of Funny wars / Phony Wars has Scenarios

Before his death, Jean-Luc Godard launched Scenarioa feature film which takes up the idea of ​​the still image versus the animated image developed with Fabrice Aragno in the Film announcement film. “Once the Announcement film was subjected to Yves Saint Laurent, Jean-Luc suddenly wanted to do something else – he wanted to get away from Funny wars», explains Fabrice Aragno. “In May or June 2022, we started discussing some ideas for Scenarioanother film which would be in two parts, one on DNA and the other on MRI. He started collecting images, talking to us about images, talking to us about the look of the film.”

For several months, work continued in this direction. “However, the summer was difficult,” recalls the close collaborator. “I took [Godard] to the hospital two or three times, and he usually stayed there for five days straight. Finally, he decided to… leave.” He sighs as he unconsciously moves forward with this euphemism. “He was already insisting at the time that we do Scenario. He didn’t want to cause trouble for producer Mitra Farahani by not delivering a film, as stipulated in the contract.”

Jean-Luc Godard will never see the final cut of what will become Scenarios (today in the plural). “Five days before (his death), on Monday, he gave me the instructions for the first half of the film,” remembers Fabrice Aragno. “Then, the day before he died, he gave me the instructions for the second part. And that day, the last thing he did was film himself for the last scene of the movie.”

“In any case, his last instructions were very precise. He had the film in mind, already edited.” A certain melancholy can be seen in Fabrice Aragno’s eyes when he talks about the moment he received the last assembly instructions from the master. “After presenting Godard films at Cannes for 15 years, this was the last. It was the last time I brought a new Godard film there. HAS final point».

A Freudian slip

“To me it’s remarkable that the film conveys what he was thinking just before he died,” as if he was preemptively defending the film. In this final sketch we see a clip of Anna Magnani being shot in the street by German soldiers, taken from Rome, open city (1945) by Roberto Rossellini.

“During assembly [selon ses instructions]I didn’t think anything of it. Later, I learned that his mother had also died in the street, in Geneva, in 1954. He was in Paris and could not come to see her. He didn’t go to the funeral. But in his final moments, he put this image there, his last – a woman dying in the street, and her child running towards her, shouting ‘Mama’. It’s one of his last gestures.”

“At the same time, I put an extract from [son film] Band apart (1964) in the timeline, as requested; I hear the voice of Jean-Luc, a younger Jean-Luc: ‘Odile’s last thought…’ And I realize now that his mother was called Odile. This last montage that he made and which he never saw is autobiography: on his cinema, on his life, on his own failures. Three days before leaving us, he very calmly, on an A4 sheet, with a blue pen, drew each image, wrote each instruction, and gave it to me like that.

Cannes, 2018: Jean-Luc Godard speaking to the press from his home in Switzerland via video link on Fabrice Aragno’s cell phone for his film “Le Livre d’image”.

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Making films without JLG

Fabrice Aragno also has his own project, The Lakewhich he has been developing for several years. “It is thanks to the success of Picture bookthat our collective [Casa Azul] produced. This helps us finance this film. I dedicate it to Jean-Luc, who really liked the short film I made before [Lakeside Suite] to prepare it, and [le critique de cinéma] Freddy Buache, who pushed me to do it. I made this film for these two men.”

In the absence of Jean-Luc Godard, Aragno turned to the co-production of other types of films. At this year’s Locarno Film Festival, Fabrice Aragno’s name appeared on screen as producer of the competing Portuguese film Wind Fire by Marta Mateus. “A day, [Marta Mateus] bought books that we had made with Godard. Then I saw a short film [Farpões, baldios, 2017] on MUBI, which I loved. And I see the name in the credits… Marta Mateus, Marta Mateus… Then it clicked: it’s the same name as the woman who made the order!” This is how a friendship was born.

Portuguese director Marta Mateus during a photo break for the film “Fogo do Vento” (The Fire of the Wind) at the 77th Locarno International Film Festival, August 2024.

Keystone / Jean-Christophe Bott

Marta Mateus talks about the difficulty of raising funds for films in Portugal. “She told me she was working on a feature film. I told him, ‘Okay, let’s produce it together!’ It’s great to co-produce films. If you only make films in Switzerland, you are stuck on something small, closed, stupid.” He pouts, laughing.

“On the other hand, co-production allows you to understand the world and start to develop a sensitivity for other things.”

“Yet we did Wind Fire without state subsidy. The Federal Office of Culture does not like this kind of co-production. We only get points if it is related to Switzerland. We therefore turned to Cinéforom and Radio Télévision Suisse Romande (RTS). And then with our own means. I like to push people to make films when they can. Please do it. Don’t wait. Here’s a camera!”

How does it feel to work on your own projects again? “Now I can say I have more time. For 20 years, I gave priority to Jean-Luc. Now I’m the priority. But to tell you the truth, it was nice to have another priority.”

After a screening at the New York Film Festival, Godard’s latest films will embark on a short North American tour which will take them to the Cinémathèque de Montréal and that of Vancouver. “Perhaps I will then have a few days to go up The Lake on my laptop, before going to Vienna to show the films with Goodbye to language…».

Proofread and verified by Virginie Mangin/ds, translated from English by Mary Vakaridis/rem