Monsieur Aznavour, the fascinating life of a workaholic

Franco-Algerian actor Tahar Rahim offers a convincing performance in the biographical film Mr Aznavourwhich opens Friday in Quebec. He also trained his voice for several months to reproduce that of the French singer, a tireless artist who has recorded more than 1000 songs.

Filmmaker Mehdi Idir and slammer turned director Grand Corps Malade are long-time friends, the former having directed several of the latter’s Music videos before their joint adventure behind the camera (Patients, School life). The genesis of Mr Aznavourtheir third feature film, dates back to 2017, about a year before Charles Aznavour’s death.

It’s a project that started with Charles, who validated us as directors, remembers Mehdi Idir. Unfortunately, shortly after, he passed away, so the project was shelved. We did not want to immediately make a biopic on someone who had only just died.

The film was finally released seven years later. Charles Aznavour’s family was involved throughout the creative process, notably through his son-in-law Jean-Rachid Kallouche, one of the film’s producers.

A carefully studied gesture

Even if the resemblance between Tahar Rahim and Charles Aznavour is not a priori obvious, the final result on screen is remarkable. Grand Corps Malade admits: this is largely due to the many layers of makeup and prosthetics that have transformed the actor, but it is also the result of significant research work.

We read all the books that existed on Aznavour, including the two most important, his two autobiographies. It was a bit like our basic biblesexplains the one who recently launched his own version of Bohemia.

Then, we identified podcasts, documentaries, archives, YouTube videos to try to retrace his life and try to understand the man he was behind the artist

As we can see in the film, Charles Aznavour often recorded his daily life with a Super 8 camera, on reels given to the directors by his family. He has a way of speaking in interviews, he has a way of singing and behaving on stage, and also a way of behaving with family, around the pool or while traveling.explains Grand Corps Malade.

We tried to absorb as much knowledge as possible to understand Aznavour’s multiple personality.

Intensive singing lessons

To accurately embody Charles Aznavour, Tahar Rahim set himself the challenge of learning to sing his repertoire, with all the voice inflections that this implies. Before arriving on set, he took singing lessons for nine months, training which continued during filming.

As we come from music, we know music sound engineers who are used to mixing albums, and that was really an asset, explains Grand Corps Malade. We worked on the reverberation and the color of the voice, especially in the high notes, to try to find a little of Aznavour’s vibrato.

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The actor, revealed in 2009 in A prophet by Jacques Audiard, However, he did not just imitate the singer, he put a lot of his personality into it, according to Mehdi Idir.

Gradually, we realized that in many aspects, he was close to the character, because he was the son of an immigrant, because he came from a poor family, because he found a passion that will guide the rest of his lifeexplains the director.

Tahar likes to say that he reached an understanding with Charles, and that they went to shake hands in the middle.

Career above all

Film buffs who only know the broad outlines of Aznavour’s career may be surprised by some of the true facts recounted in the film, from his first successes in Montreal with Pierre Roche to his platonic relationship with Édith Piaf, which convinced him among other things to have a nose job.

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The film also evokes the needy character of the artist, who lived according to the motto that nothing can beat 17 hours of work a day. This fixation on his career will also have consequences on his intimate relationships, a darker side of his personality which is also explored in Mr Aznavour.

He always wanted everyone around him to be very comfortable materially, but on the other hand, from an emotional point of view, he was not always very presentexplains Grand Corps Malade.

He put his job above everything else, and there were some human sacrifices, that’s for sure.

Dr. Dre and the modernity of Aznavour

The film also evokes the immense musical influence of Charles Aznavour, whose songs have been sampled by countless artists. The directors also nod to this influence in a glorious scene which uses the title What’s The Differencea Dr. Dre production based on the opening segment of Because you believeAznavour classic.

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According to Grand Corps Malade and Mehdi Idir, this scene, although costly, was a sine qua non condition for the delivery of the film they had in mind. We told our producers right away that we needed the song. It was perfect for ushe explains.

It tells of the modernity of Aznavour’s music, the fact that he was samples by a lot of artists, in addition to having a big W soundEast Coast at a time when we are in the “bling-bling” decade of Charles Aznavour.