With “The Army of the Romantics” on Arte, the generation of Balzac, Dumas and Berlioz comes back to life in animation

Reconstructing the flagship artistic movement of the 19th century in animation seemed an impossible challenge. The director, producer and screenwriter of the series look back on this adventure which lasted eight years.

Qhen Arte France, enthusiastic as we were in 2016 by THE Aadventurers of modern Art, asked Judith Nora which artistic movement she would now like to document in an animated series, the producer of Silex Films first thought of impressionism — « [sa] favorite period ». “A CE2 teacher, whose story I will perhaps one day tell in an animated film, changed my life by taking us to the Musée d'Orsay, to Bougival, to Port-Marly… But a discussion with Dan Franck ( 1), author of the work The Time of the Bohemians (ed. Grasset, 2015) dont The Adventurers are adapted, oriented me towards the romantic period, with its committed artists and its unique political context. » Did she understand the scale of the undertaking which, for eight years, would once again associate her with Amélie Harrault, brilliant director of this equally exciting series?

“There is nothing missing” observed Dan Franck when discovering The Army of Romanticswhich resurrects the major writers, painters and musicians of this movement, inscribing the trajectory of Hugo, Dumas, Delacroix, Berlioz and Courbet in the carefully reconstructed Paris of the years 1827 to 1874. A challenge which required immersing oneself in numerous plans of the capital and engravings, but also in the diaries and correspondence of these illustrious personalities sculpted by history, in order to bring them back to life and restore their relationships even in the impetuosity of their youth.

Accuracy and small steps aside

“I immersed myself in their daily lives and used their own words, to make them speak while giving the impression of being in their heads,” explains the screenwriter, Céline Ronté, who has documented a lot about each of them. “We checked every detail, confirms Amélie Harraultbut without corseting ourselves. By assuming in particular to dress Balzac in his homespun robe from 1828, even though he probably only began to wear it in 1830. The historian Judith Lyon-Caen, who pointed this out to us, agreed to this not sideways. »

“When I studied Fine Arts, remembers the directorour teachers from the 1970s were for “liberating the gesture” and “abolishing the technique” – technique that the romantic painters mastered to perfection. So I went over all the basics, helped by my father-in-law, a sculptor, who was upset by my practice of perspective. I also sent an assistant to photograph the statues of these sacred monsters from every angle, to be able to represent them in three quarters or from behind, when the engravings and paintings that we have of them mainly show them from the front. We also had to imagine what they looked like long before fame earned them the opportunity to be portrayed. »

Among the fifteen “great men” present in the series, George Sand is an exception. “We would have liked to include Marie d’Agoult, Berthe Morisot or Louise Michel; but it would have gone against the requirements of the narration, regrets Judith Nora, co-founder of the 50/50 collective for gender equality in audiovisual and cinema. I nevertheless wanted the concept of “muse” to be questioned. En emphasizing for example that the painter Victorine Meurent, known as a model appearing in numerous paintings by Manet, was strictly speaking a collaborator of the painter. » Or by remembering that “not everyone had the progressive fiber of Balzac of Physiology of marriage and of The Thirty Year Old Woman », adds Céline Ronté.

And The Army of Romantics turns out to be very masculine, the team that brought it to life is much less so. “80% of post managers were women”welcome Judith Nora and her partner Priscilla Bertin. Hearing Cécile de France take charge of the voice of Honoré de Balzac or the words of this great misogynist that was Charles Baudelaire is thus a form of reparation. Finally, to this contemporary concern is added the care taken by Amélie Harrault to “invent a language that speaks to young and old alike”and to “find a visual writing in which the borrowings from the paintings and engravings of the artists cited can not be offended”. What The Army of Romantics also proves to be an undeniable success.

The Army of RomanticsSaturday December 21 at 9:50 p.m. on Arte.
The Army of Romantics, 2 DVD box set, enriched with numerous supplements; The Adventurers of Modern Art, 3 DVDs, Arte éditions.