Lionel Baier, guest this Saturday October 5 on BFMTV, is the latest filmmaker to have the actor film. His film “La Cache”, which will be released next year, is currently being edited.
The image of Michel Blanc will continue to accompany Lionel Baier on a daily basis for some time to come. Because the actor, who died during the night from Thursday to Friday at the age of 72, will be appearing in several films in the months to come. Besides The Backpacker, in which he will share the poster with Christian Clavier, Michel Blanc was also able to complete the filming of the film before his death The Cacheadapted from a novel by Christophe Boltanski and which should be released in theaters next year posthumously.
Upon learning of the death of Michel Blanc, Lionel Baier, who will remain as the last director to have directed the actor, felt “a great sadness and “a feeling of dizziness”. “I see him every morning on the editing table with the editor”, he confided this Saturday October 5 on the set of BFMTV.
In his film, Michel Blanc will play Etienne Boltanski, the grandfather of Christian Boltanski, who lived for several months hidden under the floor of his bathroom during the Occupation to avoid deportation to the concentration camps.
An actor with a “sense of rhythm and tempo”
For the filmmaker, Michel Blanc was “like a concert pianist”, “capable of playing several scales at the same time”. An actor who can also demonstrate great precision, with a “sense of rhythm and tempo that musicians have”. “He’s someone with whom you shouldn’t say anything,” he also stressed. “We had to be very precise in what we offered him.”
“No one could imagine that it was his last film, but he always lived it like that. Surprisingly, when he made a film, he always said to himself that it was perhaps the last,” noted Lionel Baier about of the actor known for his great hypochondria.
“At the end of the film, he had this formula that was completely incredible: ‘Now everything is in the can, you could make the film even if I wasn’t here anymore’.”
If the director is still immersed in the post-production of his film, he already knows how his feature film will end and what will therefore be the sequence that will remain in the memory of spectators: “It’s an image that looks a lot like a image of Chaplin. We see Michel Blanc going down a road whistling from behind, with a little boy. According to Lionel Baier, the scene is at the same time sad, funny, touching. Like Michel Blanc.
