“Cinema allows us to soften the violence of life.”
 

PostED ON 23.10.2022

With the candour and warmth he is known for, Claude Lelouch opened up to the public at the TNP in Villeurbanne on Saturday during a discussion organised as part of the festival..

  © Loic Benoit

An argument at the origin of the story of ‘Live for Life’

I had just made ‘A Man and a Woman’, which had won several awards (Oscars, Golden Globes), setting the bar high. I wanted to make another film with Jean-Louis Trintignant, to tell the story of a boy who wants to find his father's killer in the concentration camps. I had filmed all kinds of things in Brazil: snakes, the jungle, etc. And I showed these images to Jean-Louis. He got scared and told me, "I am not an adventurer, I cannot see myself making this film". But the financing of the film was already at an advanced stage. I was given a few weeks to come up with another idea for the script. One evening my wife and I had a fight, and she said to me, "You may be a great guy in your job, but in life you're a loser!”  That’s how it all started. I said to myself that I was going to make a film about it.

All about the music

We all have two types of intelligence: rational and irrational, instinct, which we don't use enough. Music addresses this animal part of us. Music is the language of the divine. For me, the first medicine I take when I am not well is music. When I work on a movie, I start with the music. The first person I told about my films was my composer, Francis Lai. When I started to make scopitones (clips), I understood the importance of music. In fact, I am currently preparing my next film, and the music will be composed by Calogero and Ibrahim Maalouf.

His cinema style: love, love, love

In my films, life is omnipresent. I love it when actors stop pretending. The difference between an actor and people is that in life you only have one take! And the truth is in people’s eyes, that's why I like to film gazes. I have a love affair with life and with my movies, I want to make you love life. I am a merchant of love. I feel like I’ve told a single story: that of a man, a stroller who loves life and love. I have filmed love in all my movies, it is the main subject of humanity.

Vocation

I started out as a newsreel cameraman; I didn't think I would become a director. I travelled around several countries filming with the camera my father gave me. Shooting the film ‘Quand le rideau se lève’ in the USSR was a great adventure. A taxi driver took me to the filming of Mikhail Kalatozov's ‘The Cranes are Flying’. He was doing a scene in which the camera goes up a spiral staircase, following the actor. When he showed me one hour of the film, I was in tears. I immediately called the director of the Cannes Film Festival and asked him to select the film. And it ended up winning the Palme d'Or! On that day, I said to myself that I wanted to make films. When I was a kid, I fell in love with the cinema; my mother used to hide me in movie theatres during the war. Cinema allows us to soften the violence of life.

The camera, the main actor in cinema

The camera is a third eye, it's like a microscope or a magnifying glass that films what you can't see with the naked eye. When I happened to fall in love with some of my actresses, it was because I had seen things on camera that I could not see with the naked eye! I consider emotion stronger than the sharpness of an image. I let life enter my films.

 © Loic Benoit

 © Loic Benoit

 Laura Lépine