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But why?

Is it so difficult to sell the oranges?

There!

- Do you want my seat? - No way.

- It's... - I know, shut up.

He already has his mouth open, but it should work.

It's better with his mouth open, just this once.

Is this good for you?

- But be careful with the "N". - The "N" is in there.

Eighty-two.

- It's better. - Are you sure? He blinks.

That's nervous tension, he's ready for his big speech and all the violence...

You're serving stones in gravy! It's a question of where to cut.

There's fine.

That's what I would suggest, what do you say?

I don't trust your fanaticism in cases like this.

Here's my solution. Fasten your seatbelt.

Better.

- Much better. - In terms of what we see, but I'm afraid...

Give me a break, Straub!

... you'll cut out some preliminary harmonies of the "N".

This is you... This here.

And this is me.

- What? - A one-frame difference.

- Between us? - Yes.

- So? - So?

- Don't spend 100 years on it. - I don't need 100, I just need 70.

- They are eaten in salad. - In America?

- No, here by us. - Here? In salad with oil?

Yes, with oil. And a little garlic, and salt.

- And with bread? - Surely, with bread.

- I always ate that as a boy. - Ah, did you? It went well for you then, too?

So-so.

You never ate oranges in salad?

Yes, sometimes. But there's not always oil.

It's not always a good year.

- The oil can cost a lot. - And there's not always bread.

If one doesn't sell the oranges there is no bread.

But why?

Is it so difficult to sell the oranges?

They won't sell. No one wants them.

Abroad they don't want them.

And the boss pays us this way, he gives us the oranges.

And we don't know what to do. No one wants them.

We come to Messina on foot and no one wants them.

We go to see if they want them in Reggio, in Villa San Giovanni,

and they don't want them. No one wants them.

We go back and forth, we pay the way, we don't eat bread,

no one wants them.

As if they were poison. Accursed oranges.

You cannot expect form before the idea...

... for together they'll make their appearance.

WHERE DOES YOUR HIDDEN SMILE LIE?

I haven't told you, my Kabyle friend

is the only guy I have met so far who knows this song.

He doesn't sing: "Unhide from the mine THE guns, THE automatics, THE grenades."

He sings: "Unhide from the mine YOUR guns, YOUR automatics, YOUR grenades."

- And I think he is wrong. - I think so too.

At best you could sing:

"Unhide from the mine YOUR guns, THE automatics, THE grenades."

It could be... But my version would be:

"THE guns, THE automatics, THE grenades."

Buñuel tells a frightening story in his book.

One day his son told him that there was this guy he should meet, Nicholas Ray.

And so he went to dinner one evening with Nicholas Ray.

And Ray told him the most appalling story he had ever heard about film-making.

He said that, in the system, if you wanted to have a career,

it was absolutely out of the question that the film you were going to make

could cost less than the one you had just made.

There had to be growth, development, and all that.

So Buñuel listens to this and for him it's like the end of the world.

Do they have eyes?

I am from Leonforte,

up in the Val Demone between Enna and Nicosia,

I am a landowner with three beautiful daughters,

one more beautiful than the other,

and I have a horse

on which I ride across my lands and then I believe I am a king.

believing I am a king when I mount my horse,

and I would like to acquire some other knowledge

and feel myself to be different with something new in my soul,

I would give all that I possess and the horse, too, the lands,

to feel myself to be more at peace with men,

as one who has nothing to cause self-reproach.

Not that I had any particular cause for self-reproach.

Not at all. And I'm also not talking in the sense of the sacristy.

But it seems to me that I am not at peace with men.

I would like to have a fresh conscience

and that would require me to fulfill other duties,

not the usual, other, new duties and higher,

regarding other men, because in fulfilling the usual duties

there is no satisfaction and one remains, as if one had done nothing,

discontented with oneself, disappointed.

I believe man is ripe for other things.

Not only not to steal, not to kill, etc. and to be a good citizen.

I believe he is ripe for other things, for other duties, new ones.

That is what one feels, I believe, the lack of other duties,

other things to fulfill. Things to do

for our conscience in a new sense.

I believe you are right. Are you a professor?

A professor?

Nothing to laugh at, little Grandpa. Nothing to laugh at.

Ah, I believe that is just it. We feel no satisfaction any more

in the fulfilment of our duties. To us the fulfilment is indifferent.

We feel bad all the same.

And I believe, it is just because of this,

because these are duties that are too old,

too old and become too easy,

without significance any more for the conscience.

- But really you are not a professor? - Have I the air of a professor?

I am not ignorant, I can read a book, if I want to,

but I am not a professor. I was with the Salesians as a child,

but I am not a professor.

Thank you.

Did you get that?

"Giovanni, I will never forget you."

You see, freedom had come to him.

Like the freedom of the musician,

it comes when he masters the mechanics.

Freedom doesn't come just like that.

Things don't exist until they have found a rhythm, a form.

The form of the body gives birth to the soul, I've said it a thousand times.

There was this Thomas Aquinas who discovered that

and as he was Neapolitan, he knew what he was talking about.

When someone says: "The form, the form, never mind the idea."

It's a sell-out. It's not true. You have to understand: first there is the idea!

Then there is the matter and then the form!

There's nothing you can do about that. Nobody can change that.

The idea, that's what Eisenstein had when he organized his sequences,

he has his montage of attractions, then there is the matter

he has to find the duration of the shots he stringed together, that is the matter,

and here is the idea that was on paper, the construction of the film,

the continuity, and then we work on the matter.

We work with a matter that resists us, you can't cut anywhere between shots.

I already explained that before coming into this joint...

And through this work, the struggle between the idea and the matter,

and the struggle with the matter,

gives rise to the form. And the rest is just filling material.

I want that to be quite clear.

You can't say: "This is true, and there's this too, this is also true." No!

The same goes for a sculptor.

He has his idea and gets a block of marble

and he works the matter.

He has to take into account the nervures in the marble, the cracks,

all the geological layers in it. He just can't do whatever he wants.

My blood boils when I hear things like that.

The idea doesn't exist because there's a form. But where does form come from?

If it hasn't been worked, if it hasn't come from matter, there's no form!

It's formless!

In the beginning, the Earth was without form and empty.

Your formless form.

Your infamous form, formless, infamous, invertebrate.

If you are working with nuance, condensation, expansion, deflagration,

you cannot say that it's all in the whole, that it's all one.

Those are people who no longer have morals,

can no longer feel emotions, neither restrained nor violent.

Are you done?

- Have you calmed down? - I'm always calm.

I was in the café on the station platform with a homeless

because I had to wait for the crew who had gone to the supermarket...

And he was telling me all sorts of incredible stories,

he had been to Australia, Germany, all over...

He asked: "What are you doing here?" I told him: "Just waiting."

And I fiddled with my framing.

- You will permit me, won't you? - By God, why not?

It seemed to me I had seen you get off in Catania.

You saw me? But I accompanied a friend to the train for Caltanissetta.

I got back on at the last minute. In the last car.

I hardly had time.

- I was concerned about my luggage! - Yes, you never know.

True. You never know, with these nasty fellows going around.

I am an employee at the Land Registry.

That's good, it changes frequency.

The sound is more muted in the second shot.

While shooting, I thought we'd never edit this sound.

It's working out better than I thought.

It's nice because one can feel the high frequencies of the train coming across.

But no one does this kind of work. Even Duret, the sound man, told us

we should edit with a train track to blend everything like a sauce.

The soup!

There are lots of masterpieces in the history of cinema...

which we admire very much but which hold together because of the soup,

musical soup in particular or sound soup, etc...

I'm not saying that that's not legitimate or always ugly but nevertheless...

Here we are restricted, if there's no music or soup, you need greater precision.

Otherwise we'd say: "Yes, great."

"A bit more sound, a bit more music and everything will be nice and smooth."

"Would you like a little more?"

What's that? "Would you like a little more?"

What film is it?

You don't know? It's "My Uncle".

There's this little old man with one eye

and he is in a street, painting the white lines for the drivers.

And as he is dutifully painting his lines, a Buick drives past,

it's a Buick, I don't know much about cars, but it's a Buick.

Olive green and strawberry pink, two clashing colours.

He sees it go by, turns up his nose, pick up his brush,

and when it has passed he says: "Would you like a little more?"

When we see films like that, where...

the people who made them haven't shied away from the most basic demagogy,

we look at each other and say: "Would you like a little more?"

Some people have the impression, because we reject...

verisimilitude and TV-style cinema,

Dallas and all that, even Woody Allen, Cassavetes, etc.

that there is no psychology in our films. But that's not true.

All this is psychology.

There is no psychology in terms of the performance of the actor

because there is a dramatic abstraction that goes deeper

than so-called verisimilitude, but it's in there...

in between the shots, in the montage, in the way the shots link to each other,

it is extremely subtle psychology.

You never know, with these nasty fellows going around.

I am an employee at the Land Registry.

Oh, really?

Is this mark tighter than the one you did before?

No, it's the same.

But I'm wondering if it's not too tight. Let me think for a second.

There's a smile lighting up in his eyes but it's difficult...

If we could keep it, it would be better.

It's not easy, very hard to see...

I'm sorry, but if you want to bring out this smile a bit better,

you'll have to go back to the clap.

Really! Do it for me, please.

- There! - Don't start "thereing" me.

There is no "there"!

When you finish your refined work you'll discover a noise to deal with.

That's it?

It's your fault that I missed it!

Will you ever understand that being disrupted while concentrating fucks it up!

After all this time editing films together, you still don't have the discipline!

The guy relying on you to jump would fall on his face at every attempt.

- Just imagine an acrobat... - Shut up!

- The acrobat... - The acrobat would be dead by now!

I've something to say. I'll wait for your permission.

- But if I don't get it, I'll say it anyway. - Spit it out!

I think it's not worth searching for an intermediate solution.

As in democracy, it's a dead end.

If we want to see that there is a smile, we should have some frames

where he looks at him like a fish as if to say: "I don't believe a word."

There's no smile, something is going on in his eyes but we don't see it.

But we have to see it grow. You can't start here, it doesn't show.

You have to see it grow!

His reaction is: "Liar, I don't believe you!"

And then he smiles to himself. I've said all I had to say.

That's how I'd like it.

He knows that he doesn't work at the Land Registry.

He should slap him and say: "I offer you a seat and you tell me lies!"

- See what he does with his mouth? - He does nothing in particular.

He shuts his mouth as he shakes his head.

- Do you want this tight? - Yes.

Let me work in peace!

- We can't... - Shut up, please!

You're afraid, aren't you?

I'm not afraid, I'm looking!

You're bold. I'm always afraid.

Here if we linger on the man who says: "I'm an employee at the Registry"

then we're stuck because, or we stay on him for a long time,

then it's us, the viewers, who are contemp...

... we are contemplating a man who has lied, who has just lied.

Whereas if we stop on the "O" of "cadasto", on the exact frame,

then the lie passes over to the other side, it's sent over.

Then, it's he who contemplates the liar, it's completely different.

We're not sure it's going to work.

It works, doesn't it?

And they'll say, "he dared too much, but the audacity was beautiful."

- Shall we leave it like that? - I would leave it.

You see the stupid things we do?

- But we didn't. - No, we didn't.

We've done enough stupid things, why imagine other we could have done.

- It's hard not to talk bullshit. - No, you just have to shut up.

Of course, that's radical.

When you make films, you try not to say stupid things.

You work hard to avoid them, you destroy clichés,

go back, correct, abandon or add things...

And then, in real life, you do talk nonsense.

You end up destroying some of the work and the films you made.

Go to the maximum...

- What do you mean by "maximum"? - Take that out.

All of it, if possible.

- I want to see it. - What do you mean by "maximum"?

The maximum, the "Gia", his mouth open, anyway...

It's not difficult to be clear.

"What's well thought out can be clearly expressed"...

- "and the words one needs"... - "come easily."

No, gently.

I would do this and no more.

- I'd like to know why? - Well, just look!

To distinguish it from the preceding cut...

- The preceding one was tighter. - Yes, exactly.

I don't want to cut more because...

What can I say? Just look, look, look!

No need to be afraid here.

Cutting a film is cutting time. Things happen between two shots.

I don't want him to reply "Gia" immediately.

I don't want it to be an enthusiastic gesture, there's enough of that.

I'd like to see the end of the preceding shot.

What is he doing? There's a light in his eyes.

I would like to keep that.

- It's not him, it's the light outside. - I'd keep that.

There's a problem with the sound of the train, it's not the same, so...

Well, here...

... it's like a matching shot, which is the most idiotic thing in film-making.

Do as you like but I am sure we will cut it, not 100% sure, but...

- Don't put the light on, please. - I'm not, I'm leaving!

You don't want me anymore! So long!

This is the end of which film by Mizoguchi?

Tough luck, it works perfectly.

- You didn't understand what I said. - What?

- Tough luck, it works perfectly. - Shit!

This bloody matching shot gives rise to the suspicion that we had a script girl,

but we never had one.

What works? No script girl for me, no way.

It's a proper job. It's not something anyone can do.

There was only one script girl one could take seriously.

Hitchcock would have had a hard time without one.

The one who worked with Hitchcock? Sylvette Baudrot?...

But he really needed one...

because he wasn't into modern cinema!

"Mama, mama, what's that: modern people?"

When you see a continuity error in a good film, it's rather fun, amusing.

- But when it's just "schlampigkeit"... - Yeah, sloppiness.

When you do a series of close-ups of the same character like Fortini

and you intercut with black film, no matter how long,

you realize that it's not possible, you can't create the same framing.

You have to put marks on the wall, the next day the light is different.

What was meant to be absolute continuity turns out false, and vice-versa,

it's just not possible.

For "Cézanne", for the first time, we searched the centre of each painting.

- We often spent half an hour... - More...

While the others were fiddling around, we searched the centre of each painting.

And not looking from above or below, but the way it should be, with a tripod.

We had to draw the arcs of the circle, triangles in the frame.

It's surveyor's work, back-breaking hard work.

Jean-Marie, look at the this shot.

And you can't turn your actors into statues. Impossible.

Even if we have precisely defined positions, which they discover for themselves,

you have to leave a margin of freedom of movement,

otherwise we would be there screwing them to the ground,

moving their feet and driving nails into them...

Let's go!

Didn't you know that?

- Oh, as for knowing, I know it. - Naturally.

You could not have lived till today without knowing.

Too bad that you are an employee at the Land Registry instead of singing.

Yes. I would have liked that.

- So? - So?

I'm afraid you've won.

Men!

In Falstaff, in Rigoletto, on all the stages of Europe...

Or even on the street, what does it matter?

Always better than being an employee.

Oh, yes, perhaps...

We are in Syracuse.

I believe I will get a connection right away.

But what will you do in Syracuse?

Tales of a Pale Moon...

Peasants have no history.

Workers... have no history either.

There was a writer like Pavese who fought like hell against it

until he committed suicide,

- and Vittorini. - and Fortini.

There were also people in France. Someone I like very much.

His name was Charles Peguy.

He said: "Making a revolution"

"also means reinstating old things".

- "Very old". - "Very old but forgotten".

He was wise, he said: "also". That was Pavese's dream.

The myth, the unwritten story, that is the history of the peasants

weighed as much on the scales

as contemporary history, and the history of contemporary struggles.

And when he realized that things were mad,

that his party was not capable

of bringing the two poles together and balancing the scales,

Pavese committed suicide in a Turin hotel room in July 1950.

At the same time, Vittorini, who had the same publishers, Einaudi,

sat down on the stairs at the office and wept.

He lived on, kept on writing, there was a bond between them, they were old friends.

Pavese means a lot to us because he was an intellectual, an Italian petit-bourgeois

who didn't indulge...

in his own complacency.

Without being in the least masochistic,

he was someone who reacted constantly...

against the flow.

That's important because there comes a moment when enough is enough.

Did you see that?

A butterfly.

I saw it when we were shooting, but I forgot about it.

There, see?

- How did you recognize me? - I ask myself that, too.

Come, I have a herring on the fire.

Aren't you cold?

- No. - What?

- Are you hungry? - I don't know.

- He was a great man, Grandfather? - And how! Didn't you know that?

He was a great man. He could work eighteen hours a day,

and he was a great socialist, a great hunter,

and great on a horse in the procession of St. Joseph.

He rode in the procession of St. Joseph?

And how! He was a great rider,

better than all here in the village, and also in Piazza Armerina.

How do you think they could have had the cavalcade without him?

- But he was a socialist... - He was a socialist.

He could neither read nor write but he understood politics

and he was a socialist.

How could he ride behind St. Joseph if he was a socialist?

The socialists don't believe in St. Joseph.

What a beast you are! Your grandfather

was not a socialist like all the others. He was a great man.

He could believe in St. Joseph and be a socialist.

He had a mind for a thousand things together. And he was a socialist

because he understood politics. But he could

believe in St. Joseph. He said nothing against St. Joseph.

But the priests, I imagine that they found him contrary.

We won't get it any better.

I told him: "It's a good take, do one more for me."

That works every time.

Not true.

- What take is that? - 14th, I think.

Did we do more or did we stop here?

We have the 11th in version 1, 12th in version 2 and this is the 14th,

if there are any more, they're probably not as good.

- We'll trash them. - But this film was full of ups and downs.

Not like "Empedocles" where the last ones were always the best.

- Because they had worked less... - No, they're more extroverted,

"Empedocles" was introverted, so the concentration was intense.

There is another element at play.

"Empedocles" was a project that took a year and a half, but not every day,

this was a three-month project, working every day, no comparison.

It's better to work a year and a half, but not every day, to master the text,

than to work three months, having to work every day, even on Sunday.

There's nothing you can do, time is not money.

They also discovered what is a text and even literature.

They didn't know where it was taking them because they realized it was hard work.

- What were you saying? - It's too much work, too long, too difficult.

It really is popular culture. These are people who worked all day,

who arrived at rehearsals at six, five thirty at the earliest. It was a huge effort.

We had to get them interested, otherwise they wouldn't have held out.

It's also a question of trust, Straub meant nothing to them.

They didn't know... We're not in the papers...

they show our films on TV, in Italy, at 1 P.M. They work, they can't watch TV at 1 P.M.

Then they discovered Vitorinni - they had a vague idea of theater -

they discovered cinema, and slowly we became friends.

If you want to know, the actor makes a little mistake here,

it's not serious, but a mistake all the same.

In the first and second versions, he does what we had rehearsed...

"una COSA dei pretti"

and not "una cosa dei PRETTI"

But the priests, I imagine that they found him contrary?

But of what import was that to him, the priests?

But the procession was a matter of the priests!

How ignorant you are! The procession was horses and men on horses.

It was a cavalcade.

You see:

The cavalcade departed from over there.

There is a small church that you don't see on the mountain

but they lit it up inside and out and it became a star.

And the cavalcade departed from the church with lanterns and bells

and descended the mountain.

It was always by night, naturally. One saw the lanterns

and I knew that my father was at the head, a great rider.

And all waited on the piazza below, and on the bridge.

And the cavalcade entered the woods,

one saw the lanterns no more, one only heard the bells.

It took a long time and then the cavalcade appeared on the bridge,

with all the noise of the bells and with lanterns and him at the head

as if he felt like a king.

It seems to me I remember.

Nonsense!

You were three years old the only time you saw it.

The problem with a shot like this, is getting it done.

Most of us begin with a cliché, not always, but most of the time,

and that's fine but you have to look at it from all sides and clarify it.

So you start with the idea of a discovery...

Showing a mountain without the window, without anything.

A torn curtain. Then you ask yourself, but why?

It will inhibit the viewers' imagination instead of opening it and you ask yourself:

"After having filmed Mount Thebes in "Moses and Aaron",

"after having filmed Mount Etna, Mount Sainte-Victoire, why add another one?"

And so you renounce, slowly. Then one fine day...

you realize that it's better to see as little as possible.

You have a sort of...

reduction, only it's not a reduction, it's a concentration...

... and it actually says more.

But you don't do that immediately from one day to the next.

You need time and patience.

A sigh can become a novel.

This is the way that everybody should be editing.

It is part of what I call cinematographic rhetoric,

in the positive sense of the term.

If you don't edit this shot the way it should be edited,

there's an absolute rule, one can say that Chaplin invented it, not Eisenstein.

There is a movement. It's very clear. If it's not edited the way we're doing it now

then the film isn't edited at all, the editor just couldn't be bothered.

Stop it! Your movement doesn't start here,

it starts there.

These are the little details that Chaplin saw in his 10 minute films.

He saw them, not on a Moviola, he didn't need machinery

and buttons and switches. He used his bare eyes.

He would see an open eyelid, a closed eyelid.

He'd see the beginning of a movement and its end.

His 10 minute films from the Essanay series were like that.

Not only those, but those in particular.

Are you ready?

He didn't do it because he was a great artist, nobody thought he was a great artist.

He did it because he had found out it was absolutely necessary

and a simple question of effectiveness.

You gave me this cold, didn't you?

You're going to tell me I've been coughing for 40 years?

And yet...

Karl Rossmann said one true thing when we were working with him.

- He said quite a few. - He said...

We never had anyone able to look...

immediately in the right way, without us saying anything.

He was a young spirit. He had a young brain,

his brain cells weren't destroyed yet forty thousand cells a day.

- What age was he? - Sixteen.

But the true thing he said was...

Every time you said I had been coughing for 40 years, he would say:

"The day he stops, that'll be the end of him."

- I'll just have to go on. - Mercy on the rest of us.

Especially when we need our ears and our brains.

"Death to the old and senile".

"The Golden Coach".

"His Excellency the Archbishop is very stern."

What does it matter to see the line?

I meant without ever hearing a train pass?

What does it matter, to hear a train pass?

I believed it would matter to you.

You went out

and stood with the flag at the barrier when it passed.

Yes, if I didn't send one of you.

There was a place, where we lived near the station.

Serradifalco, I believe.

We didn't see it, but we could hear the freight cars

bumping one against the other during the shuntings...

Cut the melon!

- There... - Shut up for a second.

No.

Listen...

I think you have to go with the action, like in Essanay Chaplin once more.

Here the action is not hard to find, though it's subdued.

There's another reason: he drinks as if he were sleepwalking

he moves like Bresson dreamt of actors moving

switching on the light without knowing what one is doing,

not like a bad actor making a point of looking for the light switch

one makes unconscious, mechanical gestures.

That's what he does, he drinks.

But because he is sleepwalking and unconscious he has that meditative look

of someone who stares at the coffee grounds in his cup, into his glass.

It wouldn't make sense to prolong it, that would only dilute the sauce.

- What is she doing? - Shifting about.

We won't be able to keep a lot of this because she simpers.

She thought that was enough, she didn't keep the tension up until the end.

No, it's a pity. Look at that bent wrist there...

There.

That's something precious, because it is...

It's also something extremely difficult to get from professional actors.

Look at Vernon, who is a good actor.

When we began to rehearse, we said to him:

"You look down, down to the ground."

We're rehearsing and asked him: "Where are you looking?"

"I'm looking down at the ground." Jean-Marie asked him: "Where?"

"If you look far down, your eyes are too low, the camera won't see them."

"You have to look down and still see your eyes". That's what they're taught.

As he was not vain and he liked us a lot, he looked where we told him to.

That's what they learn as actors, tricks like that...

Instead of learning to breathe, to coordinate a gesture

or a look or a syllable and to move without it looking...

as if it were straight out of the romantic magazines,

they learn tricks, crafty tricks, Scapin tricks.

The two actors who weren't from the Schaubühne but from the Gorki Theatre, from East Berlin.

We never had any problems with them!

Brecht had spent some time there, so they did learn something.

And the first time we were with the oldest one from the chorus,

rehearsing at his place because we didn't want to put him out too much.

In a suburban flat on the 20th floor with one room which he shared with his wife.

They opened the door and there was a piano.

Which is unexpected for an actor. We had brought the long chorus text,

the longest text, which tells all the miracles man is capable of

and which ends in catastrophe. And we asked him, a little timidly

if he'd be so kind as to do a reading rehearsal.

After two or three cups of coffee and German cake.

And he began to read.

He read his text and I think Jean-Marie changed three details.

A little surprised, we asked him: "There are no miracles, how did you do it?"

"I always asked myself why one recites verse without respecting it as verse."

"I've been asking myself this since I'm an actor."

- "I saw "The Death of Empedocles"... - He meant not to link every verse.

"I found that in your films, verse is verse and metre is metre."

- And he was 65 years old. - And he played the piano.

He worked alone, he understood it! He practised and practised.

He understood it was all about practising like a musician

and not like an actor who says: "I never practise, it kills my spontaneity!"

Bullshit! Let's move on.

What I have to tell you about "The Death of Empedocles"...

It is the second of our 22 films

that has a message. And the message is not ours.

It's the message of the man who wrote the text, in 1793.

He was German but had travelled in France, he'd gone to Bordeaux.

He travelled in France, after the revolution, then he returned to Germany.

And his message is quite simply a communist utopia.

Which says:

there is only one thing that will save the Earth and its children: communism.

You'll see it's not any old communism but a very precise communism

that will be necessary, if we don't want to perish, in nothingness and ruin,

well, we will have to reinvent it. You'll see how he defines it:

"You have always thirsted for something new, so go for it!"

"You have learned only what your fathers have told you"

and he goes on, only if you don't forget this and that

as kids say... as children telling stories...

only then will there be a communism that can save us

and not just us but the only precious thing we have,

namely the ground we walk upon, not this one here but the Earth.

The children of the Earth. Good evening and...

Thank you.

Excuse me.

There are those who stick close to reality and do not put their imagination in there,

their limited imagination of limited creatures.

And then there are those who distort reality

for the sake of the so-called wealth of their imagination.

The result is, and this is controversial on my part,

that the imagination is much more limited

in the work of the second family than in those of the first family.

That of the first...

Because there is less patience in the work of the second family

and...

as someone once said, genius...

is nothing more than a great deal of patience.

If you have patience, it will be charged with contradictions at the same time.

Otherwise it doesn't have time to be charged.

Lasting patience is necessarily charged with tenderness and violence.

Impatient impatience is only charged with impatience.

Beautiful autumn is here again.

Holy shit!

He's mad!

Straub, can you tell me why the door is open and the light in my face?

- I thought we'd done the marks. - But I check them before cutting.

Here, the problem is deciding if we should have a see-saw movement:

he lowers his nose and immediately, in the next shot, raises it again.

Or if we should have him lower his nose, cut then,

and hold it for a few frames before he raises his nose again.

- We can't. - What would be the reason?

The reason would be that the clap is in the picture.

- That's the silliest of reasons. - It's not my fault.

That palm tree is annoying...

That's the most difficult thing with actors, professional or not.

We'll start like that.

It's getting into their heads that all the time after the clap...

is their time and it is luxury, and they must never rush things.

They must use this time to collect themselves, concentrate,

think, meditate and be at one with their body.

We're not a huge production, it's better to waste 10 meters of film

than to start again because you started too early and weren't concentrated.

But this guy is such a hothead...

- Did you check for noises? - No problem here.

The problem is I can't imagine the length of time I need here,

given that in the next shot he starts immediately.

And this here annoys me too.

So, for it to work, I'll have to cut early, here.

He's just finished lowering his head, and I'm not sure that this fits him,

having just lowered his head and in the next shot lifting it right away.

On the other hand, I don't believe putting in a pause

will fix things because he lifts his head immediately in the next one.

A cut serves to condense something one doesn't necessarily do in real life.

But in life we do that too: up, down...

It's not the same thing.

In real life, you don't make film shots.

I don't want to do up, down.

Here you see that editing has nothing to do with life.

Even though we work with elements...

of life.

- There! - Yes, perhaps it's better.

You see that there is no sense in a close-up like this

unless it is taken from the same perspective as the preceding shot.

Because otherwise you flatten the space,

you turn it into rubber...

and you end up not knowing where to place yourself, there's no reference.

Does one place oneself full face or in profile or a bit more frontal?...

That comes a bit like a hair in the soup.

Whereas this is a matching shot that has a meaning.

And the close-up, instead of being purely psychological matter...

is a spatial discovery. The way he's shot here

is the same point of view as when we see the two of them.

It's just the lenses that change, it's the principle of a pan

or of a crane shot sliced into several pieces.

Here it is!

This is much more interesting than if you said:

to cut the other character out, we'll move a bit left or a bit right.

If you respect the same perspective, it's much more interesting,

because it's simple and logical. It's not chewing-gum.

We won't do any better.

You must excuse me.

I believed I could do it because you are a stranger.

Oh, that is nothing. Two soldi more or two soldi less...

The question is one does not know how to comport oneself with strangers.

There are perhaps scissors sharpeners

who charge eight soldi in other villages,

and one risks damaging them in charging six.

It is beautiful, the world.

Light, shadow, cold, heat, joy, non-joy...

Hope, charity...

Infancy, youth, age...

Men, children, women...

Beautiful women, ugly women, the grace of God, roguery

- and honesty... - Memory, fantasy.

What should that mean?

Oh, nothing.

Bread and wine.

Sausages, milk, goats,

pigs and cows.

- Rats. - Bears.

- Wolves. - Birds.

Trees and smoke,

snow.

Sickness, recovery. I know, I know.

Death,

immortality and resurrection.

That palm tree is a nuisance.

Let it sway.

What about this?

It was alright. It worked relatively well.

Relatively because you don't see clearly, but it's still there.

It was in there, but just for a moment...

I saw it very well, I looked closely.

- It's just out of frame. - No, it's not!

There are still bits out of focus... But most of it is out.

You need to know that, if you have a palm tree swaying like this,

there will be, helpful, friendly assistants, or even the cameraman

Good.

They'd be here straight away to cut the branches with clippers

or to put rope to stop them moving...

And that's the kind of things that sticks out.

Then you do a large shot, you have to take off the rope and you regret having cut it.

In "En Rachachant", there was an old wooden platform in a suburban school...

It was hard to find because they don't make them anymore.

The cameraman already had an axe in his hand.

I held his arm back.

That's cinema. You can't trust cinema.

The little birds...

There are the birds and the wind in his hair.

- We could try to... - To keep some of the wind.

Let's keep a bit of the tall, dark, handsome guy as if he'd...

finished his thing, he's quite happy with himself.

- With the wind playing with his tuft. - I don't know if it will work...

Scrutinize the wind. And the tuft.

In a sequence like that, it would be wrong to do shots

like in the dialogue between Robert and Schrella in the billiards

in "Not Reconciled", in which there are high angle shots

of Robert responding to Schrella. There was a reason for that.

It's a dialogue that goes from one extreme to the other,

in which the feelings of each other constantly swing.

Here, we have two characters who meet,

first in mistrust, and suddenly...

something happens between them, we must stay at their height, that's all.

All the more so because at the end they come to be on brotherly terms...

they are both...

on the edge of a kind of invisible abyss...

It ends like that.

When you finish drifting, Straub.

Well, let's see...

Immortality and resurrection.

It is extraordinary!

- I suppose. - Too bad...

Listen...

Excuse me, if someone knows another whose acquaintance he has made with great pleasure,

and then takes from him two soldi or two lire more

for a service he should have rendered gratis

due to the great pleasure it gives him to know him,

what kind of thing is that one, isn't that a man who offends the world?

Thank you, friend.

I don't know, there's something that doesn't work.

Can I just point out that it's my hat?

I've had it for 10 years. No, 15.

- It had a hole... - That's two frames less.

I gave it to him.

- Two days later, I bought this one. - Now listen, Jean-Marie!

In "Diary of a Country Priest", they greeted...

"from one side to the other of an invisible road."

I asked: "what shirts have you got?" He brought his shirts and trousers.

And he had pink shirts and stuff like that...

- So, I had to give him that shirt. - And the trousers too.

And I found that shirt in the rubbish in Rome.

I found it 4 or 5 years before in Rome. People throw away all kinds of things.

But they're very nice, they have them cleaned first

and then put in plastic wrappers

and they either put them straight in the bins or well to one side.

I found that shirt in the rubbish.

You're mixing up shirts. I bought that shirt.

I didn't buy it, I stole it. I stole it from a supermarket in Rome.

It was a bargain, I said to myself "what a shame!"

The one you found has got a big cigarette burn in it.

It's a tartan shirt. Red and green.

- Isn't that tartan? - Yes, but not red and green.

We can't go further, there's a car door slamming, which is rather unfortunate.

- There's another solution. - What's that?

We keep the slam of the door and use it to start the music.

I'll try but I don't think so.

We did something like that when we were young.

We're not young anymore and the noise is not very clear.

It's a car door, what else could it be? It's not a gunshot.

I've made a mess of your work?

- Happy now? - You're going to sigh...

I think we live in an age of betrayal.

I'm 97 years, I am older than Baudelaire when he said he was 1000 years old.

I've survived in a world in which the life of the artiste en plein air was a bit difficult,

especially when you wanted to do what Cocteau described as:

"Nourish that for which you are criticised, it's your real self."

We see ourselves as privileged all the same.

In a world in which 90% of the people have a job they're not interested in,

we've been able to do a job we're interested in and to do it the way we wanted to,

and not the way others would have wanted us to do it.

When we did "The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach", our first project,

we spent 10 years trying to get financing but we made it.

Some people suggested Curd Jürgens, a famous German actor of the time,

who would have pretended to be playing or conducting music

"everything is possible in cinema" they said, "it will be dubbed anyway".

Then, someone suggested...

- What was his name? - Herbert.

Herbert von Karajan. I asked: "Who's going to pay him?"

He said: "I'll pay, it won't be in the film budget, I'll pay Karajan."

So I told him: "I'm sorry, we don't want Karajan,"

"we have known Gustav Leonhardt for ten years and nobody knows him"

he has made two records, and everyone asked: "who's that?"

He didn't have the market value neither in box office,

nor for musicologists, musicians and even less in the cinema crowd.

I said: "It wouldn't be our film, go on and make a film with Karajan."

He said: "If you accept it, I'll pay for him and give you a certain amount for the film."

I asked: "what's this? we have a budget, we only need half,"

"keep the other half, fuck you, give us the half we need"

"and let us do our film with Gustav Leonhardt."

To which he said no. We ended up doing it anyway.

You end up paying the price.

We haven't any retirement pension and all the crap.

But we're happy and we're privileged.

So, in an age of betrayal I don't see any harm...

in recalling a bit of faithfulness...

"Sicilia!", if it was love at first sight, if we wanted to do it it was because in 72,

when we scouted locations for "Moses and Aaron" which we shot in 74, in Italy,

we travelled 30.000 km at snail's pace

and during the search, one day, on a bridge, we said to each other:

"What a strange smell, not unpleasant but very strong, what is it?"

And we saw hundreds of kilos of oranges lying in the riverbed below.

That stuck in our minds and when we read the beginning of...

"Conversazione in Sicilia" it came back as a strong memory.

And how can a man and a woman stand, the word is stand, stand together?

It was also worth it for the oranges.

Old print, old film, but...

forever young!

"A little powder, a little rouge"...

"An artist is forever young!"

At the end of the last shot there's nothing to cut out?

I'll tell you when I've finished, but I don't think so.

You know, she always talks like that.

When we met in 54, I attended the Lycée Voltaire, for only 8 days

- 3 weeks. - 3 weeks? Very well.

Then I left...

- You were told it would be better to leave. - I was kicked out.

I was even told why:

I knew too much about Hitchcock and that disturbed the class.

I was watching her from a distance.

We weren't sitting that close to each other.

I didn't know her, I was just watching her.

Every time she uttered something,

the others would ask me - why me? - what she'd said.

I had to translate, it was taken for granted that I understood.

And did you understand?

That's a mystery! One will never know.

They must have noticed that I had fallen madly in love

at first sight, so they thought: "he must understand what she says."

Here, it's the idea of convalescence.

After this call to violence...

comes...

what Beethoven called the convalescent's thanksgiving to God.

The thanksgiving of a convalescent who comes back to life.

It's the idea of a little ointment on a wound.

Let's say that humanity has no other way out than violence...

That's exactly what I think...

That's very bad.

It's bad and one day something else must happen.

In any case, one will have to heal the wounds.

Here, on the contrary...

that which emerges slowly and grows and grows,

has nothing to do with an ointment. It's the opposite.

It's the trees of the forest beginning to march.

- Have you fastened your seatbelt? - Let's go!

Thank you, friend.

Sometimes one confuses the pettinesses of the world

with the offences to the world.

Ah! If there were

knives and scissors, awls, picks and harquebuses,

mortars, sickles and hammers, cannons, cannons, dynamite.