All language subtitles for Pedro.Costa.-.Onde.Jaz.O.Teu.Sorriso.2001,.Jean.-.Marie.Straub.en

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But why?

Is it so difficult to sell the oranges?

There!

Do you want my seat?

No way!

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

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

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

Twenty-six.

- Is this good for you?
- Yes, but be careful with the "N".

Yes, the "N" is in there.

Eighty-two.

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

Yes, but I...

That's nervous tension

because he's ready for his big speech
and the violence and all...

You're serving stones in gravy.
Now 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.

- So, here's my solution.
- All right.

So, fasten your seatbelt.

Much better...

In terms of what we see,
yes, but I'm afraid that you...

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?

- Don't spend 100 years on it.
- I don't need a hundred, just seventy.

They are eaten in salad.

- In America?
- No, here by us.

Here by us?
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, you ate that?

It went well for you then, too?

So- so.

You never ate oranges in salad,
did you?

Yes, sometimes.
But there is not always oil.

It is not always a good year.

The oil can cost a lot.

And there is 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 does not 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."
That you could say...

But my version would be: "THE guns,
THE automatics, THE grenades."

Bu�uel 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 Nicholas 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 Bu�uel listens to that 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.

But it doesn't seem to me
to be everything,

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?

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:

"Yes, the form, it's the form,
the form, never mind the idea."

That is a sell-out. It's not true.
You have to see things clearly:

First there is the idea.

Then there is the matter
and then the form.

And there is nothing you can do
about that. Nobody can change that!

The idea,
that's what Eisenstein had

when he organized his sequences.
He had his montage of attractions...

Then there is the matter.
He has to determine

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

What we are doing here
is the idea that was on paper,

the construction of the film,
and that is working on the matter.

We work with a matter that resists us
and you just can't cut anywhere you like

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 just stand here and say:
"Yes, but you could also say this,

and then there's this too,
and this is also true, etc." No, no, 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...

That the idea doesn't exist
because there is a form.

But where does that form come from?

If it hasn't been worked,
if it hasn't come out of the matter,

there is no form, it's formless.

In the beginning,
the Earth was without form.

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?

Neither restrained nor violent.
- Are you done?

- Have you calmed down?
- I am always calm.

I was in the caf� on
the station platform with a homeless

because
I had to wait for the crew

who had gone to the supermarket
and kept me waiting for hours...

He was telling me all sorts of
incredible stories. Had been all over.

He kept asking me: "What are you doing
here?" I told him: "I'm 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.

Ah, 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 PreoccuPied for my valises!

Yes, you never know.

True.

Eh? You never know,
with these nasty fellows going around.

I am an emPloyee at the Land Registry.

- That's good, it changes frequency...
- Of course, it does.

The sound is more muted
in the second shot.

When 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 running.

So that everything blends
together like a sauce.

The soup!

There are lots of masterpieces
in the history of cinema

which we admire very much

but which obviously 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
is no music or background sound soup,

you have greater precision.
Otherwise we'd say: "Yes, great."

"A bit more sound here,

more music there and then
everything will be nice and smooth."

One, two, three...
"Would you like a little more?"

So...

...what's that
"Would you like a little more?".

What film is it?

So, 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 really is a Buick. I don't know
anything about cars, but it's a Buick.

Olive green and strawberry pink,
two clashing colours.

So he sees it go by,
he turns up his nose, pick up his brush,

and shoots. When it has passed
he says: "Would you like a little more?"

When we see films like that,
that the people who made them

have not shied away from
even 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 shit,
and even Woody Allen

and 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 there, in between the shots,

in the very montage and in the way
the shots are linked to each other,

it is extremely subtle psychology.

Eh? 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 the start of a smile lighting
up in his eyes but it's difficult...

If you 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?
- Yeah...

You see.
It's your fault that I missed it.

Will you ever understand

that being disrupted while concentrating
fucks it up?

It's something! After all this time
we've been editing films together,

how come
you still don't have the discipline?

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

- Just imagine...
- Shut up!

An acrobat!

Yes,
the acrobat would be dead on the spot.

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!

Right, 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 frames

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

That's crap! There's no smile.

Something is going on in his eyes
but we don't see it.

Yes, but we have to see it grow.

You can't start here
because 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.

There, that's how I'd like it.

You see, 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 a bundle of lies."

See what he does with his mouth?

- He does nothing in particular.
- Yes, he does...

No, he shuts his mouth,
that's all, as he shakes his head.

- Well, do you want this tight?
- Yes.

Now, 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!

You must understand that
if we linger on the man who says:

"I am an employee at the Land Registry"

then we're stuck because we have to...
Or we stay on him

for a relatively long time,
then it's us,

the viewers, who are "contemplacing"...

Contemplating.

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.

That way, it's the other man
who contemplates the liar

- it's completely different.

What we're doing now,
we're not sure it's going to work.

That works, does it?

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

Why?
Shall we leave it like that?

Yes, 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

without having to think up
some that we could have done!

It's hard not to talk bullshit.

Not at all.
You just have to shut up.

Yes, of course, that's radical!

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

You work hard to avoid them.
You destroy clich�s, go back, correct,

abandon or add things...

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

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

So, go to the maximum here...

- 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,
you know.

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.

This is a little longer.

I don't want to cut anymore, because...
what shall I say?

Just look! Look, look!

No need to be afraid here.

Cutting a film is cutting time.

Things happen between two shots.

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

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

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

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 from outside.

Yes. I'd keep that.

It's good.

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

Well, here...

It looks like a matching shot, which is
the most idiotic thing in film-making.

Do as you like and I am sure that
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?
Not the script girl, that's for sure.

No script girl for me, no way.

Script girl is a proper job.
It's not something just anyone can do.

There was only ever one script girl
one could take seriously.

Hitchcock would have had
a hard time without one.

What's her name,
the one who worked with Hitchcock?

Sylvette Baudrot or Baudot?

Yes, 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...
what's the word?

Yeah, sloppiness.

No, but 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 never create
the exact same framing.

You have to put marks on the wall
and 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 "C�zanne", for the first
time in our lives, we searched

at the centre of each painting.
We often spent half an hour...

More...

While the others were fiddling around,

we were looking at the centre
of the painting.

So that the camera was not looking
from above or below,

but truly the way it should be,
with a tripod or an Elemac.

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

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

Jean-Marie, take a look
at the beginning of this shot.

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

Impossible, even if we have
precisely defined positions,

which they gradually discover
for themselves,

you have to leave
a margin of freedom of movement,

otherwise we would be there
constantly screwing them to the ground,

moving their feet
and then 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 things...
- "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 of contemporary history,

the history of so-called
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 and kept on writing

and 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,
so to speak.

And that's important because

there comes a moment
when enough is enough.

Did you see that?

A butterfly.

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

- There, see?
- Yes.

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: "That's
a good take, do one more for me."

That works every time.

Not true.

- What take is that?
- Fourteen, I think.

Did we do more or did we stop here?

All I know is that we have number 11
in version 1, and this is 14,

so, if there is 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, nevertheless,
they had worked less...

They're also much more extroverted.
"Empedocles" was introverted,

so the concentration was intense.

There is another element at play here.

"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 is nothing you can do.
Time is not money.

They also discovered
that what they had

was a text and that it was literature.

That's what everybody...

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, etc.

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

who arrived at rehearsals at six,
or five thirty at the earliest.

It was a huge effort and we had
to get them interested in it

because otherwise
they wouldn't have held out.

And then, it's also a question of trust,
I'd say. Straub meant nothing to them.

They didn't know what we were about
because... it's not in the papers.

And on TV, they show our films in Italy
at one in the morning.

These people work, they can't watch TV
at one in the morning.

Let's say they discovered Vittorini,
not theatre,

because they already knew that.

They discovered cinema
and slowly we became friends.

But the Procession
was a matter of the Priests!

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
and agreed on, that is to say:

And not...

And not...

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.

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 with 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,
if you want to know, is getting it done.

Most of us begin with a clich�
- 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 up
and you say to yourself:

"Yes, 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...

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.

Which means that the editors
just couldn't be bothered.

- Have a good look.
- Stop it.

Because your movement doesn't
start here. It starts there!

And 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!

And he would see an open eyelid,
a closed eyelid.

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

And his 10-minute films from
the Essanay series were like that.

Not only those, but those in particular.

So, are you ready?

And 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, that's all.

You gave me this cold, didn't you?

Don't tell me I've been
coughing for the last 40 years.

And yet...

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

- No, he said quiet a few.
- He said...

And, in terms of the way
in which he'd look,

we never had anyone able to look
in the right way immediately,

without us saying anything.

Of course, 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.

Right... Sixteen...

But the true thing he said was...

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

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

So, 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...
- Can you shut up for a second?

- Listen...
- Yes.

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

And here, the action, as you'll see,

is not that hard to find,
though it's subdued.

There's another reason for this.

He drinks as if he were sleepwalking,

he moves like Bresson
dreamt of actors moving...

Coming home, switching on the light
without knowing what one is doing,

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

One makes unconscious,
mechanical gestures.

That's more or less what he does...
he drinks.

But at the same time he...

Because he is sleepwalking
and unconscious he has already...

He has that meditative look

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

But it wouldn't make
any 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 of the take...

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: "Right, now lower your eyes."

"You look down, down to the ground."
So we're rehearsing and we say to him:

"Where are you looking?"

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

And he said: "Not there,
because if you look too far down,

you'll have your eyes lowered too much
and the camera won't see them.

You have to look down
so that one can still see your eyes!"

That's what they're taught!

As he is not the vain type
and he liked us a lot,

he ended up looking
where we told him to.

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

Instead of learning to breathe,

to co-ordinate 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 like that,
clever little things,

crafty tricks, Scapin tricks...

The two actors we had
who weren't from the Schaub�hne

were from the Gorki Theatre,
from East Berlin.

And we never had any problems
with them. Never!

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

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

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

In a suburban flat on the 20th floor
with only one room

which he shared with his wife...

They opened the door
and there was a piano!

Which in itself
is unexpected for an actor.

We had brought the long
chorus text, the longest text,

which tells of all the miracles
man is capable of

and which ends in catastrophe.

And we asked him, a little timidly
- it was our first meeting -

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.

We were a little surprised
and said to him:

"There are no miracles,
how did you do it?"

"First of all, I always asked myself

"why one recites verse
without respecting it as verse.

"I've been asking myself this question
since my beginnings as an actor.

"Then I saw 'The Death of Empedocles"'.

What he meant
was not to link every verse.

"And then 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 all alone, he understood
it all! He practised and practised.

He understood it was all about
practising like a musician

and not like an actor who says: "I don't
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 had travelled the whole of France
just after the revolution

and then he returned to Germany.

And his message
is quite simply a communist utopia.

Which says: There is only one thing
that will ever save the earth

and the children of the earth:
Communism.

And you will see

that it is not any old communism
but a very precise communism

that will be necessary one day,
if we don't want all to perish,

in nothingness and ruin,
well, we will have to reinvent it!

And you will see how he defines it.
It begins with:

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

You have learned only what
your fathers have told you

and he develops that
and only if you don't forget

this and that... as kids say...
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 the ground as such but the earth

the children of the earth.
So, 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.

Because if you have a great deal
of patience,

it is charged with contradictions
at the same time.

Otherwise it doesn't have
the 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.

Yes, but I check them
before cutting all the same!

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 do that!

Why?
What would be the reason for that?

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

- That's the silliest of reasons!
- Well, it's not my fault!

That palm tree is annoying.

That's the most difficult thing
in working with professional actors.

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,
but they must by no means rush things.

They must use this time
to collect themselves, concentrate,

think, meditate
and be at one with their body.

We don't do huge productions, it's
better to waste 3 or 10 meters of film

than to start all over again

because you started too early
and weren't concentrating.

You know...
This guy is such a hothead!

Did you check if
there was any parasite noise...

No, there's no noise, no problem here.
The problem is in the length of time

I need here, given that
in the other shot he starts immediately.

What's more,
what's going on up there annoys me too.

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

Here, he's just finished lowering his
head. And I'm not sure that that fits,

him having just lowered his head and
in the next shot lifting it immediately.

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

will fix things because he lifts
his head immediately in the other shot.

A cut serves to condense something

that one doesn't necessarily do
in real life.

But in life we do that too.
Up. Down.

- So?
- That's not the same thing.

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

See, I don't want to... up, down.

Yes, 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 that

if it isn't shot from the same
perspective as the preceding shot.

Because otherwise
you flatten the space,

turn it into rubber...
and you end up with a shot

one doesn't know where to place
oneself, there's no reference at all.

Where to place oneself?

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

but that's a bit
like the hair in the soup.

Whereas this is a matching shot
that has a meaning.

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,

and it's always the same point of view.

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

or a crane shot
sliced into several pieces.

Here.

That's it.

It's much more interesting this way
than if you said:

"Now, to cut the other character out,

we'll have to move a bit left
or a bit right."

But if you respect the same perspective,
it's a lot more interesting.

There, you know that it's
something clear 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.

And 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.
There's something...

No, it's not out of frame.

There are bits of it still here,
but out of focus, so...

- We'll see if we can do that.
- But most of it is out.

What you need to know is that, if
you have a palm tree swaying like that,

immediately there will be eager,
helpful and friendly assistants,

or even the cameraman...

Fine!
They'd be here straight away

to cut the branches
with clippers or to put cord

or rope to stop them moving.

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

And then you do a large shot
and you realize you have

to take off the rope and
you regret having cut it.

In "En Rachachant",

there was an old wooden platform
in a school in Saint-Ouen.

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

And 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 some of the tall,
dark and handsome bit

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,
but we'll try.

- Scrutinize the wind.
- Yes, I will scrutinize it.

And the tuft.

In a sequence like that,

it would be absolutely wrong to have
shots like we had in the dialogue

between Robert and Schrella
in the billiards room

at the end of "Not Reconciled",

in which there are high angle shots

of Robert leaning
on the billiards table

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

and we must stay at their height.
That's all one can do.

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 finished drifting, Straub...

Well, let's see.

It is extraordinary.

I suPPose.

- Too bad...
- Listen.

... to offend the world.

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 ten and a half years,
no, 15, but it had a hole there...

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."

And then, I asked
"what kind of 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 about it,
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.

That's not true. You're mixing up
shirts. I bought that shirt.

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

It was what they call a bargain
and 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

because there's a car door slamming,
which is rather unfortunate.

- But there's another solution.
- What's that?

We keep the slam of the car door and
use it for the beginning of the music.

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

We did something like
that when we were young.

First of all, we're not young anymore
and also, the noise is not very clear.

But one can make out it's a car door.

What else could it be?
It's not a gunshot.

I've made quite
a mess of your work, haven't I?

- Happy now?
- Now, you're going to sigh...

I think we live in an age of betrayal,
that's all.

I'm 97 years of age and even older;
I am older than Baudelaire

when he said he was
a thousand years old.

I've survived in a world in which

the life of the artiste en Plein air
was somewhat 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...

Because 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 are interested in

and to do it the way we wanted to,

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

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

we spent 10 years trying
to get financing but we got there...

People'd suggest names
like Curd J�rgens,

a famous German actor of the time,

who would have pretended
to be playing or conducting the music...

"Everything is possible in cinema" they
told us, "it will all be dubbed anyway".

Then someone else suggested...
What was his name?

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 2 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 the cinema crowd.

So I said to him:
"Then it wouldn't be our film."

"Go ahead and make a film with
Karajan" and he said:

"Listen, if you accept,
I will not only pay him

but also give you a certain amount
for your film." And I asked: "How much?"

We have a budget, we only need half,
so keep the other half,

fuck you and 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.

Well, you end up paying the price.

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

But we're still happy
and we're still privileged...

So, in an age of betrayal,

I don't see any harm in recalling
a little bit of faithfulness.

"Sicilia!", if it was love
at first sight and if we wanted to do it

was because in '72,

when we were looking for locations
for "Moses and Aaron",

which we shot in '74, in Italy

- we travelled 30'000 km
at snail's pace, searching...

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

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

And so we had a look around and
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 to us
as an extremely strong memory...

That being said, how can a man
and a woman stand;

stand-that really is a good word -
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!

So, at the end of the last shot
there is 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 1954,

I was attending the Lyc�e Voltaire,
but only for eight days...

- Three weeks.
- Was I?

- Three weeks.
- Yes.

Well, three weeks. Then I left...

You didn't. 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.

And 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?

Ah! 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, if you like.

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

That's exactly what I think, and that...

That's very 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 and grows,

has nothing to do with an ointment.

It's the opposite.

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.

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