Original subtitles

Letter to Freddy Buache

regarding a short film

on the city of Lausanne

-- Dear Freddy,

I'll try to talk to you about

this short film on the city of Lausanne.

I'll try talking in order to guide you.

I think they'll be furious.

They gave money for a film on

and this is a film about.

It hasn't yet reached the surface.

It's still at the bottom of things.

You and I are too old

and cinema will die soon, very young,

without giving everything it could.

We must get quickly to the bottom of things.

It's an emergency.

The police often stopped us when we were shooting.

The other day, we were stopped on the highway.

He said we could only stop here for emergencies.

We said it was an emergency.

The light wouldn't last for long.

He didn't care. It was against law and order.

I've always passed through from Vevey to Geneva

and from Geneva to Vevey, from east to west.

I'd go up, then come down again,

because it's a city that rises and falls.

They say we were dishonest

and didn't fill their order,

but it's not very honest to make an order like that.

We'd need five years' worth of light to make a film like that.

I'd like to get to the center of energy.

In this city, I thought there was something

between the sky and the water.

While shooting, I saw something between green and blue.

Do you remember when Wittgenstein said

we'd made a mistake and called blue green.

That's perfect for Lausanne, changing meanings.

After a lot of research,

I realized that three shots were enough:

a green shot, a blue shot

and the way it descends from green to blue.

Or the way it rises back up.

Between the two is gray.

There are curves and forms,

but no straight lines.

It starts when there are no straight lines.

The city has become straight lines.

Crisscrossing straight lines.

You lose your life crossing it,

but losing can be a pleasure.

The residents of this city win by losing,

and you can see it better than anywhere.

So I thought of three shots, which is hard to do.

Bonnard managed it at the end of this life.

Picasso managed it at the beginning.

All I need is three shots.

What do you think about a shot like this?

A shot that starts in the dark,

there there's light, then we see that it's green.

Then there's what we'll call an upper shot.

Then a middle shot, square and made of stone.

Then a lower shot.

At the bottom, we'll find another color.

Forms and colors.

They say we're dishonest and haven't filled the order.

I disagree, because why did they order this film?

To celebrate the 500th anniversary

of Lausanne's founding.

There was a lower Lausanne near the water,

and an upper Lausanne, near the sky and the mountains.

The two came together to form the center.

The periphery was lost.

It was thrown body and soul into the center.

The three shots have to last long enough

to see the movement of green and blue

as it passes through gray,

solid as rock, as if it would replace eternity.

Then it returns.

I liked this passage.

We're trying to escape the spirit of geometry

and the stones of city planners.

We end up on the rocks,

where we can put our feet in the water.

Reminds me of Baudelaire.

It's very clear. I don't see how

I haven't done what I was supposed to do.

There was something interesting in this short film.

Remember that quote by Lubitsch?

If you knew how to film mountains,

film water and green, you'd know how to film people.

I totally agree. It interested both Yves and me,

each in his own way.

To get out of documentary,

of the place where we live or lived,

and try to examine it scientifically.

Think of Voyager on Saturn. It took two pictures,

and scientists have four years of work from them.

I want to try looking at things scientifically.

try to find in these crowd movements

the beginnings of fiction,

because cities are fiction.

Green, the sky and the forest are novels,

water is a novel, the city is fiction.

Fiction is a necessity

which can make the city beautiful.

The people who live there are often wonderfully moving.

Even in a very rich country like this one.