Original subtitles

We were still looking...

for the path to our language.

It was still the time...

of daily massacres in Beirut.

It was already the time of glorious...

space flights to Mars and Venus.

It was the time of private television's triumph...

and of the dollar's incredible rise.

The time when trees were buried in the Black Forest...

...and the first defeat... - We were still looking...

...of McEnroe. ... for the path to our language.

- The time of the... - It was still the time of daily...

...fifth generation computer... ... massacres in Beirut.

...and the famine in Africa. - It was already the time of glorious...

space flights to Mars and Venus.

It was the time of...

- More than ever... ... private television's triumph...

...it was the time when... ... and of the dollar's incredible rise.

all the waters of the sea could not wash away the stain...

...of intellectual... - The time when trees were buried...

...blood. ... in the Black Forest...

and the first defeat of McEnroe.

- It was also... - The time of the...

...fifth generation computer...

...the time of the penultimate... ... and the famine in Africa.

...analysis session... - More than ever it was the time...

...and of the last... ... when all the waters of the sea...

could not wash away the stain of intellectual blood.

...and of the last picture show.

- In fact... - It was also...

...we weren't really looking... ... the time of the penultimate...

...any more for the path... ... analysis session...

...to our language...

...because we were talking less...

...and more slowly.

We weren't short of subjects...

...for conversation... - In fact, we weren't really looking...

any more for the path to our language.

...Or rather yes, we were. ... because we were talking less...

- What we weren't short of... ... and more softly.

were objects.

Masses of objects...

each with its own name.

- Masses and masses of names. - We weren't short of subjects...

for conversation...

But the subjects... ... or rather yes, we were.

...real or false... - What we weren't short of were objects...

...had disappeared. ... masses of objects...

each with its own name. Masses and masses of names.

But the subjects, real or false...

had disappeared.

There was nothing above or below them.

They lost all contact with the world.

Their intelligence was utterly lucid.

It was turned in on themselves

with awful intensity,

but lucid, nonetheless.

No, it was their souls which were mad.

Everything belonged to him,

but that was only a detail.

The important thing

was to sort out to whom he belonged.

How many dark powers were entitled to claim him?

A family gets a letter.

It's from the son, who's away at boarding school.

The father opens it, reads it and throws it

on the table in anger, saying,

"If that's how he asks for it, there's no way I'm going to send him money. "

The mother, upset, asks,

"Good God, what did he write?"

The father reads in a dour tone.

"Dear father,

"I'm broke.

"Please send some money immediately.

"Your son. "

The mother takes the letter, reads it

and shakes her head.

"I can't see anything wrong with the letter.

"It's quite proper. "

And she reads it in a pleading voice.

"Dear father, I'm broke.

"Please send me some money immediately.

"Your son. "

"Oh well, that's different," says the father.

Why did we never talk about the factory?

Say, "the factory. "

Say, "that place. "

Nothing else.

Just, "the factory. "

Just that.

I'm thinking about a crazy place.

Crazy in the full sense of the word,

a place without any landmark.

An infinite place.

How can you be there?

And when you are there, what happens?

Can it be talked of

without the words ending up as always, twisting it?

Can you find words for such an established fact?

The factory...

immutable...

eternal...

inevitable.

A fictitious place.

An unreal space

conceived for vain and yet sublime activity,

which bears witness to all human endeavor,

including your own.

Over the image,

could there be a cut as well - All I can say...

when it gets to this spot... - I think so, yes.

All I can say...

is that when you are in that place

when you are there,

it's extremely difficult to say anything about it

because it's both hard and stifling.

And dead, absolutely dead.

Apparently alive, but dead.

So the place is a lie

because you say you live there

and die there.

Hello.

I'm working.

Looking for the unknown.

Perhaps say nothing, just look.

I think that's the only thing

you can do in a factory.

You can look, look, look.

Perhaps all you can do is look.

Laurelton is looking.

To the left is Michel Platini.

And the ball has left play.

for Bart Laurelton, who is...

Several meters from the stadium

rescue workers attempt to save lives.

In dreams,

different directors have a hand.

One mixes action and vision, the other contrasts them.

To the first, the self and things are identical.

To the other, they're just objects.

One sprays the eye onto the phenomenon.

The other captures the phenomenon.

One looks with his eye shut, the other with his eye open.

On the one hand, a monologue on the inner stage.

On the other, a dialogue.

The northern dreams are polar

and all the more violent

because they make the images explode.

When it copies to the image

half a turn in the south

is more significant than a movement in the north.

So I'm making pictures instead of making children.

Does that stop me from being a human being?

When?

Oh, when?

When did creation exist, free of form?

When?

Oh, when without fate?

It has been already, and it was without dream,

neither awake nor asleep.

Just an instant,

a song,

a unique voice,

impossible to evoke.

A smiling cry.

Once there was a child.

One day there was creation.

One day it will be

a miracle, free from chance.

"The despair of art," that's what I was talking about.

The despair of art and its desperate attempts to create

the imperishable with perishable means.

With words, sounds, stones, colors.

So that space, given shape, may endure beyond time.

Pitiless art.

Yes, but I don't know

how to be at peace with the world by leaving it.

What an undertaking.

Merciless art, lacking all pity for human pain

which is nothing to it.

Nothing but a fleeting existence, a mere accessory

worth no more than the words, the minerals, the sounds

and like them, of use only in the quest for,

and discovery of, beauty.

The discovery of beauty in a constant repetition.

Constant repetition.

So beauty reveals itself to man,

just like cruelty, just like cruelty.

Growing cruelty.

Beauty reveals itself like cruelty,

the growing cruelty of games without rules

that promise the symbol of infinite pleasure

Greedy enjoyment,

contemptuous of knowledge.

A pleasure of fictitious earthly infinity

that can inflict

pain and death

since it can inflict pain and death without any hesitation.

For that happens in the realm of beauty

in the periphery,

the distant periphery,

the distant periphery,

exclusively accessible to the eye.

Exclusively accessible to the eye

and through it to earthly time

but inaccessible to humanity, the human tasks.

So beauty reveals itself to man like a law.

But a law alien to knowledge.

An alien law that reveals

the ruin of beauty

which imposes itself as a law

out of self-love.

The ruin of beauty that imposes itself as a law

out of self-love. Imprisoned in itself,

incapable of being renewed, enlarged, developed.

That's the game of beauty ruled by pleasure

greedy, voluptuous, libidinous, immutable.

This game, impregnated by beauty,

impregnating everything with beauty

takes as its only end, beauty playing with itself,

developing itself.

So this game, impregnated by beauty,

goes on impregnating everything with beauty,

taking as its end, beauty playing with itself.

This game goes on to the very limit of reality,

passing through time, without annihilating it.

Gambling with chance, without dominating it.

Repetitive, infinitely prolonged

yet progressing towards its end

because only humanity is divine.

And thus, the intoxication of beauty reveals itself to man.

And thus, the intoxication of beauty reveals itself to man

like a game already lost in advance.

Lost.

It was an immense, infinite space,

stretching in infinite directions.

A space where sentences didn't follow each other

but interwove in infinite interaction.

They were no longer sentences, but gifts of the inexpressible.

Gifts of life,

gifts of creation,

embracing the world,

conceived by a previous consciousness.

An inexpressible landscape, with inexpressible elements.

The world of fate,

abandoned by creation

where the world of creation

lies like an accident.

That's probably the difference between you and me, regarding the image.

What I really like in it is its inaccessibility.

But that's precisely what bothers you.

The chicken instance which you just mentioned...

Precisely because it isn't...

I mean, it doesn't have to be spectacular.

It doesn't have to be shown, and if that's what's bothering you, then maybe

Does one have to show things?

- Therefore, you could say... - Yes, yes.

You could say I like TV because it doesn't show things.

So you probably dislike it for the very same reason.

That's not it.

Television never shows things,

yet it makes you think that it never stops showing them,

and this is what showing things is.

And that there's no other way to show them.

So they shouldn't be shown.

Yes, but TV is profoundly dishonest.

It justifies its own smugness by a pretense

by a pretense

convincing itself that it does

show things,

and just as they should be shown.

- I think it knows that. - Do you really?

No.

I think some images are inaccessible

and can't be shown.

For instance, when it comes to

love relationships, between people...

Love scenes.

Once you go beyond the Hollywood kiss

you don't know how or what to show.

You don't know how or what to show

and you can only show other images

of a process at work.

If we go back to the image of the chicken and the egg...

If you really want to show

an image of the egg

perhaps you can indicate that while

that while the egg is apparently

motionless,

all sorts of invisible things

are happening inside it.

So this kind of conversation

between several people,

is it equivalent to silence?

The kind that occurs in analysis?

No.

Or an exchange between two people?

No.

Does one go further in analysis?

Yes.

Yes, and without

this construction work in moments...

So now we roughly understand

the effects of internal and external analysis.

It's not the same, but perhaps

I should do the internal analysis

while you do the external analysis.

Or perhaps not. We mustn't force it.

No, we mustn't force it.

Why would we have an analyis called internal?

Because to do an external analysis...

of television, for example...

We're no longer up to it.

But there's still a need for people

who go deeper into internal analysis.

What do you mean by not being up to it?

At the moment, I'd like to say...

Not only are we not up to it,

but we'd go under because we don't have the buoyancy

necessary to stay afloat.

All right, but you still carry on.

You're still able

to practice this work

even if the means you use don't always match up to what you'd like.

It's usually me who says that.

But what about you?

Yes, but I'm talking about you now.

I'm still on about not being up to it.

When directing a film, nothing goes unnoticed...

Yes, but for the wrong reasons.

That's precisely where you can intervene.

For the wrong reasons,

which perhaps I could do something about,

but only partly.

Perhaps some things have to be changed.

Not in the product itself, but in the way

you agree

to hand it over.

The way you follow it through its distribution.

That's where you could change things. But I couldn't really say.

But I interrupted you. Sorry.

Not at all.

But it was you who said to me,

when I was complaining

about Nathalie Baye or Johnny Hallyday in Detective

or about Maruschka in Prenom: Carmen...

About Detective, you said to me,

"Given their situation

either as stars or unknowns...

Or Thierry and Miriam in Je vous salue Marie.

Star or unknown, it comes to the same thing.

Maybe they all are the real stars.

Anyway, you said, "You may be absolutely right about the actors

"but you yourself weren't able to...

"You didn't give them much of a dialogue to work with.

"Or you fell back on the old-fashioned kind

- So, now... - In some specific scenes.

Yes, specifically in the love scenes.

Between the couples.

So I ought to redo them.

But since I can't, I have to make changes internally.

Or in my life.

Alter my life as well.

But can you just alter your life and get on with it?

You, for instance, when you have to make a choice.

I try to tell you. I mean, when you

say, "I'm afraid. "

Good, we can talk about it.

Or, "I don't know. "

I don't really understand.

Even when it's something as simple as taking a photo,

I say to you

that Eisenstein did no better or worse than that.

When he worked,

he didn't see himself as the genius he's considered today.

Whether he did it worse or better

than you is irrelevant.

I mentioned Eisenstein to please you,

but it could be anyone else.

If I was comparing your work to an unknown filmmaker's

it doesn't mean it's any worse. Not at all.

I mean, you can do it.

Yet something within you makes you feel you can't do it.

- Yes. - At the same time, you try

through analysis, to create this good dialogue

which I didn't manage to do, but is later achieved.

So I ask myself, why not stay

and make the whole world a little better, a little...

No, it's certain that...

I cannot know...

I understand things the best when I see them.

That's why I'm so intrigued by the historic theme of analysis.

Take, for example

the findings of Freud,

or the science of Einstein...

No, when you say that you understand things better when you see them...

To get back to this example and not scatter ourselves in all directions

Look again at the example you just cited.

Dialogue that you were capable of

or not totally capable of writing, for the scenes with couples

in a film like Detective.

First between Nathalie Baye and Claude Brasseur,

and then the other couple that Nathalie Baye formed...

with Johnny Hallyday in this story.

You say...

You say that

when you see things, you can

understand what doesn't work.

But you see it when you have the finished product.

Or if I hadn't told you, you wouldn't have...

I see that it's from the ancients.

You would have said...

The fact that you show me, or rather, that you make me hear...

because one doesn't hear

one's own text like someone else's text.

It's that the other makes you see like an other.

And I'd say no, it's no better than an Alan Parker.

He makes, I don't know, perhaps a little,

but not much.

Here I see it, I hear it.

I see it below the structure of vision, like a theory.

Like Einstein, who said, "There are some stars there. "

In doing an experiment.

He said, "And if you look in that direction... "

And we look and actually see the star

sometimes fifty years later.

So I have the impression that

one sees without seeing and hears without hearing

because it's your own...

your own voice.

But that didn't hinder something and therefore there's no...

You want to say that it isn't hindered in the sense that...

When you think of the correspondence between Lou and Rilke,

You want to say that it's hindered in that sense.

Yes, in fact, if I had been Rilke

I'd have said to Lou, "I'd like you to write me...

"try to write me a poem, to show me

"how you'd fare as a poet. "

She'd have said, "No, certainly not. "

But, to him,

it would have helped to say,

"What she can't do

"is not a crime.

"I can do it.

"Ducks do it. Swallows do it. "

At the same time, I've always been drawn to

films made by people that don't see movies,

but we have the sensation

that they value films.

Even when it is very sincere,

the film is a very comfortable image of what happens.

Very exaggerated, very primitive even.

With the art of life

or a memory of life or a plan of life that doesn't...

Yes, yes.

Yes, those two, and even more.

But I don't see

that one is better than the other,

from an aesthetic or moral point of view.

Phantasm of crumbs.

So what is it that worries you? If I may know, that is.

Sometimes,

I wonder if I would be able to measure up to television.

If I could only have a sense

of what you're unable

or unwilling to accomplish. But it's beyond me.

There are times when I feel that whatever

originality

there is in me,

in the way I see things or in the way

I wish to tell or show them,

I feel that this originality

is very fragile.

And since filmmaking, for me,

is not as powerful

and unique as it is for you.

For you, one might say, there's only that and nothing else.

But since for me, it's a more fragile thing,

I feel that the external things

like costumes, script presentation,

the means of raising money.

I know I'm wrong about it and

I am trying to learn, slowly.

But I feel they endanger this sliver

of a voice which is trying to express itself.

While you, even in the midst of turmoils and crowds

your sliver of a voice is never...

in fact, it's not a sliver at all.

You speak out,

you do not hesitate to shout and be heard.

You're never in doubt that whatever you have to say

is of interest. Since it is interesting for you,

it must be interesting to all. It must exist.

I'm more...

more frightened.

I'm full of doubts.

It's rather suprising in someone like you,

who comes to the cinema

and who felt the need to see films

long before I did.

At a much earlier age, that is.

But first of all...

So in actuality...

You were drawn to the projected image

rather than to painting, for example.

My first experience of cinema...

I mean, there was no TV when I was a child.

And even films like Lassie had

very restricted admission by age.

You had to be at least seven to see a cartoon

or a Chaplin film.

Every film had an age restriction of 12, 14 or 16 and so forth.

I remember the first...

Super 8 and video didn't exist, of course.

So I remember making my very first films after school, or on holidays.

I would close the shutter in my bedroom.

I would bring in the cardboard box

with all the family photographs.

Remember how photographers used to

give you your photos in a little folder?

With the positives in one pocket and the negatives in the other?

So, I'd close the shutters

and using a book case

I'd set up a shoe box in which I'd put a lamp,

and cut a slit in the side.

and I'd slide the negatives through a slit in the shoe box.

I found out I had to slide them upside down

in order to project family characters

on my bedroom wall.

It was necessary to put the negative in upside down

...in cinema.

But you...

Tell me...

So in fact you were initiated into the arts.

Not just any arts,

but specifically into a form

which was probably not considered

an art at all in your family.

So, in fact, you "came" to it in the Biblical sense.

Which was not at all my case.

I was just passing and I stayed.

I was about 20 then. Or 18, or 22.

I used to make people laugh.

People like Lelouch, for instance.

Truffaut had the same story, more or less.

"I saw Chaplin when I was four

"and that was that!"

Well, I saw Ben-Hur when I was seven.

I liked it a lot, but it certainly didn't persuade me to do it myself.

It was later, when I was twenty

that someone showed me films

I didn't know existed. That was Langlois.

That's where my story really begins.

Your story is totally different.

Yes, I started by projecting

family negatives on my bedroom wall

on certain evenings...

Family negatives, mind you.

Yes, clearly.

When I think of J.M. Barrie's books...

There's something very childlike

very primitive and effective in his imagery,

which I somehow feel is quite similar to those static images

which I was projecting in my room.

And as you pointed out,

they were characters from my family.

I don't know.

In fact, while you were changing cassettes, I was trying to understand

what exactly was that need to see them...

because I used to do it quite often.

Did you want to see things connected with your family?

Or just any image, and those were the only ones around?

Both. There was the sheer wish to watch something,

to create images in the darkness

of my room,

and family pictures were all I had.

But there was also the pleasure of watching those specific pictures.

I liked it. I don't know.

Perhaps it was a kind of a wish,

to see them again in their innocence.

Is there still a mystery in it for you?

I should say so, yes.

There are moments,

too many moments, in fact, when I still have fun. You said it yourself.

Give me a box of matches and a pencil and tell me

to make a film with that

and I would be quite happy.

Yes, it's very obvious in you,

this evident facility, this capacity you seem to have.

A little bit like...

like a child, basically,

who can make a whole construction out of a few blocks.

There are times when I feel...

I feel that you like what I do, my way of doing things.

Yes.

Yet at the same time,

you say, "No, that's not it.

"You should be more serious, Jean-Luc.

"You just keep on doing... "

No, what I mean is...

You think I should go deeper.

Well, yes, perhaps a little.

When I say you should be more serious,

what I'm trying to say is, "Look,

"You now have more than a piece of string

"and a few matches to make a film.

"You should not keep making the same

construction again and again.

"At a certain point

"you should try and do... "

That's what I meant. "You should go further. "

Yes, but I feel I've never managed to do that.

That's what I was trying to convey.

And what struck me particularly

in those love scenes,

which seemed to me weaker than the rest

and seem to be the weakness of the film as a whole...

I mean, in those relationships...

the couples in Detective.

I felt that all...

in the film, it seemed that all those bits of dialogue,

taking place in surrealist moments,

between all these groups, or rather families,

all these different groups of people

all that came to show

what was wrong with the world

that one can't be at peace with it.

Nothing works, everything's gone bad.

This is where no one can match your power and rigor.

It wasn't for...

- Wait, let me finish. - But it wasn't made for that.

But when you plunge into

another dimension

where you try to show that

there, too, things are wrong

but that there's still some hope,

some possible end,

specifically in the love relationship

between a man and a woman,

then all of a sudden,

it all becomes more timid, more withdrawn.

I would say

in defense of this accusation...

If I were the accused pleading my case,

I'd say that there are people who could show just that,

but for their own reasons, which I don't seem to grasp,

they don't do it. I mean you in particular.

It seems to me

that these people could show a...

A different idea of cinema

I don't seem able to make.

I suppose I could say,

"Right, let's do the troubadors. "

But then there's a love scene

between the lord and lady of the manor.

But you can't just write...

You can't just plunge into writing another Princesse de Cleves.

But in Princesse de Cleves, there aren't...

There aren't any jugglers in it.

Did you sometimes get the feeling

that the cinema is

an art or an institution and many other things as well,

which you must treat with respect as you make it?

Because that is what handicaps me in my work.

I'm sure that once I got over this ridiculous idea

I would find it quite easy

to get on with it, taking one shot, then another.

What ridiculous idea?

A feeling that cinema should be respected.

That you can't just do it any old way.

I know there are technical things that you need,

like light and sound, but...

- Yes, fine... - How can you still think like that?

If there is anything to respect it's...

No, I...

I think that art

is getting out of yourself

like making a child.

Or even like the rockets, today.

I had this idea last night

that nowadays, what with surrogate mothers...

Mothers who don't carry their own babies,

or the making of clones...

In French, the word clone...

I mean, what is a rocket?

You see the globe

and a rocket shooting off it.

Like a child,

coming out of the womb of the earth.

So from the moment

man was able

to make...

to project himself into space

people on earth stopped making babies.

Or just made copies. Like crystals.

But humans and crystals are not the same.

Humans come in infinite varieties.

Crystals repeat the same shape. They are perfect.

The crystal you see today is just as it was

hundreds of millions of years ago.

The crystal has preserved its purity,

neither shape nor contents.

That's where I see

cinema today as more

interesting than any other form.

Except that its power has been usurped.

There's been an usurper: television.

That's how I see it.

With the acquiescence of accomplices...

who are us, ourselves,

or versions of ourselves.

Television is the usurper.

When I watch French television today, I think I know exactly

how the French Resistance felt about the German occupation

or about the collaborators.

So, yes, I do respect the cinema

because I feel

it's an image of myself.

And it's the only means I have to understand and change myself,

to hear

what others say of me

and to bring others into being.

Otherwise, it's too much of a direct relationship.

We're drifting.

Drifting from the subject?

What was the subject you had in mind?

The subject...

Really, the subject is

the one who's saying "I."

Or the subject...

My idea was the subject as the one who says "I."

And when he says "I,"

in order to say "I," he does like you showed in your film.

Like this little girl, who made this sort of angle.

Yes.

Like that.

When you say "Yes," you open the angle.

And when you say "No," your mouth closes the angle.

"Yes" and "No" go together.

"Yes" is the opening of the mouth,

and "No"

is the closing.

When one says "I," you can see that...

So for me,

the subject is, at the same time...

You can see the "I" projecting itself

towards others, towards the world.

But when there is no subject...

The cinema has shown that quite clearly,

more than all other forms. Painting,

the novel or music project themselves into space and time.

Cinema projects itself in a form of visual representation

that people can recognize.

So the "I" could be projected

enlarged, and could get lost.

But its idea

could be traced back.

There was a sort of metaphor.

Television, on the other hand,

can project nothing but us.

So you no longer know where the subject is.

In cinema, in the very idea of the large screen,

or as in the myth of Plato's cave...

there's this the idea of project, projection,

which in French at least have the same roots...

Project, projection.

Subject.

With TV, on the other hand,

you feel you take it in.

You're subjugated by it, so to speak.

You become its subject, like the subject of a king.

"Are we being looked at?"

Where has it all gone?

All those projects...

All those projects to grow, to be enlarged into subjects?