Original subtitles

I was to realise, later on, how masterfully, how carefully,

how passionately, artfully, details had been dealt with by Walerian.

Just after having my hair cut, I waited,

you always wait on a film set,

and all the crew was waiting too.

I felt people were losing patience,

even though their impatience didn't show,

and I asked,

"What's the matter? What are we waiting for?"

And I was told that Walerian was changing

the colour of the food hatch.

It was a wooden hatch and it had been positioned just as he wanted,

but the colour was wrong and he was addressing that.

"Really? Himself?"

"Yes, himself. He doesn't want anybody to interfere."

"That's strange", I said.

I watched him and, indeed,

there he was, holding a brush

and spreading some dust,

some leaf-mould with that brush

which, obviously, was no paintbrush.

So I asked what he was doing exactly

and one of the dressers told me,

"He took my clothes-brush

"and he is painting that thing with my clothes-brush!"

I met a guy with a world of his own,

a world he would make all by himself.

For instance, the fly cages.

He made them himself

with little threads, little cages, little things.

The portrait of the king looking right and left,

and which in fact is a three-part photo,

one part flat and the other two in profile...

all that was Boro-made.

I was fascinated by this DIY man. He was a craftsman.

Yes, Boro is a film craftsman.

I realised it was a world created out of nothing, a weird world,

having nothing to do with what I could know.

It was fascinating

because I had just been demobbed,

I had just come back from Algeria...

I had met the assistant in the army,

I think he was an officer, like me,

and this atmosphere...

with military uniforms etc.,

attracted my interest.

Thévenet produces Borowczyk's film and tells him,

"You'll take my DP, Roger Duculot."

"No way", Boro said. "I work with Guy Durban."

Durban had been working with Borowczyk on all his films

since his commercials, since he had started working

for Les Cinéastes Associés at Joinville-Le-Pont.

But Thévenet insisted on keeping me,

and that's how I became Guy Durban's assistant on Goto.

And that's how I discovered

an outrageously strange and weird guy,

Walerian Borowczyk.

He seemed to be busy, very busy.

I entered his office.

The assistant introduced me.

Walerian looked at me,

but not in an inquisitive way.

He didn't look at my face.

He was unobtrusive,

like he could rely on second sight.

So I didn't feel uneasy.

He looked at me while taking care of other matters,

in connection with the film.

I stayed there for a while,

and he kept on dealing with this and that.

Then he talked to the assistant,

who came to tell me, "You're in."

And that was it. That was how I was hired.

I was nonplussed by the way he had decided I was fit for the job.

If you want an amusing anecdote, as a first job,

I had taken photographs of brick walls, as it was a red brick factory,

with an old 13-18 camera

and a tuppenny lens I had bought at the flea market.

With twelve foot high prints,

we enlarged the sets,

after adjusting the contrast so that nobody would notice the difference

between these enlarged B/W prints and the true factory.

This was my first assignment.

I like this opportunity you have in the film business

of doing things out of your speciality.

This was to bring me a lot of trouble.

I was called a Jack-of-all-trades, a scrap merchant.

Load!

Shoot!

It started around May '68.

We started shooting just before the "events".

Work was discontinued on that production.

I remember a funny headline in a newspaper:

"Director Walerian Borowczyk locks himself up with crew and guns...

"in a factory."

The second time I met Walerian was on the set.

Shooting had more or less begun when I showed up.

I was immediately surrounded.

"You need a haircut!"

I had, indeed, long hair, well, fairly long.

"We're gonna cut your hair."

I was playing onstage

in Fran? Oise Sagan's Chateau en Suède

at the Théatre DE l'Atelier, in Paris,

with my normal, fairly long hair...

"You can't stay like that.

"We won't shear your hair off,

"but it's got to be very short, as you are a young soldier..."

It was the assistant who briefed me on all that.

Borowczyk didn't really speak to me,

he was not the talkative kind.

So I came on the set and was taken care of.

I tried my uniform.

And I was awestruck

when the hairdresser...

he was a very famous film hairdresser.

I don't remember his name, but it appears in the credits,

He was a very meticulous man.

He came and cut my hair.

It felt like he was cutting each and every single hair of my head.

That was incredible.

As a result of which I was almost shorn, but not quite.

It almost looked like...

a "hair sculpture".

And I could see Walerian passing by now and then,

and saying, "Keep on. That's just fine."

The fouth of the mly...

I mean... the mouth of the fly... Silence!

He had a bizarre, very thick Polish accent.

It was difficult to understand him, we had to get used to him.

We had to learn the Boro lingo. Everybody would call him Boro.

You had the Boro clapboard, the Boro shoes, the Boro light...

On Goto, Boro didn't want any shadow.

At that time, he didn't want the photography to have any influence

on the meaning of a scene. He wanted it as neutral as possible.

Boro had a filming policy of his own.

Frontal views, no perspective, no vanishing point,

no wide-angle lens, no distortion effect...

Guy Durban had worked out "the Goto lighting",

which, in a way, was the ancestor of the English light boxes,

of the so called "English lighting", i.e. diffused lighting.

Ligia should be facing the light,

no shadows, just some shading off here

to make her face thinner.

As far as my character was concerned, I found it enigmatic.

Something about it...

was left undefined in the script.

He had very little to say.

Where are the words? What am I going to do?

Actually, I didn't understand.

I completely agreed with the topic of the film,

and at the same time, it seemed that in order to play this character...

I didn't need to do anything special.

I had to listen to Walerian.

I had to be in tune with what was around me,

with those enigmatic, weird, maybe sordid,

but rather surprising elements.

Yes, I had to go for all that.

I had no idea what the result would be.

I was there, trying to follow Walerian's directions,

minimal directions, as he was no great talker.

Long distance lenses.

We wouldn't hear of 25mm.

Same thing, I believe, for 35, 32.

40, 50, 75.

Long distance lenses to avoid distortions,

and sets always filmed frontally and from a certain distance.

Always frontal views.

Sometimes a travelling shot, but never a pan shot.

A pan shot? How horrible!

Sometimes a side travelling shot, most of the time, a stationary shot.

"Actor enter. Actor speak lines. Actor play scene and actor leave."

In fact, Borowczyk directed his actors as if they were animation characters.

Life is not a miracle, but a continuing victory o ver death.

For him, they were living props!

The only difference was that they were not drawings, they were real.

I don't remember much in fact,

but that was a beautiful, a very atmospheric image

which is still present,

the rapport with her was enigmatic, weird...

The objects, the light, the horse were important.

I don't think Walerian said anything to me.

He just indicated where and when I should be,

but never told me how I should look at things.

I don't remember him directing me,

but I had the feeling I was being directed. Strange feeling.

I remember the first scene we shot with Brasseur, it was extraordinary.

Lots and lots of rehearsals. Then action!

So Brasseur shows up and a very excited Boro says,

"Actor arrive. Actor sit. Actor take object.

"Push object. Take fork. No, put down fork. Take knife..."

Brasseur stopped, "What kind of circus is he performing?"

And Boro said, "What is stopping you?"

We had to explain to Borowczyk

that in France actors usually were given more leeway.

So he calmed down a bit,

but he kept fidgeting at every single take, making comments.

It was really funny.

Pierre Brasseur... That was another story!

It was extraordinary.

When I stepped into the dressing room,

I had the impression I was in a completely different atmosphere.

I was face to face with this outstanding actor.

He was a prodigiously gifted artist,

a figure, an incredible personality.

He would welcome me, saying, "Take a seat!"

He kept cursing the shooting,

furious with everybody.

He really lived on the set,

telling me stories which made me laugh my head off.

He was really an outstanding character.

But, at the same time, he was very nice, very considerate.

Once he asked me to be his partner in crime.

I said, "What do you mean?"

"Look, it's very simple.

"Here are bottles of ox blood,

"because we have to make blood...

"But...

"I need red wine.

"I have to drink my red wine. They are really sick on this production!

"So, among the bottles of ox blood are some bottles of red wine.

"Listen, you keep your mouth shut

"and you see to it that nobody knows about it.

"I may ask you to get me a bottle when nobody is around

"so that I can have a glass of wine."

That's how we became accomplices.

Yes, I remember that when Brasseur came,

as he hadn't been there from day one,

we had already done some shots with the leading lady.

And to Pierre Brasseur,

we said that she was a real pain in the neck.

She had even been nicknamed "Belphégor".

And this didn't fall on deaf ears.

When Brasseur came for his first shot with this lady,

he said with his hectoring tone, "So, Belphégor, how are you doing?"

The rapport I had with Ligia Branice...

There was a kind of tension,

a will to say hardly any words,

to stick to the subject.

You had the impression

speech was useless, unnecessary, vain.

You had to act on course.

Ligia was excessively reserved.

She wanted a make-up Charlie Chaplin style,

black and white, silent movies.

She wanted her make-up to be as white as possible.

I remember once there was a polaroid

featuring us both,

and I was pleased when it was shown to me.

"Good! I'll have a photograph of me with Ligia."

But when I hinted I wanted to keep it,

she grabbed it from my hand and tore it up.

She didn't want people to take pictures of her.

I was shocked, but that was part of her character.

Something imperative and...

impenetrable.

Borowczyk fascinated us

with his personality, with his incongruous, bizarre film.

He took us to another world. We were not aware of it at the time,

but when we saw the film, we realised we had made a great film.

You may return to your work.

Something was quite enlightening for me:

a conversation I had with Walerian about cars.

I loved beautiful cars,

and I believe I then had a Cabriolet 203.

I told him about cars. I was fascinated by Porsches.

And he said to me,

"What are you talking about? There's nothing uglier.

"Modern cars are ugly.

"You know what is beautiful?

"Wheels with mudguards, for mudguards have a function.

"They stop the mud.

"That is beautiful.

"Wheels, mudguards, engine.

"One doesn't conceal the engine to make the car beautiful or aerodynamic.

"One conceals the engine to protect it from the rain.

"Nothing more. And that is beautiful.

"Nothing can replace the car

"in its initial, original shape."

That taught me a lot about him.

I realise to what extent he was after authenticity

in the set, in objects, in beings.

He preferred raw material

to pretty and harmonious things,

and yet there was a kind of harmony, a kind of quest in his work.

The wear and tear of things,

their age, their faded colours were essential for him.

There was the beauty he beheld.