The book is a unique mix of walks in our region, discovery of the world of cinema and scientific research. Through 75 films, the two authors show us how a film appropriates a territory, how places become real cinema characters and how cinema is an actor in the reputation of a region, through landscapes, people and objects. Among these 75 films, Vianney Huguenot mentions three. 1985, Andrzej Zulawski shoots “L’Amour braque”, notably with Sophie Marceau and Francis Huster. The first scene takes place in Nancy on Place Thiers (now Place Simone-Veil), a crazy sequence with four thugs who have just robbed a bank. We recognize the station, the Excelsior brasserie and the Thiers tower.
In the book, no photos but drawings of film scenes, all in black and yellow, which gives a nice unity to the book. Another film: Perdrix, shot in the Vosges in 2019, with Swann Arlaud, Maud Wyler and Fanny Ardant. At one point, we see a band of nudists sweep through the streets of Plombières les Bains, but it’s not porn, it’s a very beautiful romantic comedy. The choice of Plombières is not trivial, the director Erwan le Duc says “there was a bit of a mythology around plumbers, my grandmother told me that she had seen Jacques Brel at the casino one day. , I had the impression of entering the set of the film”. Another set, another director, Jean-Pierre Mocky shot “The Albatross” in 1971 in Sarreguemines. Suddenly, Mocky is unlucky. Bourvil was to play the leading role and died a few weeks before the start of filming, in September 70, and in November 70, the one who had accepted the leading female role, Jane Fonda, was arrested in the United States for drug trafficking. Nothing that dampens Mocky’s enthusiasm for Lorraine, who said in 1971 to a journalist from the Républicain Lorrain: “I find that the Lorraine and Alsatian landscapes correspond perfectly to my conception of the noir novel. Americans choose New York or San Francisco, natural settings for the genre. In France, you need something else, heavy houses, a foggy atmosphere, gray skies, wind, rain, and the north and east naturally meet these criteria. These are regions very endearing and mysterious”. A tribute to double trigger but a beautiful tribute all the same.
