Jacques Perrin, who died Thursday April 21 at the age of 80, was “one of the most subtle and interesting French producers”, has director Costa Gavras on franceinfo. Jacques Perrin had produced and starred in several of the Franco-Greek director’s films, notably Z in 1969 or State of siege in 1973. For Costa Gavras, Jacques Perrin, as director and producer, was going “where no one wanted to go”. It was “a man of great curiosity”he added.
franceinfo: Jacques Perrin was a young producer when you directed Z. What memory do you have of this meeting?
The meeting was made before. I had it in my first film, in my second film. We have become very good friends. And I offered him Z. nobody wanted to do Z. We couldn’t find the place to do it and he offered me to Algeria. And from there, he became a producer. And since then, he has become a major French producer. I even think he’s one of the most subtle and interesting French producers. It is him who [a] does completely new things.
He was a child of the ball?
It’s exactly that. He started at a very young age in the theater. He also began to make a career in Italy as a young first. It was after that that I had chosen it. And he did my first movie, and it was great. He was a great actor. He was a wonderful man as well. And thanks to all these productions he did, he didn’t get rich, he made other films. That was the great quality of Jacques Perrin.
He was also a multi-talented, multi-faceted man?
He wanted to explore everything. He liked to do new things. As a producer, he loved going where no one else had gone. This extraordinary film about birds (The migrating people), it was extremely difficult. But he went all the way. For the films he made in the sea, he even had cameras made to go to great depths. He was truly a man of great curiosity and also of extreme kindness.
With Microcosmoswere you surprised to see him go into this universe?
Yes. Nobody thought of it before. He was completely in. He made devices to be able to film small insects. And the last project he told me about was a big film about China, like we’ve never done. He was really a huge man, who never stopped and who had the extreme curiosity that a producer must have. He wasn’t afraid to find the money either. And he always managed to convince producers, bankers to give him money to make films that were completely unusual and completely outside the scope of the great works that are made in France.