Jean-Jacques Annaud is a director, producer and screenwriter. Renowned for his perfectionism, his meticulousness, his need to supervise each stage of the production of his films, he began with commercials. The meetings followed, François Truffaut or Claude Berri. His achievements have been crowned with awards and acclaim as Headbutt with Patrick Dewaere (1979), The fire war (1981) and The Bear (1988), which won him the César for Best Director. Impossible not to mention films like Stalingrad (2001), The name of the rose (1986) or the lover (1992).
Jean-Jacques Annaudl is back at the cinema with a fiction built like a documentary: Notre Dame is burning. This film tells the dramatic fire of Notre-Dame in 2019, a blockbuster with 200 collaborators on the set.
franceinfo: This film is first and foremost a tribute to the soldiers of the fire, to those who allowed us to save this building?
Jean-Jacques Annaud: No, it’s a tribute first to Notre-Dame, who is my main actress. He’s my star. She is probably the most famous lady in France. It has been visited each year by more visitors than any other building in the world.
The tragic story of Notre Dame is that this magnificent star was attacked by the most charismatic of demons, and that is fire. According to Hitchcock’s rules, this is the best way to make a good movie. The villain has to be charismatic, fascinating. What could be more fascinating than this living being? Because fire is filmed like a living being. The tribute to firefighters, it came a little later. It was when I met them and they spoke to me with such simplicity, generosity. They are people who decide to dedicate their lives to saving others.
The sacred is always at the heart of your films. The sacred, the need for accuracy too, a concern for accuracy. Has it always been part of you?
It’s not because I’m a maniac, that I am otherwise, but how do you want the spectators to really identify if they don’t believe in the fairness of everything that surrounds the actors? So it’s for the sake of identification and allowing the viewer to feel an emotion, but it’s also for my actors because the best way to direct actors is to dress them according to the role. That is to say, if there is need for someone who is uncomfortable, you put them in shoes that are just a little too tight. You don’t need to remind him that he is uncomfortable that day. You have to find the decor, which will already be directed by the actors. And that is something that is little understood. I’ve read thousands of times that I was a craftsman who cared about detail. Yes, and I like being a craftsman because I like the idea of having a job.
“I went to schools to learn my trade and I’m not ashamed to know cinema technology, on the contrary, I juggle all that with pleasure, with enthusiasm.”
Jean Jacques Annaudat franceinfo
There’s a click when you’re younger, it’s The Battle of the Rails by Rene Clement. It’s really a film that marked you because it also referred a little to your father.
My dad was at the SNCF, so I lived in the perfume of the train. The only expensive thing he had was a watch and when we took the train, often because the tickets were free, he looked at his watch, we were within 30 seconds. Whistle. We arrived at zero and the train moved off. And he said: “The SNCF all the same, we will say what we want!”
You started shooting your first images at 11 years old.
Yes, 11 years with a camera called Christen and I still have the little 8mm film. I was an only child. I didn’t really like being bothered, I didn’t play ball and all that.
You quickly became interested in history, and even in prehistory. Was it also to be able to go even further in your work?
All my childhood, I took my bike and I went to photograph chapels, churches. I’m not a believer, but I do believe in beauty. I believe in art. I believe in places of prayer, places where we meet for the essential moments of life or after life.
“I have the feeling that we can do everything in the cinema. There is nothing that must stop. You have to let yourself be carried away by the dream and make the dream so that the public dreams with us.”
Jean Jacques Annaudat franceinfo
How do you live this love of the public?
This is the absolute reward. There are always difficult times. Sometimes there are hard things to read about yourself. But you know, I never imagined that I, who never saw any American films, was going to spend eight years of my life in the heart of what is called Hollywood. But I just experienced it. We said: “Annaud is going to be crushed by the steamroller”, but I told them: wait, I’m driving the steamroller.
How do you view your journey? Are you happy?
I’m just happy! The course, I don’t think about it at all. I don’t look in the rear view mirror. I look at what I’m doing now, what I’m going to do this afternoon. Jean Renoir said: “We are always the man of his last film”. It’s that me, each film transforms me, teaches me things and the world changes. Me, I change with the changing world. I will decide in a few months because I want to have this same enthusiasm. One thing is for sure, if I don’t wake up every morning feeling happy about writing the script and casting or doing location scouting, well the movie won’t be good. You have to lead with enthusiasm.