Six months after playing Commissioner Maigret in front of Patrice Leconte’s camera, actor Gérard Depardieu embodies a new character by Georges Simenon, this time in a non-detective novel: that of Émile Maugin, renamed Jules in this film directed by Jean Becker, on screens Wednesday.
Maurice Pialat had convinced Gérard Depardieu to play this fictional character, but the filmmaker did not have time to complete this project before his death in 2003.
The adaptation and the dialogues were entrusted to Jean-Loup Dabadie, scriptwriter of cult films of the 1960s and 70s, including the great films of Claude Sautet or comedies like An elephant cheats a lot, died in May 2020 and of which this is the last work.
“I reread the novel which described a tyrannical and unsympathetic actor”confides to AFP Jean Becker. “The portrait that Dabadie made of it is more human but with an existence just as overexcited on the stage as in the city”. With more than fifty years of cinema and about fifteen films to his credit, including The killer summer Where The Children of the Swampthe 89-year-old filmmaker organizes in these Green shutters, at the request of Gérard Depardieu, his on-screen reunion with Fanny Ardant. The duo has appeared in a dozen films, including the cult The Woman Next Door (1981) by Francois Truffaut.
By painting a portrait of a monument of theater and cinema from the early 1970s that is at once excessive, generous but terribly melancholy, the film and the work of Simenon, which was however completed more than 70 years ago, in 1950, bear disturbing resemblances to the personality of Gérard Depardieu.
At the time, “in the preface (of the novel), Simenon denies having wanted to paint the portrait of a celebrity of the time. It is simply the idea he had of the end of the life of a great actor”underlined the producers, Michèle and Laurent Pétin, to whom Depardieu blew the idea of the film after the death of Maurice Pialat.
“It’s hard not to think of making an analogy between Depardieu and the character of Simenon”, confirms Jean Becker. “At the end of the working screening, Gérard remained prostrate for ten minutes”, he says. “Gérard is a wonderful actor, one of the greatest of this century. We don’t direct the actors. I don’t like that idea. The strength of good actors is to make a total transfer between themselves and the character On the contrary, we must leave them the reins on their necks so that they can express themselves”adds the filmmaker.
No retirement scheduled for Jean Becker who is already working on a next film, a camera on the world of sailors: “At 89, I am lucky to still be able to exercise my passion. I continue”, he promises. A passion which he explains having inherited from his father, Jacques Becker (1906-1960), director of golden helmet and Don’t touch the grisbi : “I hope I wasn’t too bad of a student…”