The director, producer, screenwriter, cameraman and film enthusiast, Claude Lelouch is the exceptional guest of Le Monde d’Elodie all this week.
The one that the cinema has never left since he was seven years old, a period during which his mother plunged him into dark rooms to escape the Gestapo, evokes his happy and less happy memories.
Among his 50 films, we go back to his life with: A man and a woman (1966), Adventure is adventure (1972), One and the other (nineteen eighty one), Itinerary of a spoiled child (1988) and Station romance (2007).
Claude Lelouch, after having been the main actor of his father, an amateur filmmaker, became that of the documentary by Philippe Azoulay released in May 2022: turn to live.
franceinfo: Each film is your life path, the passage of time. Sandrine Bonnaire says of you that you remind her of Maurice Pialat because you have this truth and this same freedom. Are you a free man in your choices, in your way of being?
Claude Lelouch: I don’t need to ask a lot of people for advice to make a film. Above all, I ask myself the question: should I do it or not? And very often, it’s the irrational that gives me the answer. I am a free man. I made amateur films and amateurs don’t have the same constraints, the same results as the others. I made cheap films. When I’m poor, I make films about the poor and when I’m rich, I make films about the rich. I am constantly adapting.
I have the impression that what scares you is the editing because there is no going back.
So. First, there is the film we dream of, there is the film we write and there is the film we shoot. And then he has the film that we are editing and there, it is the verdict. If the film fails, that’s where we see it. It’s when you’re happiest or when you feel like killing yourself if it doesn’t work out. You’re right, I’m very scared during editing.
So you’ve been playing Russian roulette for six decades and yet it seems like you haven’t wavered at any time.
Because when we’ve made a film that failed, we can make another one. I haven’t made failed films, I’ve made films that didn’t meet the public. At some point, the public cuckolded me, or I cuckolded it, I don’t know. And when you’re cuckolded, you’re in a bad mood, that’s it. But that doesn’t stop you from starting to flirt again.
How do you define yourself?
Like a very curious man. Everything interests me, I’m a janitor. Everything interests me, everything fascinates me. If you want, I’m in a Hitchcock movie, life is a permanent suspense. Each second prepares for the next. I don’t have time to be bored, and above all, I mustn’t be bored.
“I tell myself that at any moment, life has so much imagination that it will perhaps take me to land that I would not have thought of.”
Claude Lelouchat franceinfo
There is a character that has been recurring since your first shoot, it’s the music. There is a real musicality in your way of shooting. I am thinking of the composer Francis Lai. Is the music really a priority character?
Yes, because music is the universal language. Music is what reassures us. Me, the first medicine I take when I’m not well is music. And I’m glad you told me about Francis Lai. I met him thanks to Pierre Barouh who said to me one day: “I must introduce you to a musician who accompanied Edith Piaf, his music resembles your films“. It was at the beginning of all of our careers. And this little guy arrives with his accordion, one day like that, at my house. Not in my office, but in my maid’s room, but we didn’t call that a office because you shouldn’t scare those who came.
“Francis Lai came with his accordion, he started to play and there, I began to dream as I had never dreamed. He was the person to whom I told my films, my stories.”
Claude Lelouchat franceinfo
I said to him: listen, I’m going to tell you the story ofA man and a woman, that’s how it started and I asked him: can you tell me the same story with musical notes? Three days later, he called me back and told me the same story with musical notes. We had found a complementarity which means that today I miss him very much and all the films that I will make now will be dedicated to him since there will always be themes from Francis Lai that I will use.
This maid’s room, you have always kept it indirectly. There are a lot of winks, especially in the film Itinerary of a spoiled childsince the famous scene between Richard Anconina and Jean-Paul Belmondo is this tete-a-tete, shot in a maid’s room in Paris.
We traveled the world with Itinerary of a spoiled child. We went to the most beautiful places and the scene that everyone remembers is a scene shot in a maid’s room. This scene was not in the script, it came to my mind in the morning. I had listened to a radio program, in the car, on my way to the set and then there was a guy who said: “The most important thing in life is to say hello“. I arrived on set and wrote the scene. I don’t even know who said it was important to say hello, but I thought to myself: it’s true. When you say hello, it’s like telling people about your life. There is in the “Hello” all that you are.
Apart from the César for Jean-Paul Belmondo, which brought you Itinerary of a spoiled childwhich is a major film in your filmography?
I think it’s one of my most important films insofar as it’s a film about the contradictions that can exist in a man. And we show that having it all is too much. This man has everything and it is because he has everything that he realizes that he must find something else.
This film is a synthesis of Jean-Paul and me. At the time we are making this film, we are both going through a period of spoiled children. Our films work a little less, all of a sudden, the public moves away from us and so we say to ourselves: “Maybe now we piss off the public. Maybe he’s worn us down and maybe it’s time to leave“. That’s what the film is about. Me, when I make this film, I want to flee. And I really left with my car. Then, when I arrived in Fontainebleau, I called Jean-Paul saying : listen, maybe I have an idea for a film and I told him. He says to me: “Come home quickly, we’re going to make a movie“.