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: After more than 50 films and this loyalty that you devote to cinema, I have the impression that you will never be satisfied!
Claude Lelouch: It is digested well the cinema. All these films that I want to see again allow me, as I don’t have much memory, to rediscover them. I think there are a thousand marvelous films which invented cinema, which invented cinematographic writing. I think that one day a film will be so beautiful, so successful that not ten percent of the population will go to see it, but the whole world. So there are still 90% of spectators to pick up. I believe in cinema as others believe in God.
I would like us to discuss the title of the documentary which was dedicated to you by Philippe Azoulay: turn to live. Precisely to turn you, isn’t that quite simply living?
Quite simply, it’s my heart. I think that the day when I no longer want to shoot, my heart will stop. It’s my oxygen, it’s my way of breathing and all that happens in life is movies. Cinema is an art of compression. At some point, we’re going to have to reduce the life of a 60-year-old man to an hour and a half. Those who film a little better than the others are people who have a spirit of synthesis and who know how to go to the essential. It’s kind of my case. Cinema is eternity. Because there are seven billion people on this earth and that’s seven billion fantastic scenarios. There is no scenario that sucks. Me, I make a film every day. This curiosity constantly feeds the screenwriter.
You have always taken care to offer the spectator this feeling of not being at the cinema.
If we remain a spectator, we get bored. Look at the people who go to a football match, I want to say that the ball is the Earth. We spend our lives sending the ball to the right, to the left, to exchange it. And with each kick, people are screaming, getting excited, going crazy so that’s a bit of life, it’s all these kicks you give the ball.
“Films that work are films where the spectator, at a given moment, ceases to be a spectator and appropriates a character by saying to himself: ‘This is my life’.”
Claude Lelouchat franceinfo
All these films, you own them. You set up your production box very early on. Was it important for you to have this independence?
I would have liked to have, at the start, producers, but the first three, four that I went to see did not take me seriously and then I said to myself: if I have to go through this kind of character, I’m not going to be able to make the films I have in mind. Fate wanted me to be a producer as well, precisely to have the “final cut” each time and try to make these films that people liked. I know that annoyed some people.
I would like to talk about Station romance which didn’t necessarily work, which happened after four films that unsettled your audience. It was a bit The life ahead, by Romain Gary. You wanted to refine the screenplay and I have the impression that this film has been one of the pillars of your life and your career as a filmmaker.
“I tried to make believe that ‘Roman de gare’ was not by Claude Lelouch and I finally heard what I wanted to hear on one of my films.”
Claude Lelouchat franceinfo
Yes, then, I was a little fed up with all these film specialists who, for each of my films, opened a drawer, the “Claude Lelouch” drawer and repeated the same things. I asked my best friend, Hervé Picard, to endorse the paternity of the film, which he did with pleasure, especially since he knows nothing about cinema, he was not embarrassing. And I made this movie. It’s true that people came out of the screening, came to see me saying: “You found a wonderful director, it’s extraordinary“I finally got some great reviews and since I didn’t want the heist of the century to happen, I told the truth.
What is your take on this whole journey?
If I had been made to read Claude Lelouch’s life script, I would have said: no, you’re overdoing it, it’s impossible for a guy to make 50 films under these conditions, with ups and downs , with enemies who are there all the time but who are loyal. I hope to be able to play overtime and I know that I am making my last films. I would love to make a film that makes me want to quit.
Exactly, what’s next?
A journey of a man who borders on madness because today’s world is creating crazy people. Look at all those men you meet in the street talking to themselves. All these people who, today, can no longer sum up all the gifts that are offered to them, from this society that has made their lives easier. Madness will therefore be at the heart of this next film. By the way, it will be called: The madness of the senses. Madness can save us because we no longer believe in reasonable people.
Is the seven-year-old boy who discovered cinema in dark rooms to escape the Gestapo proud of the man you have become?
Since I don’t have too much of a memory… I’m not angry with anyone. If I had any memory, I would be angry with the whole earth. I was born with Alzheimer’s, I have the memory of the present. A memory that remembers only very beautiful things, life is beautiful. I’m jealous of Blier, when he made a movie called thank you life because that should have been the title of all my films.