The director Jean-Jacques Annaud is the exceptional guest of the Elodie’s World all this week. This lover of the Seventh Art and History looks back on these exceptional moments experienced before, during and after the shooting of his films. If some have defined Jean-Jacques Annaud as a “wild” director, we think of The Bear (1988) and at last wolf (2015) which highlighted his love of the animal world, others have nicknamed him the “roaring” director, particularly in view of his commitment and his desire to go a little further in each film, from us take elsewhere.
On the occasion of the release, on Wednesday July 20, on DVD, Blu ray and Blu ray 4K of his latest film: Notre-Dame brule, a blockbuster devoted to the fire of the cathedral, we look back on images, with him, over almost 50 years of career.
franceinfo: The Bear, Seven years in Tibet, the lover, Two brothers, Stalingrad, the last wolf, Black gold, The name of the rose, Headbutt Where Notre Dame is burning. Does each film represent your family a bit?
Jean-Jacques Annaud: Yes. What’s more, there’s something that can’t be mistaken, it’s that my little refuge is my office and I’m surrounded by books that allowed me to better understand the films I was going to make. I feel good because it’s my family, it’s my job, it’s my love. I am lucky to have a wife who has accompanied me, who has been my scriptwriter since Headbutt and so, if you want, we shared this life together. A bit of a nomadic life, even if I kept my French nationality. I lived eight years in Los Angeles, I lived four times a year in London, I lived in Delhi, Cambodia.
Citizen of the world !
Yes, but when we walk around a lot like that and we are still a bit representative of our country, we are more French than when we are in Paris.
Each film has built you as a man, made you change, grow.
Yes, that’s why I can’t choose what I’m going to do later because I’m waiting to know who I’ve become!
In all these films that I have mentioned, and I have not mentioned them all, there is one that occupies, I have the impression, a special place, it is Stalingrad. Is it a different baby?
It’s a film that I really enjoyed making. It’s obviously painful to talk about it now. But I was invited a lot to Russia for a strange reason: I was probably the only French filmmaker not to be a communist. And I have always liked Russian music very much, I love Russian operas, the Slavic soul. I had a craving for Russia, not the one that is happening right now and breaking my heart.
With ‘Stalingrad’, I wanted to tell, what is the historical truth. Of course, the Americans saved us with the Landings, but if it hadn’t been for Stalingrad and the war in Russia, the Eastern Front and the Russians as cannon fodder, we wouldn’t have won the war.
Jean Jacques Annaudat franceinfo
This story fascinated me because in my mind, it was an intimate film. Why ? Because it’s two snipers and what do I see of a sniper? These are his eyes. A film between two pairs of eyes looking at each other. I remember, the first day, when we got to work with Alain Godard, I reminded him well: Alain, we’re making a little film, we’re making a close-up film. But of course, you have to place the characters. He then asks me:What are we doing ?” Listen, it’s a train coming. There are a thousand soldiers rolling down a slope and getting on a boat crossing the Volga. “And what’s going on?“There are bombs falling on the Volga, dropped by a squadron of Stukas. We wrote four pages. I go to the restaurant with him and in the car, I say to him: Alain, I don’t know if you realize, we have just written for 15 million dollars. That is to say, we are starting an intimate film with 15 million dollars. It was six minutes of film, but we did it!
We are talking about gaze and I have the feeling that all the choices you have made, even in terms of your actors, have gone through the gaze.
Me, I choose on the eyes because the eyes, as they say, “it’s the window to the soul“. Casting sessions are probably the most exhausting moments of my life, because very often I see that this actor or that actress would not be suitable for this role, but for another time. I never ask what they’ve done before. Very often, I meet well-known people that I don’t know myself, and I’m very happy. I find them very nice, pretentious or not at all to my taste, but I don’t care, I react completely on instinct.
How do you view this course?
Oh no, no, I don’t have time to look back.
I don’t look in the rear view mirror, I look through the front windshield!
Jean Jacques Annaudat franceinfo
In any case, happy with what you have already accomplished?
I think I was happy every day. I can not believe it. Sometimes I pinch myself because on top of that, I’ve been free. If the film does not please me, it does not come out. That’s crazy. I made all the films that I liked and only the films that I liked!
your movie Notre Dame is burning has just been released on DVD, Blu ray, Blu ray 4K, always with this care taken, the precision, to the image. What does it represent for you?
I like to put myself in trouble because when you’re not in trouble, you’re not at your best. So I like to do different things. There, what I liked was having something to recompose, very close to reality and creating suspense when we know the end. This is a great Hitchcockian principle. It’s the how, so the film is based on the how. And then, I also discovered the world of firefighters and I was a little overwhelmed, as I was with the Buddhists, because they are people who have a vocation and I didn’t know it. Not one disappointed me. Besides, I’m very flattered. I’ve received quite a few awards in my life, but imagine that I’m a first-class honorary firefighter with a number in the Paris fire brigade.