Patrice Leconte delivers his “Secrets of filming” in a richly illustrated river interview

To read Shooting Secrets by Patrice Leconte (Ed. To make cinema), one would think to hear it. Marc Desti, a young director, questions the filmmaker about his “method” and the multiple stages in the implementation of a feature film. At the time of the release of his Maigret with Gérard Depardieu, Leconte tells how an idea emerges, then a vision that will become a film. Illustrated with many unpublished set photos, beautiful work.

Filming Secrets of Patrice Leconte covers around thirty films – Vécés were closed from the inside after Gotlib with Jean Rochefort and Coluche (1971), in poor bastards (sketch, 2019), via The Bronzed, Mr Hire (Michel Blanc against the grain and Sandrine Bonnaire, 1989) or Redicle (Rochefort and the revelation Charles Berling, 1996), Tandem, The hairdresser’s Husband, The girl on the Bridge… Indefatigable for the camera, Leconte recounts his filmography, his memories of filming, his experience, with his stacked scenarios never realized, and projects always full of his head.

Those secrets constitute a real manual. Leconte is not a lecturer, but he knows the music and we find in his words the humanism that characterizes the man and the filmmaker. Whether it’s the choice of a focal length, crisis management on set, editing, the release of the film, Leconte responds to the multiple aspects of a profession that is an art. It is in this faithful to this craft that remains the cinema put in certain hands.

So, Patrice Leconte, not even afraid? Of course if, as when he talks about the relationship between art and money, about producers: “The fact of no longer understanding anything about staging, of being the head in the numbers. Of not understanding anything, of making decisions that don’t make sense, of being on the small onions with the great actors, and talking badly to the crew. All human shortcomings in the end”.

Students are moving more and more towards the professions of the image and the classes of cinema are multiplying. Each of them would benefit from reading such a diverse, enthusiastic and lively experience of their vocation.

Filming Secrets by Patrice Leconte
Marc Desti
Editions Make cinema
323 pages, hardcover
Many unpublished photos
€49.90