The director Jean-Jacques Annaud is the exceptional guest of Le Monde d’Elodie 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. On the occasion of the release, on Wednesday July 20, on DVD, Blu-ray and Blu-ray 4K of his latest film Notre Dame is burninga blockbuster devoted to the fire of the cathedral, we look back on images, with him, over almost 50 years of career.
franceinfo: We spend the week together, which allows us to have some time to discuss certain shoots, certain periods of your life as a filmmaker. Are you a lover of the seventh art?
Jean-Jacques Annaud: Yes, it is at the heart of my life. I only do this. Whenever I have some free time, I watch a movie.
In 1988 you go out The Bearbut previously another of your films also enjoyed great success, that is The name of the rose. The latter was born because The Bear took a lot of work to raise the bears, four years. So you decided to optimize that time and turned to this work by Umberto Eco. I would like us to talk about it because it must have been quite difficult for you to take up this challenge.
I read in The world a short article that talks about a curious success in Italy. It takes place in a monastery and I read the thing, I fall over backwards saying to myself: but this guy wrote for me, it is not possible! And that’s how I converted Umberto. I told him : “listen to Umberto, I’m not going to force you. I want you to want me.“I had an aunt who wasn’t so in love with the man she ended up marrying, but every day he put a rose on her doorstep and after a year she cracked. He cracked faster!
In this film, the one who embodies the main character is Sean Connery. There was a negative look at the beginning on him as an actor in this film, because his role of James Bond stuck to his skin and because he was a little ‘has been’.
“Every 15 days, Sean Connery’s agent called me. He said to me: ‘Sean would like to meet you’. I told him to stop because in ‘The name of the rose’, the character was called Guillaume d ‘Ockham and was the great thinker of the Franciscans. In the book, it’s a pastiche of Sherlock Holmes, I’m still not going to add James Bond on it!
Jean Jacques Annaudat franceinfo
I didn’t want to meet Sean Connery. I resisted. As no one wanted to edit the film in France, I had to emigrate to Germany with a wonderful producer, Bernd Eichinger. And one Monday morning, Bernd arrives and says to me: “Say, you have a visitor this morning“, who is it ?, “It’s Sean Connery, he’s coming to see you!“Well, I couldn’t refuse to meet him. A few moments later, there’s a knock on the door and I say to myself: but how handsome he is! What an incredible presence! He has the script under his arm and he begins to read me And there, my hairs stand on end because he says it with the tempo, the voice, the serenity that I imagined. I run to see my producer on the floor below, I say to him: we He’s formidable, he’s magnificent, he’s going to make a marvelous William of Ockham.
four years later The Bear and this international success, you decide to adapt the novel the lover by Marguerite Duras, in which the author recounts her hidden youth, her difficult relationship with her mother and then, indeed, this relationship with this Chinese, 21 years her senior. You are really going to experience tense and difficult times with Marguerite Duras. She won’t miss you.
That’s why I refused the film at first, because Claude Berri told me: “Darling(he called everyone ‘Honey’), “Say, after The BearYou would like to do what ?“I answer him: listen, I have kids at home, my daughters. I try to talk to them about sexuality, but there is nothing to do: “Stop dad saying all your crap, we want to eat in peace!“
“‘The lover’ was a response to my daughters who kicked in touch as soon as I spoke about sexuality. I told them: ‘girls, too bad for you. I’m going to make a film for you about the sexuality of young girls.’ “
Jean Jacques Annaudat franceinfo
And Claude, one day, arrives on the set of The Bear By telling me : “Honey, I have a present for you. I bought you the lover“. De Duras? You’re crazy, I’m not going to hit Marguerite. No, no, it’s out of the question. He said to me: “You know, Marguerite is not well, she is not going to piss you off, she is in the hospital“. And finally, I commit.
Except that some time later, the phone rings: “Hello, is it Jean-Jacques?” Yes? Who’s on the phone ? “Marguerite Duras“. She tells me : “So the scenario?“The script is progressing very well, I’m working with Gérard Brach,”No, mine!“As I knew the work of Duras well, I understood that she was a killer. She always said: “This will be my film and you will make the images“, I replied: no Marguerite. Me, I make the film, it’s my film, it’s something else.
Is that what you also told Umberto Eco?
But of course, because it’s not the same object! One day, Marguerite Duras falls, because she was reading the screenplay in any order, on the last page. “What is this shit?“Marguerite, that’s the end of your novel in its entirety.”Yes, but the end of my novel is shit. Everyone tells me it’s a station novel“It’s a station novel, I tell her, but you’re the one who wrote it, Marguerite, that’s why we like it. And if you don’t want these scenes, I don’t don’t make the movie. So we call Claude Berri and it was decided that she let me make the movie my way and that she write another book, which is called North China Lover in which she repeats the same thing.
Have you refused to read this book, by the way?
No, no, I read it. What interested me is to know if she had kept the end and she had kept it.