The director Jean-Jacques Annaud is the exceptional guest of Le Monde d’Elodie all this week. This lover of the seventh art and of 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 is burninga blockbuster devoted to the fire of the cathedral, we look back on images, with him, over almost 50 years of career.
franceinfo: Your beautiful meeting with Claude Berri, thanks to François Truffaut, will give birth to your first realization, victory by singing. This non-success, which became a success a year later, will make you want to propose a film Headbutt with Patrick Dewaere. You will also really fight on all points because at the beginning, we did not want this actor at all.
Jean-Jacques Annaud: At the time, everyone wanted Depardieu, but Depardieu, for me, was not the character. Depardieu was a solar man. I needed someone more nocturnal, a piano out of tune, and I thought Patrick was best. Except that one day, Alain Poiré, who was the producer of Gaumont said to me: “Jean-Jacques, not only me, I don’t like him, but I can’t insure him because he uses substances that are uninsurable“. I had dinner with Patrick and I said to him: listen Patrick, I want you in the film, but you are not insurable. He looked me straight in the eye and said: “I quit”. And so I managed to convince my producer to take Patrick.
“I loved Patrick Dewaere’s way of being. He was a completely endearing beast and very dangerous. When I talk about him, I tend to have a lump in my throat because he was someone one you wanted to hug.”
Jean Jacques Annaudat franceinfo
You will, through this film, be able to show who you are. Previously there was victory by singing, a huge success. People flirt with you on the side of Hollywood, but at the same time, you say that at that time, you were not necessarily ready to leave and you immediately refused. You preferred to make this film which sticks to your skin even today.
You must be crazy! The day after the Oscar, a guy arrives, an agent in Los Angeles with the biggest agency, CAA. He asks me if I want to sign. Why not, but I really don’t care and then I have a lot of work in France. He returns to Los Angeles and at the end of the week, I receive three scripts. Three films that were made, three films that I refused, including Torah! Torah! Torah!, a huge war movie. Right away, I said to myself: no, it’s not reasonable, I must at least have the experience of a second feature film.
Indeed, I could not sell it to anyone, except that, as I had the Oscar, all of a sudden, I became “bankable”. What was odd, moreover, was that it was a scenario that was to be called Thanks crowd, because in fact, it’s not a film about football, it’s a film about changing our outlook. That is, why does an outcast become a hero? And me, it happened to me all the time with these commercials that I was refused. Then all of a sudden, I was offered champagne and carried on their shoulders, applauding me because I had won a prize. Me, I was the same person. It’s the look that changes, so that’s what I wanted to talk about.
When the movie comes out, the reviews are going to be great and then you catch us, you blow us away, you take us completely somewhere else with The fire war (nineteen eighty one). Some even said:But it’s suicidal to make a film about prehistory“.
That is very dangerous. I loved Africa so much that I had the chance to live for weeks, in the forest, with the pygmy people, for example. And I said to myself: but the human is completely universal. Why don’t I talk about what came before, all of us? Claude Berri had made Gerard Brach and me read a book that neither of us liked. I say to Gérard: the only thing that I liked was the prehistoric period of the character. He answers me : “Would you like to make a film about prehistory?“I tell him: yes. The problem is that of the language because we cannot make them speak either French or English. I said to him: Gérard, we will invent. He has understood that he was with a madman! In France, nobody wanted to touch it.
“I remember what Claude Berri said: ‘When Jean-Jacques Annaud and Gérard Brach have finished messing around, we will offer them serious things!'”
Jean Jacques Annaudat franceinfo
The fire war is a huge worldwide success with the key to a César for best film, a César for best director, an Oscar for best makeup too. In 1988, it was the birth of the film The Bearan adaptation of the novel The Grizzly by James Oliver Curwood. More than 9 million entries to discover this orphan bear, unconscious, clumsy, learning about life. Is there a part of you in this film?
Unfortunately, and I keep repeating myself, I’m hiding, I dare not say it’s me. I wanted to return to my African fiber. I am in this incredible environment of ancient Africa which lives in a period of pre-urban civilization. Let’s make a movie in which the main character is an animal. Brach and I thought of the bear because it’s not for nothing that small children sleep with a small bear. On top of that, I was technically interested in learning everything I hadn’t learned in film school. It’s the opposite of what you should do, which is to say the false connections, everything, but keep the story you’re telling. There is also a deep attachment to the big bear, which nearly killed me. I was in the hospital for two months in a row, morning and evening, with a drain in my buttocks. These are the risks of the job.