The eye of the INA: how Marcel Bluwal and Michel Piccoli deconfined Dom Juan

Prohibited between 1665 and 1841, that is to say for 176 years, the tragicomedy of Molière, Dom Juan or the Feast of Pierre became, then, the nightmare of several generations of high school students. Michel Piccoli's early years were marked by his reading, followed by vague explanations of texts by teachers who did not dare, taboos oblige, to analyze the reality of the author's thought.

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"The fatal era of my transhumance in secondary school" , he explains to Marcel Bluwal, when in 1965, the director offered to embody this character, the time of what was then called a "dramatic" for television. Piccoli accepts, but poses a requirement however: he does not want to delve into a dusty booklet, whose image is linked to too bad memories. He asks for a typed text, in order to have the feeling of working on an original. Bluwal gives him the green light.

Through its ambition, the adventure turns out to be as exciting as it is risky. In order to make the play accessible to viewers who, for the most part, have never seen it, or even never read it, the director chooses to make it timeless. He cuts words that have disappeared from dictionaries for decades, and suggests that actors give up the traditional wig. Piccoli's emerging baldness will remain visible, but that's not a problem: it will add to the charm of the cynical and proud libertine he has to embody.

Bluwal asked the costume designer to create outfits closer to the romantics of the 19th century than those of the Court, in the time of Louis XIV. He specifies to his team that these developments will not prevent the ensemble from remaining in conformity with the spirit of the author. A long administrative journey of the combatant with the direction of the ORTF allows him to obtain technical means usually reserved for cinema. The cameras and projectors, much more imposing than those of today, will travel between the Petit Trianon in Versailles, and the stables of Condé in Chantilly, passing by the Royal Saltworks of Chaux, in Burgundy, a Wissant beach, in the Hauts-de-France and the Saint-Sulpice church in Paris.

On November 6, 1965, at prime time, the drama achieved considerable success. Critics hail a "rejuvenated and dusted room" . The polls do not exist but studies ensure that more than 80% of the seven million receivers identified, remained connected to the first channel, still in black and white.

The next day, at the zinc and in the offices, the conversations are much more serious than usual. We are debating fate, our relationship with God. Questions that we asked ourselves without ever daring, until then, to raise them in public.

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Dom Juan then becomes the model of what the small screen should offer. The room moves from the top of the libraries, where it was confined, to textbooks. It is still there today. Michel Piccoli is gone. At 94 years old. Marcel Bluwal, who is going to celebrate his 95 spring, deserves to be officially thanked.

Find on Madelen, the new platform of the INA, this TV movie that has marked generations of schoolchildren.