They were inseparable and undoubtedly they must toil, up there, on new remarkable works.
Jean-Claude Carrière and Luis Buñuel, two men of cinema, wrote many films together, during stays of several months, alone, mainly in Mexico and Spain.
"I have shared face to face with him nearly two thousand meals in my life,"
confided the screenwriter of
Belle de jour
in 2012.
Read also: Jean-Claude Carrière, never far from the story
An intimate, productive and creative work, launched in 1964. Carrière was then thirty-two years old, Luis sixty-four.
“I met Buñuel at the Cannes Film Festival, at a lunch, directly at his hotel
, told Jean-Paul Carrière on France Culture, on the occasion of the thirty-ninth Amiens festival, dedicated to the Mexican director.
He was looking for a French screenwriter to adapt
Le Journal d'une femme de chambre,
someone who knows a little about cinema.
I was just starting out.
We got along very well, and eight days later, I learned that I was leaving for Madrid.
It was the date of my life.
»And the beginning of a twenty-year collaboration.
Weeks of improvisation
Together, the two men gave birth to six films and a book,
My Last Sigh,
published in 1982
.
“We wrote it right at the end
[of Buñuel's life]
, when he no longer had the physical strength to turn.
He was quite reluctant at first, so I wrote a first chapter.
He was seduced. ”
The work, between autobiography and film theory, was an international success, especially in Mexico.
The secret of their success lay in the isolation they imposed on themselves when writing the different versions of their feature films.
Like two monks, they isolated themselves,
“far from cities in general, still in a country of the former Spanish Empire
,” Carrière recalls.
"
Only the two of us, with no women, no friends and for as long as it takes."
A few times for two months, without taking a single day off.
Working with him was living with him, having all my meals with him, walking with him, drinking with him, in order to achieve a kind of total concentration. "
Until arriving at a first script, satisfactory but never definitive.
It was then that they would separate
“for two or three months”
and then meet
“to work on a second, a third version
”
.
"
For
Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie,
there were up to five different versions, it lasted two years,
" revealed the author of Le
Lézard
.
“When I see Luis's films, I find in each of the actors his own rhythm.
"
Jean-Claude Barriere
During these long weeks, Buñuel and his young screenwriter are dizzy in improvisations for two, giving each other
"my darling"
in the game and
"you"
in the city.
Carrière takes notes all the time.
In the evening, alone, he writes a first version of the scenes imagined during the day.
The next day, the two friends play, replay, retouch, methodically harass the text.
They embody their characters, Buñuel reserving the leading female roles, as in
Belle de jour
or
Le Journal d'une femme de chambre
.
Which, according to the writer, could lead to
“ultra-comic scenes”
.
“When I see Luis's films, I find in each of the actors his own rhythm.
I see him playing in front of me ”
.
Read also: Luis Bunuel, to muscle your imagination
A life regulated by the line
Enjoying to compare these laborious breakaways to a
“final of the Olympic Games
”, Jean-Claude Carrière confesses some difficulties.
"When you work with a filmmaker of this stature
[...]
, you have to be at the best possible level otherwise he will not need you"
.
Which implied an unfailing frankness:
“We had a right of veto over each other.
It was terrible for a young screenwriter to have a veto right over Buñuel.
When he offered me something, I had to say no if I didn't like it.
I have said 'no' often, even if you then had to explain why. ”
Several times, Buñuel, playing the role of Henri, took his pencil, stood up and said “come Georgette, this film is not for us”.
Jean-Claude Carrière
To do this, a strange ritual is established from their second trip.
Near them, they imagined
“a couple of average spectators, Henri and Georgette, who could leave the room at any moment.
We had to keep them ”
.
If one of the filmmakers had an idea, the other would turn to these two imagined viewers and ask their opinion.
"Several times, Buñuel, playing the role of Henri, took his pencil, stood up and said
'come Georgette, this film is not for us"
"
, tells, with an almost surgical concern for detail, the late screenwriter.
The rules, omnipresent during these hours of creation, invite themselves even in the moments of relaxation of Carrière.
At the end of the day, only half an hour of solitude was given to them, during which
"we each had the obligation to invent a story or a piece of history, related or unrelated to the scenario"
.
A gag, a scene, a tale.
It doesn't matter.
All that mattered was imaginative gymnastics.
They then met at the bar, in front of an aperitif, and told each other the result of their respective reflections.
"It was in this very Buñuélienne idea that the imagination is a muscle and that this muscle can and must be trained
," conceives the author of
La Controverse de Valladolid
.
Our brain is very reductive, always tends to be satisfied with the first idea it finds.
You have to provoke him, you have to harass him, you have to titillate him. "
To read also: Jean-Claude Carrière: "I have been an orphan since the death of Pierre Étaix"
Almost laughing, Jean-Claude Carrière recounted these unusual and paradoxically so usual moments.
“I remember very well, when I joined him at the bar, of Buñuel looking at me coming and waving me as if to say 'my idea today is worthless'.
Or, on the contrary, raising his glass and calling me “come, I have a very good one to tell you” ”
.
From now on, neither of them will tell us anything more.
