The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

From the Crabe-Tambour to Cinema Paradiso, Jacques Perrin told by his greatest films

2022-04-21T17:38:32.387Z


In 2011, the Cinémathèque paid tribute to the actor and producer by broadcasting more than thirty of his films. The opportunity for Le Figaro to return, with the actor who died at the age of 80, on a journey as exceptional as it is atypical.


Not the type to salve his ego because a tribute, however flattering and appreciated, is paid to him at the Cinémathèque de Paris.

It was with amiable detachment, discreet satisfaction, that Jacques Perrin evoked the retrospective which was devoted to the Cinémathèque française.

At almost 70 springs, he was returning to his extraordinary trajectory.

Of those which are not traced with a single stroke of a ruler, but summons the compass of a curiosity with an ever-sharp tip.

Constantly widen the circle of his encounters, identify new universes to apprehend, play on all levels to get there...

To discover

  • Discover the “Best of the Goncourt Prize” collection

Read alsoActor and director Jacques Perrin died at 80

Better than a long speech, the thirty-seven films broadcast then illustrated this double profile offered by the actor who became very young, at 27, producer then director.

No particular titles on his business card.

Just the recurring pleasure of carrying out different adventures with the same enthusiasm, whether in front of or behind the camera.

A career spanning half a century did not prevent Perrin, the comedian, from continuing to love acting to

“escape, pass out from things and find himself confronted with a spectrum of situations, of feelings to which life exposes you. rarely”

.

It is in the midst of others, between sky and sea, that Jacques Perrin found his

Cinema paradiso

.

Who helped him to accomplish himself?

Who revealed it to himself?

This very shy person had agreed to look back on his past and to evoke, over the years, the directors who allowed him to be what he has become: an accomplished man of cinema.

The time when Valerio Zurlini gave him his first lesson in cinema

The Girl with a Suitcase

(

La ragazza con la valigia

) by Valerio Zurlini, in 1962, with Claudia Cardinale, Jacques Perrin...

1961. Jacques Perrin had just finished his ranges at the Conservatoire when Valerio Zurlini spotted him on the stage of the Edouard VII theater where he played, with Sami Frey,

L'Année du bac

, a play directed by Yves Robert.

A few tests in Rome with Claudia Cardinale finally convinced the Italian director: the 19-year-old blond will be the Lorenzo of

The Girl with a Suitcase

.

An emotion that remained intact:

“Valerio Zurlini knew how to film feelings when they come alive... The loving impulse that leads you to walk differently, the conviction or the rage that ignites your gaze!

He knew how to put us in condition, prepare the romantic and affectionate framework so that we find the right expression as well as possible.

He was a former professor of the history of painting.

Thanks to him, I discovered the school of the Italian Renaissance, a humanism that I pursued in Tuscany with Masaccio, Piero della Francesca or Andrea Mantegna.

Their painting marked the sensational appearance of the human model.

With Zurlini, it is the evidence of the feeling that was essential.

You have to know how to approach the soul and know the human being well in order to succeed in grasping, like him, their strength and intensity.”

The Tartar Desert

(

Il deserto dei Tartari

) by Valerio Zurlini, in 1976, adapted from the novel (1940) by Dino Buzzati, with Jacques Perrin, Vittorio Gassman, Helmut Griem, Giuliano Gemma, Philippe Noiret...

The time when Pierre Schoendoerffer opened the way to infinite questioning

The 317th Section

of Pierre Schoendoerffer, in 1965, with Jacques Perrin, Bruno Cremer...

1965. It was after seeing him in

Journal in

time that Pierre Schoendoerffer hired the young actor to join the expeditionary force of

the 317th Section.

The two men would shoot four films together:

Le Crabe-Tambour

(1977),

L'Honneur d'un captain

(1982) and

Up there

(2002), but it was the shooting that took place during the Indochina war that will leave a lasting mark on Jacques Perrin.

In 2002, he directed L'Empire du milieu du Sud

with Éric Deroo

– the DVD of which has just been released by Montparnasse.

What he had discovered in the jungle is confirmed in the words of Musset:

"It's a whole world that everyone carries within them."

This world, which is born and which dies in silence, the actor then the producer will never stop revealing its folds and secret compartments.

“Difficult to evoke Pierre Schoendoerffer in a few words.

Of my journey with him, I could write a chronicle or a logbook.

It would be a question of a journey towards others where one ends up above all by meeting oneself, in areas of mystery.

With Indochina, Schoendoerffer was following in his footsteps, and what footsteps!

I saw him go all the way, catch dysentery, fall ill... All that, to seek to understand and to understand again.

Why this war?

Why these fights?

There is not necessarily an answer to this voluntary questioning drift, but in a way The 317th Section showed that war takes place above all between the soldier and himself.

We never talked about the French Empire or the colonial spirit...

Most of these young people left for the exoticism of elsewhere, to reveal themselves by rubbing shoulders with something exhilarating and dangerous: the path of adventure and that of inevitable destiny... Death.

From that time, I understood that the elsewhere did not exist.

When you are very far away, you walk a little more confused, but you always carry around the same carcass.

What really interests me is the journey that we make with others here or at the end of the world.

but we always carry around the same carcass.

What really interests me is the journey that we make with others here or at the end of the world.

but we always carry around the same carcass.

What really interests me is the journey that we make with others here or at the end of the world.

Le Crabe-Drum

by Pierre Schoendoerffer, in 1977, with Jean Rochefort, Jacques Perrin, Claude Rich, Jacques Dufilho...

The time when Jacques Demy showed him that cinema could reveal unsuspected worlds

Les Demoiselles de Rochefort

by Jacques Demy, in 1967, music by Michel Legrand, with Catherine Deneuve, Françoise Dorléac, Jacques Perrin, George Chakiris...

1967. Why him?

Jacques Perrin still wonders.

He could neither sing nor dance.

The New Wave shunned him, and yet.

From one Jacques to another, Demy was able to find on the actor's face the pure expression of Monsieur Maxence in Les

Demoiselles de Rochefort

(1967), then, later, the romanticism without sentimentality of Prince Charming by Catherine Deneuve in

Peau d' donkey

(1971).

Two enchanted parentheses as we rarely experience.

“That Jacques Demy asked me was a real surprise.

I was very far from the New Wave, not for political reasons or out of a desire to defend another cinema, but I didn't correspond to it.

He was part of it, but he was different, quirky!

His first film,

Lola,

already announced his taste for the musical.

He was an immensely creative man who pursued a kind of fantasy of existence, a very personal imagination.

Even on a shoot, he had this side that was always floating, between two clouds... Which didn't prevent him from mastering everything perfectly.

His requirement was coupled with such kindness that it didn't feel like work.

He spread over all the actors and the entire technical team a kind of grace that meant that we didn't quite touch the ground.

Whether it was for

Les Demoiselles de Rochefort

or

Peau d'âne,

I wanted to go back to the set every morning, just to see this magician at work.

A great example."

Donkey Skin by

Jacques Demy, in 1970, with Catherine Deneuve, Delphine Seyrig, Jacques Perrin, Jean Marais, Micheline Presle...

The time when Costa-Gavras made him the producer of an Oscar-winning film and twice awarded at Cannes

Z

de Costa-Gavras, in 1969, with Jean-Louis Trintignant, Yves Montand, Irène Papas, Jacques Perrin...

1968. While Parisian youth are throwing cobblestones, Jacques Perrin created his production company Reggane Films.

In his bag, a few short and medium-length films, but the young producer's first coup was to allow Costa-Gavras to produce

Z

: a ​​firebrand inspired by the assassination of the Greek deputy Lambrakis.

After

Compartment killers

(1965) and

One man too many

(1967), the actor who only plays a secondary role, alongside Yves Montand and Charles Denner, finds himself in the forefront to finance the adaptation of the novel by Vassilis Vassilikos.

His involvement is total.

With the team and a group of students, he will even go so far as to stick the film posters on all the walls of the capital.

The pragmatic utopian has discovered that building his dreams is possible.

“Cinema is also a formidable weapon that goes straight to the point, to emotion.

I immediately understood how high time it was for Costa to make this film.

The exile, the torn man who abandoned everything needed to balance himself in relation to his native country, to what he thought, to his compatriots.

I don't think he would have been at peace if he hadn't.

As a producer, I was often sorry for the lack of comfort, of means, but the whole team was united.

How not to be, seeing Costa so convinced?

We were like a theater troupe, a family that, for a time, was deeply together.

I love the team spirit!

Me and Gavras, both in the middle of the others: a very nice meeting in the service of

Compartment killers

of Costa-Gavras, in 1965, with Yves Montand, Jacques Perrin, Catherine Allégret, Pierre Mondy...

The time when Gérard Vienne and Claude Nuridsany led him towards wildlife documentaries

Cinema Paradiso

by Giuseppe Tornatore, in 1988, with Philippe Noiret, Alfredo Salvatore Cascio, Jacques Perrin...

The 1990s. Under the guise of an Anglican pastor, Jacques Perrin campaigned against mental laziness and the inertia of consciences by producing committed films such as

The Algerian War

by Yves Courrière and Philippe Monnier or

La Victoire en chantant

by Jean - Jacques Annaud.

Taking risks has never scared him, even if it means experiencing a few crosswinds.

While

The Roaring Forties

(1981) left him on the sand financially, he created and presented, between 1991 and 2000, the program "La 25e Heure".

The need then arises for him to relay the work of directors specializing in wildlife documentaries.

Thanks to him, Gérard Vienne filmed

The Monkey People

(1989), Claude Nuridsany that of the grass -

Microcosmos

(1996).

The producer has found his privileged field of exploration: the mystery of the living world.

"To the question 'How do you choose your films?', Cinema Paradiso producer Franco Cristaldi answered: 'I don't know, but I want it to exist!'

Well, some encounters give me that desire!

How to fly with birds?

At first, I didn't know.

How to do a tracking shot to follow the movement of an ant?

Nothing allowed at the time to do so.

When with Claude Nuridsany, we started, we didn't care about us, but the idea was there and I believed in it.

It's good to be the architect of this whole journey, of this addition of talents which at some point makes the dream possible.

The time when adventure invites more and more adventure

The Migratory People

directed by Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cluzaud and Michel Debats, in 2001

The 2000s. It was the time of rewards, of recognition: a César for

Le Peuple migrateur

in 2001, then another for

Océans

in 2010. His fresco on the seabed, produced and co-directed with Jacques Cluzaud, attracted more than 12 million viewers worldwide.

But Jacques Perrin does not intend to stop there.

With Laurent Gaudé and Christophe Cheysson, he is currently finishing the writing of a screenplay inspired by the hostage-taking of Le

Ponant

.

A film about Felix Kersten, Himmler's doctor, is in the works, as well as a new nature documentary project.

In September, a series entitled The People of the Oceans

... A frenzy that defies time

will also be broadcast on France 2 ?

“Time flew by without me looking at it.

I didn't worry about it and now I am more than three times 20 years old!

If aging does not scare me, I dread the physical betrayal that will limit me.

But the desire is still there!

I remain permanently available for what there is to see, to listen to, to imagine, to dream.

Above all, no remorse!

To be passionate, to try not to do exactly like everyone else by taking other routes, to track down the bushy path of life and its unforeseen events: it is this wake, these traces mixed with others, like the foam left by a boat in the open sea, which counts... Keeping your eyes wide open to all the possibilities, all the elsewhere... This is still how you dream best and feel less old! »

Source: lefigaro

All life articles on 2022-04-21

You may like

Life/Entertain 2024-02-21T18:34:50.609Z
Life/Entertain 2024-02-10T16:03:23.636Z

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.