François Margolin is a director, producer and screenwriter. He directed the film Salafistes.
Christophe is dead and my sadness is unnamed. Or rather, she has a first name: Aline.
"I had drawn, on the sand, her sweet face, which smiled at me , " wrote the singer, and we all take it to heart. "And I shouted, shouted, Aline, for her to come back" : Aline, the first name of the woman I love, also named, no doubt, by her parents, because of the success of the song. The tube, as we said at the time. In 1965.
The real Aline was called Aline Natanovitch. She was Polish and looked after the locker room in a trendy box of the time. Christophe admitted it a few years ago in an interview with Lui magazine . No one knows if something had really happened between them but for the real poets, of which he was, the disappearance is more important than the presence. And regrets allow us to realize that love exists.
His culture was shared between France and Italy and he sang in both languages, perhaps even better in Italian."I will tell him the blue words, the words that are said with the eyes, speaking seems ridiculous to me, I rush forward and then I step back," murmured in our ears Daniel Bevilacqua, his real name. He, whose culture was shared between France and Italy and who sang in both languages, perhaps even better in Italian, the language of his family and his father, heating engineer based in Juvisy, in the southern suburbs from Paris. Italian, the language of Dolce Vita, the sun, beaches, pasta and the Neapolitan canzone undoubtedly at the origin of all the sung romances. And this irresistible urge to hum.
I was lucky to witness Christophe's big return to Olympia on March 11, 2002. The hall was full, but it was like a gamble for him. The singer of "Mots Bleus" and "Puppets" had been forgotten by the general public for almost twenty years. The emotion was palpable when he sat on the piano to perform his short stories, and his old songs. Marie-Claude Pietragalla's choreographies did nothing: Christophe was alone, left to himself, delivered to us, his audience, his fans. A thread of voice, almost quavering, in this gigantic room, but an intensity so obvious that, gradually, she captivated the room. Christophe had won. It was, in a way, his resurrection. The end of a disappearance that should never have happened.
The whole young generation wanted to record with him, and resume their successes.And, in fact, Christophe returned. He was again adulated, recognized, solicited. He became a myth in French song, he who, in a few "cult" songs had managed to seduce this popular France which likes to be carried away by simple melodies. The whole young generation wanted to record with him, and resume their successes. Christophe finally had his "Succès Fou", which however dates from 1977.
I heard a few days ago that he had been hospitalized but, as Boris Johnson got away with it, I did not worry too much. However, I should have.
And then, last night - it was half past one, the time when the day of Christophe, that follower of the night, usually started - I learned of his death. Because of this filth of virus that drags and attacks its victims without even choosing them: known or unknown. I didn't want to believe it but it was reality.
A Czech and French-speaking friend told me this morning that with his brother, children, in 1965, they were laughing while transforming the refrain of "Aline". They were screaming, "And I shouted, shouted, Stalin, to come back, and I cried, cried, oh! I was too sad. " It was of course ironic. And shortly before Prague Spring.
Like what, great songs cross borders and last longer than men.
