A few days before Christmas 1961, December 21 to be exact, the children are even wiser than usual.
At least during the thirteen minutes of the broadcast of the first episode of a new soap opera,
Poly or the mystery of the castle
.
William Magnin, director of youth programs for the only channel still in black and white, chose to schedule it at 5 pm in “L'antenne est à nous”, the meeting point for Thursday afternoon programs for children. , then school day off.
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The adventure began two years earlier, in an office in Buttes-Chaumont. Christiane Colonna, a producer of the RTF, receives Cécile Aubry, novelist, filmmaker and illustrator. She discovered, on her small screen,
The stories of Cécile
, short films, where the young mother reads to Mehdi, her two-year-old son, tales, which she wrote and illustrated. Convinced that there is a nugget to develop there, Christiane Colonna asks her interlocutor to imagine a soap opera that would be divided into several episodes of a quarter of an hour. Cécile Aubry sets a condition: Mehdi will be the hero. Bargain !
A few days later, on July 14, 1958, a traveling circus arrived in Saint-Cyr-sous-Dourdan, near Paris, right next to Cécile Aubry's house. The discovery of the smile of his son fascinated by the assembly of the marquee, triggered a click in the mind of the screenwriter. This is how the adventures of Pascal, a four-year-old child, played by Mehdi, and a Shetland pony called “Poly”, in homage to his “poly… technician” grandfather, are born. The project was accepted and, knowing that Cécile Aubry also knew the techniques of cinema, the channel entrusted her with the directing.
The casting begins with the search for a pony that she wants blond, although she is aware that the images will not be turned in color. After having toured the circuses and farms in vain, she discovers one, in the Yonne, at the bottom of a meadow. She buys it, and sets up an enclosure for it, around a hut at the bottom of her garden. Five years old, he becomes the best friend of the children of the municipal school of a village who will participate in the adventure. The teacher, the painter, the baker and the carpenter become the volunteer extras of a series with such a low budget that the technical team surrounding the director is limited to a cameraman and a scriptwriter. There is no sound recordist, because it has been decided that the dialogues will be recorded afterwards, in the studio,by professional actors. Isabelle Aubret, then a beginner, accepts to interpret a credits which will become cult.
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From the viewing of the first scenes, Mehdi is unanimous.
At four years old, he plays, with a bluffing naturalness, scenes of which he does not always understand the meaning.
This is how he becomes the idol of the very young, and begins a career that will continue, in particular, with
Belle and Sébastien
.
On the other hand, he will not shoot the other eight series of
Poly
, written by his mother, and produced, until 1973, by Claude Boissol.
The pony will nevertheless remain very present in his heart.
The tender memory of his trial run.
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