Rupture (Pierre Étaix & Jean-Claude Carrière, 1961)

Mary Ellen Mark, Paris, Photo by Jean Claude Carriere, 1970

AT LEAST YOU HAVE YOUR HEALTH:

Four comic vignettes

Struggles of everyday life

Now with more slapstick

To Jean-Claude Carrière

Mexico City, 3 October 1981

My dear J-Cl, I wrote a – relatively – long letter to you yesterday, but I forgot something important: to congratulate you on your 50 youthful years, and to regret that we were not able to celebrate together over a glass of wine. I envy you. I was as strong as an ox at that age, and now… well, you can see how life goes by and ‘how cometh Death in stealthy surprise… How fain is memory to measure each latter day inferior to those of old’.

No news of Serge. For two months now. If you have any, please let me know in your next letter.

I’ve looked through the memoirs. Cutting out the section on my films (that was of no interest whatsoever) will make it very short. I imagine it would be good for commercial reasons to make it more ‘baroque’, as the publisher suggests, in other words, more scandalous, but you should just tell them I’m not Dalí, although if I wanted, I could be and more besides. If it wasn’t for your sake, for all the friendly interest you’ve put into writing these memoirs, I’d stop the whole thing right now. Well, if we do carry on, I’ll do my best to avoid falling into banal and foolish tales.

Write to me.

With love, Luis

PS The great Louis Malle came to see me a week ago. I had a wonderful time. He drinks like a fish.

Jo Evans & Breixo Viejo, Luis Buñuel: A Life in Letters

Maybe this is the lesson I had with Jean-Claude Carriere. Carriere was one of the best scriptwriters of the cinema. He was a true narrator; not a poet, but a narrator. He said to me, “When you write the script, the audience has to be surprised by the thing after.” And this is the most difficult thing because we saw so many movies and so many things that we have to be entertaining. You follow the scene that you are watching because spectators are so quick right now. They say, “I think after this scene this is going to happen.” I wanted to build some traps for the spectator.

Louis Garrel on The Innocent, Making the Audience Happy, and How to Be a Good Cinephile

Gli altri sport: Didier Pironi

 Il pilota che pur di continuare a correre trovò una seconda strada nel mondo della motonautica… Didier Joseph-Louis Pironi nacque  il 26 marzo 1952 a Villecresnes, cominciò a studiare come ingegnere, ma poi dopo si iscrisse alla scuola di guida al Paul Ricard ricevendo la borsa di studio di sponsorizzazione della compagnia petrolifera francese Elf nel 1972. Il giovane pilota partecipò alla Formula Renault francese nel 1973 e l’anno successivo con il team Elf Martini conquistò il titolo con sette vittorie e fu  sempre con il team Elf Martini nel 1975 nella Formula Renault Europea ottenendo tre vittorie a Monaco, Paul Ricard e Hockenheim e l’anno successivo conquistò il titolo con dodici vittorie. Passato nella Formula 2 con lo stesso team, Pironi ebbe una sola vittoria a Estoril e il terzo posto finale e nello stesso anno corse la gara di Formula 3 a Monaco vincendola. L’anno successivo con la Renault-Alpine Didier vinse la 24 ore di Le Mans in coppia con Jean-Pierre Jaussaud e debuttò in Formula 1 con la Tyrell, riuscendo a conquistare punti in cinque gare del campionato e concludendo la stagione al quindicesimo posto con sette punti. La seconda stagione con la nuova vettura della Tyrell 009 per il pilore fu migliore rispetto a quella della passata stagione, con due terzi posti in Belgio e negli Stati Uniti e punti iridati in Brasile, Spagna e Canada, terminandola undicesimo con quattordici punti. Nel 1980 Pironì passò alla Ligier e conquistò la prima vittoria nel Gran Premio del Belgio, conquistando diversi podi e punti iridati, finendo il campionato quinto con trentedue punti. L’anno successivo passò alla scuderia Ferrari dove si trovò come compagno di scuderia Gilles Villeneuve, che divenne sua grande amico, ma la Ferrari 126CK non era competitiva e Pironi riuscì  ad avere punti solo a San Marino, Montecarlo, Francia e Italia concludendo la stagione tredicesimo con nove punti. La stagione 1982 della Ferrari, con la più competitiva 126C2, vide il pilota,  dopo il diciottesimo posto nel Gran Premio del Sud Africa, i punti conquistati in Brasile con il sesto posto e il ritiro nel Gran premio degli Stati Uniti Ovest, ottenere la seconda vittoria della sua carriere nel Gran Premio d’Imola. Quest’episodio rese difficili  i rapporti tra lui e Villeneuve, poichè il francese aveva superato il canadese nelle ultime fasi della gara, quando c’erano ordini precisi di scuderia di tenere la posizione conquistata. L’8 maggio 1982 nelle prove a Zolder del Gran Premio del Belgio Villeneuve, pur di migliorare il suo tempo, ritorna in pista,  tampona la vettura di Jochen Mass,  sbalzato fuori dalla vettura  muore in ospedale, la Ferrari per rispetto non partecipò alla gara. Dopo due podi conquistati a Montecarlo e Usa e il nono posto in Canada, Didier ebbe la sua terza ed ultima vittoria in Olanda e ottenne altri due podi nei due successivi Gran Premi. Sabato 7 agosto 1982, durante le prove del sabato mattina del Gran Premio di Germania sulla pista bagnata Pironi,  che stava tornando ai box dopo aver ottenuto la pole position, tamponò la Renault di Prost  decollando, quando atterrò la Ferrari si spezza in due insieme alle gambe del pilota, mettendo fine alla sua carriera in Formula 1. Fu superato nella classifica finale da Keke Rosberg che conquistò la sua unica vittoria nel Gran Premio di Svizzera. Dopo varie operazioni Pironì tentò di nuovo di rientrare in Formula 1, non riuscendo,  prima con la scuderia AGS e poi con una Ligier. Alla fine il pilota si concentrò sulla motonautica, con uno scafo da lui ideato detto Colibrì,  che lo portò a vincere diverse gare, ma il 23 agosto 1987 non potè sfuggire ancora una volta al suo destino, morì, insieme a Bernard Giroux e Jean-Claude Guenard,  nel Needles Trophy Race al largo delle coste dell'isola di Wight. Read the full article

fun fact: the ending of the mini series was shot in september 1989!

discover that and more facts below! ;)

Once again, The Phantom of the Opera has been sighted, according to reports from the capital. Last fall, the masked figure in full evening regalia made a sudden appearance on the roof of the Paris Opera House. Fortunately, he was cornered by the police and unmasked.

This scene, shot last September, is the climax of a four-hour mini-series, adapted by the playwright Arthur Kopit from Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel and starring Burt Lancaster and Charles Dance; Teri Polo, a relative newcomer, plays Christine, the young singer who becomes the object of the Phantom's ardor. The initial two-hour installment will be presented next Sunday evening at 9 on NBC, with the conclusion the following night.

Last summer and fall, the veteran British stage and film director Tony Richardson, a man not fond of heights, filmed from every angle of the Opera House, right up to the gables that rise some 160 feet above the street, and at a stone quarry outside Paris, where the Phantom's watery domain was re-created.

The atmosphere of a mysterious habitat, from backstage to underground lagoon, made Leroux's Phantom a legend and the Paris Opera the most famous haunted house of the century. Even though the Phantom spooked the Opera House's staff, threatening to kill off those who got in his way, the novel was not a mere horror tale but a love story about a disfigured creature with a passion for music, who is infatuated with a gifted young singer.

Mr. Kopit, whose stage works include ''Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feeling So Sad,'' ''Indians'' and ''Wings,'' has brought out the romantic theme, playing on hidden motivations that he feels are close to the spirit of the original. It certainly makes for a more modern, nuanced ''Phantom,'' full of Freudian surprises and even fun.

''The key to my adaptation,'' said Mr. Kopit, ''was that Erik, the Phantom, falls in love with Christine, the girl with the beautiful voice.'' It took him, however, a year to plot his approach. ''Of course, I had seen the old Lon Chaney movie and the Claude Rains movie,'' he explained. ''I saw them again and realized I remembered them as being better than they were. What had haunted me was a dim recollection of a girl singing above and a dangerous figure lurking below - a sense of forbidden sensuality.''

Mr. Kopit's real inspiration was a vision of, as he put it, ''an enchanted place of the imagination'' that came to him from Jean Cocteau's ''Beauty and the Beast.'' Accordingly, he created a family for the Phantom, a sad, secret history that makes Erik's father, Carriere - played by Mr. Lancaster - a pivotal character.

''Carriere is a composite of two characters from the novel, the Opera manager and the Persian, a man who always knew the Phantom's whereabouts. Burt's role makes it more human; he's the link between the different strands of the story. In all other versions Erik comes to the Opera - I wanted him born there. Why is the manager so kind to him? Why does Erik fall in love with Christine's voice? I knew there must be more to the story. So, I made the manager his secret father, the lover of Erik's mother, a famous singer who had gone mad. This explains the boy's love of music - Christine is his answered prayer, the dimly remembered presence of his mother.''

In the novel, the manager and staff had treated the Phantom almost as a mascot, reserving his box at the Opera, giving him bonbons. When a new manager attempts to have him evicted, the trouble starts. In Mr. Kopit's version, too, chandeliers crash, Christine is abducted and the corpses pile up. ''You have to have these things,'' he said, ''but I was out to get at the deeper relationships. It was an astonishing journey for a writer, because I didn't impose my ideas but discovered these characters as if they really existed, and I had to put the story together.''

Mr. Kopit, who wrote the book for the 1982 Broadway musical ''Nine,'' had written a libretto for a musical based on ''The Phantom of the Opera,'' but in 1985, the rights went into the public domain and he was beaten to the punch by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

''When Lloyd Webber's show opened in London, that was the end of mine,'' said Mr. Kopit. ''I was devastated because I deeply loved my version. I feel that the story never achieved its potential as a Gothic romance - women swoon, men die of love - and I like to think that Gaston Leroux would approve of the changes I made.''

On the set of the mini-series, Mr. Richardson, the opposite of the typically high-strung, pressured TV director, seems to move in slow motion. Wearing bleached jeans low on his hipless form, he takes time with each of the actors, cajoling them in his singsong voice and improvising changes in the shooting schedule when it suits him. Today, he has devised a prank on Mr. Lancaster: The actor has referred to the director, who tends to wring and flap his hands a lot, as ''the surgeon''; so, Mr. Richardson has sent out for some surgical gloves to wear.

While technicians set up the scene for the afternoon's filming, Mr. Richardson dons the rubber gloves. Unfortunately, Mr. Lancaster is so engrossed in learning his lines - hunks of very fin-de-siecle-sounding dialogue - the joke is lost on him.

''Burt has pages and pages to learn, so he's preoccupied,'' Mr. Richardson says. Indeed, there seems to be a contest going on: Mr. Kopit keeps adding dialogue; as soon as his back is turned, Mr. Richardson trims it down. Mr. Kopit haunts the set - today he is in the costume of a police officer - to watch over details.

''This is supposed to be 19th-century dialogue, so I don't want anybody making it up,'' he said. During a lunch break, Mr. Richardson explains that, for him, ''working for television is like making a movie on a low budget, shooting a certain amount of film in a limited time. I had done the Beryl Markham mini-series on location in Africa, in natural surroundings. For 'Phantom,' everything has to be staged and lighted. The camera moves all the time, the atmosphere is being created all the time. We are creating a fantasy, a big romantic love story.''

Mr. Richardson did his casting in London, New York and Paris: Jean-Pierre Cassel is in hot pursuit as Inspector Ledoux; Andrea Ferreol plays Carlotta, the diva fury who sings off-key, and Ian Richardson is her comically self-important husband.

As a boy growing up in New York City, Mr. Lancaster had been so terrified by Lon Chaney's performance in the 1925 ''Phantom'' that he ran all the way home from the movie theater, convinced that the Phantom was on his heels.

''Now I don't see movies any more,'' he shakes his head, ''not even my own. But I used to go all day, and my brothers had to come dig me out every night.''

Over the years, huge rocks from the quarry of Mello, a rural village 38 miles north of Paris, have been used to repair Notre Dame Cathedral. Mello's 8,000-square-foot cave is proving a fine site to stand in as the Phantom's subterranean kingdom. John-Kristian Alsaker, the production's designer, is especially pleased with the lagoon, created by piping in 50 tons of water. Painters and carpenters are putting last touches to a barge that looks as if it might have been Cleopatra's.

The designer has also transformed a stonecutter's lodge into the hideaway where Erik sequesters Christine. Chiffon curtains float like cobwebs over a canopy bed. Mr. Lancaster sits, bundled in a greatcoat against the quarry's cold dampness, poring over his lines. Like a true trouper, the 76-year-old actor prefers to commit his lines to memory and shuns a Teleprompter standing nearby.

Mr. Richardson paces, overseeing a flashback sequence in which Mr. Lancaster recounts how he loved and lost Erik's mother. The director expresses impatience with the kind of spelling out and repetition needed for television: ''You have to allow for a different rhythm when you do television; you're not able to do the same things. The format of a feature film has much more momentum. But I love this script - it's a great story.'' he says.

Today's shoot takes place in the Opera's second-level basement, where Erik chases Christine. Mr. Dance has made Erik an urbane, self-deprecating figure, a man of wit. His 6-foot-3 frame wrapped in a black cloak, the actor perspires under one of the Phantom's six masks. ''Erik changes faces according to his mood,'' he explains.

Off the set, Mr. Dance likes to caper and camp it up, trying out fiendish laughs on Ms. Polo, but actually the actor, who started out at the Royal Shakespeare Company, takes his part very seriously:

''Wearing a mask means you have to depend much more upon body language than eye language. Erik is a man steeped in theatricality - his whole wardrobe has come out of the Opera House costume department. I see him as a child, an innocent - I never think of him as being a murderous maniac. He's alone in a world he's created for himself, and into this world of music comes this girl with an exquisite voice.''

After the chase scene comes a long conspiracy sequence between Mr. Dance and Mr. Lancaster. Erik complains that the off-key Carlotta and her officious husband are ruining the Opera; he will have to ''kill them off.'' Carriere begs him to calm down.

Because of unwanted noises in the resonant basement, the actors resume several times. ''Very good, extraordinary,'' Mr. Richardson says. ''Well, I'd like to do another one, without noises,'' says Mr. Dance.

''You want more life? More vitality?'' asks Mr. Lancaster after the next take.

Mr. Richardson twiddles his thumbs and wags his hands. ''That was very good,'' he says. ''Extraordinary.''

And they do another take.

THE FASCINATION OF 'PHANTOM'

What is there about Gaston Leroux's potboiler - more suave than sinister - that has made it such a target for takeover? From Universal's 1925 silent version, starring Lon Chaney, film makers have squeezed the story of ''The Phantom of the Opera'' for all its bogeyman worth.

''The Lon Chaney film,'' says Arthur Kopit, ''was the best of the lot - the first in the horror genre, yet it had mystery.''

A 1943 version with Claude Rains was snubbed by cinephiles but successfully scared a new generation; Herbert Lom tried his hand in 1962, and Maximilian Schell in 1983. The 1960's opened the way to a certain vulgarization; the French came up with a new twist: Juliette Greco as the Phantom haunting the Louvre, and the kitsch British stage production ''Phantom of the Paradise'' became a Brian DePalma cult film in 1974.

The success of Mr. Lloyd Webber's musical - it is now into its third year on Broadway - has inspired others. Menahem Golan has produced a gentrified Grand Guignol version with Robert Englund, the vengeful Freddy of ''Nightmare on Elm Street'' fame, freshly manicured. And now Universal has decided to tint, not colorize, its original and reissue the film for the home-video market; the music track will boast operatic voices and an orchestra under the supervision of the rock musician Rick Wakeman.

Alredered Remembers Prolific French author, playwright and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière , on his birthday.

"Faith doesn't begin until reason stops."

-Jean-Claude Carriere

The gang's all here:

(Front) Billy Wilder, George Stevens, Luis Buñuel, Alfred Hitchcock, Rouben Mamoulian (Back) Robert Mulligan, William Wyler, George Cukor, Robert Wise, Jean-Claude Carriere, Serge Silverman.

Ph: Marv Newton

Goya, Carriere and the Ghost of Bunuel

Goya, Carriere and the Ghost of Bunuel

It is with great emotion that we rediscover the magical langage of the late screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, as he researches the painter Goya. An incredible trip through culture, emotion, cinema, painting and Spain.

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Celebrating Jean-Claude Carrière this #JessFrancoFriday.

Jean-Claude Carrière was a screenwriter on many important classic films such as the Tin Drum, Belle Du Jour, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeois, and many more. Though more importantly on #francofriday he also has writing credits on several Jess Franco films. These are Diabolical Dr Z (Miss Muerte), Attack of the Robots (Cartes Sur Table), and Jack the Ripper. He has also been credited with La Casa de Las Mujeres Perdidas and therefore also Broken Dolls, but Jess Franco is on the record as saying that this was not the case, he turned down the work. There is an interview with Carrière where he discusses Jess Franco available on the 1kult Vimeo. Unfortunately my French is a little too rusty to figure out all that he says about Jess, but it’s worth a watch. Jess Franco Friday!

Rest in Peace

Jean-Claude Carrière, 1931-2021.

THE SUITOR:

A hapless rich nerd

Attempts to get a girlfriend

Slapstick disaster

To Jean-Claude Carrière

Mexico City, 19 January 1981

My dear and favourite disciple, As always, great happiness at the arrival of your two most recent letters, and this reply from me is mainly to the second one.

I’m in no fit state to travel and still less for tributes. What would I do in Cannes – even though I love it – with all these years on my back? Greet dozens of people and waves of journalists, etc.? I’d rather stay in my monastic cell and allow the time I have left, that I neither think nor hope will be long, slip sweetly by. Thank Jacob and Favre Le Bret on my behalf for the invitation, I am sadly unable to accept.

As for my biography, I don’t think it’s a bad idea in principle, and it would mean we could spend about a month together. You could come to Mexico whenever you like, and we could go up to San José; because I could do with getting some oxygen in my lungs before we start. But we’d need to set up some kind of contract with Laffont beforehand, the main clause being that whatever you write would have to be approved by me. I’m very much afraid of your excessive and inventive imagination. Je connais mes moutons. So I accept, in principle, and you can come whenever suits you.

I got the lovely little letter from Iris. Give her a kiss from me, another for Auguste and, for you, my greetings, although cold and correct ones, for fear that you’ll invent things for that biography of yours.

Luis PS I’ve completely recovered from the operation and am smoking and drinking much more than before.

It would be good if Laffont would pay for the stay at San José.

Jo Evans & Breixo Viejo, Luis Buñuel: A Life in Letters

“El libro es como la cuchara, el martillo, la rueda, las tijeras. Una vez se han inventado, no se puede hacer nada mejor. El libro ha superado la prueba del tiempo... Quizá evolucionen sus componentes, quizá sus páginas dejen de ser de papel, pero seguirá siendo lo que es.” Eco / Carrière - Nadie acabará con los libros.

The Weekly Gravy #51

The Weekly Gravy #51

The first Weekly Gravy article went up August 3, 2020. Although I’m writing this on the morning of July 28, 2021, this article will go up August 2, effectively marking the first anniversary of this series. This should, of course, be #52, but I skipped Thanksgiving week last year (which is fine since the week before I’d been stuck at home with COVID and reviewed 15 films), forever throwing off the…

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