Film Culture (December 1957)

young people who deny the existence of love — and fall in love. — When you work with directors, do you find it really a matter of collaboration? — Yes. I believe in the complete participation of both the author and director. However, for Kermesse héroique I wrote only the scenario, not the dialogues. I quarreled with Feyder, and Bernard Zimmer wrote the lines. And he did very well. — How about the collaboration in La grande illusion? — Renoir changes a lot. He improvises as he works. — With the consent of the scenarist ? — No. Renoir never consulted me. He used to say: “We're two buddies working together, and one is just a little more of a director than the other.” And, in fact, making a film is actually a way of living. I live with the director. It’s really a marriage, where the director is the mother and the scenarist the father. The director usually carries the film nine or ten months from the scenario to the finished film, and the director must even have a somewhat feminine character, coquettish with the press, flirting with the producer, and fretting over his own state and that of the gestated baby. On the other hand, the scenarist, like the father, says simply, “O.K., so I'll turn out another kid!” Then, like that, he takes off!! — Don’t you think that one should study the works of scenarists as one studies other literary art? — Yes. I think it is a great injustice to the scenarist for films always to be grouped by director. The scenarist has a certain vision of the world. The director: changes enormously; the scenarist stays the same. It is he, not the director, who has the continuity of style. — I have noticed that many of your films have a social preoccupation. Do you consider yourself a sociological or a social writer? — Some critics do, I know, but I prefer to consider myself a realist. People are generally well-intentioned. They mean well, but they are at grips with events. They want very much to be proud, but they can’t. Jericho is typical: too great an effort is demanded of the characters. I find first a theme, and then a milieu. It’s a matter of more than just a story. — Jericho is about the resistance, isn’t it? — A very important film on the resistance — the truth about the resistance. La bataille du rail (Clément) is nothing but a delusion. — For your Banquet des fraudeurs (about the Benelux experiment) did you seek any information from your brother? — Men of state and politicians have no imagination. The idea of nationality is outmoded. Patriotism and peace are only catchwords. What the ordinary man wants to know is: “What’s in it for me within six months?” If you can guarantee him something, he’ll take the idea. — How do you feel you fare at the hands of the critics? — The critic who pleased me the most is Jacques Natanson. He wrote, in reviewing Jericho, “Spaak is the more at his ease, the greater the subject.” At that moment we were interrupted by the arrival of the Belgian director Paul Haesaerts, who had an appointment with Spaak. We ended our interview looking at a deluxe edition of Clair’s “Le silence est d’or.” Fearing that the display of a volume with that title might be a subtle hint cast in my direction and knowing that I had really asked all the questions I had wanted to, I decided to depart. It is good to hear a film writer speak for himself and hence for his fellows. Far too much attention, as Spaak says, is devoted to the director and to the stars. Naturally there is jealousy among the groups responsible for a good production. Spaak, for instance, at one time flatly stated he despised stars! (I had asked him if he ever had written a scenario for a given star. “Yes, and almost always it’s not the one who finally plays the part. I don’t like actors.”) His attitude toward directors shows a certain condescending distrust. It is for those of us who appreciate films to maintain the balance which director, actor, and writer are too involved to establish. And certainly the director has been, to date, the spoiled child of the cinema. Actors are not far behind. I do not mean to suggest that their roles are unimportant. Rather I feel, with Spaak, that the writer contributes an equal share to the making of a film. He, too, should be studied, analyzed, and criticized on his own merits. In the United States we have even less of an opportunity to hear from a film writer because of the “mill” employed in Hollywood. Kazan is a director who shows signs of breaking with the tradition of the anonymity of the scenarist. His preface to the published “Face in the Crowd” by Budd Schulberg is encouraging. But Schulberg and Tennessee Williams are authors from other fields of writing who have approached the film, and Kazan retains the stage director’s respect for his authors. Paddy Chayefsky is about the only American writer who, since he writes primarily for the film, could be compared with Spaak. Spaak occupies an enviable position — respected by the French directors, if not by all of the French critics. What is needed now is the study of the styles and thought of such writers as Spaak, for, as he said, it is not always the director who gives a film its unity of style — more often, it’s the writer who is the creator with a unity of inspiration and “a certain vision of the world.” GUIDO ARISTARCO THREE TENDENCIES: A POSTSCRIPT TO THE VENICE FILM FESTIVAL This year, unlike last, the directing committee of the Festival did not have complete control over the selection of all films. They were able to choose only four of the GUIDO ARISTARCO IS EDITOR OF ITALY’S MOST IMPORTANT FILM PERIODICAL, “CINEMA NUOVO,” AND AUTHOR OF SEVERAL BOOKS ON FILM HISTORY AND FILM THEORY, AMONG THEM “INVITO ALLE IMMAGINI,” “IL COLORE NEL FILM,” “IL CINEMA JTALIANO DEL DOPOGUERRA,” AND THE MONUMENTAL “STORIA DELLE TEORICHE DEL FILM.”