Take One (Jul-Aug 1971)

every one of us is involved. But the film changed bit by bit, and became a more realistic story — the story of aman and a woman, a love story that would tell of their transformation in a political/ideological landscape. Essentially, we decided to make a film about France between '68 and ‘72, an historical film. It’s a film about history and its power to transform the individual. The film came out of an analysis of the specific situation we were involved in. It is not a film about politics, but it’s a political film. There is a great difference between considering politics as just a chapter in your life, and saying that politics is everywhere and is the reason for everything. We said, during the shooting, that the film was Love Story, but a little bit different. It's the story of a man and a woman, defined by their relationship to the production and to each other — and to some extent it’s the story of a breakup. It's a very traditional film in that sense. But we don't deal with it in terms of metaphysics. Instead, we simply speak of a man who is a filmmaker, and a woman who represents an American radio network in Paris, and what happens to them between '68 and ’72. Did you put in the love story just so the film would be commercial, or was there a political reason? There are some archetypes in films, and the love story is one of them. We wanted to take a “normal” event and express it in a realistic way, to make people discover what was happening beyond that normality. The film takes a very simple situation and analyzes it. There’s the stock phrase, “Lovers are alone in the world.” We think they are not alone at all; there’s a lot of noise happening, and they'd better realize it. Was the dialogue written in advance? Everything is fiction in Tout Va Bien. Everything was written, yet many critics reacted as if the actors were improvising. It makes us feel that we were successful. There's a long sequence when Yves Montand is answering questions that you don't hear, and all the French critics thought it was Jean-Luc, but Jean-Luc didn’t write the text. The text was written in such a way that first you think it’s Jean-Luc, then you think it’s Yves, then you think the guy is a dummy, then you think you’re a dummy. It’s a very tricky thing. But it has only a fictional relationship to our reality. It’s a condensation of some elements of our situation, a situation that intellectuals have been dealing with in France for several years. For seven minutes Yves speaks into the camera with a very difficult text, and people think he’s improvising! We think it's his best acting performance. Was he consulted in the writing of the scene? We weren't able to do everything we want to in shooting the film. We had originally planned to discuss the texts with oe Yves and Jane, but because of Jean-Luc’s illness it wasn’t possible. The actors were confronted with the texts after they were written. But they did participate in some discussions — less than we wanted, and less than they wanted. We heard that, due to Jean-Luc's accident, you ended up doing most of the work on Tout Va Bien. |s that true? Well, let’s not put it that way. | wrote most of the dialogue, and the general scheme was more mine than JeanLuc’s, but it’s difficult to say who is responsible for what because we are so accustomed to dealing with one another that... it’s a question of no importance. Was Jean-Luc able to be physically present during the shooting? Of course, he was there all the time. He was there and alive. He has fantastic physical courage, stamina. It was a great effort for him, but... /s Tout Va Bien as analytical as the 16mm films? Yes it is, but in a very different way, because it appeals to people without any theoretical or philosophical background. It’s a clear and simple film. Unlike the earlier films, where we used overcrowded soundtracks and commentary to make our analysis, Tout Va Bien is a film without commentary. The commentary is the film itself. This is a step forward. Are you satisfied with Tout Va Bien? Even if | can clearly see some mistakes in the film (for instance, there is a certain amount of avant-garde bullshit), both Jean-Luc and | are very satisfied with it. I'm not at all concerned about whether this film will ‘“‘stay’’, as we say in French. |’'m quite sure it will stay, and maybe it will stay as one of the two or three films made in France that are genuine French films. But we have had, and will have, a long struggle to make people give us the right to analyze in films. It's a long march. We may have to make detours, because people are not willing, at this time, to give us that right. Perhaps the solution lies in comic cinema — a new kind of comic cinema with its roots in the work of people like Keaton, Marx, or even W.C. Fields. How is Tout Va Bien doing in France? For us, it's doing well. One hundred thousand people is four times as many as some of our films have had, and it’s even better than Weekend did in France. But people feel that when you're using stars like Yves Montand, if you don't smash the box office you're a loser — which is the old Hollywood ideology. The problem is that we don't make films to unite people in the contemplation of masterpieces or shit. We make films to divide them, so as to unite them in a new way. This takes time. The film is very strange, and we don’t know how people will react to it. It will be shown at the New York Film Festival. We're going to tour with it and talk a lot about it — sometime around September. We had a deal with Paramount to distribute it. (Great laughter) Well, we’re using every means at our... We had that deal, but they haven't signed anything yet. Maybe they'll sign, maybe they won't. We told them we were the only people able to make a modern film, and we've proved it. Who shot the film? A guy named Armand Marco, who's made three films with us: Palestine Will Win, Struggle in Italy, and Viadimir and Rosa. He did incredible work on lighting and things like that. It's amazing that none of the reviewers have spoken of this, because it’s a very beautiful film aesthetically. Actually, we've always been dealing with that. Every film we’ve made has been an attempt to deal with a new kind of aesthees. Are there any political filmmakers that you and Jean Luc consider to be working in a good way? Two years ago | would have said no, and that would have been dogmatic. Now | feel we shouldn't make any exclusive judgments against anyone. Our struggle over the last few years has been to bring up all the problems, all the theoretical contradictions of making what people have called ‘‘political films.’ We’ve opened certain paths, but very few people have found it easy to go into these paths. Most people are still making political films in a very different way from ours. A film called Coup Pour Coup was released in France a 23