Classiq - An online journal that celebrates cinema, culture, style and storytelling.

2 April 2023

When Françoise Hardy Met Yves Montand

Françoise Hardy and Yves Montand on the set of “Grand Prix”, 1966 | photo taken from the book Yves Montand: La force du destin

In 1966, John Frankenheimer made Grand Prix, a film that paid tribute to car racing. The film was considered by the director himself not his best, but one of the most satisfactory films he had made because he was able to indulge into one of his fantasies – what his life would have been like if he had been a Ferrari driver. It was a big picture, because anything that must live up to one’s fantasy has to be grand, and it was above all a triumph of visual and technical style, and of a director’s personal vision, something worth standing up for. With an international cast that included James Garner, Yves Montand, Françoise Hardy, Eva Marie Saint and Toshirô Mifune, Grand Prix remains one of the true classics rooted in motor sports.

This great photograph of Yves Montand and Françoise Hardy from the set of the film lives on to document not just the film, but the story behind the camera. What would we do without the unit still photographers, those behind the lens who must get close while remaining unseen, ever-present yet invisible, incredibly quiet and gentle yet forceful and determined, in order to document the film as it’s being made but also capture the moment? A genuine moment of life between takes. It’s not just about the image, but about the feeling. This is how Françoise Hardy remembers her encounter with Yves Montand on the set of Grand Prix.

“It was in 1966 that I met Yves Montand during the long five-month shoot of Grand Prix, directed by John Frankenheimer. Fortunately Montand was there, because he was so warm, so funny, too, sometimes facetious. He was so kind to me that his presence made this shoot very pleasant. For the film, he had to take racing car driving lessons in England for a month, since he was playing the role of a Formula 1 driver. On the last day of filming, he could not prevent himself from expressing his relief of being rid of these damn vehicles forever. Filming took place on various major European motor racing circuits. When I had to go from Clermont-Ferrand to Milan (the Monza circuit), I had to drive there alone and Montand asked me to bring him his tape recorder. He wrote me a hilarious letter about this which says a lot about his personality as I knew him and which reminds me of him. Subsequently, he invited me to his premiere at the Olympia. I was seated in the first rows and was very touched to see how much of a traqueur he was: as we know, he sang perfectly well and mastered his gestures just as perfectly, but I could see how much his hands were shaking. Over time, I have realised even better the great actor that Montand was. And it is always with moved tenderness that I think of the good times with him in 1966.”

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The Hollywood photography of Bob Willoughby:
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Posted by classiq in Film | | Comments Off

22 March 2023

Solveig Dommartin is Wearing Yohji Yamamoto in “Until the End of the World”

Solveig Dommartin in ”Bis ans Ende der Welt”, 1991 | Argos Films. Road Movie Filmproduktion

Until the End of the World begins with a grim end-time scenario. A nuclear satellite threatens to crash through the ozone layer and wipe out the world’s communications system. It is said to be circling above like a bird of prey. Watching the film now, in 2023, it’s daunting to realise that the unrestrained pursue of progress and technology and the catastrophic effects of human activity on the global climate already raised issues and a great deal of interest more than 30 years ago.

Claire Tourneur (Solveig Dommartin) is a restless wanderer whose life is forever changed after she takes an unknown route and survives a car crash. Claire embarks on a trip around the world after she encounters a mysterious man, Sam Farber alias Trevor McPhee (William Hurt), and falls in love with him. Along with some interesting companions, among whom Eugene Fitzpatrick (Sam Neill), a writer and her former lover, she will eventually end up in the Australian outback, a journey that will also take her deep into her own self, but also very far away from herself.

During this worldwide chase, we learn that Sam, when he puts on a pair of special glasses, is collecting images from various places around the globe. Visual impressions from his blind mother’s past that he wants to give to her so that they are recorded in her brain thanks to a technical innovation by his father, Henry (Max Von Sydow). In order to make his wife Edith (Jeanne Moreau) see, Henry Farber has invented a process that makes it possible to transmit the images recorded in the brain of sighted people directly into the visual system of blind people. Dream images that become our world, the only world we connect to, devouring us, a striking vision of the near future, an idea that speaks with eerie prophecy of how people would learn to deal with images, or become their victims – “There is a line that should never be crossed and we passed it a long time ago.” Both Claire and Sam become gradually entangled in a world of dreams, images and technology, completely engrossed in their handheld devices.

“They suffered finally from a complete loss of reality,” narrates Eugene, who is recording Claire’s story in writing. “Their dreams became black holes where they lost themselves in.”

Solveig Dommartin in ”Bis ans Ende der Welt”, 1991 | Argos Films, Road Movie Filmproduktion

Twelve years in the making, with a shooting time of over a year, filmed in 9 countries across 4 continents, Bis ans Ende der Welt (1991), after a story imagined by Wim Wenders and Solveig Dommartin, runs for almost 5 hours in the epic length Wim Wenders intended, considered the only valid form of this “ultimate road movie”. The Director’s Cut version is also the only version that features the soundtrack in its totality, which in the initial edited release of the film was drastically cut by the producers. This film without its soundtrack doesn’t even make sense.

So many films today seem hurried, eager to inflict on us the story and whatever takeaway, lesson, ideas, explanation, one-sided solutions they want to feed us as quickly as possible, as if they have a job to do and want to get over with it. Until the End of the World truly felt like a cathartic experience, with its unhurried and intimate action, making me so present at all times throughout the course of the narrative, making me aware of a city or a landscape the way very few films are able to do. You feel real time passing, love budding, memories forming or coming to surface, capture the moment and its eternity with your mind’s eye but also in images. What will the future hold?

The soundtrack is as intrinsic to this road movie as Yohji Yamamoto’s costumes are. The Japanese designer made the costumes for both Solveig Dommartin and William Hurt. In 1989, Wim Wenders made a documentary film about Yohji Yamamoto, Notebook on Cities and Clothes, where he interestingly linked cinema with clothes, cities, mobility and motion. When he was contacted by the Centre George’s Pompidou in Paris to make a documentary about a fashion designer, Wenders, who had no real interest in the industry of fashion, knew exactly who he wanted to make it about: Yohji Yamamoto. And it all started with a shirt and a jacket. “My first encounter with Yohji Yamamoto was in a way an experience of identity. I had bought a shirt and a jacket. You know the feeling. You put on new clothes, you look at yourself in the mirror and you are content, excited about your new skin, but with this shirt and this jacket, it was different. From the beginning they were new and old at the same time. In the mirror I saw me, of course, only better. More me than before. And I had the strangest sensation. I was wearing, yes, I have no other words for it, I was wearing the shirt itself and the jacket itself. And in them, I was myself.”

Solveig Dommartin and William Hurt in ”Bis ans Ende der Welt”, 1991 | Argos Films, Road Movie Filmproduktion

Notebook on Cities and Clothes ended up playing a huge role in developing the story of Until the End of the World. Wim Wenders shot Notebook by himself, as a one-man team, many times with hand-held cameras, an experience he described as “the oddest thing”, and, during filming, he realised that the future lay in that kind of device. Without that shooting experience, he confessed that Until the End of the World would have been a very different movie, the least of all a projection into the future of the audio-visual revolution that was just starting. Even the name digital was a word only known to some techno-freaks, he said, but nobody had any idea that everything was going to be digital, images and text, in the near future. The film tried and succeeded to project itself into that future, and even used pioneering technology to accomplish that.

In Notebook on Cities and Clothes, Wim Wenders framed the portrait of a dressmaker, an auteur amidst a gigantic industry – “I could understand how Yohji’s tender and delicate language could survive in each of his creations.” You sense that delicate language in Claire’s clothes, especially the nude dress she is wearing throughout much of her time in Australia. In Yohji Yamamoto’s clothes, from the short dress made of metallic discs, to the abstract hats and oversized knitwear, Claire projects an otherworldly image of someone in search of herself. She always wears flats, too, one of the signature styles that Yamamoto is famed for, and rightfully so, because she seems to be walking on air, channeling the very idea of beauty existing only for a very brief moment in time. In Yamamoto’s hands, challenging modernity segues with breathtaking romance.

There is a youthful sentiment about Claire and she lives her life by it, her true self emerging from the very heart of her existence. Her clothes reflect that. And Yohji Yamamoto, by voicing opposition to established conventions, reflects that in his designs. She is delicate and stark at the same time. That’s why I love the long dress look so much. It’s so ethereal that it puts you off. You don’t perceive the strength behind it at first. But when she puts the worn-off leather jacket on, a jacket that always pops up throughout the journey, it literally looks like it can survive everything and everywhere. It carries some of the adventurousness of Indiana Jones and a lot of that Blade Runner future-shaped-by-the-past mentality. It has what it takes to take Claire until the end of the world. “You can say that designing is quite easy,” Yamamoto confessed. “The difficulty lies in finding a new way to explore beauty.”

Solveig Dommartin in ”Bis ans Ende der Welt”, 1991 | Argos Films, Road Movie Filmproduktion

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Emotionally caged and extravagantly clad:
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“If you see a film ten years after it’s made, it should still look classy and good”:
Nina Hoss in Barbara

Posted by classiq in Film, Film costume | | Comments Off

16 March 2023

Read Instead…in Print

Read instead…in print #21

J’ai connu une belle époque is a journey through cinema. The good times of cinema, says Jacques Deray at the beginning of his book. “A time of the stars. A time when dreaming was not forbidden. A time when two generations were exalted, even clashed, for the sole love of the 7th Art. What memories, which remain or disappear with time. What encounters, what emotions… I am not a man of the past. I have a hard time talking about it. Today, however, I wonder about this profession to which I have given everything.”

The way Jacques Deray talks about his films is with the freedom that filmmaking should really be about and with the passion of a filmmaker who made the movies he wanted to make, driven by choices “dictated by my desires, my loyalty, my moods”. He elegantly and seamlessly takes us back to those good times and to his film sets and to the stories and friendships behind those films, never the man to seek out the spotlight, always seeking out to allow each story, each character to live to the full. In filmmaking, Jacques Deray found his place in the world. “By recounting his work, film after film, Jacques Deray launches here in search of himself,” Jean-Claude Carriére wrote. “With the modesty, but also the sharpness and rigor that are specific to him. I have known him for a long time: he is a man of style. I find in his sentence the elegance and efficiency of his camera movements.”

Read instead… in print is about a good book about cinema or filmmakers. No discursive, pretentious analyses, no verbose scrutiny. Because the idea is to invite you to read the book, not read about it here. But instead of using social media, I use my journal. Back to basics. Take it as a wish to break free of over-reliance on social media (even if it’s just for posting a photo of a good book) for presenting my work, cultural finds and interests. These are things to be enjoyed as stand-alone pieces in a more substantial and meaningful way than showing them in the black hole of Instagram thronged with an audience with a short attention span. This is also a look through my voluminous collection of books about film that I use as research in my adamant decision to rely less and less on the online and more on more on print materials.

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Read instead…in print #20:
Satyajit Ray Miscellany: On Life, Cinema, People and Much More

Art directing film posters: In conversation with illustrator Akiko Stehrenberger

Read instead…in print #9: Bertrand Tavernier: Amis Américains

Posted by classiq in Books, Film, Read instead...in print | | Comments Off

10 March 2023

Slow Fashion Moves Us Forward: Interview with Delia Brad, Founder of She’s Linen

Photography by Denisa Coman for She’s Linen. Modelling by actress Aida Economu

Beautiful is a word I don’t use lightly. Because I believe beauty can not be defined easily or stereotyped. Beautiful is not the one blessingly bestowed just with lovely physical features, but the one who projects beauty from within and through what one is and does. That’s the beauty that looks good. And just as inner calm and gentleness nurture outer beauty in a person, a fashion design is as beautiful as the story behind it. That’s the fashion that looks good.

She’s Linen is a beautiful fashion brand. They make fashion that follows its own rhythm. They don’t create a new collection every season, but basic pieces you want to keep for years, most of them made to order in their family-owned studio in Transylvania. Classic, clean, minimalistic, feminine style, with linen as fabric and quality not as an act but as a habit. This is fashion that has a lot to do with style and comfort, clinging to your body like second skin so that you feel at ease and good with who you are. Fashion that is an expression of identity, of belonging, of communicating. Fashion that is kind to nature and celebrates the individual. Fashion that is aiming at rediscovering values that speak of thinking smaller and is embracing a return to making things locally, seeking that much-needed balance where growth is not just about financial gain, but about personal growth, too, and about the growth of the community it mindfully builds around it.

It is the ones who see things differently that move us forward. Good is cool. And She’s Linen is cool like that. Because they don’t show respect for the future just through the way they make slow fashion, but through impacting change on children from a very early age through the riches of film. The Educational Programme for Young Audiences speaks of the powerful connection that movies make with us and between us, and encourages an appreciation of film as an artistic, cultural, educational and historical document.

It is a great pleasure to have Delia Brad, the founder of She’s Linen, as my guest today. We talk about how the brand came to life, the difficulties of a systemic change in fashion, about finding balance every day and the film culture of the future.

Photography by Denisa Coman for She’s Linen. Modelling by actress Aida Economu

She’s Linen. Why linen? Why did you choose this particular fabric for your collection? And what was the starting point of your brand, what’s the story behind?

Identifying a starting point is not simple, because this brand is actually the result of a years-long search, both on a personal and professional level. Some of us need decades or even a lifetime to get to know ourselves, to identify and prioritise our values. In my case, the search for answers has led to the idea of creating this brand, which was never intended to be a fashion brand, but rather a lifestyle one, with a social and educational component.

It also needs to be said that while She’s Linen is the expression of my creative vision, it is a family-run brand, part of a business my parents started from scratch in the early 90s and which my husband also joined later on.

“She’s Linen is an invitation to calm, reflection,
and a healthier relationship with our belongings.”

As for why I chose linen – there were two equally important reasons:

On one hand, because I truly believe the objects around us can influence the way we perceive the world and ourselves, and even help us become the person we want to be. For me, linen is a way of cultivating simplicity, mindfulness, and a connection with the natural world, which we sadly tend to forget about, caught up as we are in our endless ambitions and to-do lists.

On the other hand, sourcing traceable, locally-produced raw materials, with a low environmental impact is not easy for a small brand to achieve. Linen is one of the very few fabrics that can meet these requirements. For transparency and traceability, we chose to work directly with the weaver, an almost 100-year-old flax mill in Europe and a member of the Alliance for European Flax-Linen & Hemp, which oversees the fiber’s development from plant to finished product.

Photography by Denisa Coman for She’s Linen. Modelling by actress Aida Economu

If you could capture the essence of She’s Linen in one sentence, how would you describe it?

She’s Linen is an invitation to calm, reflection, and a healthier relationship with our belongings.

She’s Linen is a women’s collection, one that looks so simple and liberating from what’s going on in the fashion world. Who is the She’s Linen woman? Who are the women who inspire you?

Many women inspire me in different ways. Some of them are well-known public figures, while others are family members or people that I happened to cross paths with. Rather than giving you a list of names, I would like to talk about qualities I find inspiring. Kindness is first, and natural, unpretentious elegance – in body posture, language, and gestures. Self-knowledge and self-acceptance. Modesty, generosity, aging gracefully. The way these women dress is merely a consequence and reflection of all that. However, I should say I am not alone in nurturing the concept creation at She’s Linen. In my work, I am constantly consulting with a wonderful lady and talented fashion designer from Cluj-Napoca, Denisa Pitea.

“A systemic, impactful change is only possible
if more of us decide to play a part in it.”

As the founder of a socially conscious, slow fashion brand, do you think there is a significatly increased interest in the locally-made, in craftsmanship and mindful shopping? Is change here to stay?

An increasing number of people are becoming aware of the impact of their fashion choices and consumption behaviour in general. And yes, some of us are learning to reshape our habits. But we are still a tiny minority and studies are showing that change is not happening fast enough to counterbalance the negative impact of the ever-growing fast fashion industry. Therefore, as I keep saying, spreading awareness about these issues is one of the most important things we can do to drive fashion to become more ethical and sustainable. A systemic, impactful change is only possible if more of us decide to play a part in it, which is why I encourage people to share the information with their family and friends and recognise that it is only by using our collective voices that we can truly make a difference.

Photography by Denisa Coman for She’s Linen. Modelling by actress Aida Economu

What does style mean to you personally?

To me, style is about good sense and self-knowledge. It is something you can choose to cultivate and improve. It means figuring out what works best for your body type and lifestyle, makes you feel good, and allows you to be yourself.

We live in a hectic world and more and more people are trying to go back to basics, to find a balance, to live mindfully. How do you find balance every day? How do you live life as a conscious choice?

I believe mindfulness starts with feeling rested and emotionally balanced. These are fuelled by getting enough sleep and exercise, eating healthy, spending time with people we love. To me, this doesn’t always come naturally, it’s something I need to be very intentional about, otherwise, I tend to slip in the wrong direction. I find it helps to add all these to my agenda as specific goals in my daily routine. And I am literally checking boxes (or not) at the end of the day to keep track of where I need to try harder. I make time to listen to this great podcast by Andrew Huberman, Ph.D., a neuroscientist and professor at Stanford School of Medicine. He and his podcast guests share scientific-based tools that we can all use to design better, more balanced lives. I also use a meditation app called Waking Up, created by Sam Harris, a neuroscientist and philosopher, who gives me a boost of clarity and calm every time I open the app. Not as often as I should. But I think we are all a work in progress and each small step ahead matters.

Photography by Denisa Coman for She’s Linen. Modelling by actress Aida Economu

To make a better future, we have to invest in the present. She’s Linen does that not only through the way it makes fashion, but also through the cultural community it builds around its core values and particularly through another beautiful project the brand is part of. Please tell us a little about Cinema Arta and its Educational Programme for Young Audiences.

Once you realise there is a need for systemic change in the fashion industry and in the way we produce and consume goods in general, one question comes to mind: is this a realistic expectation, and if so, how can change be achieved? I can’t say if an impactful change is possible in due time and I don’t think anyone has an answer to that, but I can tell you what I have found while looking for answers.

Simran Sethi, a journalist and educator focused on sustainability and social change, gave a TED Talk saying that “Psychologists have almost no evidence that information changes people’s decision-making. We tend to believe the facts and embrace the facts that already confirm our world view. It’s called confirmation bias. We tend to disregard the facts that do not align with our views.”

Problems like climate change, she further said, are too complex and abstract for us to grasp, which is why they don’t inspire the same need for action as imminent threats. So, anyone looking to get their ‘environmental message’ through to people needs to find creative ways to make these concepts perceivable. We need to provide contexts that people can relate to and understand. I knew from personal experience as well as my readings that art and film, in particular, have the power to do that. It is with this conviction that I knocked on the doors of Cinema ARTA from Cluj-Napoca in 2019 and I was more than delighted to find out that film education was already a part of their vision and agenda. They welcomed me and we’ve been working together ever since. The project was born in 2020 and is growing beautifully from one year to another. More details about it, about the activities and resources available, can be discovered on the Cinema Arta website.

“The aim is to improve media literacy, creative and critical thinking,
but also raise awareness of social and environmental issues.”

You have an incredible film selection for young audiences, films you don’t find in mainstream cinemas. The truth is there are fewer and fewer good movies you can go to with your children, because few cinemas bring or show such films. And I think what you are doing is amazing, and it’s something that gives me hope. Hope that our children can find in cinema a safe and enjoyable space (I wholeheartedly believe in the importance of the cinema experience), but also a space that, because of the films offered, can broaden their minds, imagination, culture and, yes, their attention span. How do you make the selection of films available at CineKids and how has the audience responded so far? What gives you hope for the film culture of the future?

Thank you for your kind words, Ada! The film selection is the result of a collaboration with two European projects of film education, but also the work of Csilla Nagy, the Cinema ARTA curator, and Anca Caramelea, an expert in film education. And as you noticed, this selection was intended as a much-needed alternative to mainstream cinema.

We mostly work in partnership with schools, inviting teachers and students to the cinema; they can choose a film from our Catalogue and decide whether they want a cultural mediator to be present. Our intention is to create a safe space, where young audiences can learn and express themselves freely. Most of the films available are accompanied by educational files which are used in the after-film discussions and activities with the children. The aim is to improve media literacy, creative and critical thinking, but also raise awareness of social and environmental issues.

As for the audience response: the films are different and the children are different, with very different backgrounds, so we have seen mixed reactions. But overall, the response is positive and inspiring, even passionate at times, so we feel motivated to keep developing the programme. This is what gives me hope for the future of film… and the future in general, I dare say.

Thank you, Delia, for this honest and inspiring discussion.

Photography by Denisa Coman for She’s Linen. Modelling by actress Aida Economu

Website and online shop: sheslinen.com | Instagram: @sheslinen

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Posted by classiq in Fashion, Interviews, Style | | Comments Off

6 March 2023

March Newsletter: Shadow City, Jacques Deray’s Polars and a Rogue Adventure as Life

“In the amnesiac city, other versions of the city shimmer
in the distance, below the surface, from the penumbra
between remembering and oblivion. […] Walking
was a way to encounter these cities within the city.
This book is the story of these walks.”

Tharan Khan, Shadow City: A Woman Walks Kabul

Viewing

Jacques Deray’s crime thrillers – 4 polars de Jacques Deray

In his book, J’ai connu une belle époque, Deray confessed he liked thrillers, he liked “genre cinema, the most apt to capture the spirit of the times, to describe an environment and to analyse behaviour in a given context. Imperceptibly, I know that popular cinema, which touches a large audience, will be the business of my life, already in disagreement with the antagonism of principle established between commercial cinema and auteur cinema. Chaplin raised this question with The Gold Rush, or Renoir with The Great Illusion. ‘Commercial?’, asked Frank Capra. ‘How’s that commercial? You reproach me for wanting to seduce the spectators? What do you think we want to do in this damn job, if not intrigue, surprise and seduce?’”

Jacque Deray’s cinema does seduce you. It has a certain elegance and efficiency, and it is in total complicity with the spectators, in action, surprise, emotion. His crime thrillers are named “polars” – a sub-genre of the policier film – and they have something of their own, a specific sharpness and rigor, something unexpected, dark or tragic that always takes you by surprise.

Symphonie pour un massacre

Based on Alain Reynard Fourton’s noir novel Les Mystifiés, Symphonie pour un massacre (1963) is a brilliant study of a crime. With a script co-written by Deray, José Giovanni and Claude Sautet, Deray overcame “the difficult obstacle of a second detective film”. The story is this: five gangsters get together for a big narcotics deal. They seem to be long-run friends, but Jabeke (Jean Rochefort) plans to frame them up and keep all the money to himself. This will stir up hatred between them and trigger an unstoppable game of massacre. Deray wanted Jean Rochefort for the lead and fought for him, casting him against type – it was Rochefort’s first dramatic role. “I want the story to be treated like an English film, with suspense, twists and serial murders. I know that Rochefort could display a dazzling array of black humour.” He also cast Charles Vanel, Claude Dauphin and Michel Auclair. “What joy for a director to have in front of his camera such accomplices who know how to construct their characters with elegance and depth! I like their discretion and their kindness. I often think about this race, probably extinct, of actors happy to do their job, to play comedy and to join a troupe for the duration of the shooting of a film.”

Borsalino et Co

When Delon came to him with the idea of a sequel for Borsalino, Deray wasn’t very keen on it. But the desire to stage another great spectacle was much stronger. Borsalino had a light-fingered style to it, but Deray was also very keen on keeping and reconstituting the typical atmosphere of the town of Marseilles – he gathered all the magazines, newspapers, journals, archival material available, and Jacques-Henri Lartigue’s photographs as research, he set off to discover the vintage cars abandoned on the farms in the French countryside and find the mechanics, upholsterers, saddlers, electricians and painters to recondition them – and its underworld from the 1930s. The town of Marseilles played its own role in the film. Such big imprint were Marseilles and its underworld to have in the film that Alain Delon, the producer of the film, was forced to negotiate with the real Marseilles underworld so that they would not use the real names of Paul Carbone and François Spirito (played by Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon), the two real gangsters on which the film characters were based.

Set during the period of the Popular Front, with the Nazism looming over, Borsalino et Co displays a realistic tone to the action and the same attention for details and historical reconstruction, yet it is different in pace, faster, more playful yet more violent, too. But the novelty for him, Deray revealed, was “the character played by Delon, who starts off as a loser, drunk on revenge. The film describes his ascent.”

“The cinema very quickly became the main element of my existence
and still is today. Even if at times my private life tries to refuse
to submit to it. It’s not a second life for me, it’s life.”

Le Gang

In the disorder that is post-World War II France, Robert “Le Dingue” (Alain Delon) leads a gang of small-time crooks to stage a chain of spectacular robberies. They start leading the high life, but the lure of gain leads Robert to take on more riskier heists. The team from Flic Story (1975) found themselves together again on the set of Le gang (1977). Alphonse Bouchard adapted a new Bornuche novel with Jean-Claude Carrière, who Deray had worked with on Un homme est mort, by his side. Deray wanted something different than Cop Story, a thoroughly stylised cinematic world, as he had already introduced us in Borsalino, and an accent put on humour and characters instead of violence.

Alain Delon was again a producer, with his company Adel Productions, and interprets the main character. About his relationship with Delon, Deray confessed that he felt an anguish in his presence, often asking himself questions about this mysterious friendship that bound them. Delon wanted to personalise his character, deciding to have curly hair. Deray, who placed great importance on details and on the image of the characters (he believed that the costume designer’s “work is an integral part of the work and contributes to its success: it is he who brings the characters to life, creates the difference according to the personality and the sensitivity of the actors. The psychology of the role must be found in the way of dressing, in the will to appear or just to stick to the reality of an era”), agreed to this point of view, but the producer, Julien Derode, initially protested. Delon would eventually have his way, “pushing the negation of his own mythology inside a film that respects the rules of the genre.”

Trois Hommes à abattre

This 1980 film was Deray’s sixteenth and the seventh with Delon, who also wanted a return to the thriller. Jean-Patrick Manchette’s book, Le petit bleu de la côte ouest, was the inspiration. Deray remembered how Delon told him that he believed that few directors had this talent and this obsession to capture and convey the atmosphere and the action of a thriller. It’s only natural that their complicity and previous successes brought them together again for a new collaboration.

“Dark movie. Black as night, black as fear. This is not an ordinary police investigation, but a story in the first degree, straight, clear, precise, a continual tension with a situation that remains simple. Because he picks up an injured person on the road, a man becomes a troublesome witness. By doing so, he becomes prey to killers. He must defend his skin. I have the impression I am returning to my early career loves, Rififi à Tokyo, Symphonie pour un massacre, Un Homme est mort, with the theme of the Un papillon sur l’épaule. The fate that takes hold of a normal man.”

It is true that, just like Lino Ventura in the marvelous Un papillon sur l’épaule, Delon is an ordinary man, who simply finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, thrown on a fateful path by circumstance. One evening, Michel Gerfaut, a professional poker player, rescues a injured man who has had an accident on a country road and takes him to the hospital. In reality, the man was murdered, and so Gerfaut becomes the target of killers. Employing a Hitchcockian element, an innocent hunted man, a loner trying to survive, caught up in a machination he does not understand, Deray produces a hard-hitting thriller that projects fear, anguish and suspense at all times. “We recognise in him the adventurer who reveals himself, even at the risk of his own life,” Deray says. Delon is all that. The car chase scene, after his friend is mistakenly taken for him and shot – a thrilling, beautifully staged and carried out sequence, with no words, no music (Deray preferred his images without music, especially the action scenes) – is a great moment to reveal this side of this solitary and seemingly incorruptible vigilante, magnificently inhabited by Delon.

Left: Akiko Stehrenberger poster for “Tár”, 2022 | Right: Vanni Tealdi poster for “Symphonie pour un massacre”, 1963

Reading

One of the first things I was told when I arrived in Kabul was never to walk...

It’s the opening line of Taran Khan’s Shadow City: A Woman Walks Kabul. She first arrived in Kabul from India in 2006, and over the next seven years, she would come back on extended visits to work as a journalist and explore the city… So she walked. The Kabul she discovered is different than the simplified version we’ve seen and read in the media, the Kabul she walked is different than the one the expats and foreigners who came to Kabul usually experienced, a “blur of streets glimpsed from their moving vehicles”. She saw the stories behind the walls, behind the history, behind the people, the stories behind the many versions of the same city. And she makes us see, too, and not just see, but listen to these stories. It is an incredibly powerful and urgent book. Her powerful descriptions of interior worlds, of the world’s she inhabited through books, the Kabul she describes through recounting her grandfather and the way “Baba inhabited Kabul more fully than I could hope to, though he had never been there”, the way her walks open up her memories and the memories of the city she walked… “Walking showed me a way to read the city, just as reading guided my walks through the city.“ The Kabul Taran Khan writes to life is heard in a very poignant and personal voice.

Making

Akiko Stehrenberger’s brilliant poster for Tár is simply a work of art. I love how she explores this whole new idea for the film – a storybook illustration to emphasise the Gulliver’s Travels-like concept – which just shows that a movie is different for each one of us. Posteritati carried a limited series of the poster signed by both director Todd Field and Cate Blanchett, but unfortunately it is sold out. But the Posteritati archive is a wonderful place to get lost in.

The Vanni Tealdi poster for Jacques Deray’s Symphonie pour un massacre posted below is not among their archive, but it is a beautiful piece of art worth including here, especially that this newsletter is dedicated to the films of Jacques Deray.

Listening

The album: Scarecrow, John Mellencamp

Exploring

Somira Sao‘s story. Somira is a photographer, writer, wife and mother of six. She has circumnavigated the world by sailboat, given birth in four different countries, bike-packed, horse-packed and descended rivers with her family. Travelling for the last 16 years, they have lived in tents, vans and sailboats. A rogue adventure as life.

I love people who do things differently, who raise their children playing with jewels of ice, “learning the names of the birds, trees and plants, visiting the tiny local library and the anthropological museum, searching for information in field guides and books, seeing first hand the impact of commercial fishing on the community and the ocean, grasping the size of the natural world by playing with gigantic vertebrae at the anthropological museum, being in polluted ports where the ocean feels dead, and learning to value clean water and clean air, and ample access to open spaces and nature”.

And, amidst of it all, adults being immersed in nature, at the pace of a child’s unrushed play and harmonious and natural discovery of the world.

“In nature, my kids evolved into naturalists. […] I often think back to the events around the dismasting that brought us to such a special island. Never had a landfall been so emotional. We went from being isolated in the wilderness, racing across the ocean, to finding ourselves on land with a broken boat surrounded by people, sounds and smells. It all felt so surreal and so sickening. James and I were mentally shattered on so many levels but extremely relieved that we were all safe in port. And, in the midst of all our boat and work dramas, the kids thrived.”

The regulars: The interviews, newsletters and podcasts I turn to every week and/or every month because they are that good. Craig Mod’s newsletters: Roden and Ridgeline. Soundtracking, with Edith Bowman. Alicia Kennedy’s newsletter. Gone to Timbuktu, Sophy Robert’s podcast on the art of travel. Sirene and Racquet magazines, in print.

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