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FILM COMMENT
May/June 2005
Jean Rouch in Conversation with James Blue
(Appeared in the Fall/Winter 1967 issue of FILM COMMENT)
You are one of those filmmakers most intimately involved with the problem of the existence of man in front of the camera-seeking to draw out of him not the professional performance of an actor but the revelation of what might be called his essential nature, his being. If you will, I would like you to trace your thinking for me here. As you know, Pudovkin has made the observation that the non-professional actor is unable "to be himself" when faced with the unusual instruments of picture making: camera, microphone, lights, etc. These generate an artificiality that distorts his behavior. A wall is created. What has been your experience?
All right, first the problem of this wall. You know very well that when you have a microphone - such as the one you are now holding, and when you have a camera aimed at people, there is, all of a sudden, a phenomenon that takes place because people are being recorded: they behave very differently than they would if they were not being recorded. But what has always seemed very strange to me is that, contrary to what one might think, when people are being recorded, the reactions that they have are always infinitely more sincere than those they have when they are not being recorded. The fact of being recorded gives these people a public.
At first, of course, there is a self-conscious "hamminess." They say to themselves, "People are looking at me, I must give a nice impression of myself." But this lasts only a very short time. And then, very rapidly, they begin to try to think - perhaps for the first time sincerely - about their own problems, about who they are and then they begin to express what they have within themselves. These moments are very short, and one must know how to take advantage of them. That's the art of making a film like Chronicle of a Summer.
Then another thing happens! In Chronicle of a Summer Morin and I lived in permanent contact with these people who followed the development of the film with us little by little, seeing the rushes, and the film became for them a reason for living during these months. Now then! The people caught up in this game, and seeing themselves on the screen, began to think about the character that they were representing involuntarily - a character of which they had been completely unaware, that they discovered on the screen all of a sudden with enormous surprise! And at that very moment, they began to play a role, to be someone different! This is a phenomenon that we have still not explored enough with film.
Do you remember Marcelline? The Jewish girl who walks along La Place de la Concorde recalling aloud her memories of being taken to a concentration camp during the occupation? That was the first scene we shot with Michel Brault as cameraman. We had brought him in from Canada and with him came all his lightweight equipment. All of a sudden we felt "liberated." We could go anywhere. So we thought we would try out the new material on La Place de la Concorde.
Now. Marcelline was always talking about having been deported, and each time she brought it up, she had this sort of exhibitionism that many deportees have when they want to make you feel the horror of it all. And faced with the apparent indifference of those of us who didn't know how to reply to her, all we could say was, "Yes, you don't say?" - she would make it even more horrible. So we absolutely wanted something of that in the film to explain the character of Marcelline, but we didn't know very well how to put it in.
But at that time - it was the 15th of August 1960 - there were some filmmakers out shooting scenes of that, you know, "Occupied Paris" genre, so we said - "Let's go to the Place de la Concorde. There will surely be some 'German soldiers' and then we can ask Marcelline to tell us about her experiences." But we all got up too late that morning, and when we got to La Place de la Concorde, there were no more "German soldiers." Nothing. So I said - "It makes no difference. Marcelline, you hang the tape recorder over your shoulder and take the necktie microphone, and you just go for a walk around, the Place de la Concorde - which was empty - and you say anything that comes into your head." And she came out with this monologue, which I think is extraordinary, where she just talks to herself - no one could hear her. We followed with the camera. And when I stopped the scene, Marcelline said - "I haven't finished yet." So we went to Place de l'Opera but nothing seemed to happen. Then by chance we came upon Les Halles [market place of Paris with a large steel hanger-like structure over the street]. It was empty, so we had her walk through that. And she said whatever she wanted.
And when Morin and I saw that, we were very moved. I thought it was extraordinary. And what seemed so important was that someone could speak so sincerely while walking. And what was even more impressive was that what she said came really involuntarily! And that's what I like so much about this kind of cinema: anything can happen! You never know! All of a sudden she began to talk - not of the camp, but of her return! Why? Because Les Halles resembles a railroad station. And you see, by association of ideas, she immediately began to talk of her return when her family came to meet her, but her father wasn't there. That was something miraculous. Something absolutely unplanned! We didn't know what would happen. I thought it was a miracle.
How does this tie in with what you said about your people becoming aware of a new role, a new side of themselves that they had not suspected before?
Well, when we projected this scene to Marcelline, she said that none of that concerned her! Now what did that mean? She meant - "I'm an excellent actress and I am capable of acting that!" But that's not true. Morin and I are persuaded that when she said those things, it was the real Marcelline, terribly sincere, who was speaking of all that - exactly as she felt it, as she was.
So after having revealed herself, she refused the revelation by saying she was just acting. What were the consequences on the rest of the film? Did she freeze up?
After Marcelline had seen those sequences, she felt that she had to play that role!
A role of someone who had suffered a traumatic alienation, who had lost a father, who pitied herself, a role that normally she had not projected to the world·
Now, at that time she was with a young man named Jean-Pierre, and since we were shooting the film without knowing very well where we were going, and we were all in collaboration, Jean-Pierre became involved also.
And now the very strange aspect of this kind of cinema comes out! When Marcelline and Jean-Pierre are together, all sorts of problems arise between them - problems that Morin dwelt on - problems of a couple that doesn't get along, etc. We were then the witness to something strange, which I've noticed before in other films: the cinema became for these people a pretext to try to resolve problems that they were not able to resolve without the cinema.
For example, when we were down at St. Tropez for the final scenes of the film, Marcelline and Jean-Pierre were there, and one night they got into a fight over something pretty futile. And Morin said to them: "I want to get some sleep! If you want to fight, wait until tomorrow and you can fight in front of the camera!" So they fought a little less, and then the next day we went out on the pier and let them fight it out. Of course, it was a little bit forced, but Morin and I are convinced that what they said in front of the camera was 90 percent extremely sincere, and of that 90 percent at least 10 percent of what they said to each other they would never have said otherwise. Never! Never! Never! Never! The extraordinary pretext offered was, if you wish, the possibility to say something in front of the camera and afterwards be able to retract it saying that it was "just for the film." The extraordinary possibility of playing a role that is oneself, but that one can disavow because it is only an image of one self. One can say: "Yes, but it's not me."
So to sum up - first a "hammy" artificial self-consciousness; then a reflection upon oneself and a revelation of a hidden aspect of oneself of which one was not aware perhaps; then the more or less conscious attempt to play out a role defined by this revelation and an attempt to resolve the problems of it on the pretext that this is only a film.
Now, this extremely strange game we were playing, may also be extremely dangerous. When you have people play out this psychodrama which engages their whole existence, what happens when there is no more film? I've thought about this often, and I don't think we have the right to do this. Really, I believe that we don't have the right! Because when you begin such a thing, giving people not only the possibility to express a character hidden within them which has not heretofore been revealed, but also to live out that character - well, life just doesn't stop when the film does! It goes on!
What if you take two people, a boy and a girl, and you have them meet each other and you say to them: "Anything in the world is now possible! The camera is rolling"? This is a marvelous pretext for a romance, for a voyage, for anything at all because everything is possible. But it is very dangerous because you become a kind of Prometheus creating creatures for whom you alone are responsible!
The camera and the cinema are the only justification of their existence. Once that stops, what happens? You haven't got the right!
Do you see any application now of these improvisational, psychodramatic techniques that do not transgress the bounds of the right of the individual?
You can use them to help people who need to get things out into the open and can't do it otherwise and who would be helped to solve their problems in this manner. Or they can be used to tell pure and simple fiction - a story. And when that story is finished, the whole fiction is terminated.
You think, then, that a fiction story with a definite end to it will permit the nonactor to reveal himself without involving his private life to a point where the role is prolonged indefinitely?
I think that's the solution, personally.
If you wish, I see two possible directions for these direct shooting or cinŽma-vŽritŽ techniques: the first is the recording of reality when there is something important, the problems of our era, etc. For this, the light, portable equipment is a marvelous tool. It must be lighter still, more flexible, no wires connecting tape recorder and camera. That's the kind of thing that Leacock is doing. You take a situation, a problem and you try to express it - attempting to be as close as possible to what you think is going on. You try to record the images and the sound of that reality - which is your reality.
The second direction is to move into fiction using these techniques, using the fiction on the one hand to tell a story, but on the other to prevent your people from becoming completely involved in such a film. That is a direction that we have only begun to explore.
Leacock has told me in an interview (FILM COMMENT, Spring 1965, Vol. 3, No. 2) that we don't have the right to use "reality techniques" in telling fiction stories.
I understand Leacock's idea very well. As soon as you begin to use these techniques for fiction, the spectator, when we show him reality, will say that it, too, is fiction! But we've known that for a long time! This feeling of "authenticity" to an image, there is no reason why it should not be applied to fiction. When Shirley Clarke used techniques very close to those of Leacock in The Cool World, she never pretended to be telling me a true story in the strict sense of the word. I was very moved by her film. As soon as a director has the honesty not to pretend that he is showing me a filmed reality - as they attempt to do in Paris-Secret or in Mondo Cane, which are pure invention passed off as being real then I see no reason why the director should not use any technique he wishes. There is nothing wrong with attempting to give to a story the greatest realism possible. The cinema has always been a reconstitution of a reality in a time and in a space which are not those in which it was made. A western shot in this technique could be fascinating. So to condemn, as Leacock does, the use of those techniques from a philosophical standpoint seems to me absurd. It's a question of professional honesty, nothing more. When you made Les Oliviers de la Justice you didn't say that you were making a "report" on Algeria. You were telling a story, and you used some of these techniques to try to be nearer to that reality which seemed to you one of the essential elements of that era. No one thought that you were deceiving us.
In which direction do you see yourself moving now?
Since Chronicle of a Summer, I've moved in two directions: the first being the use of the technique to record reality. For example, The Lion Hunters, in which I try to get closer to what is going on with image and sound - that's terribly difficult. The second direction is an attempt to tell a story in which there is an enormous part of improvisation and, above all, an enormous part of chance. Surrealism, perhaps, has influenced me in this direction. The chance occurrence is an essential thing. All of a sudden an encounter takes place between two unusual things that are normally not related and a structure is created because of this meeting. This was the case of Marcelline and Les Halles in
Chronicle of a Summer. Les Halles had nothing to do with concentration camps, nor anything to do with Marcelline. She had never been there. We went there by chance. However, from this encounter something was born. So I think that you can create fiction by trying to stimulate chance, by trying to provoke this kind of encounter - using the most free reportage techniques not to film life as it is - but life as it is provoked!
George Sadoul (the French critic and film historian) told me once that Chronicle of a Summer reminded him a little bit of what the poet Apollinaire used to do, his "Poem-Objects," where he would cut together bits and pieces of conversations overheard in a cafe and try to make a poem out of them. And right there! Right there, you start to enter into that "other domain" where film can do something very important! Taking bits and pieces of reality and trying to make an artistic composition out of them - like paper collages by Braque and Picasso. That's really exciting. To find again Vertov's experiment: shoot the world apart and put it back together to express something. Cinema is the creation of a new reality. That's its real vocation!
Have any of your cinŽma-vŽritŽ films been commercial successes?
No. Not one. No one else's have been either. Why? I don't know. Perhaps people don't like to see their own image.
Like Marcelline who was happier when she felt that what she was doing was fiction. Perhaps fiction is the only way of facing ourselves.
Of one thing I am sure: when you make a film, you must show it even if it's bad. You have undergone an experience. You show it to others. Then you must say - "I tried to do such and such. I failed. Why?" You have a right to fail. Because it's your duty to run risks. He who never fails, never risks anything. What is the most interesting thing in life? Very probably to run risks. That for me is our profession.
© 2005 by the Film Society of Lincoln Center
