rent apartment malta

this story began in the elevatorof a paris apartment house, between the fourth and thirdfloors, to be precise. i am claustrophobicand for two hours i was stuck in an elevatorwith a companion in misfortune. so we got acquainted. inã¨s was the widow of famousfilmmaker henry-georges clouzot, a cult figure, one of the greatest directors ever. she talked about her husbandwho’d died 30 years ago,

and the masterpiecesthat so thrilled me. l’assassin habite au 21, le corbeau, quai des orfã¨vres, the wages of fear, les diaboliques... she also talked abouthis lasting regret, inferno, in 1964. a huge budget, anill-fated production, a film he saw as his most important and which no one would ever see.

she told me about thoseforgotten cans of film, the dramatic story ofthe making of the film. these 185 cans of film are all that remain of inferno. 13 hours of exposed film, the genesis of a film thatsought to revolutionise cinema. 185 cans of film unseen for more than half a century. no soundtrack.

these cans, these images, tell us the story of inferno. henri-georges clouzot’s inferno. henri-georges clouzot’s inferno it can’t be! it all started with insomnia. i had this idea which was to dramatise the anxiety attacks i suffer every night

and which keep me awake. so i wrote a 50-page treatment. well, i very quickly realised, after having finishedthese 50 pages, sadly, that it was fairly easyto convey to an audience a character having ten obsessions, but you can’t share theseobsession in two hours, because they took tenyears to poison him. there’s an obviouspathological side to this film.

semi pathological... the principal character... for a period i can’t define becauseit would take too long on television, is in a pathological state. but often enough he is perfectly normal. are you personally interestedin the morbid and pathological? not particularly. but the starting point is you, isn’t it? i don’t think i’m a pathological case.

i had been once, but i’m not any more. you had been? i had a depression, yes. a real one! i’m not alluding to aparticular starlet’s depression. i tell you... nothing. don’t think... forget. don’t think.

earlier... i was about to leavefor clermont with her. but we’re still here... like before. like before what? inferno is the story ofa man, marcel prieur, and his wife odette. just married, theytake over a small hotel in the cantal department,by the garabit viaduct.

the script starts here. a happy opening,images of happiness. the film starts now. and as it says in the script, it starts... badly. i arrived at the colombe d’or whereclouzot was living at the time. he gave me the script, some 300 pages. he said “read it and we’lldiscuss it.” it was late afternoon.

an hour later he calls and says “well?” i say “i’ve barely started.” he called me twice that evening. i said “no, tomorrow morning. ihaven’t had time to take notes.” when we met the next morning iasked him a specific question. he re-read the sceneto answer my question. it was a powerful moment asit lasted a very long time. it was ten lines. but he took a long timepuffing on his pipe,

reading and re-reading, as if trying to see exactlywhat he wanted to do and how. that’s an image thatwill forever stay with me. clouzot had lived at thecolombe d’or for ten years. this inn, far from busyparis in st paul de vence, had become a mecca of french art. here you could meetanybody who mattered, painters, actors, writers, musicians. since filming picasso,

he’d developed a passion for painting. depression and the tragicdeath of his first wife vera, were far behind now. in 1963, he married inã¨s, finished the script for infernoon which he’d worked for many years, and tried the opening lineson other hotel regulars, like serge reggiani... yves montand, simone signoret, and her daughter, catherineallã©gret, who’d debut in the film.

i feel like i’d always known clouzot. mum and montand were always there,me at times and clouzot all the time. he was part of dailylife at the colombe d’or. he must have thought no one hadever depicted jealousy properly. he cut deep into the pain of jealousy. someone so obsessive...it’s pathological. it reaches the point of neurosis. he depicted neurosis,beyond the drama of jealousy. the feeling i hadwhen reading the script

was of something totally physical. more physical than intellectual. i remember the story perfectly, but what remains weren’tscenes where you say “this is terrific! what vision...” it’s not that. it’s something... you experience when youprogress through the script. the anxiety and neurosisfelt by marcel, by reggiani, is so potent,

that you’re overwhelmed bya physical sense of angst, to the point where you can’t breathe. clouzot and romy schneider. filmed together for the first time. can 5 and the followingcontain the first exposed images. first moment of sharedenthusiasm: the costume tryouts. in 1955, romy had become sissi. now, at 26, she was this young star who’d already worked with welles,de sicca, siodmak and visconti.

for the general public shewas still the innocent sissi. for clouzot, she would bethe sensual, alluring odette, object of marcel’s gazeand obsessive jealousy. it was a pretty amazing story, written, i think, forromy schneider alone. romy who was, at the time, oneof the major french actresses, despite her austrian origins. romy’s co-star, serge reggianiwould be marcel prieur. he’s 42 and had already worked withclouzot 15 years earlier in manon.

the two men knew each other welland met often at the colombe d’or. there were manycontenders for the part, but clouzot fought with the producers. he wanted reggiani. people said he had a headlike a carved chestnut. so he was perfect for the role of a man who becomes totallyparanoid and jealous. he easily fitted the bill. clouzot cast hotelregular jean-claude bercq

as martineau, the mechanicfrom the next village, a buck, show-off and womaniser. did he seduce odette?is he the only one? alongside mario david, the fourth member of thecast, the impish dany carrel, would play carefree marylou, bestfriend and village hairdresser. in the story clouzot imagined,she is both angel and demon. she introduces the sense of seduction and doubt.

in the cinema of the time,clouzot was one of the greats. one of those french directors who could get the actorsand funding he wanted to do as he wanted. so in terms of budget andproduction it was a big film. people were talkingabout “clouzot’s film”. also the fact that hehad american backing added an extra element. clouzot hadn’t worked in four years.

his last film, lavã©ritã© with brigitte bardot had won a prize at venice. four long years of waiting. as the new film seemedout of the ordinary, the cameras of the onlytv channel of the time went to the hotel george v whereclouzot had his headquarters. he rounded up his usual teamof long-time collaborators. i met a clouzot quite different from the one i’d known whenmaking quai des orfã¨vres.

to begin with, he took up a suite at thegeorge v to prepare the film, when in the old days, he’d settlefor a drafting office in the studio, or, as on quai des orfã¨vres, my brother’s flat onrue des bourdonnais. it was casual and easygoing. but this time, it was a bit more hollywood- like. 9 a.m. in a five star hotel,the clouzot factory is gearing up. with an engineer’s precision,

clouzot begins the preparationfor his new film, inferno, starring romy schneiderand serge reggiani. his character’s obsessive jealousy hasbeen chartered on colour-coded cards, depending on his moods andactions in time and space. madness conceived as an equation. in any case, the story boards,previously used in wages of fear, are magnified here. this clever system allows to calculate a character’sheight in the camera’s field

depending on the lens. clouzot demanded extremely detailed preparation so that when he was on the set he could focus almost exclusivelyon the actors’ performance. the 2-d representation you see here, is exactly what you have in the frame if you respect the focal of the lens and the camera position.

sometimes he’d say “i’d like you to film “a bottle of mineral water onthe side table with a 75 mm lens.” i’d answer “what’s the point? “you know all about it. “you know what you get with a75 if the camera is 80 cm away “or if it’s 120 cm away.” but he needed to be reassured. he always saw the bigpicture whatever the angle. he was criticised by the newwave for being too meticulous,

for planning everythingout in the script. that was the main criticismof those great directors. you had to improvise.that was the keyword. today it’s auteur cinema. each generation has its own... he had a nice line aboutit. “i improvise on paper.” he was fascinated by the film 8 1/2, which had rocked the cinema at the time. especially filmmakersof clouzot’s generation,

who made, not so much traditional films, but a certain type of film. suddenly there wasthis amazing phenomenon, the birth of a totally different cinema. i think that with inferno clouzot wanted to makeanother kind of cinema. odette. odette! mr martineau was justshowing me his slides.

in the dark? true, it is dark. but with this thingyou don’t need light. know what time it is? i don’t know. 8? 8.30? 8.20. how time flies! they’re waiting for dinner. don’t get mad. i’m going.

it’s a tale of jealousy thatis not totally thrilling. i think the film wouldonly have been interesting if those famous tests had led him to something totallynew, something extraordinary, a new way of treatingimages, of filming, a new visual world. at the time it was all very “in”... ircam, boulez, electro-acoustic music, op art...

it was all part of the 60s environment. everyone was talking about it. we started as a small team. there was clouzot, winding, me. maybe a grip... very few people. we began by filming an exhibitionat the museum of decorative arts, called new forms. there was yvaral, vasarely andothers. it was about kinetic art. the film tells the story of a man

who is obsessive andpathologically jealous. he thinks his wife is cheatingon him with anyone, men or women. each time he thinkshis wife is cheating, he has feats of jealousy and the outside world becomes deformed. we had to figure out howto deform this universe. instability... we liked the word. it was exactly whatwe wanted to capture. the visual discomfort

of people observing something and the questioning of visual logic. he proposed to jean-pierre, yvaral and myself, to come and recreate certainelements in the studio. and very quickly this representationof objects in the studio turned into a request to come up with, to create effects specific to the film. marcel prieur loses hisvisual and spatial bearings.

obsessive jealousy alsodistorts his perception of sounds. how did clouzot plan to explore the sound landscapeof his hero’s madness? it was at jean-louisducarme’s, in a small box, that a single sound reel was found. 30 minutes of tests, whichtalk and tell us a story. what does she see in him? in march 1964, clouzot made his firststudio test recordings.

with him was ducarme,a young sound engineer, from public radio’sresearch division, and gilbert amy, a leadinglight of electro-acoustic music. he told me “i have this veryambitious film project, “in which i want the music, notjust the music but the sound, “to be not only in the foreground,but to move the film along.” “that means we startoff with sound, voices, “which will lead to theprojections, the shooting of visuals.

“and i want you to think “how you would work as a composer “on manipulating thevoices in particular.” of course he explainedwhat the film was about, the theme of jealousy and so on. and the fact that the mindhears voices in a certain way. the mind of the main character,to be played by serge reggiani, hears voices that remind him, that maintain the phenomenon ofmorbid, pathological jealousy.

your wound’s opened again. it’s your wound opening. what did you expect? your wound opened. you never started toimagine such things. look. look. come on... don’t be afraid. show some courage. as you can see... she’s here, here...

here, here, here... these sound aggressionsare deformed phrases. he starts to multiply his assumptions. and he multiplies them so much, that he repeats a lot of phrases from things he’s seen in his daily life, or supposedly saw,but actually imagined. and this progression in the complicationsof his mental torture

is translated in practiceby superimposed voices, like when a musician writes a fugue. first voice, secondvoice, then the descent. and the more time passesin the film’s story, the more it takes onmonstrous dimensions. at first it’s only babbling, inverting syllables as inback slang, if you want. but then it grows and becomes totally uncontrollable.

if you end up like that, take a vacation andgo see a psychiatrist. it’s something like that. so... may be that’s what excites him? we play bitchy mama. hanky-panky,titty-titty, bang-bang... bitch! shit, he’s married. all the more reason to be two-timed.

let him feel her up, stickhis paws all over her. they leave no trace, no fingerprints. just a kid sometimes, as a souvenir. wait, i’ve got my key. you’re gonna get locked up. double lock. gotcha, bitch. nabbed. nothing. you’re safe.

don’t think, calm down. everything is in its place. calm down. think of nothing. calm... okay, next time we’ll take a cab. - odette.- yes? aren’t you going too far? what? he flirted withme, i took advantage. - did you pay the printer?- yes, right after lunch.

he called at 3 p.m.to ask for his cheque. like i said, i dropped by after lunch. - you were at your mum’s til 3?- mum? i never mentioned mum. didn’t you lunch with her? she had a student. anhours of scales, no thanks. i dropped by marylou’s,we had a snack in the shop. what about her customers? luckily, there were none. until 3?

i don’t spend my life checking my watch. wait a second... you’re jealous! jealous... i’m not blaming you. on the contrary. it shows you care about your wife. nice, isn’t in? must be expensive. guess.

it’s crocodile...let’s see... 800? 1000? are you crazy? where would i find 800 francs? so how much did you pay? when you get an idea! less than 200. impressed? you bet. march 1964. clouzot and his crew set up shop atthe boulogne studios for a few days

for the first camera tests. tests that would in factgo on for several months. when we started doing all these tests, on a low budget asthere were so few of us, we weren’t planning onmaking a film like that. i can’t remember exactly when, but one day we saw arrive five or six peoplefrom the united states. they were the heads of columbia

and they asked to see the first tests. after the screening,after seeing the tests, they said “unlimited budget”. that’s when the film took on a giganticdimension that was never planned. i walked into something totally insane, which were clouzot’s tests. it came as a total shock to me... having worked on french films of the most conventionaland traditional kind,

i was suddenly thrust into a weird mix where all the elementsof traditional cinema, with the best cameramen andthe most seasoned technicians, all busy doing the weirdest things. it immediately became clear to me that they had no ideawhat they were doing. he went off into a world of tests that was completelynew to french cinema.

it was a mystery. and whenthere’s mystery, there’s irony. when people don’t understand, they get ironic insteadof trying to understand. but it was pretty amazing. they expected somethingexceptional to come out of it. with clouzot, it couldonly be exceptional. what’s interesting in inferno and what makes it, ifnot a unique project, at least a very rare onein the history of cinema

is that the means, the money, weren’t there toprovide 100,000 horsemen, and built huge sets. again, it was a small film in a way. the money was there togive a creative artist, clouzot in this case, the possibility of freely experimenting, of trying different ideas,see if they worked or not. there was something else.

at some moment in the film, he sees his wife on the lake, in a rowboat with someone. he thinks there’s somethinggoing on with this someone. and the reality changes. the lake, which is normallyblue, turns blood red. it made quite an astonishing image. today, it’s easy tocreate an effect like that. back then, we didn’t want lab effects,

so we used colour inversion. by shooting the normalway on regular film the blue lake turned red. but the rest had to remain normal. which means we had tomake up the actors grey, so that once reversed, they were pink. we had to find clothingin complementary colours so that once reversed, wehad the right colours back. it was a herculean task.

we rarely had a chanceto do tests like that. we usually did only cameratests, and that was that. but here we had thechance of doing tests, shooting with filmand seeing the results. it was terrific. in inferno, the daily scenesare shot in black and white, and marcel’s visions andfantasies are shot in colour, the improbable colours of madness. to produce these “shock images”,

clouzot could rely ontwo exceptional technicians: claude leon, head offabrication at ltc labs, who would stop the lab to dohis enigmatic printing tests. and michel deruelle,in charge of makeup, who experimented in new ways: actors covered insequins or olive oil, blue lipstick, multicolour makeup. we worked in total freedom. clouzot let us do what we wanted.

he’d come to see us from time to time. he was mostly friendly. rather nice, a bitsardonic at times maybe, but not nasty. and then, when the props were made, without there ever beinga precise completion date, or a special rush for something, he would test themand we’d try them out. we had the impression

that he didn’t quite knowwhat we were doing or why. and he had the impression that we were not trying hard enoughthat we were holding back. so there was tension, but nothing compared to whatthe actors had to endure. dozens of cans of colour tests, visions and enigmatic obsessions,none of which exist in the script. for endless days, in the heatof the boulogne sound stages, clouzot tried to fit his actorsinto strange kinetic images.

we realised that clouzothad a very special vision of the objects on view. i remember there was one work made oftriangles which came towards you. there were a dozen triangleslike that, completely modern. very quickly in the conversation, while winding waslighting, clouzot said, “no, andreas, the left thighshould stay in the shadow.” so he really saw somethingelse, something very sexual

against somethingthat apparently wasn’t. i had become... i rememberlaughing about it... i’d become the specialistof optical coitus. he had me zoom in andout, faster and faster, faster and faster, like incoitus, to reach the final orgasm. we had no idea what this massof tests would be used for. every evening, we’d meetto look at the rushes, and we’d be fascinatedand dazzled by things, or bent over laughing,

because it was bungled, whichhappened plenty of times. but this accumulationof all-out research seemed to us a sort of reservoir from which he could draw whenit was time to build something. june 1964. the tests were over. thousands of meters of experiments and a star, romy. clouzot saw in her the sensual womanhaunting her jealous husband’s dreams.

for clouzot, sheagreed to everything. she chose to give him hertrust, until the end, as she had done forno other director before. during these tests, i realised that clouzot was the mostdifficult director i’d ever met. difficult not in a negativeway, he is never satisfied. he’s a perfectionist. he wantsevery tone, light and gesture to be exactly, down to everynuance, as he’d imagined it before. i wondered, how will i stand 18weeks of shooting with henri-georges?

6 july 1964. shooting begins atgarabit in the cantal. an ideal location: a remotehotel, a lake, a viaduct, and, of course, trains. within a few days, thetourist hotel had a new face, and the ambiance was less homey. like the crew, gathered around mario david,bernard paul and dany carrel, they played hard and worked hard.

the local press announced thearrival of the top film stars, who all would live hereat the hotel garabit. for weeks, art directors andconstruction crews had been at work. the hotel garabitbecame the hotel du lac. there would be fourweeks of exteriors, before the 14 weeks ofstudio at boulogne. every angle had been filmed fora few seconds, for prior approval. everything was worked out. bernard paul, the first assistant,didn’t mind filling bit parts.

now they had to work very fast. in exactly 20 days, the artificiallake, filled a few years earlier, would be emptied byelectricit㩠de france to supply electricity to the region. after that no pickupshots would be possible. clouzot was well aware of that. there were other hotels, otherrailways along other lakes. but this was clouzot’s dream site. he would work fast, withall the means he needed.

but here comes anothertrain, always on schedule, which makes the viaduct’smetal structure rumble. buses and tourists go by, andalways that unreal rumbling, which each time triggers marcel’sanxiety attacks and jealousy. the shooting took on proportionsthat were truly hollywood-like. three camera crews, and not just anyone. armand thirard, who’d shot quai des orfã¨vres,retour ã  la vie, manon...

the wages of fear. claude renoir, who’ddone le mystã¨re picasso. andreas winding. top cameramen, florent, dumaitre. he even brought in louis nã©e, thirard’s old cameraman. nã©e had been cameramanon dreyer’s joan of arc. we called him “millimetre frame edge”. every cameraman had a complete crew.

cameraman, firstassistant, second assistant. key grip, plus two or threegrips, chief electrician. it was an army, not to mentionthe extras and all that. we couldn’t all eat in a single shift. we had to have two shifts forlunch. there were so many people. you got mail? a letter from my brother. where is he now? in germany.

germany? the stamps are for my dressmaker’s son. - going out?- to mum’s. again? i told you, she’s sick.i promised to help her. you told me? the doctor was right. you need help. my bus! tell him i’mcoming. see you tonight. eugã¨ne, my wife will be right down.

still, what nerve! writing to her at my hotel. i wonder... i’m not mad, my girl. no... i’m not mad. not mad at all... no, girl, i’m not mad. i’m not mad. not mad. not at all mad. no way!

get that into your head. i’mneither a monster nor a madman. i’m neither a monster... nor a madman. so what exactly did happenat the hotel garabit? a handful of people shutup in a hotel in a valley, a hugely ambitious film, and crews who knew less andless what was going on. in reality as in the fiction, the elements of a strangedrama were falling into place.

everyone who was close to him, continuity-girls, directorsof photography, cameramen, all the people who had to scoutlocations after the day’s shooting, had the right to live there. i took the opportunity to rent ahouse a few miles from the hotel. i said “take my room. i’llgladly let you have it.” because he had the bad habitof waking people at 2 a.m., as he was an insomniac, to discussthe next day’s work schedule. i wasn’t keen on that sort of thing.

i remember one thingthat always made me laugh. he couldn’t stand usnot working on sundays. he didn’t want us to stop. he wanted to keep onsupposedly scouting locations. clouzot would wait in the hotel lobbyfor the first cameraman to come by and he’d say “let’s go takea look” and off they’d go. claude renoir had no desire to go. so he’d go into the toiletsand climb out the little window. clouzot was a bit odd.his assistant went nuts.

clouzot would call him at 3 a.m.when he’d suddenly have an idea. and as clouzot was an insomniac,he wouldn’t let anyone sleep. no one among those close to him making the film with him, forhim, at the same time as him. everyone was exhausted. unable to sleep, he couldn’tstand others sleeping. so when he suddenly had an idea, you had to be on theball and take notes. for him, we had to bethere around the clock.

we’d stick with him. when hegot up, we had to be there. at breakfast, we were there. we were stuck to him.we were his things. we were his fingers,we were his respiration. i’m not crazy, my girl. oh, no. i’m not crazy... soft, normal or firm hold... at the mike robert vã©dal. yesterday, the unconvened in new york

in a special session to debate aproblem left pending for too long: territorial waters. the debates endedsooner than expected... this is marcel auffretreporting from new york. yesterday, the unitednations organisation met in a special session... there you are at last! yes, i almost missedyou. i’d have been sorry. - you should have seen my face.- poor dear! show me, quick!

- look!- it’s gorgeous! and now we’ll take a commercial break. sensational discounton crocodile bags! a gift from her sweetheart.a handbag for a pair of... brown a large amount of onions in oil... to make it spicier you canadd my little darling... yesterday afternoonwent by like a flash. he may not be a pã¢tissier,but the icing on the cake... attention, citizens of barbezieux!

an envelope containing a key chain has been lost in themain street of your city. this envelope hasnothing written on it. naturally. what a nerve! writing to my hotel. i wonder... the address is writtenin a woman’s hand... he had his secretary write the address. isn’t he clever! the girlfriend set it all up.

the snack. the iron-clad alibi. marcel? what are you doing here? as you can see... waiting for mum. the credit union called. credit union? it’s nowhere aroundhere. where’s the car? joan of arc square. at the bus station?

i see. i can’t believe this.you’re following me. why would i follow you? hard to say why ashooting goes wrong. the film was progressing, but slowly. despite a tight schedule, clouzotspent hours on certain scenes, re-shooting a fewsequences over and over. he was increasingly fussy. he seemed anxious, nervous.

his three crews wereready. always ready... but ready for what? theoretically, it was smart. it could work. but in practice, it was catastrophic. theoretically, you had crew number one preparing shot number one. clouzot of course wasthere to do the shot. afterwards, as in anyfilm, you have to prepare.

so during the preparation,he was to see crew number two. and with crew number two,he’d set up shot number two. except that in practice, he’d go in the morning to seecrew number one and wouldn’t budge. he didn’t feel like it. hewanted to see the preparation, so the others did nothing butwait, having nothing to do. he didn’t even know the shot. it was like that almost every day. i think no one really understood

why this film mobilised such means and finally never got anywhere. there was always some reason wehad to stop at a given moment, and it went on forever withoutproducing any real results. i remember the crew arrivingat 7 or 7.30 in the morning. everyone was there, and we were often there till 10 p.m. waiting or changing a scene. it’s weird. he was soefficient in the past.

when you look at quai des orfã¨vres, it’s a film made withincredible precision. there’s not a thing out of place. it’s superb craftsmanship. but this time, he’d remain there for longminutes next to the camera. he seemed a bit lost. marcel, what is it? what happened to you?

an accident? are you sick? answer me. is it serious? i’m fine, leave me alone. where were you? don’t just stand there.you’re scaring me. can’t i help you? marcel... my poor odette. i know everything.i saw you and martineau on the river. so what if you did?

i’ve had it. i’m done with talking. i followed you! isn’t that enough? no? on the island, didyou play cat’s cradle? is that why you took off like a lunatic? is that why i trembled allday and you made yourself sick? sure, we got off on theisland. i needed to rest. - lying in the grass?- no, standing on one leg! look at me, you dope.

don’t you see i love you? that i’m your wife? look at my eyes, aren’t they pretty? it’s your fault. it’s becauseof you i cried all afternoon. i told myself... “what if he doesn’t comeback? if something happened?” it’d be the end of me,too. i had decided that. odette... leave me alone!

you don’t love me. if i didn’t, i wouldn’t be here. i wanted to die, too. my poor darling. is it true? did you really think that? did it hurt you so much? but it’s all over. it’s over.

never again. promise me, marcel. i love you so much. hold me. hold me closer. closer. romy schneider was a huge star. a “vedette” as they called them.she wouldn’t be pushed around. on top of which, theactors arrived a bit tense because they knew clouzot’s reputation

of being hard on the actors. they said he was cynical,that he tortured you. that was part of his image. he wanted his ideas tocome through his actors, that the actors translateand interpret his ideas. not always easy, especially with strongpersonalities like reggiani, who had his own vision of himself and the character he was asked to play.

reggiani was biased against clouzot. i remember him sniggering,which exasperated clouzot. he was always in opposition and you could feel that his attitude was “i won’t be had, iwon’t be had by clouzot. “i know la clouze”, as he called him, “and i won’t be pushed around.” relations between reggianiand clouzot were rather tense. i don’t know what it was, butthey had something to settle.

he had to run behind a camera car,for miles and miles, all day long. he couldn’t take anymore. if you do it with an actoryou don’t do it ten times, or else you do a testwith him and that’s it. but here, he wore himout. he was dead tired. he drove people so hard, that they... they either broke down or... and if they did, he was happy. he’d say “good, let’s shoot!”

inferno, 390a, take 7. i’m jealous. jealous. jealous of who? of what? i don’t know, but it’s killing me. sometimes, i feel likejumping out the window. we can’t go on like this all night. if you won’t be reasonable,i’ll be for us two. my going into town worries you?

okay... i won’t go. never? never. feel better now? yes. of course, it’s too late now. what’s done is done. what did i do? why ask me? on the island,were you eating candy? i told you, i was tired, i rested.

you rested for half an hour? five minutes. not true. you went off at 11.30.i arrived at 12. you’d just got up. - it took time to get there.- with a speedboat? we stopped on the wayback. for the last time, we left at 11.30. i skied to the dam. we stopped at theisland on the way back. for a roll in the grass. i’d just lain down when the bells rang.

you’re lying. i’ve hadenough of your lies! now tell me the truth. answer me, now! yes, i slept with martineau. not only on the island, everywhere! at his house, in the car,in his bed, in your bed. while you were at the market. we couldn’t get enough. there. happy now? henri-georges would yell, of course.

serge never yelled. he’d leave. romy would yell andhenri-georges would yell. so it created... when they’d both yell,we onlookers knew why. when henri-georges yelledat serge, we knew why. but when serge walkedoff, we didn’t know why. as clouzot cut himself offand kept revising his film, the crews grew moreand more impatient.

christian de chalonge,one of the assistants, a key production figure, couldn’t follow the rhythmof constant changes. he suddenly walked off the set. the film was behindschedule, way behind. the rhythm had to pick up. the lake would be drained within days. but clouzot wouldn’t listen. he kept re-doing dialogueand scenes already shot.

and despite the general confusion, his directing of the actorsbecame increasingly demanding. when shooting a film, you can’t totally escapethe notion of productivity. it’s impossible. so we’d think “does he reallywant to finish this film?” clouzot was alone. healone called the tune. on the script it said “written,directed and produced by...” he was the architect ofthe entire undertaking.

what the film lacked thewhole time was a producer. i don’t mean a producer as a watchdog, but a producer as someone to speak to, to confront, sometimes to clash with. otherwise you go off on wildtangents, you indulge yourself. in the end, you no longerknow what you’re after. come now... calm down... you’re in your room...

safe... nothing’s happened... nothing... i don’t believe it... it’s not true... it’s not possible... precisely... details... precisions... calm down.

they’ll want explanations. details... why? how? on 20 june, the crew awoke tothe news that reggiani had left. suffering from pains for several days, he had walked off theset, never to return. there was talk of maltese fever. they had to start over again, and clouzot had to findanother actor and fast. it was the end of a day’s shooting.

late afternoon. it must have been... something that had beensimmering all along, let’s be clear about that. this time it was too much. and serge said he wasn’t there to be insulted and yelledat by a schizophrenic maniac, that he was leaving and screw it. clouzot threatened legal action.

reggiani said “screw it.”that’s what it came down to. he had a mysterious illness, which wasn’t surprisingcoming from reggiani. and people were sayingthat he had been so tense, that he was trying to steel himself,before anything could happen, he was so wound up against clouzot that it brought abouta nervous reaction. i don’t know which theory was right,maltese fever or semi-depression. he had consciously takenthe risk of searching,

but with 100 people around him. it was a courageous enterprise,but an extremely risky one. every director has had this experience when you suddenly don’t know what to do. you have the crew around you. if they like you and respect youthey’ll wait, they trust you. they say “he’ll find it.”but you’re under pressure. he deliberately put himself in danger. to replace serge reggiani,

clouzot brought jean-louistrintignant to garabit. a brief encounter. whathappened between them? after a few days, trintigant leftwithout shooting a single shot. so for a few more days, clouzot wrote new scenesand shots every night for the actors he had at hand. new visions. new nightmares for marcel. the main thing was toshoot. shoot until the end.

a few more images. clouzot was shooting a scene on a boat, a small boat on the lake. there were two women, i think, dany carrel and romy schneider. it was a scene where thetwo women were kissing. he was there, smoking his pipe. we were very close,three or four metres. and suddenly there were alot of people rushing over.

clouzot had suffered a heart attack. they called an ambulance andhe was taken to the hospital. it all happened very quickly. i have the feeling thatthis was the general opinion at a dinner we had at st flour. several actors were there,including romy schneider. and she said that to her mind... it came at the right moment,he couldn’t have gone on much longer. things were going too badly.

he taught me what other directorsbefore and since taught me. you have to see your madness through. you have totake responsibility to the end. at some point, everyonewonders “where’s he going?” “into a wall.” that’s the moment whenyou have to keep going. i don’t much believe in inspiration. i believe there’s a job to do every day and from time to time,ideas do or don’t come.

it’s like a seed you plant in the earth. every day, you water itand whatever grows will grow. and there’s no point pulling the stemto make it grow faster. if you do,you uproot it and that’s that! in 1968 clouzot made onelast film, la prisonniã¨re, experimenting again with kinetic art. he died in 1977 and remainsone of cinema’s greats. subtitles 2010 bypeoples republic for kg