Philippe Garrel 9781526115966

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Philippe Garrel

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diana holmes and robert ingram  series editors dudley andrew  series consultant Chantal Akerman  MARION SCHMID Auterism from Assayas to Ozon: French Film Directors five directors  KATE INCE Jean-​Jacques Beineix  phil powrie Luc Besson  susan hayward Bertrand Blier  sue harris Catherine Breillat  douglas keesey Robert Bresson  keith reader Laurent Cantet  MARTIN O’SHAUGHNESSY Leos Carax  garin dowd and fergus daly Marcel Carné  JONATHAN DRISKELL Claude Chabrol  guy austin Henri-​Georges Clouzot  christopher lloyd Jean Cocteau  james S. williams Jacques Demy  DARREN WALDRON Claire Denis  martine beugnet Marguerite Duras  renate günther Julien Duvivier  BEN MCCANN Jean Epstein  CHRISTOPHE WALL-​ROMANA Georges Franju  kate ince Jean-​Luc Godard  douglas morrey Robert Guédiguian  JOSEPH MAI Mathieu Kassovitz  will higbee Diane Kurys  carrie tarr Patrice Leconte  lisa downing Louis Malle  hugo frey Chris Marker  Sarah Cooper Georges Méliès  elizabeth ezra Negotiating the auteur  JULIA DOBSON François Ozon  Andrew Asibong Marcel Pagnol  BRETT BOWLES Maurice Pialat  marja warehime Jean Renoir  martin o’shaughnessy Alain Resnais  emma wilson Jacques Rivette  douglas morrey and Alison smith

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Alain Robbe-​Grillet  john phillips Eric Rohmer  derek schilling Coline Serreau  brigitte rollet Bertrand Tavernier  Lynn Anthony Higgins André Téchiné  bill marshall François Truffaut  diana holmes and robert ingram Agnès Varda  alison smith Jean Vigo  michael temple

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Philippe Garrel

Michael Leonard

Manchester University Press

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Copyright © Michael Leonard 2020 The right of Michael Leonard to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 7849 9139 5 hardback First published 2020 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-​party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Photo of Philippe Garrel by Michael Leonard and François Parvex

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This book is dedicated to Delphine and to Jeanne Nuala Madeleine

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Contents

LIST OF PLATES SERIES EDITORS’ FOREWORD ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Introduction: Philippe Garrel, an irregular auteur

page x xi xiii 1

1 Cinema and revolution

21

2 Cinema of the underground

59

3 Narrative turn: Autobiography and the imaginary self

100

4 Dialogues

131

5 Past and future generations

168

Conclusion

217

FILMOGRAPHY

220 229 231

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX

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Plates

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Godard et ses émules, 1967 Actua I, 1968 Le Révélateur, 1968 Le Lit de la vierge, 1969 La Cicatrice intérieure, 1972 Les Hautes Solitudes, 1974 Elle a passé tant d’ heures sous les sunlights, 1984 Les Baisers de secours, 1989 La Naissance de l’ amour, 1993 Le Vent de la nuit, 1999 Les Amants réguliers, 2005 L’Amant d’ un jour, 2017

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Series editors’ foreword

To an anglophone audience, the combination of the words ‘French’ and ‘cinema’ evokes a particular kind of film: elegant and wordy, sexy but serious  –​an image as dependent upon national stereotypes as is that of the crudely commercial Hollywood blockbuster, which is not to say that either image is without foundation. Over the past two decades, this generalised sense of a significant relationship between French identity and film has been explored in scholarly books and articles, and has entered the curriculum at university level and, in Britain, at A-​level. The study of film as art-​form and (to a lesser extent) as industry, has become a popular and widespread element of French Studies, and French cinema has acquired an important place within Film Studies. Meanwhile, the growth in multi-​screen and ‘art-​house’ cinemas, together with the development of the video industry, has led to the greater availability of foreign-​language films to an English-​speaking audience. Responding to these developments, this series is designed for students and teachers seeking information and accessible but rigorous critical study of French cinema, and for the enthusiastic filmgoer who wants to know more. The adoption of a director-​based approach raises questions about auteurism. A series that categorises films not according to period or to genre (for example), but to the person who directed them, runs the risk of espousing a romantic view of film as the product of solitary inspiration. On this model, the critic’s role might seem to be that of discovering continuities, revealing a necessarily coherent set of themes and motifs which correspond to the particular genius of the individual. This is not our aim: the auteur perspective on film, itself

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xii  Series editors’ foreword

most clearly articulated in France in the early 1950s, will be interrogated in certain volumes of the series, and, throughout, the director will be treated as one highly significant element in a complex process of film production and reception which includes socio-​economic and political determinants, the work of a large and highly skilled team of artists and technicians, the mechanisms of production and distribution, and the complex and multiply determined responses of spectators. The work of some of the directors in the series is already well known outside France, that of others is less so –​the aim is both to provide informative and original English-​language studies of established figures, and to extend the range of French directors known to anglophone students of cinema. We intend the series to contribute to the promotion of the formal and informal study of French films, and to the pleasure of those who watch them. Diana Holmes Robert Ingram

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Des O’Rawe and Dominique Jeannerod for their time and effort in reading the various incarnations of this study, and for the sound advice and guidance they provided throughout. Thanks also to Michael Witt for his encouragement with the undertaking of this project, and to Marc Vernet who oversaw my work during a period of archival research in Paris. Finally, I would like to thank my wonderful family and great friends for their generous support during the completion of this book, with a particular word of mention for my brother Patrick, my sisters Orla and Ciara, my parents Gerardine and Michael, and my grandma Nuala.

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Introduction Philippe Garrel, an irregular auteur In April 2013, a retrospective of Philippe Garrel’s films took place at the Magic Cinéma, a municipal theatre in Bobigny, outside Paris. Such a location, on the periphery of the French capital, may seem inappropriate for the work of a longstanding director whom the film critic Serge Daney spoke of as ‘le seul grand cinéaste français de ma génération’1 (Jousse 1991: 58). But both the accolade and this peripheral location are revealing of the ambiguous position Garrel has occupied within French film culture during the last half century. While held in high esteem by peers and critics, he is only beginning now to receive some mainstream and popular recognition. This increased recognition is evidenced by the first French international conference on Garrel that took place at Paris Nanterre University in November 2018 and by a more recent retrospective of Garrel’s work at the Cinémathèque Française in September 2019. Garrel’s status as a critically respected yet marginal figure may be explained by the fact that his cinema occupies an uncertain terrain in the history of French cinema, somewhere between the New Wave and the vast heterogeneous body of French cinema that developed in its aftermath. This anomalous position is compounded by an oeuvre that often resists straightforward exegetical criticism, and challenges traditionally held critical oppositions such as those of the real and the imaginary, documentary and fiction, political and personal, avant-​garde and mainstream. This study traces the irregularity of the film-​maker’s oeuvre and situates it within the context of French film 1 ‘The only great film-​maker of my generation.’ Unless otherwise indicated, all translations throughout are the author’s.

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2  Philippe Garrel

culture, history and society. It contends that in addition to making him an important figure in his own right, Garrel’s work helps illuminate the unstable and elusive film category referred to as the post-​ New Wave, and provides vital insight into the relationship between French film culture and the legacy of May 68. Before expanding on the types of critical issues that congregate around the career and personality of Garrel, it is important to establish some facts about his life and the films he has made. What emerges in the account that follows is the significant overlap between Garrel’s biography and the characters, themes and forms that predominate in his cinema. Philippe Garrel was born on 6 April 1948 in Boulogne-​Billancourt, a working-​class city southwest of Paris. His parents, Maurice and Micheline, studied philosophy and German respectively at the Sorbonne University. They married in 1947 and had three children, Philippe, Thierry and François. Maurice Garrel trained under Charles Dullin and Tania Balachova, theatre directors and actors who had a significant role in teaching. Dullin and Balachova were responsible for the tutelage of many important young French actors after the Second World War, the latter having worked with Michael Lonsdale, Antoine Vitez, Delphine Seyrig and Jean-​Louis Trintignant. In 1951, the family moved to Rochetaillée, a village south of Saint-​Etienne. Here Maurice began working at the Comédie de Saint-​Etienne, a workers’ cooperative theatre founded by Jean Dasté and Jeanne Laurent (Azalbert and Delorme 2011: 72). When the family returned to Boulogne-​Billancourt, Maurice and Micheline worked on a puppet show for children’s television called Martin et Martine, created by Alain Recoing. The show was broadcast every Thursday afternoon on RTF Télévision between October 1953 and April 1957. Philippe Garrel recalls an early fascination with witnessing his parents and their friends preparing the show and recording it live, before he would watch it on television the following afternoon. The craft of his parents provided an apt backdrop for Garrel as a future director, with the puppeteer’s orchestration of speech and manipulation of the postures of a body providing a noteworthy corollary to the relationship between director and actor. The early experience of growing up in the milieu of struggling artists is taken up in the film Liberté, la nuit (1983), where Garrel transposes his parents’ relationship and their craft as marionettists to the backdrop

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Introduction  3

of France during the Algerian War. Describing his childhood and the marginal artistic milieu he grew up in, Philippe Garrel comments:

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Si je suis d’extrême gauche –​on ne le dit jamais mais c’est ainsi: mon cinéma est un cinéma de gauche –​si j’ai refusé l’armée, si je méprise les facilités que procure de l’argent, c’est grâce à quelques personnes que j’ai vues vivres, pendant ma petite enfance, dans des conditions très pénibles, mais qui étaient des rois.2 (Garrel and Lescure 1992: 135)

Poverty and the impact of financial struggles on the lives of artists form a backdrop to a number of Garrel’s works, influencing notably his development of ‘poor’ modes of production in the films he made in the 1970s. Garrel’s parents separated when he was five years old, an event also recalled in Liberté, la nuit. Jean, an FLN (Front de Libération National) sympathiser played by Maurice Garrel, is shown in a short sequence leaving his wife, played by the iconic actress of Hiroshima mon amour (1959), Emmanuelle Riva. In Le Cœur fantôme (1998), Garrel returns to the subject when the character of Philippe (Luis Rigo) approaches his father, again played by Maurice Garrel, seeking an explanation as to why he left his mother. The subject of his parent’s separation, and more broadly the crises and ruptures experienced by couples, forms a recurrent theme in Garrel’s cinema, something the director has acknowledged:  ‘À l’origine de mes films, il y a toujours un conflit, quelque chose de douloureux et la séparation, pour moi, c’est la scène primitive’3 (Garrel and Lescure 1992: 33).

Adolescence In the late 1950s, Maurice Garrel began to integrate film acting with his theatre and television work. He played small roles in several New Wave films including Jacques Rozier’s Adieu Philippine (1960) and François Truffaut’s La Peau douce (1962). Seeing his father on the 2 ‘If I am of the extreme-​left –​no one ever says this but it is the case: my cinema is a cinema of the left –​if I refused the army, if I have contempt for the facilities that money procures it’s thanks to a few people whom I saw, during my childhood, in very difficult conditions but who were kings.’ 3 ‘At the source of my films, there is always a conflict, something painful and separation, for me, it’s the primal scene.’

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4  Philippe Garrel

screen encouraged Philippe’s early enthrallment with the cinema. He was also interested in painting and attended the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, which offered classes in painting for children. Later he went to the Louvre, where he studied proportions, lighting and colouration, developing a passion for Georges de La Tour. This early experience helps to explain the painterly quality of many of Garrel’s films, including his attachment to compositions illuminated by candlelight reminiscent of La Tour and his allusions to the neo-​classical painting of Ingres. According to Garrel, his debut in film-​making came about due to an encounter with Claude Berri when he was fourteen years old. Berri spotted the young man on the Champs Élysées and organised an audition with Georges de Beauregard. After an initial screen test, Garrel explained that he was not interested in becoming an actor and asked Berri to take him on as an apprentice director on his first feature film, Le Vieil Homme et l’enfant (1966). During the filming of Berri’s first feature, Garrel saved up to buy the film stock left over from the shoot, which enabled him to make Les Enfants désaccordés (1966), his first extant work4 (Azalbert and Delorme 2011:  73). Recorded in three days and edited rapidly, this short film about adolescent rebellion was bought by French television. The money from TV enabled him to finance a second short film, Droit de visite (1966). The use of street photography, sequences filmed in Parisian cafés, in addition to the evocation of rebellious youth culture in both works, reflects the influence of the New Wave. Following his film-​ making debut, the young director began working for the French television broadcaster, the ORTF (Office de Radiodiffusion-​Télévision Française). Until a study by Nicole Brenez, this period in Garrel’s early career had gone virtually unacknowledged. He worked for two programmes, Bouton Rouge, co-​produced by André Harriss and Alain Sédouy, and Seize million des jeunes, produced by Michel Taittinger and Jean-​Pierre Frambois. During this time, Garrel made short films, documentary pieces dealing with the expansion of pop music and the lifestyle of the baby-​boomer 4 Prior to Les Enfants désaccordés Garrel made one other work, Une Plume pour Carole, initially entitled Un français à Londres. Shot in London and starring Garrel’s English girflriend at the time and Jérôme Laperrousaz, the director later destroyed the film when classifying his work in 1970 (Tsukidate 2018).

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Introduction  5

generation. Brenez depicts Garrel’s approach as a deliberate challenge to the transformation of the youth culture in France into a demographic with passive tastes and modes of behaviour dominated by American consumer culture. She writes, ‘dans un tel contexte, frappe la radicalité politique de Philippe Garrel qui injecte de la critique partout où cela s’avère possible, à commencer par la diversité inventive du traitement des sujets abordés, grâce à des formes et des longueurs encore non-​standardisées’5 (Brenez 2013: 124). The ORTF commissioned Garrel to make a feature-​length television film. Anémone (1967), the film’s eponymous title, is drawn from a nickname Garrel gave to the leading actor Anne Bourguignon, a nickname that Bourguignon went on to adopt in the course of her film career. She plays an adolescent from the Parisian bourgeoisie, who rebels against her privileged background by running away from home with her companion Pascal (Pascal Laperrousaz). With a similar storyline and featuring the same male lead, the parallels between Anémone and Les Enfants désaccordés are readily apparent. The black and white cinematography of Garrel’s first short is, on this occasion, replaced by saturated 16mm colour stock. Garrel recounts that after an advance screening of the work, a programmer from the ORTF promised him that his work would never be shown (Garrel and Lescure 1992: 38–​39). The film was eventually televised a year later in 1968, but the anecdote reveals an early conflict between the film-​maker’s approaches and institutional tastes. Garrel’s second feature film, Marie pour mémoire (1967), at once brought him critical recognition but also a further warning as to the hostility and incomprehension his work would be met with in the future. With the director no longer working at the ORTF, the film was independently produced in part thanks to financial support from Claude Berri. The film received first prize at the Festival International du Jeune Cinéma de Hyères in April 1968. Garrel describes how the entire audience booed when the award was announced. The critical endorsement nonetheless proved fortuitous for a different reason. The award helped Garrel avoid prison for having refused compulsory military service, after a photo of him being embraced by Michel 5 ‘Garrel’s political radicality is striking in such a context, injecting criticism wherever possible, beginning with the inventive diversity of the treatment of the subjects taken on, thanks to forms and durations not yet standardised’.

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6  Philippe Garrel

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Simon on receiving the prize at Hyères was shown to the jury during the trial (Garrel and Lescure 1992:  40). This episode is recalled in Les Amants réguliers when the young poet, François Dervieux (Louis Garrel), is given a suspended sentence owing to his artistic sensibility, having refused to report for compulsory military service.

May 68 The worker and student revolt of May 68, which threatened to topple the de Gaulle government, led to a marked politicisation of French film culture. During the événements, many in the French film industry united in solidarity with those who had gone on strike, occupying the IDHEC (Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques), and  the CNC (Centre National de la Cinématographie) and establishing the Estates General of Cinema (États Généraux du Cinéma Français).6 Garrel responded to the tumult through his participation in the realisation of collectively produced militant films, referred to as cinétracts. Alongside Laurent Condominas, Serge Bard, Patrick Deval and with the assistance of Alain Jouffroy, Garrel made Actua 1, a mostly silent, black and white short film shot on the streets of Paris during the événements. Recorded in 35mm, unlike the other film tracts, which were recorded on 16mm, the film was described by Godard as the best film made about May 68 (de Baecque 2010: 413). Garrel’s experiment with collectivised, militant film-​making was short-​lived. His next two films Le Révélateur (1968)  –​a silent work shot in the Bavarian countryside at the tail end of the événements –​ and La Concentration (1968) –​filmed over three days in a studio in Paris during the period immediately afterwards  –​appeared only obliquely related to the revolutionary upheaval witnessed in France. Articulating his particular vision of artistic engagement, Garrel stated the following during an interview with Cahiers du cinéma in August 1968:

6 The IDHEC and the CNC constituted France’s national film school and its major public funding for film respectively. For a detailed discussion of the role of the Estates General and the relationship between May 68 and French film culture see: Harvey 1978.

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Introduction  7

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Il ne faut jamais que le cinéma soit l’endroit où le spectateur trouve sa part de plaisir. Or, c’est cela que le cinéma avait tendance à devenir dans le système capitaliste. Il faut absolument que le film soit celui qui dérange: s’il a une fonction, c’est bien de tomber comme un pavé dans la mare, dans la salle où la bourgeoisie vient se nicher.7 (Comolli, Narboni and Rivette 1968: 54)

The statement implies a form of engagement in terms of pushing formal boundaries and provoking the spectator. Garrel articulates the necessity of an austere approach that would challenge the notion of the cinema as a mode of entertainment, highlighting a quest to align experimental cinema with revolutionary struggle.

Underground In 1969 Garrel met Christa Päffgen, the German musician, actress and model better known by her stage name Nico. The encounter with Nico took place when Garrel travelled to Italy to film part of Le Lit de la vierge (1969) in Grottaferata, just outside Rome. Nico had previously been closely affiliated with the Factory in New York, forming one of Andy Warhol’s ‘Superstars’, a grouping of artists and friends of Warhol arbitrarily designated as stars in a riposte to the Hollywood star system. She appeared in Warhol’s most famous film, Chelsea Girls (1966), a work presented in a split screen with an alternating soundtrack, made with the inhabitants and associates of the Chelsea Hotel in New  York. Nico’s song, ‘The Falconer’, which had originally been written in dedication to Warhol, accompanies a single-​ shot sequence in Le Lit de la vierge, a black and white film recorded in widescreen. Garrel himself appears in this dreamlike sequence, dressed in ragged clothing and carrying a newspaper. He is shown in a long-​shot waking up in a vast, deserted landscape, with mountains visible in the distance. The camera tracks laterally for several minutes to capture the young man’s meandering stroll, as he makes his way towards the figures of Mary (Zouzou) and Jesus (Pierre Clémenti). 7 ‘The cinema must never be a place where the spectator finds pleasure. That is the tendency of film in a capitalist system. Above all the film must be something that disturbs: if it has one function, it is to fall like a paving stone in a pond, into the auditorium where the bourgeoisie has come to nestle.’

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8  Philippe Garrel

The incorporation of the song marks the first collaboration between Garrel and Nico. It signified the beginning of a creative and romantic affiliation between the two figures, which would lead to the production of six films. The period of Garrel’s relationship with Nico is also synonymous with his underground period, a term that denotes the experimental nature of Garrel’s cinema as well as his refusal to subscribe to the traditional circuits of production and distribution. The underground films, each of which feature Nico, can be divided into two subgroupings. The first is defined by wealth, as Garrel benefited from the patronage of Sylvina Boissonnas,8 an experimental film-​maker and militant who had inherited a large fortune. The second is defined by poverty, beginning with Les Hautes Solitudes in 1974, a silent film starring Jean Seberg, Nico, Tina Aumont and Laurent Terzieff. In the later films of Garrel’s underground period, the director self-​produced his work, often with little money and without the aid of crew or technicians. Many of the works during this period were only screened at the Cinémathèque Française upon their release, thanks to Henri Langlois, who was a long-​time admirer and supporter of Garrel’s cinema.

Narrative In the late 1970s, following the end of his relationship with Nico, Garrel came to a creative and emotional impasse. His experimental works, made with ever-​diminishing resources, increasingly discouraged the interest of a broad public due to the opacity of the subject matter and the poverty of the means of production. The film-​maker responded to this crisis by deciding to make work that confronted aspects of his life, including his relationship with Nico, by means of a more transparent narrative form. This manifested in the development of an autofictional style, involving characters that loosely resembled the director and other members of his entourage of 8 Having been a significant figure in Parisian underground culture in the 1960s and early 1970s, Boissonnas became more closely involved with militant feminism. Since 1974 she has collaborated with and helped finance the feminist publishing house Éditions de femmes.

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Introduction  9

friends and family, some of whom are incarnated by their real-​life referents. L’Enfant secret (1979) was the first work to emerge following this shift, portraying the relationship between a young director and an actor closely resembling Garrel and Nico. Following his relationship with Nico, Garrel began a relationship with the actor and director Brigitte Sy. Together, Garrel and Sy had two children, Louis Garrel (b.1983) and Esther Garrel (b.1991). In the 1980s and 1990s the director’s work loosely traces the evolution of this family unit, confronting the various crises faced by couples, including the tension between a desire for artistic and sexual freedom and the responsibilities of being a husband and father. Louis Garrel’s first appearance in his father’s cinema was in a photograph shown in Elle a passé tant d’heures sous les sunlights. Still only a child, Louis also made a cameo appearance in Les Ministères de l’art (1988) and Les Baisers de secours (1989), before a prolonged period of collaboration with his father that began with a leading role in Les Amants réguliers. Esther Garrel, Louis’s younger sister, made her first appearance in her father’s work much later with a cameo role in Sauvage Innocence (2001) at nine years of age. She is shown standing in the wings of a film-​set in Amsterdam, during the down time in the shooting of the film within the film. This prefaced her leading role as the character of Jeanne in L’Amant d’un jour (2017). Further reflecting Garrel’s tendency to integrate aspects of his personal life in his cinema, the actors Brigitte Sy and Maurice Garrel are recurrent figures in the director’s films of this period. For Les Baisers de secours (1989) Garrel deployed a screenwriter for the first time, the poet and novelist Marc Cholodenko. Cholodenko subsequently worked as a screenwriter for ten films with Garrel. This development has marked a gravitation in the film-​maker’s approaches away from the strict individual control of the various aspects of production, towards a more standardised production model and the inclusion of a larger team of technicians and professionals. Cholodenko’s affinity with Garrel’s work preceded their collaboration. This included an admiration for the director’s underground films which he watched in the Pagode cinema as a young man when based in Paris for military service. Cholodenko’s creative affinity with Garrel, in addition to his burgeoning friendship with the director, meant that he was sensitive to his counterpart’s autobiographical tendencies and the subjects previously explored in his cinema. This

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10  Philippe Garrel

affinity facilitated Cholodenko’s ability to address Garrel’s relationships, notably with Nico, who emerges as an avatar in several films, including the character of Marianne (Johanna ter Steege) in J’entends plus la guitare (1990). It also facilitated the treatment of Garrel’s evolving familial ties, something that is most explicitly touched on in Les Baisers de secours. In the latter work, Philippe Garrel plays the role of a director named Mathieu who comes into conflict with his wife, played by Brigitte Sy, having chosen a different actress to incarnate her in a film about their life. Loosely based on a real-​life crisis between Garrel and Sy, after Garrel had chosen Mireille Perrier to star in Elle a passé tant d’heures sous les sunlights (1984), it represents the director’s most developed autofictional work.

Future generations In 1999, just over three decades after the événements of May 68, Garrel made Le Vent de la nuit. The film provides an oblique reflection on the traces of May 68, through the portrayal of the relationship between a former militant named Serge (Daniel Duval) and his young assistant Paul (Xavier Beauvois). The film signals the beginning of a shift in focus in Garrel’s cinema, involving the treatment of the lives of younger generations. Beyond working with Cholodenko, Garrel has also deployed Noémie Lvovsky as a screenwriter, in addition to regular collaborations with Arlette Langman and his second wife Caroline Deruras, who first worked on Un Été brûlant (2011). Garrel has also worked with veteran cinematographers including Raoul Coutard, famous for his work with Godard and Truffaut, who accompanied Garrel for La Naissance de l’amour (1993), Le Cœur fantôme (1998) and Sauvage Innocence (2001), combining a shift towards youthful characters and collaborations with experienced writers and artists. In 2018, coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of May 68, Garrel celebrated his seventieth birthday. This followed his completion of a trilogy of films: La Jalousie (2013), L’Ombre des femmes (2015), L’Amant d’un jour (2017). The three works are filmed in black and white and, with a similar duration of around 75 minutes, are relatively short for feature productions. Although the films deal with the amorous struggles faced by couples, there is the suggestion of a lighter approach that may in part be owed to the participation of the screenwriter

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Introduction  11

Jean-​Claude Carrière, whose irreverent black humour inflects both L’Ombre des femmes and L’Amant d’un jour. Despite the suggestion of a softening in Garrel’s approach, his continued political commitment was expressed in an open letter published in Le Monde in 2018, in response to the violent suppression of the ZAD (Zone à Défendre) at Notre-​Dame-​des-​Landes. The letter, which was co-​signed by Aki Kaurismäki, Pedro Costa and a range of other film-​makers, actors and film professionals, expressed solidarity with those who had occupied a section of land near Nantes, destined to be turned into an airport. It called for the direct intervention of film-​makers in a manner that harks back to Garrel’s intervention in Actua 1 during May 68: Nous, cinéastes, appelons donc à ‘mordre’, c’est-​à-​dire à filmer et à défendre ce territoire qui bat et se bat. Car défendre la ZAD lorsque l’on fait du cinéma, c’est défendre une idée de l’expérimentation, c’est défendre un lieu réel qui lutte pour construire des imaginaires, d’autres imaginaires, pour dessiller le regard et supprimer l’agonie.9 (Le Monde, 17 May 2018)

In its conflation of political engagement and artistic experimentation, the appeal implies Garrel’s continued preoccupation with issues surrounding the relationship between the aesthetic and the political, and between film-​making and resistance.

Critical contexts Although reference will be made throughout this study to the various scholarly and popular critical sources that discuss Garrel’s work, it is instructive at this point to review some of the key publications that have engaged with specific films, periods or tendencies within Garrel’s career. In comparison with other film-​makers of a similar generation and output (for example, Chantal Akerman, Wim Wenders or Nanni Moretti), writing on Garrel’s cinema 9 ‘We, film-​makers, call upon people to “bite”, meaning to film and defend this territory that breathes and struggles. Because defending the ZAD as film-​ makers is to defend an idea of experimentation, to defend a real space that is fighting to construct imaginaries, other imaginaries, in order to open people’s eyes and end the suffering.’

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12  Philippe Garrel

remains limited and fragmentary. Critical responses to Garrel’s work tend to refer to specific films or periods in his career rather than his entire body of work. This may in part be owed to the scale of his output, which encompasses twenty-​six feature films, at the time of writing, in a career spanning more than five decades. It is also quite likely owed to the irregularity of his film oeuvre, providing a challenge to critics to assimilate the heterogeneity of his style into a single study. Four major trends, at times overlapping, can be identified within the literature. The first grouping is theoretical criticism that tends to emanate from Deleuze’s exploration of a corporeal cinema in his book Cinema II: The Time Image (1985). The second emerges from critical attempts to situate Garrel’s films within a particular tradition, categorising and positioning his work in relation to the history of French cinema and in particular to the New Wave. A third trend incorporates comparative study, relating Garrel to other film-​makers or contrasting specific films with those of other directors. A  fourth trend encompasses occasional and essayistic writings. In his second of two famous works on the cinema, Deleuze offers an endorsement of Garrel’s cinema, describing him as one of ‘the greatest modern auteurs, whose work, alas, may well develop its effects only in the long term, endowing the cinema with powers that are as yet not well known’ (Deleuze 2005: 207). Deleuze describes Garrel’s work as a ‘cinema of the body’, categorising him alongside other French film-​makers of his generation  –​including Chantal Akerman, Jean Eustache and Jacques Doillon –​who display similar preoccupations with the depiction of postures and attitudes of the body. Deleuze uses the term post-​New Wave to designate the circle of film-​makers associated with Garrel, arguing that the film-​maker’s figuration of bodies in space (in particular the three bodies of man, woman and child) establishes a cinematographic corporeal presence that rivals the presence of the human body in the theatre. Although Deleuze has been important in promoting the reputation of Garrel and coining the term post-​New Wave, several issues emerge from his approach. First, his analysis of Garrel is removed from a direct consideration of the day-​to-​day political occurrences in France. Deleuze does not analyse the intersection between Garrel’s cinema and the political manifestations with which he was associated, and which, as is evident in his return to the subject of May 68

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Introduction  13

in Les Amants réguliers (2005), remain a preoccupation of his work. Another issue is the relationship proposed between Garrel’s cinema (and that of others of his generation) and the New Wave. Referring to the cinema of Godard and Rivette, Deleuze notes how the New Wave ‘has taken this cinema of attitudes and postures (whose model actor would be Jean-​Pierre Léaud) a long way’ (Deleuze 2005:  186). The association of Garrel’s cinema of bodies with the New Wave elides what appears to be a more ambivalent relationship between the director’s work and his cinematic predecessors. Nicole Brenez and Fabien Boully have continued in the tradition of Deleuze, providing theoretically rigorous readings that play close attention to the formal patterns in Garrel’s film oeuvre. Both scholars offer challenging and rich responses to his cinema while largely omitting a consideration of the place of autobiography in his work. Fabien Boully, for instance, provides a detailed study of a tetralogy of films made between 1988 and 1993, for the most part avoiding reference to Garrel’s biography. He argues: ‘cette étude ne tiendra à peu près aucun compte du caractère autobiographique des films de la quatrième période, si ce n’est dans les rares moment où le problème filmique envisagé ne nous paraîtra pas pouvoir se passer du savoir de l’autobiographie’10 (Boully 2004: 10). Thibault Grasshoff’s more recent study proposes a tetralogy of Garrel films beginning with J’entends plus la guitare (1990), differing marginally from the selection made by Boully. Grasshoff’s analysis considers the political ramifications of Garrel’s intimate oeuvre, tracing how the film-​ maker’s aesthetic of survival constitutes a subtle but eloquent form of resistance. By contrast, a co-​authored text by Garrel and Thomas Lescure provides an in-​depth study of the relationship between Garrel’s films and his life. Produced through a series of edited interviews between Lescure and the film-​maker, the text seeks to establish coherence in a varied oeuvre, and to consider the genesis of several films by paying attention to the complex toing and froing between Garrel’s life and his art. Lescure writes: 10 ‘This study takes almost no account of the autobiographical character of the films of the fourth period, except for the rare moments in which the filmic problems envisaged appear to be insurmountable without knowledge of his autobiography.’

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14  Philippe Garrel

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Le travail de Garrel est, on le sait, autobiographique. Dialoguant avec lui j’ai donc cherché à mettre en rapport sa vie et ses films, moins pour fournir des clefs, au demeurant bien connues, que pour mettre en valeur la rhétorique aussi secrète que retorse qu’il a fini par élaborer … et qui fait de ses films de singuliers objets en lesquels le réel ironise la fiction, à la fois mystifiants et démystifiants.11 (Garrel and Lescure 1992: 23)

The text refers to almost all of Garrel’s films produced up until 1991, contrasting with the majority of studies which respond only to a single film, a small group of films or a specific period. In terms of texts written in English, Sally Shafto has produced a study of a group of young, experimental French film-​makers from the late 1960s and early 70s that numbered Garrel in their entourage (Shafto 2000). These so-​called Zanzibar film-​makers were sponsored by Sylvina Boissonnas, their name being drawn from a cinematographic expedition organised by Boissonnas to the then Maoist island of Zanzibar between 1969 and 1970. Shafto’s analysis is useful for interrogating and problematising the relationship between the films financed by Boissonnas, including those made by Garrel, and the cinema of the New Wave. Issues remain with the proposed composition of the grouping and the fact, acknowledged by Shafto, that Garrel has not identified with the term Zanzibar in relation to his film-​making (Shafto 2000: 6). Such a scenario draws attention to the elusiveness of Garrel regarding categories and the heterogeneity of associations he has formed in his varied career. Jill Forbes’s survey of French cinema after the New Wave provides an overview of Garrel’s career. She addresses his body of work alongside that of Jean Eustache in a chapter entitled ‘The Heritage of the Nouvelle Vague’. Forbes observes key developments in Garrel’s work, while providing a brief analysis of the themes and forms of his films. The personal nature of Garrel’s film-​making is evoked, not just in terms of subject matter but also in his modes of production that 11 ‘The work of Garrel is, as we know, autobiographical. Conversing with him I  therefore sought to place his life and films into relationship with one another. This was less about providing clues for interpretation, given that much of this is already well known, than valorising an equally secret and inventive rhetoric that he has managed to develop … and which makes his films singular objects in which the real ironises the fiction, at once mystifying and demystifying.’

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Introduction  15

incorporate the use of friends and family as cast and technicians. The broad remit of Forbes’s excellent survey of French cinema after the New Wave means, however, that it does not allow for an in-​depth analysis of Garrel’s cinema. In 2013, two French publications were produced on Garrel to coincide with the retrospective of his work at the Magic Cinema in Bobigny in 2013. The first, Philippe Garrel. Théâtres au cinéma (Bax and Béghin 2013), forms a large tome combining various articles, interviews and testimonies related to Garrel’s cinema from its inception until his then most recent release, Un Été brûlant (2011). It includes important material on his little-​known work with French television, made prior to becoming an independent film-​maker, compiled by Nicole Brenez. In the same year, the journalist and film critic Philippe Azoury published a book offering a personal response to Garrel’s work. Azoury offers a series of edited ‘carnets intimes sur ce cinéma intime’12 (Azoury 2013: 12). His unorthodox and essayistic approach produces a personal and lyrical response to Garrel’s oeuvre, more discursive and poetic than scholarly. Finally, in terms of sources of film criticism, the French film journal Cahiers du cinéma has provided sustained analysis of Garrel’s films over the last decades. The journal revealed an early adherence to his work in the late 1960s, which was interrupted by the 1970s Maoist period, during which no mention was made of Garrel’s cinema. Since the late 1970s, however, Garrel has regularly featured in its pages. Dossiers of short essays have accompanied the release of almost every new film, and regular interviews with the film-​maker provide reflections both on his recent work and historical reflections on his oeuvre. Cahiers critics who have written regularly on Garrel include Alain Philippon, Thierry Jousse and the magazine’s current chief editor, Stéphane Delorme. The latter expressed the depth of his affiliation with Garrel when he stated that it was after seeing L’Enfant secret as an adolescent that he decided to devote himself to cinema.13

12 ‘Intimate notebooks on this intimate cinema’. 13 Delorme expressed his affiliation with Garrel during a discussion following the avant-​première of Un Été brûlant at the Club de l’Etoile Cinéma on 22 September 2011.

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16  Philippe Garrel

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Methods The reading of Garrel’s oeuvre that follows draws on the revelations and insights provided by the available literature while at the same time providing several new strands of analysis. The chapters examine the relationship between Garrel’s work and May 68, exploring the link between the director’s formal innovation and the intellectual and political climate in France, something touched on by several writers, including Shafto and Forbes. Second, following from the approaches developed by Shafto in relation to the categorisation of Garrel, the study provides an interrogation of the label post-​New Wave  –​first proposed in reference to the film-​maker by Gilles Deleuze –​that has often been attached to him. Rather than presenting Garrel as a willing descendant of the New Wave, it considers the formal and thematic traits of his work that suggest an ambivalent relationship with the cinema of his forebears. The study also considers the director’s role as a film historian whose cinema traces the contours of a loose school of largely French film-​makers that followed the New Wave. A further aspect developed in the book is an exploration of the links between Garrel’s work and several avant-​gardes, including the Surrealists, the Situationists, the Italian artistic movement Arte povera and the American underground. Exploring the synergy between these movements and the film-​maker’s work provides a way of interpreting aspects of his oeuvre –​both formal and thematic –​resistant to straightforward critical exegesis. Additionally, the analysis that follows considers the significance of autobiography in Garrel’s films. Attention is paid to the autobiographical approaches used by the director, and his investigation of the porous relationship between art, dreams and everyday life. This field of enquiry, which resonates with Surrealist practice, emerges strongly in Garrel’s cinema in his post-​ underground period. In tracing Garrel’s cinema and its relationship to French culture and society, this study refers to his entire film oeuvre, including works that have not been seen by a wide audience. Nearly all Garrel’s films since Elle a passé tant d’heures sous les sunlights (1984) have been made available on DVD. Some of his earlier works –​including Marie pour mémoire (1967), Le Révélateur (1968), Le Lit de la vierge (1969), La Cicatrice intérieure (1972) –​have also received DVD releases. Many of Garrel’s earlier works remain stored in 35mm format in the archives

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Introduction  17

of the Cinémathèque Française, only visible during the occasional retrospective of his work. A  close analysis of the early, little-​seen works is provided, given their importance to an understanding of the evolution in Garrel’s style over the last half-century. The study is composed of five chapters that provide both a chronological and thematic presentation of Garrel’s oeuvre. The chapters are largely organised according to a periodisation which was proposed by the film-​maker in the early 1990s. Lescure outlines four distinct periods put forward by Garrel: L’œuvre de Philippe Garrel est divisée par lui même en quatre périodes: l’adolescence (1964–​1968) des Enfants désaccordés au Révélateur; les années-​Nico ou période underground (1968–​1978) de La Cicatrice Intérieure au Bleu des Origines; l’époque ‘narrative’, de L’Enfant secret –​ aux Sunlights. Une quatrième époque, caractérisée par le recours aux dialogues  –​réduits à leur plus simple expression voire inexistants dans les films précédents –​s’ouvre avec Les Baisers de secours (1989) et J’entends plus la guitare (1990).14 (Garrel and Lescure 1992: 26)

Advancing on these four periods outlined, Boully suggests a fifth period in Garrel’s cinema that begins with the release of Sauvage Innocence (2001). He notes that Garrel had previously alluded to an inability to film generations other than his own. The choice of two actors still in their twenties to play the principal roles in the work, is posited by Boully as creating an effect of rupture with his previous films. This period, addressing new generations, is the focus of the final chapter in the study. In accordance with this periodisation, the book is structured into the following chapters. Chapter  1 examines Garrel’s early works, which the director refers to as his adolescent phase. It looks at the development in this period (1964–​1968), moving from an early affinity with the New Wave to a more enigmatic and austere practice illuminated by its resonances with Situationist theory and practice. 14 ‘The oeuvre of Philippe Garrel is divided by himself into four periods: adolescence (1964–​1968) from Enfants désaccordés to Révélateur; the Nico-​Years or the underground period (1968–​ 1978) from La Cicatrice intérieure to Bleu des origines; the “narrative” period, from L’Enfant secret –​ to Sunlights. A  fourth period, characterised by the recourse to dialogues  –​reduced to their most simple expression, which had indeed been non-​existent in his previous films –​opens with Les Baisers de secours (1988) and J’entends plus la guitare (1990).’

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18  Philippe Garrel

Chapter 2 considers the films of the 1970s, designated by the term ‘underground’. It draws upon the American Underground, notably the cinema of Andy Warhol, as well as the precepts of the Italian avant-​garde Arte Povera in order to interpret the preoccupations and stylistic innovations of Garrel during this period (1969–​1978). The third chapter addresses the narrative period (1979–​1988), which begins with L’Enfant secret. It explores in particular the relationship between Garrel’s autobiographical approaches and Surrealism, especially the writings of André Breton, with whom the director expresses a close connection. A  second element of this chapter assesses Garrel’s role as historian, and in particular how he integrates the personal histories of film-​makers such as Chantal Akerman, Jacques Doillon and Jean Eustache, with a broader history of a loose cinematic school that evolved in the aftermath of the New Wave, the so-​called post-​New Wave. Chapter  4 addresses the tetralogy of films that mark Garrel’s first collaboration with scriptwriters:  Les Baisers de secours (1989), J’entends plus la guitare (1990), La Naissance de l’amour (1993) and Le Cœur fantôme (1998). These works continue in the vein of the previous period, engaging with aspects of both Garrel’s present and past life, including marital difficulties and the conflict that emerges between one’s responsibilities towards one’s career and one’s family. In addition to providing close readings of the films, the chapter assesses the aesthetic implications of Garrel’s various collaborations with screenwriters, cinematographers and sound engineers during this period. Chapter 5 addresses the most recent period in Garrel’s oeuvre, as identified by Boully. It considers the relationship between the films Le Vent de la nuit and Les Amants réguliers in terms of the memory and legacy of May 68. It also explores the latest trilogy of work produced by Garrel and what it suggests about the future directions of the director. Despite the different periods that mark Garrel’s career, the director’s oeuvre is defined by a distinct approach that renders a porous relationship between individual films. Through this, works from distinct periods are drawn into dialogue with one another and the impression emerges of a large body of intersecting and interdependent components. Throughout, Garrel reworks the same thematic preoccupations, including the couple, separation, suicide,

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Introduction  19

the material and existential struggles faced by artists and the relationship between art and the political. The same formal patterns recur, including a minimalist, uncluttered frame, the use of long-​ durational close-​ups, as well as contrasted cinematography that often reveals the grain of the film reel. In exploring his life and the lives of those close to him through the prism of a distinct romantic sensibility, Garrel elaborates a rich and variegated canvas that promotes a constant exchange between the imaginary and the real. This study aims to bear witness to Garrel’s singular approach and the rare cinematic landscape he has wrought for over half a century.

References Azalbert, Nicholas and Stéphane Delorme (2011) ‘Mon but c’est de faire des films d’amour politiques. Entretien avec Philippe Garrel’, Cahiers du cinéma, 671, pp. 69–​77. Azoury, Philippe (2013) Philippe Garrel en substance, Paris: Capricci. Bax, Dominique and Cyril Béghin (eds) (2013) Philippe Garrel. Théâtres au cinéma, Bobigny: Collection Magic Cinéma. Boully, Fabien (2004) ‘ “Entre deux personnes”: esthétique de la co-​présence dans la quatrième période du cinéma de Philippe Garrel’, PhD dissertation, Université Lumière, Lyon. Brenez, Nicole (1998) De la figure en général et du corps en particulier. L’invention figurative au cinéma, Brussels: De Boeck Université. Brenez, Nicole (2013) ‘Philippe Garrel, l’œuvre télévisuelle’, in Bax and Béghin, Philippe Garrel. Théâtres au cinéma, pp. 124–​126. Collective authors, ‘Notre-​ Dame-​ des-​ Landes. Nous, cinéastes, appelons à filmer et à défendre ce territoire qui bat et se bat’, Le Monde (17 May 2018). Comolli, Jean-​Louis, Jean Narboni and Jacques Rivette (1968) ‘Cerclé sous vide. Entretien avec Philippe Garrel’, Cahiers du cinéma, 204, pp. 44–​63. De Baecque, Antoine (2010) Godard, biographie, Paris: Grasset. Deleuze, Gilles (2005) Cinema II:  The Time Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta, London: Continuum. Forbes, Jill (1992) The Cinema in France after the New Wave, London: Macmillan/​ BFI. Garrel, Philippe and Thomas Lescure (1992) Une caméra à la place du cœur, Aix-​en-​Provence: Admiranda/​Institut de l’Image. Grasshoff, Thibault (2015) Philippe Garrel, une esthétique de la survivance, La Madeleine: Lettmotif. Harvey, Sylvia (1978) May ’68 and Film Culture, London: BFI. Jousse, Thierry (1991) ‘Le Cinéma au présent. Philippe Garrel, Serge Daney: Dialogues’, Cahiers du cinéma, 443–​444, pp. 58–​63.

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20  Philippe Garrel

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Shafto, Sally (2000) The Zanzibar Films and the Dandies of May 1968, New York: Zanzibar USA. Tsukidate, Nanako (2018) ‘Philippe Garrel et sa generation dans les années 1960–​ 1970’, Débordements. www.debordements.fr/​Philippe-​Garrel-​l-​experience​interieure-​exterieure-​671 (accessed 10 August 2019).

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1 Cinema and revolution

The culmination of the adolescent period of Garrel’s film-​making coincided with the revolutionary événements of May 68. Having started out by making several short films and working for French television as a young teenager, Garrel began a frenetic period of production. Within two years the director made four feature films: Anémone (1967), Marie pour mémoire (1967), Le Révélateur (1968) and La Concentration (1968). He was also responsible for one of the collectively produced agitational films referred to as cinétracts which was made during the événements of May 68. Actua I (1968) was shot on the streets of Paris, occupied by demonstrators engaged in pitched battles with the CRS (Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité). In addition to the task of finding a cinematic response to the political turmoil in France in the late 1960s, a significant challenge faced by the film-​maker when starting out was how to negotiate a relationship with the substantial heritage of the New Wave. René Prédal compares the influence of the New Wave on the directors who followed to that of a shock wave with numerous aftershocks. Referring directly to Garrel, he writes: ‘[M]‌ême les auteurs révélés à la fin des années 1960 ont été classés eux aussi dans la postérité directe d’une Nouvelle Vague vite légitimée et volontiers dotée d’une généreuse descendance, certes évidente pour Philippe Garrel (Anémone 1967)’1 (Prédal 2008:  5). Although the influence of the film style and thematic 1 ‘[E]‌ven the auteurs that came to light at the end of the 1960s have themselves been classed in direct posterity to a New Wave quickly legitimated and willingly equipped with a generous descendance, especially evident for Philippe Garrel (Anémone 1967).’

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22  Philippe Garrel

preoccupations of the New Wave are evident in Garrel’s adolescent works, the young director progressively deviated from this, developing a distinctive aesthetic resonant with the prevailing political climate in France and beyond. This growing distinction is evident in Garrel’s reaction to dominant photo-​journalistic depictions of political dissent in Actua I. It is also evident in the film-​maker’s desire to bring to the surface a repressed trauma underlying the outbreak of revolt in May, in Le Révélateur and La Concentration. The austerity of these films signals an approach to form and film meaning that breaks with Garrel’s cinematic antecedents. At this time Garrel made references in public statements and within his films to the Situationists, a political avant-​garde whose utopian slogans, including ‘ne plus jamais travailler’,2 ‘sous les pavés la plage’3 and ‘vivre sans temps mort, jouir sans entraves’,4 have since come to define May 68 in the popular imagination. In addition to agitating through slogans daubed on walls around the city of Paris, the Situationists propagated their ideas through the journal the Internationale Situationniste and through the film work and writings of Guy Debord, who published The Society of the Spectacle in 1967. The latter text delivered a withering critique of the violence of late capitalism, and its transformation of authentic lived experience into ‘mere representation’. Critical concepts developed by Debord, including détournement (the hijacking and redirection of existing imagery and texts for critical purposes) and the notion of an ‘anti-​cinema’, were resonant in intellectual circles in France at the time and captured the attention of Garrel. The critical theory and practice of the Situationists open avenues for interpreting aspects of the film-​maker’s later adolescent works which are often resistant to simple exegesis.

Early shorts and television work: Les Enfants désaccordés (1966), Droit de visite (1966), Bouton Rouge and Seize million des jeunes Before progressing to making feature films, Garrel’s cinematic debut was announced with two short films which were followed by several 2 ‘Never work again’. 3 ‘Under the paving stones the beach’. 4 ‘Live without dead time, make love without constraint’.

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Cinema and revolution  23

works made for French television. While at times reflecting the significant influence of the New Wave, these early works are testament to the remarkable innovation of the young director and contain the seeds of the distinctive stylistic traits that would mark his later cinema. The title of Garrel’s first short, Les Enfants désaccordés, translates roughly as ‘children out of tune’. It provides a snapshot of a young couple at odds with society. Christiane Pérez plays the role of the adolescent girl and Pascal Roy plays the role of the adolescent boy, neither of whom is given a name. The film is defined by a striking oneiric quality and a non-​realist style. An example of this treatment is evident when the couple are shown sitting on a park bench as the boy alludes to the constraint and pressure imposed by his family. When he notes that his mother would have liked him to have become an actor, the image cuts to a series of still shots of the boy in various poses, like screen tests, the last of which shows his head in his hands in despair. This anti-​realist, parodic quality is sustained when the couple’s absence is dissected in the form of television-​style interviews with the young man’s teacher (Marcel Domerc), and the girl’s father (Maurice Garrel). During the father’s laconic testimony, following his daughter’s disappearance, he refers to his own childhood. Searching for explanations for his daughter’s behaviour, he alludes to the war at one stage, commenting parenthetically ‘où on a été … été … occupé’.5 His hesitation plays on the double meaning of ‘occupé’ in French, meaning ‘occupied’ but also the more neutral and anodyne ‘busy’. The latter euphemistic deployment suggests an explanation behind the flight of the boy and girl. Their rebellion appears as a reaction to the hidden horrors of the French collaboration with Nazi Germany, something that many in France were keen to repress. Having met in a Parisian café, the couple decide to steal a car before driving to an abandoned chateau. Here they perform a Baroque dance in an empty room. The camera oscillates around them, forming a swirling chiaroscuro against the light entering by the windows. Discussing the lyrical explosion of the dance sequence, Garrel posits it as indicative of the distinction between his film and the cinema of the New Wave: ‘Dans un film de la Nouvelle Vague on aurait vu un 5 ‘Where we were … were … occupied.’

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24  Philippe Garrel

slow dans une chambre, un Teppaz’6 (Garrel and Lescure 1992: 35). However, in many other respects the film’s affinities with the New Wave predominate. The choice of the setting for the first encounter between the young couple is consistent with many New Wave films in which cafés often serve as locations for meetings and chance encounters. The story of youthful rebellion resonates strongly with films such as François Truffaut’s Les Quatre cents coups in which the young Antoine Doinel (Jean-​Pierre Léaud) finds himself in conflict both with his family and the institutions of school and penitentiary, before his desperate flight in search of freedom. Finally, the insertion of still photographic portraits of the girl and of the boy adopting a range of poses are reminiscent of the use of freeze frames of Jeanne Moreau in Truffaut’s Jules et Jim (1962), simulating various expressions of contrasting emotion. The film reflects an experimental treatment of narration and oneirism. A silent sequence towards the end of the film opens with a shot of the young man in a white dressing gown holding a large axe in his hands. This is followed by a lengthy, fast-​moving tracking-​ shot of the girl, clothed similarly to the boy and filmed from behind, fleeing across the grounds of the chateau. As she eventually falls to the ground in exhaustion, a low-​angle shot of the boy in shadow shows him swinging the axe violently towards the ground in what we assume to be her direction. Despite this apparent act of violence, the girl reappears in the penultimate sequence, pushing the young boy in a wheelchair as though touring the grounds of an asylum. These chronological inconsistencies and aberrations in cause and effect clash with realist tendencies in the film and create a distinctive oneiric quality in Garrel’s evocation of the young people’s malaise. Despite the film’s indebtedness to existent tropes of the New Wave, the burlesque, violent rage of Pascal could in fact be considered as a precursor to the cannibalistic violence of the Seine and Oise Liberation Front, witnessed at the conclusion to Godard’s Weekend (1967). Like Godard’s film, which has been considered as a prognosis of the anger and discontent that would explode in May 68, Garrel’s work, even at this early stage, appeared to have a finger on the pulse of a wider sentiment within France. In this respect, his reflections 6 ‘In a New Wave film we would have seen a slow dance in a bedroom, a record player.’

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on the film in an interview that coincided with its first screening for French television in 1967 are noteworthy. Jacques Demeure, the presenter of the programme Banc-​d’essai, pushes Garrel to concede that the film is ultimately an evocation of dissatisfaction and rebellion among young people. Garrel, whose manner appears somewhere between arrogant and insecure, refuses Demeure’s premise. Rejecting the assertion that the film is merely about disaffected youth, he positions the out-​of-​tuneness of the young protagonists as part of a general malaise afflicting society, diagnosing a type of monstrosity that no right-​thinking person is immune to: ‘Manifestement, toute personne qui a intérêt pour les choses vraies doit de temps en temps voir une espèce d’évidence en face de la monstruosité de la vie extérieure’,7 adding, ‘Mettre ça sur le dos de la jeunesse serait trahir ce que je voulais dire.’8 Les Enfants désaccordés was followed by a second short film Droit de visite. A boy, whose parents are divorced, visits his father and his father’s young mistress for the weekend. The style of the film is more conventional than Les Enfants désaccordés and the oneiric quality of the previous work is less marked. It is noteworthy, however, as a reflection of Garrel’s integration of his personal life with his cinema from an early stage. Maurice Garrel relates how Philippe, having found himself in a similar position to the young boy of the film, following his father’s separation from his mother, sought to integrate this lived experience into his cinema. He adds that the treatment of youth and adolescence in his son’s first two short films was ‘directement inspiré de la vie’9 (Morice 2012: 167). Following his two short films, Garrel began working for the programmes Bouton Rouge and Seize million de jeunes on French television. The works directed by Garrel for Bouton Rouge feature musicians such as Donovan, The Who and French pop artists including Ronnie Bird, Michel Polnareff and the model Zouzou, who later played a leading role in two of Garrel’s early feature films. Other works marry a playfulness on Garrel’s part with a growing polemical slant. Handa et la sophistication (1967) proposes a portrait of 7 ‘Clearly, anyone who has an interest in truth must from time to time see a sort of self-​evidence when faced with the monstrosity of the exterior world.’ 8 ‘To blame that on young people would be a betrayal of what I was trying to say.’ 9 ‘Directly inspired by life’.

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the female dandy, embodied by a model named Handa. Filmed in close-​up, she recounts her day-​to-​day life. Precocious and unapologetic, she concludes her account with a provocative address to the audience: ‘Bon, si vous êtes tombée amoureuse de moi, vous pouvez m’écrire, vous risquez rien. Vous n’avez aucune chance, j’ai horreur, mais vraiment horreur des gens qui regardent la télé.’10 Handa’s provocative address to the TV-​watching public is mirrored in an introduction delivered by Garrel to a programme on the theme of young people and money, Les jeunes et l’argent: France Gall, Marianne Faithful (1967). In a short piece-​to-​camera the director begins by detailing how the programme is about young people’s adaptation to the capitalist system, before adding: Entendez par là, ceux qui ont déjà accepté de lutter pour l’argent et plus précisément, ceux qui ont réussi. Cette soirée étant placée sous le signe de la jeunesse, c’est à eux que je m’adresse, parce que moi je commence vraiment sérieusement à manquer d’air.11

In these moments of provocation, Nicole Brenez recognises Garrel’s rare success in adopting a critical stance while working in an audiovisual field governed both by the Gaullist state and the diktat of commercial interests. Brenez also observes how within this largely forgotten period of the film-​maker’s career, stylistic traits (approaches to portraiture, oneirism) and themes central to his cinema (dandyism, drugs, romanticism, anarchism) are present, in addition to a humorous tone that is often unacknowledged in his work (Brenez 2013). For Bouton Rouge Garrel also directed Godard et ses émules (1967), a feature-​length documentary focusing on the most recent generation of film-​makers in France whose careers began in the wake of the New Wave. It features interviews with Jean Eustache, Francis Leroi, Jean-​Michel Barjol, Romain Goupil and Luc Moullet. The interviews are intercut with short extracts from the work of the directors in question, including Eustache’s Le Père Noël a les yeux bleus (1967), which 10 ‘OK, so if you’ve fallen in love with me, feel free to write. You’ve nothing to lose, you don’t have a chance. I can’t stand, really can’t stand, people who watch TV.’ 11 ‘By this, I mean those who have already accepted competing for money, and more precisely for those who have already succeeded. Given that this evening is concerned with today’s youth, it’s to them I’m speaking, because personally I’m really starting to suffocate here.’

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had been released in the same year. The film opens with a long panning shot of the Parisian skyline accompanied by a voice-​over from Garrel in which he attacks the current climate of film production in France and a critical culture that has led to the neglect of young film-​ makers ‘qui s’obstinent à réaliser des films libres’.12 A refrain of many of those interviewed is their indebtedness to Godard’s revolution of film form and modes of film production, as well as his financial support for their work. Garrel is said to have decided to make the work in part as a pretext for having access to the set of La Chinoise (Tsukidate 2018)  and the documentary includes several outdoor sequences showing Godard directing the film, accompanied by a voice-​over from Jean-​Michel Barjol discussing the latter’s talent and influence. Godard et ses émules is not, however, a straightforward hagiography. It also features an interview with Romain Goupil in which the then spokesperson for the Jeunesse Communiste Révolutionnaire (JCR) criticises La Chinoise for having ‘récupéré l’irrécupérable, c’est à dire la révolution’.13 A similar attempt to sketch a portrait of a generation of film-​makers emerges just over twenty years later with Les Ministères de l’art (1988), a film which adopts a comparable approach to Garrel’s treatment of France’s young directors in 1967, this time focusing on a group of directors that include Jacques Doillon, Chantal Akerman and Leos Carax.

Before the revolution: Anémone (1967), Marie pour mémoire (1967) Garrel’s association with French television led to the production of his first feature film Anémone (1967). Following this, he cut his ties with the ORTF and made the independently produced feature Marie pour mémoire (1967), financed in part thanks to the support of Claude Berri. The transition from short works to feature film-​making was considered as a rite of passage by many of the New Wave directors. Garrel’s rapid progression to make his first independent feature meant that, at only nineteen years of age, he could consider himself as an established film-​maker. His youth eclipsed that of the New Wave directors, the majority of whom made their first features when 12 ‘Who persist in making films without constraint’. 13 ‘Recuperated the irrecuperable, meaning the revolution’.

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in their late twenties. As with Garrel’s short films, aspects of Anémone and Marie pour mémoire reveal formal and thematic similarities with the cinema of the New Wave. Nevertheless, these films also reflect a growing distinction from the cinema of the director’s predecessors. Anémone provides a portrait of an adolescent girl who decides to run away from her family, establishing an immediate parallel with Les Enfants désaccordés. It also stars Pascal Laperrousaz, the young male star of the latter film, in a leading role. The black and white cinematography of Garrel’s first shorts is replaced on this occasion by saturated 16mm colour stock. The film opens with a close-​up of the timetable of a lycéen specialising in arts and humanities, with the title ‘Leur emploi de mon temps’.14 The latter suggests the constraining influence of the curriculum and, more generally, the spatial and temporal control exerted by the timetable on the individual as expounded by Michel Foucault. Foucault identifies the timetable as a system that creates docile bodies by constructing ‘disciplinary time’. He considers the timetable’s inheritance from monastic communities, in which it developed methods to establish daily rhythms, impose discrete occupations and regulate repetitious cycles –​methods that later became widespread through the incorporation of the timetable into hospitals, workshops and schools (Foucault 1991: 135–​169). The school timetable amounts to one of several repressive ties that Anémone attempts to escape in the course of the film. Other constraints that Anémone attempts to flee include the comforts and rituals of her bourgeois lifestyle and the repressive control of her psychoanalyst father (Maurice Garrel). The second sequence of the film is composed of a static shot of Anémone and her father dining together in a sparsely decorated living room. Their meal, which consists of spooned servings of honey, evokes Garrel’s distance from realist codes of dramaturgy and establishes a parodic tone that predominates in the film. As they converse, Anémone draws attention both to the controlling parental influence of her father, and to the psychoanalytic profession to which he adheres, labelling him as both ‘détecteur’ and ‘détective’.15 These twin roles are drawn together in the film’s conclusion, when, following Anémone and Pascal’s role in a robbery, the father assumes the role of a police-​officer who turns 14 ‘Their use of my time’. 15 ‘Detector’ and ‘detective’.

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up at a café to arrest the young man and restore Anémone to his paternalistic control. If the plot suggests a conventional tale of adolescent rebellion, it is replete with self-​referential strategies that discourage straightforward identification with characters and disrupt the binding hold of plot development. The first example of this is evident in the sequence where Anémone initially encounters Pascal. It opens with a mirror reflection showing a close-​up of a camera-​operator staring into a viewfinder, hand clasped around the lens. The shot pans downwards from the mirror to reveal Anémone in close-​up studying at a café table. An off-camera voice can be heard directing her to look to the right. As she does so, the camera zooms out and pans slightly to the left to reveal Pascal at a neighbouring table. Reflected in the mirror above him is the camera operator, this time with three other members of a film crew now visible, one of whom is the young Garrel. The sequence draws attention to the artifice of the film’s construction, underlined by the director’s cameo. Garrel makes one further brief appearance in the work, in a short sequence introduced by a clapboard. While staring into the camera, with his naked upper-​body visible, he declares: ‘Je ne voudrais pas m’étendre plus longtemps sur ce qui va suivre mais simplement devancer au passage le malentendu qui pourrait subsister entre vous et moi qui fais le film.’16 The phrase is ambiguous, but it suggests that Garrel’s interruption is not merely playful or ironic but is consistent with a wish to bring about a conflictual relationship with the spectator reminiscent of aspects of his television work, including the performance by Handa. The initial refusal of the ORTF to broadcast the film suggests that Garrel had been prescient in assuming the lack of comprehension of the public. The end titles include an acknowledgement of all the police who contributed to the film’s production, appearing to be a sardonic allusion to the censure of the ORTF.17

16 ‘I don’t wish to elaborate much further on what will follow, simply to pre-​ empt the misunderstanding that might occur between you and me who is making the film.’ 17 Garrel recalls how he was forced to steal a copy of the film that was later screened in a cinema in the Latin Quarter of Paris (Garrel and Lescure 1992: 38–​39).

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Other elements in the film signal a desire to frustrate a relationship of complicity between the film-​maker and the viewer. These include reference by characters to the story of the film that is unfolding. The final attack of the policeman-​father-​psychoanalyst on the young bandit-​hero of the film leaves him lying for dead in the street, a conclusion that has overtones of the fate of Michel Poiccard (Jean-​ Paul Belmondo) in Godard’s À Bout de souffle (1959). Just prior to this, as the couple hide out in a café, Pascal excuses himself to go to the toilet. In a close-​up shot from inside the toilet booth, he turns to the camera saying ‘Je répète ma propre mort’,18 before he spits blood from his mouth and collapses to the ground. By alerting the spectator to the film’s conclusion, Pascal’s commentary upsets the auratic grip of a linear plot that progresses towards the jouissance of narrative resolution. Following their first encounter in the café, Anémone entertains Pascal in her room, showing him old books passed down to her from her grandmother. He remains expressionless and virtually motionless as she chats freely. The final shot of the sequence consists of a long-​durational take of the couple sitting on a bed. Leafing through some of her old diaries, Anémone provides an off-​the-​cuff commentary on various entries she has made at different stages of her life, before proposing to read an extract written the previous year. In response to this, Pascal speaks for the first time: ‘Si tu as envie de te donner en spectacle, alors ne te gêne pas, c’est pour eux.’19 He delivers these last words with a gesture indicating the position of the camera, before getting up from the bed and walking out of shot. Pascal’s reference to ‘spectacle’ deploys for the first time in Garrel’s oeuvre a critical term that was introduced by the Situationists and would achieve widespread currency in the same year, following the publication of Guy Debord’s La Societé du spectacle. In this instance Pascal’s sudden intervention displays an intent to upset the comfort of the spectator, challenging the voyeurism implicit in being witness to this intimate recital. A similar approach is evident later in the first sexual encounter between the couple, filmed in a single shot from above the bed with Anémone and Pascal both lying on their backs

18 ‘I’m rehearsing my own death.’ 19 ‘If you want to offer yourself as a spectacle, then go ahead, it’s for them.’

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facing upwards. Each successive mechanical gesture in this parody of lovemaking is introduced by Pascal’s commentary ‘premièrement, deuxièment’20 and so on. The austere distance provided by the camera framing and the exaggerated performance reinforce the attack on the cinema as a voyeuristic spectacle. Despite practices in Anémone that run contrary to the codes of a mainstream cinema, the film bears many similarities to the cinema of the New Wave. This is something that the director seemed to acknowledge himself when a year after the film’s completion he described it as ‘très mauvais, complètement Godardien’21 (Comolli, Narboni and Rivette 1968:  46). The dominant themes of the film, including issues of youth, revolt and sexuality  –​in a similar vein to Les Enfants désaccordés and Droit de visite –​reveal Garrel’s strong affinity with his cinematic predecessors. The use of location shooting in cafés and on the streets of Paris compounds the impression of the residual influence of the New Wave. It appears that at this stage Garrel was a willing descendant of Truffaut, Godard et al. One sequence, however, suggests early signs of Garrel developing a more distinct cinematic language. Following Anémone’s decision to elope with Pascal, the couple are filmed in a static shot from the inside of a taxi, circling around the large courtyard at the front of the Louvre. She debates whether or not she has made the right decision, as Pascal once again remains silent. The taxi completes the large loop of the courtyard three times, captured in a continuous fix-​framed shot lasting three minutes. This circular repetition, arresting a linear narrative progression, is unsettling to watch. The motif of circularity, both within sequences and as an overall structuring device relating one sequence to the next, will predominate in Garrel’s cinema post-​May 68. At this stage, the sequence still remains implicated in the logic of character psychology and motivation, reinforcing Anémone’s hesitation to abandon the comfort and familiarity of her bourgeois background. In addition to this, her refrain: ‘qu’est-​ce qu’on va faire?’,22 as she pleads with Pascal, is reminiscent of Marianne Renoir’s (Anna Karina) repeated ‘qu’est-​ce que je peux faire? Je sais pas quoi faire’23 20 ‘First, second’. 21 ‘Very bad, totally Godardien’. 22 ‘What will we do?’ 23 ‘What shall I do? I don’t know what to do.’

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in Godard’s Pierrot le fou (1965). Garrel still appeared to be suffering from an anxiety of influence in relation to his predecessors. The director’s first independent feature, Marie pour mémoire (1967), displays similarities with Anémone, including the presence of Philippe’s father, Maurice, and the deployment of techniques of distanciation. Yet in other ways the narrative is much more fragmented and incoherent, conveying Garrel’s shift to a more experimental cinematic approach and a greater stylistic autonomy. Garrel describes the story of Marie pour mémoire as being about two couples who were supposed to have met through a matrimonial agency. A  mix-​up in their papers, however, led to the wrong match being made, resulting in one couple becoming ‘ultra-​rationnel’24 and the other ‘romantique, suicidaire’.25 But if this description of the story implies a familiar romantic plot, involving confusion and disorder followed by reconciliation, the summary that was used to introduce the film at the Festival International du Jeune Cinéma de Hyères in 1968 describes a very different work. Film réalisé en dix jours, par un imposteur, protégé par le statut d’artiste. Constat pessimiste plutôt que film critique, parce que tout va bien dans le monde occidental, excepté les hommes qui y vivent. Partis pour tourner un manifeste athée, on est revenus avec un éloge de la folie dans les boîtes. Le jeune homme qui vient d’impressionner ces images mentales sur la pellicule attend, faute de mieux, le quiproquo entre la société et le film.26 (Garrel and Lescure 1992: 42)

The presentation, resonant with Garrel’s intervention in his address to camera in Anémone, is reflective of the director’s combative approach, deliberately seeking the incomprehension of the viewer. The reference to an elegy to madness pre-​empts the portrayal of the young people in the film, as well as the disconcerting approach adopted with regard to montage. 24 ‘Ultra-​rational’. 25 ‘Romantic, suicidal’. 26 ‘Film made in ten days, by an imposter protected by the status of artist. A pessimistic statement, rather than a critical film, because all is well in the Western world, except the people who live there. Having set out to film an atheistic manifesto, we ended up with an elegy to madness in the film canisters. The young man who has inscribed these mental images on the camera reel is waiting, having done all he can, for the conflict between society and the film.’

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Shot in black and white, Marie pour mémoire opens with a close-​ up of a couple sitting opposite one another, their bleached faces in profile isolated with a spotlight against the penumbra of the background. Blandine (Nicole Laguigner), to the left of the shot, asks her counterpart, Jesus (Didier Léon), ‘Qui es-​tu?’,27 to which he responds by declaring that he is Hieronymus Bosch. The camera pans slowly to the left to reveal a couple adjacent to them, Marie (Zouzou) and Gabriel (Thierry Garrel). Marie and Gabriel’s discussion is delivered through a voice-​over provided by the first couple. Blandine, offscreen, repeats once more ‘Qui es-​tu?’ and Jesus replies on behalf of Gabriel: ‘Situationniste le seul mouvement vraiment Marxiste qui tente d’élucider l’aliénation de l’homme dans le monde moderne.’28 The camera tracks back to the original couple, and Blandine utters the refrain:  ‘Qui es-​tu?’. The camera movement is repeated once again, before settling on the two female characters seated back to back in the middle of this configuration of bodies. They discuss the mix-​up in the partner they have been assigned, before agreeing to accept the mismatch. The unusual camera panning helps to conjure the confusion in the film referred to by Garrel, presenting numerous configurations of couples including the two women in the final framing. This is added to by the multiple identities assumed by Jesus and Gabrielle, which include the psychoanalytic theorist Jacques Lacan and the film-​maker Erich von Stroheim, in addition to the previously mentioned Bosch, and the Situationist. The use of an off-​screen voice, whereby a character out-​of-​shot speaks on behalf of another in-​shot, is also found in Godard’s Weekend (1967). This occurs when two binmen, representing the Middle East (László Szabó) and Sub-​Saharan Africa (Sanvi Panou), each iterate the reflections of the other in the form of political slogans. The rejection of the shot-​reverse-​shot convention through the use of a repetitive panning movement is another technique deployed by Godard, notably in Le Gai savoir (1969). These factors reflect Garrel’s continued debt to one of the most significant representatives of the New Wave. Nevertheless, compared to Anémone, Marie pour mémoire establishes a stronger stylistic 27 ‘Who are you?’ 28 ‘Situationist, the only truly Marxist movement that attempts to elucidate the alienation of man in the modern world.’

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distinction. The identity and role of characters are less defined in Marie pour mémoire. Continuities exist with Anémone in the infantilisation of Marie by a parental figure, evident when she is shown being bathed by her mother (Silvaine Massart), who washes her hair violently and watches over her whilst she eats a yoghurt. However, Maurice Garrel’s role in the film is more confused; a taxi-​driver in one sequence, in later sequences he appears as a cross between an analyst and human resources manager, dressed in military garb, when he interrogates both Gabriel and Jesus. Furthermore, the development of the relationship between the couples appears to be virtually abandoned, as Garrel dispenses with a coherent narrative and with characters who possess singular identities. A second factor that establishes distance from the New Wave is the presence of strategies of self-​referentiality aimed at discomforting the spectator. One sequence that stands out in this respect begins with a handheld close-​up shot that follows Marie as she walks around the exterior of an abandoned church. The shot is entirely silent. The camera follows her as she enters the building via a small staircase and explores the interior of the ruin, which is laden with wooden joists and bits of masonry that have collapsed to the floor. In the distance she notices the figure of Jesus, sitting on the ground with his head in his hands, and walks towards him before tapping him on the shoulder. He stands up, they put their arms around each other and begin to waltz slowly together. The camera continues to observe them in close-​up. As they move to embrace each other, the camera draws back suddenly with great rapidity. The image then cuts to a longshot from outside the church showing Gabriel, unseen until now, violently expelling the camera operator from the same passageway that Marie had previously entered. Sound is reintroduced and Gabriel can be heard shouting at the cameraman, ‘Écartez vous, écartez vous, la vie n’est pas un spectacle.’29 Gabriel’s outburst incorporates the second reference in Garrel’s cinema to a critical term belonging to the Situationists, underpinning the director’s affinity with this political avant-​garde movement. The Cahiers journalists who interviewed Garrel in 1968 observed a shifting tonal register in his work, less ironic and more critical than was the case with Anémone. 29 ‘Get out of here, get out of here, life is not a spectacle.’

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Il y a une distance beaucoup plus grande, et qui n’est pas du tout faite de recul ou d’ironie. Dans Marie pour mémoire reviennent souvent des phrases comme: ‘Je me donne en représentation’, ‘Comme ma douleur est spectaculaire’, ‘Comme je me montre’, etc. ce qui est extrêmement significatif: Tu dénonces un certain narcissisme, vis-​à-​ vis duquel tes personnages prennent aussi leurs distances.30 (Comolli et al. 1968: 47)

These direct allusions to the performance that is unfolding before the spectator challenge the spectator’s uncomplicated identification with the fiction on the screen. Perhaps owing to the confrontational relationship the film establishes with the viewer, the audience at Hyères reacted angrily when Marie pour mémoire was announced as the winning film at the festival for young cinema. The boos that met the film when it was first shown at Hyères seem the desired outcome to the defiant stance adopted in the film with respect to the audience. The misunderstanding that Garrel anticipated between his film and society in his presentation to the work seemed to be realised at an early stage. A sequence towards the end of the film establishes a different relationship with the city of Paris from what was portrayed previously in Garrel’s cinema, signalling a shift towards a more marginal position. The sequence opens with a shot of Jesus and Marie standing in the foreground of a vast expanse of agricultural land. They are dressed in pale-​coloured overcoats, with dark trousers and cloth tied around their feet extending up to their ankles. A  panorama of high-​rise apartments and industrial buildings is visible in the distance, forming the suburban perimeter of the Parisian centre. The couple stare into the camera as Jesus makes a hysterical speech that develops into a celebration of madness. Once he has completed this tirade, they both turn away from the camera and begin to skip off unsteadily into the vast muddy wasteland. As they do so, the camera tracks rapidly to the left, perpendicular to the bereft landscape, before coming to rest on Gabriel and Blandine. The second couple are seated opposite each other on a white cloth placed on the ground. This time Gabriel 30 ‘There is a greater difference and it is not just about drawing back or being ironic. Phrases such as “I give myself in representation”, “How spectacular is my pain”, “How I show myself” etc. recur in Marie pour mémoire which are extremely meaningful because you denounce a certain narcissism from which your characters also distance themselves.’

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36  Philippe Garrel

delivers a speech to the camera that culminates in an attack on the passive spectator:  ‘Mais reprenons notre fiction, pour ceux qui ont remis à demain ce qu’ils pouvaient déclencher le jour même. Fin des informations.’31 The shot tracks to the left, once more with rapidity, for over a minute. The incongruous sound of ragtime music on the soundtrack accompanies the camera’s survey of the desolate terrain. The sequence in the suburbs is like a short film, independent unto itself. It appears to have nothing in common with the short sequence prior to it (a profile shot of a heavily pregnant Marie descending a staircase) and the sequence that follows it (a medium-​shot of Marie and her mother in which the bump has been replaced by a labyrinthine circle drawn on her stomach). The irrational approach to sequence arrangement and the peculiarity of the long horizontal tracking-​shots through a suburban wasteland heighten the celebration of madness in Jesus’s and Gabriel’s speech. This sequence maps out Garrel’s move towards a more marginal position in the cinematic landscape. In this respect it is significant that the actors perform in a hinterland, beyond the outskirts of a city that was central to the cinema of the New Wave. Apart from Garrel’s next film Actua I, filmed during May 68, this is the last work that he shot in Paris until Les Hautes Solitudes in 1974. Although filmed in Paris, the latter centres on the landscape of Jean Seberg’s face rather than the context of Paris as a city. It is only in L’Enfant secret (1979) that Garrel returns to use Paris as a recognisable location in the manner of his first films. The suburban wasteland provides a precursor to the desert landscapes that predominate in Garrel’s early underground films. It reflects the director’s increasing experimentation and an approach to formal composition that actively seeks to provoke and challenge the spectator by frustrating straightforward interpretation and challenging common-​sense explanation.

Film-​maker on the barricades: Actua 1 Referring to the out-​of-​step young people in Marie pour mémoire, Thomas Lescure sees the film as a premonition of May 68 (Garrel 31 ‘But let’s take up our fiction again, for those who put off until tomorrow what they could begin today. End of the news.’

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and Lescure 1992: 43). In Garrel’s next work, Actua I, he filmed what was taking place on the streets as part of a film-​making collective. Considered lost for some time, various accounts of the fate of Actua I circulated before it was discovered in the Archives Françaises du Film at the CNC in 2012. The restoration of the film took place at the Cinémathèque Française before it was screened at the Côté Court short film festival in Pantin in 2014. Garrel’s reflections on the film shortly after it was made provide an insight into his standpoint vis-​ à-​vis the cinema at the time, drawing upon theoretical positions adopted by Debord. The comments made by Garrel display a growing politicisation of his outlook and an urgency to explore the potential emancipatory role of the cinema.32 Filmed in black and white, Actua I was the only cinétract to use 35mm, incorporating additional anonymous 16mm footage recorded by demonstrators. The collage of imagery is accompanied at various intervals by a voice-​over that takes the form of pithy slogans delivered by a male and a female. Although the film incorporates a striking lateral tracking-​shot of the CRS in formation on bridge, there is no footage of the barricades erected by militants. Garrel’s reflections on the refusal to film the barricades reveal a deliberate opposition to the televisual documentations of the protests: Filmer les barricades, c’est complètement aberrant, parce que c’est n’avoir aucun rapport avec quoi que ce soit: c’est à la fois être absent de la barricade, ailleurs que le type qui est sur la barricade à envoyer les pavés, donc être en sécurité par rapport au danger, et rapporter l’évènement au présent en disant:  ‘Voilà, il s’est passé ça pendant que je vivais.’ Ce qui est l’abolition de la pensée.33 (Comolli et  al. 1968: 54)

His comments draw attention to the physical separation of those filming the barricades from the demonstrators. The resultant

32 For a detailed study of the genesis of the film and an analysis of its formal patterns, see Vergé (2016). 33 ‘Filming the barricades is totally absurd because it means having absolutely no connection with anything at all. It is to be at once absent from the barricades, to be in relative safety, elsewhere than the people throwing paving stones, and it is also a way of transporting the event to the present as if to say “that happened when I was living”. It’s the abolition of thinking.’

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perspective of the barricades aligns the media with the forces of order, and in opposition to those seeking revolution. In addition to attacking this physical separation, Garrel attacks the intellectual bareness of the testimony produced by unreflective, mass-​media representations of the événements. His analysis conceptualises a temporal separation conferred by such configurations, serving to immediately historicise the unrest by transporting it to a future audience as news commerce. Instead, he places himself in direct opposition to these media responses, quite literally providing the reverse shot to what they disseminate to a passive viewing public, equally separated from the struggles on the barricade. When discussing Actua I, Garrel elaborates on the notion of the relationship between televisual documentations of the violent upheaval during May 68 and the defusing of anger. In doing so, he attacks the treatment of the événements by French television: ‘D’ailleurs tout le monde patauge dans cette notion de spectacle. Je pense aux Situationistes qui la dénoncent. Parce qu’en fait, la “Télévision Française” a montré aussi des barricades, mais il s’avère que c’est nul, parce que les gens se défoulent sur l’image à ce moment là’34 (Comolli et al. 1968: 54). Invoking the Situationists, Garrel’s critique attacks the role of photojournalism and televisual imagery in absorbing and deflecting anger. He proposes that the cinema has an aesthetico-​political function, and should not participate in subduing the spectator by rewarding a voyeuristic urge for gratification. Garrel’s reference to the Situationists, adding to the allusions drawn in Anémone and Marie pour mémoire, suggests the influence of the avant-​ garde on his approach to filming May 68. Guy Debord’s attack on the operation of televisual media is developed in his first short films, Sur le passage de quelques personnes à travers une assez courte unité du temps (1959) and Critique de la séparation (1961).35 Both works feature a collage of diverse imagery, much of it drawn from newsreel broadcasts. In the 34 ‘Anyway, everyone is mired in this notion of the spectacular. I’m thinking of the Situationists who denounce it. The fact is that “French Television” also showed the barricades, but it turns out that it is useless because people just get off on the images.’ 35 The extracts from the voice-​over cited in this chapter, and elsewhere in this book, are taken from the edited English translation by Ken Knabb (Debord 2003). From here on, Sur le passage de quelques personnes à travers une assez courte unité du temps will be referred to as Sur le passage.

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collage of imagery assembled in Sur le passage, footage is deployed of the suppression of uprisings in Japan, showing police throwing teargas canisters at protestors. However, rather than being deployed to invoke the indignation of the viewer, the footage functions dynamically with the voice-​over to encourage a recognition of the essential passivity of the spectatorial position. The violent suppression of protests is matched with the commentary: ‘What should be abolished continues and we continue to wear away with it. We are engulfed. Separated from each other. The years pass and we haven’t changed anything.’ Resisting what Garrel describes as the tendency of images of violence to allow the spectator to ‘get off’, here the spectator is designated as culpable for their submissive witness to the mediated violence. In Critique de la séparation, Debord once more constructs a conflictual relationship between the voice-​over and fragments of newsreel footage, in order to critique the passivity of the spectator. He incorporates footage showing riots in the Congo and soldiers dispersing protestors with blows from rifle butts, followed by a slow zoom on a photograph of Djamila Bouhired, the Algerian FLN rebel (Front de Libération National) captured by the French authorities in 1957.36 The voice-​over states: ‘This dominant equilibrium is brought back into question each time unknown people try to live differently. But it was always far away. We learn of it through the papers and newscasts. We remain outside it, relating to it as just another spectacle.’ The voice-​over, in conjunction with the footage, condemns the act of contemplating such imagery of resistance, by evoking its disengagement from political struggle. Garrel’s approach to filming the streets of Paris during May reveals how he drew upon this Situationist critique in an attempt to challenge the dominant equilibrium rather than reinforce its contours. The refusal to film the barricades, or to create spectacular images that gratify the viewer, establishes Garrel’s careful enquiry into the relationship between the cinema and political engagement. This exploration is something that would continue outside the realm of collective militant film-​making as the director chooses a more individualist approach in his next two films. 36 In his notes provided on the film, Ken Knabb comments that the photograph of Bouhired is cut off at the top to reveal only the hands of Jean Lartéguy, a right-​wing army officer and journalist, ‘presumably involved in Bouhired’s interrogation or reporting on it’ (Debord 2003: 227).

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40  Philippe Garrel

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Archaeology of trauma and revolt: Le Révélateur and La Concentration The two remaining works of Garrel’s adolescent period, Le Révélateur and La Concentration, appear on the surface to be far removed from the turmoil on the streets of Paris visible in Actua I. Equally, both works reveal marked differences from the director’s films made prior to May 68. Le Révélateur was shot in the German countryside during the final days of the événements, and La Concentration was filmed in a studio later in the summer. The pronounced shift in the narrative structures and formal texture of these films, rendering them unrecognisable from any work produced by the New Wave, is matched with a desire to bring to light the trauma underlying the outbreak of revolt in May. Both films are marked by their evocation of a ‘concentrationary universe’, a term deployed by Max Silverman and Griselda Pollock in relation to Alain Resnais’s film Nuit et brouillard (Pollock and Silverman 2011). The term is derived from the Holocaust survivor David Rousset, who first used it in his text L’Univers concentrationnaire (1946). Silverman and Pollock point out that for Rousset the concentrationary does not define a singular moment of atrocity, uncovered by the liberators before being cleaned up and cleared away. Instead they argue that ‘[t]‌he concentration camp system marks the inception and initiating actualization of a new political possibility in modern political life, of a form of terror that, as a result of this realized experiment under the Third Reich, will always be with us now that it has been unleashed in the world’ (Pollock and Silverman 2011:  18–​19). The concentrationary imaginary that defines the final two films of Garrel’s adolescent period serves to connect May 68 to the political logic brought into being by the Holocaust. Le Révélateur is an entirely silent black and white film, shot in the Bavarian countryside with a borrowed camera and handheld torches as the sole means of illumination. The film consists of sequences composed for the most part of long-​durational takes that explore various configurations of the trinity of a man (Laurent Terzieff), a woman (Bernadette Lafont) and a child (Stanislas Robiolles), within a landscape of forest trees and abandoned roads. Garrel’s decision to move away from the contested centre of Paris, to make a film that has little tangible connection with what was taking place on the streets of the capital, suggests his disengagement from the political struggle.

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Bernadette Lafont, however, offers a different perspective. She recalls that when she had hesitated to travel to Germany because the événements were still in progress, Garrel had responded: ‘I know –​it’s not over. But what’s the point of waiting for the end of the comedy if we already know the final gag!’ (Shafto 2000:  20). Lafont implies that Garrel’s decision was motivated by the shift in the revolutionary tide, including the mobilisation of right-​wing rallies in favour of de Gaulle, and the drawing up of the Grenelle agreements between trade union leaders and the Gaullist government. Beyond Garrel’s apprehension of the shifting political tide, his choice of the title Le Révélateur hints at a new aesthetico-​political enquiry. Translating literally as ‘the revealer’ in English, the film’s title refers to the chemical product used to develop the film image. This signification implies a desire to make visible what has been repressed or concealed, in the same way as the developer brings to light the latent image imprinted on the film reel. Garrel’s comments on the decision to make a silent film reveal a deliberate attempt to address the generation that had grown up in France during the Second World War –​the generation directly preceding his own –​and to expose the traumatic experiences in recent French history that had been repressed. C’est pour cette raison que dans Le Révélateur je n’ai pas donné la parole à l’ancienne génération; je l’ai montrée simplement dans son traumatisme, c’est à dire vivant la guerre, et j’ai montré cela d’une façon complètement abstraite parce qu’il n’y a pas de raison de montrer une guerre concrète ou d’historiciser:  on sait que par toute la guerre les hommes sont marqués, qu’ils ne peuvent plus, après, avoir les mêmes rapports qu’avant.37 (Comolli et al. 1968: 46–​47)

A number of sequences are suggestive of the trauma referred to by Garrel. One is composed of a tracking-​shot, lasting over ninety seconds, that follows the three protagonists in profile as they flee across a field. The enemy at the source of this flight is never made visible. As the camera tracks the trio, the image is bisected by a stretch of 37 ‘That’s why in Le Révélateur I didn’t give a voice to the previous generation; I simply showed it in its trauma, that is living the war, and I showed it in a completely abstract way because there is no reason to show a concrete war or to historicise. We know that men are marked by every war and that, afterwards, they cannot have the same relations as before.’

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42  Philippe Garrel

barbed wire from the perimeter of the field. Another sequence begins with a tracking-​shot of the child, framed from behind, which follows him as he walks along the side of a road next to a hedgerow and some trees. As the road turns, the trees begin to clear, giving way to a large perimeter fence. The man and the woman come into view, their bodies immobile and pressed against the fence with their arms raised in a crucifix formation. A military vehicle is visible in the background of the shot. The camera pauses to observe them for a while, before continuing once more to track the child, who has proceeded to walk along the perimeter fence. Le Révélateur is reminiscent of Ingmar Bergman’s Shame (1968), a film that was released in the same year. In Bergman’s work, a couple living in isolation on a small island become gradually overwhelmed by a conflict that is never situated by name or by a precise historical periodisation. This abstraction evokes traces of conflict and violence latent in the present day, as opposed to a singular reference point. In response to the enigmatic sequences in Le Révélateur Shafto comments:  ‘War throws an indefinite shadow over the entire film. [Garrel’s] characters are in flight, and in one long scene we see them running behind barbed wire, a visual motif evoking the concentration camps’ (Shafto 2006: 20). Shafto’s observation, combined with Garrel’s personal reflections, suggest the film-​maker’s wish to unveil the traumas of recent French history, including both the Second World War, the war in Indochina and the Algerian War, as well as France’s responsibility for the deportation of Jews during the Vichy regime. The period of post-​war boom experienced in France, the so-​ called Trente Glorieuses, aided this amnesia and the repression of this horrific past. Rising living standards and a rapidly expanding consumerist culture in France were harnessed to support this. Garrel’s subtle expository approach brings forth the residual trauma underlying this supposed prosperity, and is consistent with Silverman and Pollock’s designation of a concentrationary cinema as something that ‘disturbs the slumber induced by post-​war reconstruction by showing us the novel message of the concentrationary system in which we have to see what it means that “everything is [now] possible” ’ (Pollock and Silverman 2011:  1). Stepping back from the immediacy of May 68, Garrel’s cinema instead conjures a traumatic pre-​history. Shafto’s allusion to the presence of the concentration camps in the work provides an enlightening interpretation of its preoccupations.

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Like Bergman’s Shame, Le Révélateur is striking thanks to the absence of props or motifs indicating a particular historical context, or any singular trauma. The consequence of this is to enact a temporal conflation of recent traumas in French history, including the violence and struggle associated with May 68. The fear and flight of the family inevitably draw the spectator back to France and in particular to the police repression in Paris concurrent with the making of the film, as well as anticipating the fear and desolation that would follow the failure of revolt. Garrel’s exchange with the Cahiers journalists in August 1968 is revealing in this respect. He describes how the difficult conditions for the shoot, with cars passing on the road and the interference of German military personnel, meant they were forced to content themselves with one take irrespective of its quality. This prompts an observation from one of the interviewers, who remarks, ‘Dans Le Révélateur on a l’impression qu’il y a des troupes de C.R.S. qui bloquent les routes, qui encerclent le lieu du tournage’38 (Comolli et al. 1968: 53). The lack of clear narrative markings or characterisation, along with the suppression of sound, contribute to the elaboration of a polysemous work, which lends itself to a direct association with the oppression and violence emanating from May 68. The film contains further elements that subtly evoke the experience of trauma. This is true of the recurrence of circular motifs in the work that suggest the notion of the impossibility of progression and the idea of entrapment. In a night-​time sequence at the beginning of the film, a tracking-​shot observes the young boy from behind as he advances through a cylindrical passageway towards the kneeling figure of the woman. The tunnel is lit at regular intervals, creating a striking visual effect revealing the transition between circular segments of light and darkness as the camera advances. When the child’s stroll takes him as far as the woman, the camera movement ceases. The child bends down to embrace the woman, before glaring light suddenly illuminates both their bodies. This sudden illumination appears to be an invitation to the boy to get up and to circle the woman several times, in a ritualistic fashion. This same action is repeated later in the film, when the boy’s parents are seated in the 38 ‘In Le Révélateur we have the impression that the road is blocked by the troops of the C.R.S. encircling the site of the filming.’

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44  Philippe Garrel

forest at either side of the base of a tree. The shot repeatedly pans from left to right to capture the boy’s movement as he slowly circles their motionless bodies. The motif of circularity is extended through the organisation of sequences in the film. Garrel’s approach to montage eschews linearity in favour of digression and circular repetition. In one sequence, the man and woman are framed frontally in a tracking-​shot as they ascend a serpentine roadway. Exhausted, they press on, before finally coming across a small white sheet on the ground. As the woman proceeds to lie down on the blanket, the camera tracks rapidly away from the figures, climbing the winding road until the couple become virtually invisible in the background of the frame. The next shot is of the boy, again framed frontally, ascending the same roadway. As the camera tracks his ascent, a white blanket comes into view in the middle of roadway and his parents walk into shot. This montage frustrates the expectation of narrative linearity. The disquieting repetition it evokes reinforces the sense of trauma, referred to earlier in an observation by Garrel, that denies the possibility of advancement. Having withdrawn from Paris for the filming of Le Révélateur, Garrel’s next film, La Concentration, is equally dislocated from the streets of the French capital. The black and white high-​contrast photography of Le Révélateur, including a grainy texture associated with film reel that is push-​processed, is replaced by a colour palette composed of contrasting whites, blues and deep reds, marked by harsh metallic textures. Filmed at the Dovidis studio in a purpose-​built set, the uninterrupted approach to the production, which involved a continuous three-​day shoot, suggests a possible reasoning behind the film’s title. A  feature-​ length film, it is composed of twenty sequences, many of which contain only a single shot. The predominant use of lengthy single-​shot sequences, involving the rigid tracking movement of a camera that remains focused on either one or both of the actors, also suggests the concentrated stare of the camera aperture. However, following on from the echoes of the Holocaust in Le Révélateur, Garrel’s choice of title suggests a continued preoccupation with this historical trauma and an inclination to trace its echoes in the present. The set consists of a large bed situated in the middle. To the left of this is an adjoining space with a white tiled surface and a solitary tap, referred to by Garrel in his interview with Cahiers in

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1968 as the ‘chambre froide’.39 To the right is what he describes as the ‘chambre chaude’,40 with red brick walls and a furnace which emits fire. These three areas are circled by the rails of a tracking-​ shot that enclose the location. Jean-​Pierre Léaud and Zouzou are the sole performers in the work, dressed like infants in shiny white plastic underwear. It is difficult to avoid the parallels between the architecture of the set and that of the gas chambers and furnace, used as a system of industrialised execution and annihilation during the Holocaust. However, as with Le Révélateur the film eschews precise geographical or historical contextualisation. This is underlined in the opening sequence that begins with a close-​up of Léaud and Zouzou, who huddle together as they ask each other:  ‘Nous sommes quoi? Nous sommes quand?’41 Throughout the film, the sparse dialogue fails to provide any clear temporal or spatial bearings in which to situate the film. This approach resonates with Pollock and Silverman’s description of a concentrationary cinema as connecting ‘the living to the dead, past to present, here to there in order to shock us out of comforting dichotomies that keep the past “over there” ’. Garrel’s film evokes the continued and manifest presence of a concentrationary universe, refusing the compartmentalisation of the Holocaust as a mere historical event without ramifications in the present. In the absence of precise bearings, dialogue and gesture are marked by absurdity and a disquieting repetition. In the second sequence, Léaud is shown at the foot of the bed with a tin hat on his head. As he bounces up and down on the bed he repeats excitedly ‘j’ai vu l’abîme’.42 This enthusiasm gradually turns to panic as he begins to shout ‘je suis coincé’43 and in response Zouzou can be heard repeatedly imploring him to go away. The repetition in gesture and dialogue is matched by the repetitive movements of the camera, with the majority of the sequences in the film opening with a close-​up shot of either or both of the performers, before the camera tracks backwards and then laterally around the circumference of the set to observe Léaud and Zouzou from a different perspective. In the 39 ‘Cold room’. 40 ‘Hot room’. 41 ‘What are we? When are we?’ 42 ‘I saw the abyss.’ 43 ‘I’m stuck.’

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46  Philippe Garrel

twelfth sequence of the film, Zouzou is shown in a medium-​shot lying down at the side of the bed nearest the cold room. The camera observes her for a while and then tracks horizontally to the left incorporating the tiled surface and an air vent in the wall. It pauses for a while before tracking back to her. She smiles peacefully, as though sedated, gently mouthing inaudible phrases. The camera tracks once more to the right and pauses over a syringe taped to a wall, suggesting at once the panacea for her suffering but also a further form of imprisonment. This camera movement recurs a further three times, oscillating between Zouzou, the tiled surface and the syringe. The incarceration of the two infantilised figures in this ominous setting resonates with the invisible menace conjured in Le Révélateur. Although the explicit context of May 68 is obscured, it remains a preoccupation of the film in a way that is comparable with Le Révélateur. The confinement of the performers, condemned to repetitive gesture and echolalia, is suggestive of a wider trauma of the failure of this revolutionary moment, and of the repressive conditions that persisted in the weeks and months afterwards when France became a virtual police state (Ross 2002:  52–​53). Overhanging all this is the great historical trauma of the Holocaust that Garrel invokes as pervasive. As is the case with Le Révélateur, circular motifs dominate the film. This is evident in gestures made by Léaud, when, framed sitting cross-​legged on the bed and staring directly ahead into the camera, he makes gradually widening labyrinthine circles around his body with his finger. In the second sequence of the film he is shown drawing the figure of infinity (a horizontal eight configuration) on a board with a piece of chalk. This figure is suggestive of the couple’s state of perpetual incarceration and their condemnation to repetitive gesture and speech. The camera’s persistent encircling of the perimeter of the bed reinforces this condition of entrapment. This state of the characters being lost in a state of perpetual perdition, evoked through these repetitive movements, contributes to the sense of trauma evoked through the concentrationary architecture.

The art of détournement The changes evident in Garrel’s cinema with the release of Le Révélateur (the abandonment of Paris, the suppression of sound) and

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La Concentration (the use of repetitive speech, gesture and camera movement) establish a definitive break with the forms and themes of the New Wave. Nevertheless, Garrel maintains a relationship with the cinema that immediately preceded his own, through the use of the actors Laurent Terzieff (associated with the tradition de qualité) and Bernadette Lafont and Jean-​Pierre Léaud (associated with the New Wave). The presence of these actors points to a complex engagement with French film history that borrows from the Situationist practice of détournement. Garrel’s approach involves the manipulation of the star status of Terzieff, Lafont and Léaud to establish a rupture with previous film traditions. More broadly, Garrel’s approach in Le Révélateur and La Concentration establishes an aesthetics of resistance to the implications of a concentrationary universe. When discussing Le Révélateur, Garrel alludes to Terzieff’s experience of the filming process and his response to the fact that the work was silent: Terzieff a fait les films conventionnels de la bourgeoisie. Quand il tourne Le Révélateur, il se rend bien compte que c’est assez intéressant, parce que les gens autour de lui sont tous très passionnés, qu’ils font les choses rapidement et avec un certain lyrisme; et en même temps, il ne comprend pas parce que c’est un film muet; alors il pense que je lui fais faire du mannequinat, et en haut lieu c’est peut-​être effectivement ce que je lui fais faire, du mannequinat.44 (Comolli et al. 1968: 46)

Garrel conveys how the decision to make a silent film was influenced by a consideration of Terzieff’s connections with French cinema, expressing a certain satisfaction with his manipulation of these associations. The silencing of an older generation is extended in this formulation to the silencing of a previous film generation. Terzieff’s first major film role was in Marcel Carné’s Les Tricheurs (1958), a work savagely critiqued in Cahiers du cinéma by Eric Rohmer for its perceived commercial exploitation of youth culture (Rohmer 1959: 58–​ 59). He went on to star in three films in close succession, directed by Claude Autant-​Lara, including Les Régates de San Francisco (1960), Le Bois des amants (1960) and Tu ne tueras point (1962). In a sequence

44 ‘Terzieff made conventional films of the bourgeoisie. When he made Le Révélateur he soon realised that it was quite interesting because the people

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48  Philippe Garrel

halfway through Le Révélateur, Terzieff is shown in a medium-​shot, as he makes a call from a phone box, gesticulating wildly in mute desperation. Garrel explains that this was an expression of Terzieff’s genuine frustration and his incapacity to comprehend the nature of the film and the methods deployed (Comolli et al. 1968: 46). By forcing Terzieff to play the role of a ‘dummy’, Garrel challenged the image-​making tradition with which he was associated, the so-​called tradition de qualité. The performative opportunities that Terzieff’s previous roles presented him were truncated in Le Révélateur. Garrel hijacked his star status, rerouting it to address his preoccupations with the trauma associated with May 68. In attacking the tradition de qualité, Garrel adopted a position espoused by the New Wave. In his famous article published in the Cahiers du cinéma in 1954, François Truffaut attacked the film-​making of the French mainstream, something that he elsewhere referred to as ‘le cinéma de papa’.45 He lambasted the stale and conventional approaches, insensitive to youth and innovation, in particular of the director Claude Autant-​Lara and the screenwriters Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost. In the article Truffaut deployed the phrase ‘la politique des auteurs’ to denote an alternative approach to film-​making, one revealing a personal style or artistic vision. This text functioned as a manifesto for the innovative and personal works that Truffaut and his fellow critics at Cahiers du cinéma later produced in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Truffaut’s notion of the ‘politique des auteurs’ was drawn from Alexandre Astruc and in particular an article he wrote for the magazine L’Écran français in 1948, entitled ‘Naissance d’une nouvelle avant garde: La caméra-​stylo’. In it, Astruc describes the cinema becoming a language in which the artist can express their thoughts and obsessions in the same way as a novelist (Astruc 1948: 5). This personal style and close creative control of the author would replace an emphasis on the role of scriptwriters, with the director as a mere technician charged with implementing a blueprint. Although Garrel’s treatment of Terzieff appears consistent with Truffaut’s polemic, his use of Lafont in Le Révélateur and Léaud in La around him are all very passionate and they do things rapidly and with a certain lyricism. But at the same time he doesn’t really understand because it’s a silent film. So he thinks that I made him play a dummy, and in a certain way that’s effectively what I made him do, play a dummy.’ 45 ‘Dad’s cinema’.

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Concentration is more problematic. The birth of Bernadette Lafont’s film career is synonymous with the birth of the New Wave. In her first acting role she starred in François Truffaut’s short film Les Mistons (1957), made just two years prior to Les Quatre cents coups (1959), one of the most celebrated works of this film movement. Following this, she played Marie in Claude Chabrol’s Le Beau Serge (1958), a work that has the notable status of being the first feature-​film release of the New Wave. Under the direction of Chabrol she later played Jane in Les Bonnes femmes (1960), and Prudence in Jacques Doniol-​Valcroze’s L’Eau à la bouche (1960). As a result of these roles, Lafont became an icon of the New Wave, synonymous with the youth and energy of this film movement. Although Garrel does not refer directly to Lafont in his interview with Cahiers du cinéma in 1968, appearing instead to reserve his derision for the tradition de qualité embodied by Terzieff, the implications of his treatment of her are similar. While Anémone and Marie pour mémoire may have shared some of the elements associated with the New Wave, Le Révélateur displays little in common with the aesthetics of the work of Truffaut and others, nor with the aims of these film-​makers to invade the mainstream from a position on the margins. In his treatment of Bernadette Lafont, Garrel took an established actor and draws her to the margins, in a film made with almost no financing and with a rapidity that eclipses anything produced by the New Wave.46 The use of Jean-​Pierre Léaud in La Concentration is similar to that of Lafont. Perhaps most central to the construction of Léaud’s iconic status at the time was his incarnation of Antoine Doinel in Les Quatre cents coups and the short film Antoine et Colette (1962). The third instalment of the Doinel series, Les Baisers volés (1968), was released in the same year as Garrel’s film, with the travails of the young detective in his thwarted pursuit of love appearing a world apart from Léaud’s infantilised appearance and repetitive speech in the confined setting of La Concentration. Garrel does not draw on Léaud’s cinematic biography in a complicit way, expressing continuity with his previous cinematic incarnations; rather there is a rupture and a radical rerouting of these roles. To underline this point, a useful parallel to consider is Godard’s deployment of the actor Eddie 46 Shafto notes that the film was shot in one week and edited in one week (Shafto 2000: 9).

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Constantine (Lemmy Caution) in Alphaville: Une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965). His role as the secret agent Lemmy Caution in the futuristic dystopia of Alphaville pays homage to the B-​movie films Constantine starred in during the 1950s and early 1960s that were much admired by the New Wave film-​makers. Even though there is perhaps a playful dimension to this homage, there is no rupture with his previous roles and Godard’s sympathies for the cinema that Constantine embodied are clear. The same argument can be made with regard to Godard’s use of Akim Tamiroff (Henri Dickson) in Alphaville as a homage to the cinema of Orson Welles. Tamiroff performed notably in A Touch of Evil (1958), a film whose chiaroscuro cinematography is recalled in Godard’s film. Garrel’s use of Léaud’s screen biography enacts instead a rupture with a previous style of film-​making that for Garrel appeared outmoded or incommensurate with the exigencies of the prevailing political climate. This approach by Garrel bears a strong resemblance to the Situationist technique of détournement. The term was first deployed in 1952 in the short text Le Mode d’emploi du détournement, published in the Belgian Surrealist journal Les Lèvres nues, in which Debord and Gil Wolman envisaged ‘going beyond’ previous artistic practices, through a process of combining existing artistic forms and redirecting them in such a way as to express an ‘indifference toward a meaningless and forgotten original’ (Debord 2003:  9). Debord subsequently exploited the practice in his cinematic works, which Asger Jorn described as experimental notes on the development of the general theory of détournement. A particular manifestation of détournement has been indicated previously in the analysis of Debord’s rerouting of televisual images for the purposes of critique. Garrel’s use of Lafont, Terzieff and Léaud differs from Debord’s approach. Rather than directly using existing visual material, Garrel manipulates the established screen biographies of film stars, using these in the construction of a radically new cinematic form. This ludic approach to presenting something that is at once recognisable and simultaneously unfamiliar challenges the audience’s habitual viewing experience. The example of Debord’s work presents a means of conceptualising the approaches developed by Garrel in terms of his use of these actors. Within Debord’s cinematic works the practice of détournement develops broader meanings and associations beyond the mere

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rerouting of existing images. It aims also at the rerouting of the spectator in a way that seeks to emancipate them from the passive contemplation of film images. This inclination is developed through a paradoxical relationship with loss in Debord’s cinema that surfaces in Sur le passage and Critique de la séparation. Debord’s analysis of Sur le passage, provided in a letter to André Frankin of 26 January 1960, is revealing in this respect. Gradually (the film) becomes less clear and more disappointing, which might at first appear to be the result of a pretentious ‘ideological’ interpretation of an otherwise clear subject, because the text appears increasingly inadequate and pompously inflated in relation to the images (the tone of Lefebvre = Marx-​Goldman-​Huizinga!). The question then arises: what is the subject of this film? –​which I think represents an irritating and upsetting break with the habitual spectacle. (Debord 2003: 214)

Debord extols the virtues of the film, praising an increasing lack of clarity that renders the precise meaning elusive to the viewer. The collage of diverse imagery in both Sur le passage and Critique de la séparation, combined with a voice-​over that at times relates to the images and at other times has no apparent correlation, contributes to this frustration of critical exegesis. Détournement functions to disorient the spectator, forcing them into an active engagement with the elucidation of meaning in the film. Critique de la séparation provides a complex treatise on the notion of loss. The film at once forms an attack on the idea of separation as suggested in a quotation read out in voice-​over at the beginning of the film, that celebrates the capacity of man to distinguish between himself and his language and make each an object of study. This separation, and more broadly the loss associated with the increasing atomisation of individuals in advanced capitalist societies, becomes a central critique in the work. However, the film complicates and muddies this critique by turning to champion the notion of loss and perdition. This paradox is highlighted in a sequence towards the end of the film. A tracking-​shot from a car, featured at the opening of the work, is deployed a second time as the voice-​over states: Everything involving the sphere of loss –​that is, what I have lost of myself, the time that has gone; and disappearance, flight; and the general evanescence of things, and even what in the prevalent and

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therefore most vulgar social sense of time is called wasted time –​all this finds in that strangely apt old military term, lost children, its intersection with the sphere of discovery, of the exploration of unknown terrains, and with all the forms of quest, adventure, avant-​garde. This is the crossroads where we have found ourselves and lost our way.

The loss and separation that the opening of the film attacks becomes itself inverted as it intersects with the virtues of quest and adventure. The feeling of lostness conferred on the spectator by Debord’s confusing cinematic essay constitutes the possibility of discovery and emancipation. Garrel’s exposition of the trauma underlying the revolt of May 68 also offers a means of resisting the constraint of the current order that is consistent with the Situationist strategy of détournement. Referring broadly to the ‘Zanzibar film-​makers’ with whom Garrel associated during this period, Shafto provides a convincing analysis of the approaches adopted in both Le Révélateur and La Concentration. The narrative of these films seems often constructed by episodic blocks instead of by sequences. These film-​makers rejected an idea of traditional causality. For them, the idea of cause and effect was tied to the dominant ideology with which they wished to break. … Instead of causality, the Zanzibar film-​makers emphasized repetition and nonsense. (Shafto 2000: 15)

The entrapment of the performers, condemned to silence in Le Révélateur and repetitive gesture and echolalic speech in La Concentration, constitutes a critical shift from the reigning spectacle. Shafto alludes to a possible emancipation in this through a resistance to the dominant logic of cause and effect foregrounded in mainstream cinema. The repetition of circular motifs within both films is a significant formal innovation that seeks paradoxically to emancipate the viewer by challenging the dominant language of the cinema. Rather than simply reinforcing the traumatic imprisonment of the actors, and condemning the viewer to this discomfiting experience, these motifs also suggest the possibility of liberation. Garrel says of the experience of watching Le Révélateur: ‘on est perdu dans un espèce de labyrinthe qu’on parcourt’47 (Garrel and Lescure 1992:  52). This image 47 ‘We are lost in a type of labyrinth that we wander though.’

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of the labyrinth captures how the film’s circular, episodic structure confers the sense of being lost and without bearings. The figure of infinity drawn by Léaud in La Concentration encapsulates the sense of perpetual perdition experienced not only by the actors but also the audience, confronted with a work in which circularity rather than a causal linearity is proposed. However, although ominous and disorientating, and suggestive of the trauma of a pervasive concentrationary universe, the labyrinth and the figure of infinity are evocative of boundlessness and the surpassing of limitations and constraint. In this sense Garrel can be seen to develop a film aesthetic that resists the violence that underpins the dominant social order. Resonating with the celebration of lostness in Debord’s cinema, the perdition and disorientation conferred by the motifs of circularity and of the labyrinth constitute the possibility of the transgression of the common-​sense logic of the dominant order, bringing the opportunity for discovery.

Contre le cinéma The concentrationary imaginary, the use of circular and labyrinthine motifs, and the détournement of star actors, signal continuity in the formal approaches in Le Révélateur and La Concentration. However, La Concentration differs from the previous work through its incorporation of the cinematic apparatus as a dramatic element of the film. This incorporation is not playful, nor is it used in an ironic fashion, but instead serves to attack the cinema itself. Garrel’s imbrication of the cinematic apparatus reveals a cinephobic tendency that strikes a notable contrast to the cinephilia associated with the New Wave. Debord’s concept of an anti-​cinema sheds light on the methods Garrel develops in La Concentration. The seventh sequence of La Concentration opens with a close-​up of Léaud holding a piece of film reel. The section of film reel is covered in metallic paint so that it looks like a razor blade. He proceeds to use this instrument to cut through a piece of narrow tubing attached to his wrist. As he does so, blood begins to pour out from where the incision is made. The gesture transforms a fundamental component of the cinema into an object of self-​mutilation. Garrel’s explanation for this act reflects his dissatisfaction with the cinema: ‘Je n’en peux

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plus du cinéma, je ne le supporte plus, et je me demande ce que je pourrais bien faire. Alors nous avons pris un bout de pellicule, l’avons peint en métallisé pour en faire une lame de rasoir’48 (Garrel and Lescure 1992: 51). Garrel’s comment points to a cinephobia that predominates in the work. Léaud and Zouzou repeatedly suffer from the concentrated gaze of the camera. At one stage Zouzou can be heard imploring, ‘Laissez moi, laissez moi’49, as though in supplication for the relentless stare of the camera to cease. The camera itself acts as persecutory device, policing their imprisonment. This notion of the camera as a persecutory device is most striking in the penultimate sequence of the film. Zouzou is shown to the right of the frame, with her head hanging lifelessly out of the side of the bed and her arm hanging in the cold room. Léaud is positioned to the left of the frame, leaning against the wall of the cold room, a section of the track for the camera visible in the foreground of the frame. As he approaches her lifeless body and lifts it, the shot pans to the left and tilts downwards vertically to observe him placing her on a low pedestal positioned on the camera track. Zouzou’s torso hangs over the front of the pedestal so that her head is inverted and her upper body occupies the greater part of the frame. Crouched to the right of the frame, in profile, Léaud stares at her body in contemplation for several moments. He then steps behind her and proceeds slowly to push the body towards the camera, as though presenting it as a sacrificial offering to its gaze. The camera retracts in response to his steady advance, maintaining the shot length, before Léaud pushes the ‘sacrificial altar’ away forcefully. Zouzou’s body moves along the camera track, passing out of shot by the right of the frame, the camera remaining fixed on Léaud. Garrel’s reflection on the sacrificial sequence described above, and more generally on his use of the materials of the cinema as dramatic devices, is noteworthy in terms of how it confirms a rejection of the cinema that is already suggested by the imagery: Dans La Concentration, le simple fait de montrer les rails du travelling, que ces rails soient montrés dans le décor, dans l’appartement –​ si c’est un appartement  –​et que cette voie ferrée, ces rails pour la 48 ‘I have had enough with the cinema, I  cannot tolerate it anymore, and so I asked myself what could I do about it. So we took a piece of film and painted it a metallic colour so that it looked like a razor blade.’ 49 ‘Leave me, leave me.’

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caméra soient donnés comme élément dramatique du film, signifie que ce n’est plus la caméra seulement, mais le cinéma lui-​même qui est intolérable.50 (Comolli et al. 1968: 49)

Garrel’s commentary casts the entire cinematic institution as a site of oppression, marking a rupture with the cinephilic tendencies of the New Wave. A notable precedent for Garrel’s position is found in the anti-​ cinematic critique established in Debord’s cinema. Debord, like Garrel, condemned the cinematic medium through his development of an auto-​critical practice. His first feature-​length film, Hurlements en faveur de Sade (1952), is composed entirely without images. The voices quote extracts from the French Civil code, from the prose of James Joyce and from newspapers, ‘mixed into the dialogue of this film (with its equally indiscriminate use of different writing styles)’ (Debord 2003: 211). The screen oscillates between white, accompanying the verbal détournement, and black for the extensive periods of silence. During one of the sequences with the white screen the voice of Isidore Isou announces: Just as the projection was about to begin, Guy-​Ernest Debord was supposed to step onto the stage and make a few introductory remarks. Had he done so, he would simply have said: ‘There is no film. Cinema is dead. No more films are possible. If you wish, we can move on to a discussion.’

This extract establishes a position that recurs throughout Debord’s cinematic works. The proclamation of the moribund condition of the cinema confirms what Debord enacts in his visual treatment through the suppression of all imagery in Hurlements en faveur de Sade. The audience, in addition to being denied the essential visual component of the cinema, is for a significant part of the film also denied its auditory component and thrust into the abyss of a darkened auditorium. Central to the provocative approach in Sur le passage and Critique de la séparation is a sustained attack on the cinema, and a declaiming of the obsolescence of all aesthetic activity. This continuity with the preoccupations of Hurlements en faveur de Sade is underlined by the use of a blank screen, in both films signalling a deliberate negation 50 In La Concentration, the simple fact of showing the rails of the tracking shot, that these rails are shown in the setting, in the apartment – if it is an apartment – and that this rail track, these rails for the camera are presented as a dramatic element of the film, shows that it is not only the camera but the cinema itself that is intolerable.

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of the image that marked the first work. In Sur le passage a blank white screen is deployed on twelve separate occasions, each time in conjunction with elements of the voice-​over commentary that attack artistic production and the cinematic institution. The most striking example of this occurs towards the end of the film, in which a blank white screen is accompanied by a voice-​over attacking the notion of artistic production and the virtue of individual expression. It concludes with the following passage:  ‘The only interesting venture is the liberation of everyday life, not only in a historical perspective, but for us, right now. This project implies the withering away of all the alienated forms of communication. The cinema, too, must be destroyed.’ Debord’s auto-​critical art establishes a willingness to liberate the spectator from the auratic grip of the false life on the screen, redirecting them towards real life. The manipulation of images so that they partake in their own condemnation seeks to reroute the spectator away from the cinema towards the contested sphere of everyday life. Debord’s anti-​cinema, in this sense, offers the possibility of the spectator’s emancipation. As with his use of existing screen stars, Garrel’s approach in La Concentration does not involve the recycling of existing imagery. Garrel does not mimic the Debordian visual collage combined with a derisive voice-​over. Garrel’s work makes sense, rather, when seen in dialogue with Debord’s, engaging with its critical premises. His construction of images that condemn the cinematic apparatus form a visual parallel to the extracts drawn from voice-​over commentaries in Debord’s cinema. This approach fulfils Garrel’s desire to create a cinema that disconcerts rather than placating the viewer, refusing any visual gratification. Garrel’s expression of his wish to make the viewer suffer physically in La Concentration reveals a distinction from Debord’s position. When Garrel is asked to reflect on his use of harsh metallic surfaces and colours of contrasting whites, blues and reds in the film, he comments: ‘c’est mieux pour la souffrance des spectateurs’.51 This sadistic inclination suggests an affinity with the cinema of Isidore Isou, the leader of the Lettrists from whom Debord separated to form the Lettrist International in 1952. In his film Traité de bave et d’éternité (1951), Isou develops a manifesto for his theory of a discrepant cinema. 51 ‘It’s better for making the spectators suffer.’

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It features the character of Daniel, who following his attendance at a debate on the cinema of Charlie Chaplin, is shown in a series of handheld shots walking around the streets of Paris and encountering various individuals. The voice-​over to these encounters serves to articulate the premises of Isou’s discrepant cinema. Alyson Field observes how this is used to invoke a sadism in the image: ‘Daniel reflects that he would like “a film that hurts your eyes”, connecting sadistic pain to his manifesto for the destruction of the cinema. Isou’s elements of sadism center around the desire for the viewer to leave the cinema with a headache. Indeed, the entire concept of discrepant cinema is analogous to an aesthetic sadism’ (Field 1999: 58). Isou put into practice this aesthetic sadism through the use of images with scratched surfaces; such images are ubiquitous in the latter half of Traité de bave et d’éternité. Garrel’s urge to condemn the cinema as intolerable by inflicting suffering on the spectator through the metallic textures and colour in La Concentration suggests a predilection for an aesthetic sadism. The above analysis reveals the rapidity of the changes in form and theme that occurred during Garrel’s adolescent period. In less than four years, the young director shifted from a style revealing an indebtedness to the New Wave to a more austere practice that ultimately sought to be ‘intolerable’. This progression coincided with the film-​maker’s persistent interrogation of the political function of the cinema, an enquiry given urgency by the atmosphere in France in the lead-​up to May 68. The condemnation of the cinematic institution in La Concentration suggests Garrel’s desire to liberate himself and his audience from an alienated form of communication. The development of a cinema that participates in its own critique, signals a desire to turn the spectator away from the passivity of contemplating images towards a revolutionary struggle that would overhaul the reigning political order. The virulent cinephobia of La Concentration did not, however, spell an end to Garrel’s relationship with the cinema. Instead, it paved the way for Le Lit de la vierge and La Cicatrice intérieure, two films peopled by nomadic figures in desert locations. These works would experiment with new forms, seeking to expose the viewer to the disconcerting experience of lostness. They will be discussed in the next chapter, which considers the body of seven films that encompasses Garrel’s underground period.

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References Astruc, Alexandre (1948) ‘Naissance d’une nouvelle avant garde: la caméra-​ stylo’, L’Écran français, 144, pp. 98–​99. Bax, Dominique and Cyril Béghin (eds) (2013) Philippe Garrel. Théâtres au cinéma, Bobigny: Collection Magic Cinéma. Brenez, Nicole (2013) ‘Philippe Garrel, l’œuvre télévisuelle’, in Bax and Béghin (eds), Philippe Garrel. Théâtres au cinéma, pp. 124–​126. Comolli, Jean-​Louis, Jean Narboni and Jacques Rivette (1968) ‘Cerclé sous vide. Entretien avec Philippe Garrel’, Cahiers du cinéma, 204, pp. 44–​63. Debord, Guy (2003) Complete Cinematic Works: Scripts, Stills, Documents, ed. and trans. Ken Knabb, Oakland, CA: AK Press. Field, Alyson (1999) ‘Hurlements en faveur de Sade:  The Negation and Surpassing of “Discrepant Cinema”’, in SubStance, 28.3, pp. 55–​70. Foucault, Michel (1991) Discipline and Punish:  The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan, London: Penguin Books. Garrel, Philippe and Thomas Lescure (1992) Une caméra à la place du cœur, Aix-​en-​Provence: Admiranda/​Institut de l’Image. Morice, Jacques (2012) Maurice Garrel, le veilleur, Paris: Éditions Stock. Pollock, Griselda and Max Silverman (2011) ‘Introduction: Concentrationary Cinema’, in Griselda Pollock and Max Silverman (eds), Concentrationary Cinema: Aesthetics as Political Resistance in Alain Resnais’s Night and Fog [1955], Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 1–​54. Prédal, René (2008) Le Cinéma français des années 1990. Une génération de transition, Paris: A. Colin. Rohmer, Eric (1959) ‘Archaïque et superficiel’, Cahiers du cinéma, 92, pp.  58–​59. Ross, Kristin (2002) May ’68 and its Afterlives, Chicago:  University of Chicago Press. Rousset, David (1946) L’Univers concentrationnaire, Paris: Éditions de Minuit. Shafto, Sally (2000) The Zanzibar Films and the Dandies of May 1968, New York: Zanzibar USA. Shafto, Sally (2006) ‘Le Révélateur and a brief introduction to the Zanzibar Films’, essay in booklet for RE:VOIR DVD edition, pp. 16–​27. Truffaut, François (1954) ‘Une certain tendance du cinéma français’, Cahiers du cinéma, 31, pp. 15–​29. Tsukidate, Nanako (2018) ‘Philippe Garrel et sa generation dans les années 1960–​1970’, Débordements. www.debordements.fr/​Philippe-​Garrel-​l-​ experience-​interieure-​exterieure-​671 (accessed 10 August 2019). Vergé, Émilie (2016) ‘Actua 1, “film perdu” retrouvé de la filmographie de Philippe Garrel et de l’histoire du cinéma de Mai 68’, Mille huit cent quatre-​ vingt-​quinze, 79.2, pp. 152–​171.

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2 Cinema of the underground

Following the cinephobic traits of La Concentration, Garrel entered what he describes as an ‘underground’ period, encompassing seven films. Nico was his partner throughout this period, her roles in the films establishing a continuity within a body of work that Garrel has also described as ‘les années-​Nico’1 (Garrel and Lescure 1992:  26). Beyond the coherence provided by Nico’s presence, two noticeable sub-​categories exist within this period. The first is associated with wealth, influenced by Garrel’s ability to draw on the financial sponsorship of Sylvina Boissonnas for the feature films Le Lit de la vierge (1969), La Cicatrice intérieure (1972) and the short film Athanor (1972); the second is associated with poverty as Garrel found himself in the position of financing his own work after Athanor. This latter impoverished phase produced five films: Les Hautes Solitudes (1974), Le Berceau de cristal (1975), Un Ange passe (1975), Le Voyage au jardin des morts (1976) and Le Bleu des origines (1978). Although marked by a formal eclecticism that was in part influenced by the shift from wealth to austerity, these works collectively challenge the precepts of conventional narrative film-​making. Garrel explains his preference for remaining apart from and in opposition to the mainstream as being been born out of a fidelity to May 68. Reflecting on his refusal to make narrative films after the événements, Garrel stated: ‘C’était une façon, après 68, de rester fidèle à 68. C’est comme si l’avant-​garde se devait, comme elle avait repéré la société du spectacle, de trouver quelque chose de parallèle pour ne pas mettre 1 ‘The Nico years’.

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des films dans la machine’2 (Azalbert and Delorme 2011:  71). The commitment to an anti-​spectacular cinema, produced outside of the capitalist ‘machine’, emerges in several nuanced ways that establish continuity with aspects of Le Révélateur and La Concentration. These include a wandering, digressive approach to composition (both narrative and pictural) that draws meaning from the Situationist concept of dérive; an affinity between Garrel’s approach to portraiture at this time and Andy Warhol’s predilection for cinematic portraiture in his first Factory period (1962–​1968); and finally in the development of ‘poor’ modes of production in Garrel’s later underground films, revealing an aesthetic and ethical affinity with the Italian avant-​garde Arte Povera. These three tendencies intersect Garrel’s underground period as he searched for a radical film style within the context of the dashed hopes of May 68.

After the revolution: Le Lit de la vierge (1969), La Cicatrice intérieure (1972) The diversity of filming locations in Le Lit de la vierge (Morocco, Egypt and Italy) and La Cicatrice intérieure (Iceland, New Mexico and Brittany) reflects Garrel’s nomadic existence at the time. Nomadic figures occupy the screen in both works, featuring lengthy sequence-​ shots of actors wandering through diverse desert terrain. Beyond this exposition of a literal nomadism, the films are defined by a formal nomadism in terms of how Garrel strays from the standardised narratives and aesthetic codes of the mainstream. Debord’s cinema, in particular his film In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (1978), celebrates the notion of dérive, or drift, in everyday life and as a philosophy of film practice. This concept of dérive lends itself to an interpretation of Garrel’s first underground films. Garrel’s description of Le Lit de la vierge (1969), suggests the deflation that follows the failed hopes of May 68:  ‘C’est une parabole non-​ violente dans laquelle Zouzou incarne à la fois Marie et Marie-​Madeleine tandis que Pierre Clémenti incarne le Christ, un 2 ‘It was a way, after 68, of remaining faithful to 68. It was as though the avant-​ garde owed it, because it had pointed out the society of the spectacle, to find something parallel in order not to put films in the machine.’

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Christ bien découragé et qui baisse les bras devant la méchanceté du monde’3 (Garrel and Lescure 1992:  40–​41). The feeling of post-​ revolutionary malaise, epitomised by an abject Christ born into a cruel world, merges with the search for forms of resistance in both Le Lit de la vierge and La Cicatrice intérieure. The films are defined by the presence of lengthy sequence-shots, many of which depict characters drifting and wandering. The sense of drift evoked in these sequences is compounded in Le Lit de la vierge by Garrel’s allusion to, and simultaneous digression from Christian iconography and the story of Christ’s life. In La Cicatrice intérieure allusions to the myths of Oedipus and Theseus invoke a narrative and iconographic foundation that Garrel equally transgresses and digresses from. Le Lit de la vierge is filmed in widescreen and features richly contrasted black and white cinematography. The opening sequence establishes the biblical story of Christ as a structuring narrative, albeit one which Garrel will not adhere to with strict fidelity. It shows Mary (Zouzou) lying on a bed astride the ocean giving birth to an adult Jesus (Pierre Clémenti). Zouzou’s presence in the film in the role of Mary establishes a link with her role as Marie, the partner of Jesus (Thierry Garrel), in Marie pour mémoire. Le lit de la vierge, however, literalises what was an implicit relationship to the biblical story in the previous film. Framed from above, Mary’s face is shown in close-​up, before the camera slowly draws back and Jesus emerges from the right of the frame. He climbs on to the bed, shivering and wet from the ocean. Mary proceeds to comfort her son, cuddling him and singing to him, before sending him onwards to preach to his followers. The next sequence depicts Jesus embarking on this journey, conveying his frailty when faced with brutality. It is composed of a frontal tracking-​shot, lasting five and a half minutes, of Jesus arriving in a village on a donkey. As he slowly makes his way along a dirt track surrounded by mud houses, he is pursued by a gang of four men on horseback who emerge from the left of the frame. They circle him, shouting and jeering in an intimidating fashion. Jesus continues to advance, taking something from a paper bag to place in the mouth 3 ‘It is a non-​violent parable in which Zouzou incarnates at once both Mary and Mary Magdalene, while Pierre Clémenti incarnates Christ –​a discouraged Christ who gives up when faced with the cruelness of the world.’

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of two women he encounters on his journey, in apparent allusion to the distribution of communion in the Catholic liturgy. The men on horseback continue to pursue him, chasing him out of the village. At the conclusion to the sequence, the camera draws to a standstill and frames Jesus in profile on his donkey, before one of the gang approaches him and pulls him down into a stream below. The camera zooms in on the forlorn face of Jesus, before panning to observe him as he runs off in pursuit of the donkey. This sequence, depicting the relentless persecution of a frail and inarticulate Christ, is consistent with the mood of despondency and resignation following May 68 alluded to by Garrel. A sequence later in the film, in which Jesus discovers himself ensnared in a series of conjoined tunnels, reinforces the allegorical relationship between the film and May 68. A roving camera circles in a cavernous subterranean landscape, moving between dark passages and illuminated areas to reveal hooded guards resembling members of the Ku Klux Klan. The figures have lit torches and dogs on leashes that bark aggressively. Having been the victim of persecution on his arrival in the village, Jesus is on this occasion a helpless witness to violent scenes of incarceration and punishment. The sequence conjures the atmosphere in Paris after May 68, evoking the internment of activists who had taken part in the événements, something that is alluded to by Garrel when he states:  ‘En dépit de sa nature allégorique, le film contient une dénonciation de la répression policière de 68, qui avait en général été bien comprise par les spectateurs de l’époque’4 (Garrel and Lescure 1992:  41). As with Le Révélateur and La Concentration, Garrel’s geographical distance from home is not indicative of a detachment from what was happening in France. The mood of despondency evident in the sequences described above is not, however, definitive of the work. Jesus is depicted as a figure that wanders without any clear direction. The film refuses chronology or the semblance of causal logic in favour of a fragmentary and confusing cinematic form. Indicative of this is Garrel’s evocation of the Crucifixion in a night-​time sequence in which Clémenti stumbles across two figures illuminated in the desert. Shown with 4 ‘In spite of its allegorical nature, the film contains a denunciation of the police repression of 68, something that was generally understood by the viewers at the time.’

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arms tied to a length of wood that runs horizontally across the top of their shoulders, the men appear as modern avatars of the thieves crucified alongside Christ. They are framed with their backs to the camera, on either side of Jesus. The thief on the left has two buckets hanging from each side of his cross attached with rope; the other thief, played by Garrel himself, has the skull of a ram hanging from each side of his cross. Standing in between them, in the middle of the frame and facing the camera, Jesus stares at them for some time in silence before finally gesturing to them to follow him. The shot remains fixed as the three slowly walk off into the desert, the edges of the buckets shimmering with light in contrast to the deep blackness of the night. This wordless sequence dispenses with the drama and violence associated with the culmination of Christ’s journey, in preference for a surreal, oneiric encounter. The sequence that follows the Crucifixion reinforces the apprehension of Christ’s wayward journey. The shot of Christ and the thieves walking off into the desert by night fades to a longshot of the men framed frontally and walking in the direction of the camera by day. This time, they are joined by a fourth person who dances to guitar riffs that can be heard in the soundtrack.5 Jesus proceeds to lead them as they walk along the middle of a shallow river. The Crucifixion sequence appears to make way for Christ’s baptism in the Red Sea, dispensing with the chronological order of the Christian story. The transgression of narrative chronology and the distortion of Christian iconography challenge the viewer’s capacity to readily integrate these events into a rational, coherent order. In the course of the film Jesus is seen killing his mother before proceeding to pursue a relationship with someone resembling her. Having murdered his mother, Jesus is shown leaving his house with a large chest that he lifts onto his shoulder to carry. In the sequences that follow, as he wanders in various locations, he is shown at times carrying the chest and at times without it. When he walks in the river, in the sequence referred to previously the chest is replaced with the body of one of the thieves whom he picks up to carry after he is attacked and beaten by the other thief. In the sequence immediately 5 Sally Shafto notes that this music is by Les Jeunes Rebelles: ‘an instrumental rock and roll group made up of the painter Frédéric Pardo, Jean Pierre Kalfon, Didier Léon and Philippe Garrel’ (Shafto 2000: 48).

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following this, however, the chest re-​emerges as Jesus is shown arriving at the home of Mary Magdalene with the cumbersome weight on his shoulder. The effect of the substitution of the object with a human body between sequences, and of the disappearance and reappearance of the chest, is to create temporal confusion and a fractured cinematic form. This confusion is increased by the fact that Mary and Mary Magdalene are both played by Zouzou, so that following Clémenti’s act of matricide he is shown encountering the same woman once again. Azoury’s analysis of Garrel’s doubling of the person of Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary foregrounds the film-​maker’s intentional adoption of a disorientating cinematic style. He writes, ‘Our failure to distinguish Mary from Mary of Magdalene is not the result of a flaw in Garrel’s scenario; it is the successful outcome of a deliberately confusing mise-​en-​scène’ (Azoury 2006: 27–​28). Journeys defined by drift also characterise La Cicatrice intérieure, which strikes notable parallels with Le Lit de la vierge. Garrel appears alongside his partner Nico in the three opening sequences to the film, which together form a prologue. These sequences constitute a type of cinematic triptych that figures the film’s central thematic and formal preoccupations. The first sequence opens with a frontal shot of Nico in the foreground centre of the frame, sitting on the edge of a lunar-​like landscape of rock. She is dressed in a fawn robe matching the colour of the barren terrain. The figure of Garrel emerges in the background of the frame, following a serpentine path that gradually leads him to her. He is dressed in light-​brown leather trousers, with a matching waistcoat and a long fawn shirt with loose sleeves. Garrel, who made the costume himself, explains that his fascination with medieval costume came in his childhood, when his father would leave him with the costume maker at the Comédie Française when performing there (Pacadis 2005: 190). As he walks steadily towards her, he looks back intermittently over his shoulder. When his path brings him as far as Nico, he lifts her up by the arm and the camera, static until now, tracks towards the couple. The camera proceeds to follow them in close-​up as Garrel advances, guiding her in his arms. She can be heard repeating several times in English, ‘Where are you taking me?’ Garrel makes no reply and his face remains expressionless. The camera then ceases to track their movement, circling away, before drawing to a standstill and observing the couple as they walk slowly off along a barren mountainous pathway. Nico’s induction on

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a journey into the unknown prefigures the journey that the viewer is invited to surrender to: a peripatetic voyage refusing the causal teleology of the cinematic mainstream. The next sequence features a remarkable circular tracking-​shot that reinforces the sense of drift introduced in the opening sequence. It opens with a medium-​shot of Nico, this time sitting in the middle of a vast desert terrain. Garrel is shown standing to her right, holding her hand and staring out to the left of the frame. The expanse of flat, arid land is interrupted by the horizon, bisecting the frame evenly. Nico can be heard repeating several times, ‘Philippe I can’t breathe, can you help me?’ As in the previous sequence he does not reply and continues to stare absently towards the left of the frame. This persists for some time before he gradually pulls away from her grasp. He walks off, seemingly in a perpendicular direction to her, tracked by a camera that matches his stride and frames him in profile. This movement continues for over a minute and a half, until he is observed once again drawing abreast of Nico, who is seated on the sand in the same place as before. The same movement is repeated, as Garrel steps over her and appears to walk away from her a second time, only for his journey to return him to the same starting point. Garrel’s reflections on this enigmatic sequence are striking, invoking a new type of sequence-shot that challenges the associations of this form with lyricism, virtuosity and freedom, particularly as celebrated by the New Wave. La question du plan-​séquence avait beaucoup occupé la Nouvelle Vague. Ce qui caractérise un plan-​séquence c’est la continuité de la prise de vue et la profondeur de champ. Or, dans un désert il n’y a rien, ce qui ôte beaucoup d’intérêt à la profondeur de champ, d’autre part la fin du plan étant identique à son commencement, la durée elle-​ même a été annulée. Ce travelling est donc un plan-​séquence à l’état pur, une sorte de degré zéro du plan-​séquence.6 (Garrel and Lescure 1992: 61) 6 ‘The New Wave had been very concerned by the question of the sequence-shot. What characterises a sequence-shot is the continuity of the filming and the depth of field. However, there is nothing in a desert, something that removes the importance of the depth of field, and on the other hand, because the end of the shot is entirely identical to the beginning, the duration itself is cancelled out. This tracking-​shot is therefore the sequence-​shot in its purest state, a type of zero-​degree sequence-​shot.’

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The ‘zero degree’ sequence-shot contradicts the notion of striking a clear path towards freedom, uninterrupted and unimpeded by the imposition of montage. The sense of the characters advancing in space and time, or of a narrative progressing according to a chronological, causal blueprint, is challenged by the spatial repetition and the impression of a temporal circularity, as though Garrel seeks to visually enact Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence. It exposes both the actors and the spectator to disorientation and unease as though wandering inside a labyrinth, subjected to repetitious drift. The final sequence of this opening triptych reinforces elements present within the previous two. A  frontal shot of Nico and Garrel shows the couple walking listlessly along a wide path in a landscape of white, salt-​like sand, typical of the desert in New Mexico. The path circles inwardly towards the right of the frame, and as the camera tracks backwards it observes the steady advance of the two worn bodies along the circular pathway. As with the other sequences in the prologue, no indication is provided of a purpose behind this wandering. None of the sequences combine to suggest a chronology, and the barren landscape offers no context to indicate a precise historical moment. While the prologue contains few narrative markers, the main body of the film incorporates allusions to classical myth. These allusions, however, do not serve to provide clarity or to establish a familiar narrative. In this manner, they imitate Garrel’s treatment of the biblical story and Christian iconography in Le Lit de la vierge. This point is illustrated by a sequence midway through the film. It opens with a longshot of a boat with a black flag on the shoreline, and a white horse positioned to the left. Pierre Clémenti slowly emerges from the boat, and walks with the horse towards the foreground of the frame. Naked, with a bow in his right hand and a quiver of arrows around his body, he resembles the subjects of the neo-​classical painter Ingres, notably the depiction of Oedipus in Oedipus and the Sphinx (1808).7 The black flag of the boat provides an allusion to the mythical journey of Theseus to Crete, where the hero was charged 7 In an interview with Dominique Païni, recorded while they walk around the Louvre together, Garrel reflects on his admiration for Ingres, implying a source for his depiction of Clémenti (Païni 2005).

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with the task of slaying the Minotaur in the labyrinth. Setting out with a black sail, his return under a white sail was supposed to signal the success of his voyage to King Aegeus. However, the structure of the mythical journey is not adhered to in La Cicatrice intérieure. Later in the film, Clémenti is shown in the same boat with the black flag still aloft, this time mooring in a glacial landscape. On a third occasion, in the penultimate sequence of the film, he is shown setting sail from a lakeshore. Nico is positioned to his left with a black horse. The dark-​coloured sand in the foreground of the frame contrasts with the luminosity of the glacial landscape seen earlier. Garrel conflates a pictural tradition associated with Oedipus with the mythical journey of Theseus, constructing sequences in which Clémenti is depicted on numerous voyages that remain free from any discernible purpose or direction. Instead of producing some sort of goal-​orientated fiction, Garrel privileges a visual collage of contrasting desert landscapes, shifting between these diverse topographies in an aleatory fashion. The ambiguity and indeterminateness of the journeys in La Cicatrice intérieure are compounded by the virtual absence of dialogue in the film. This is limited to a number of phrases in English uttered by Nico, and a poem she recites in German, neither of which is subtitled to aid the comprehension of a French viewer. The lyrics of Nico’s song My Only Child, which forms part of the soundtrack to the film, are significant in this respect. A  verse from the song, ‘There are no words no ears no eyes to show them what you know’, can be interpreted as a justification of Garrel’s refusal to resort to speech in the film, eschewing a verbal locus for meaning construction. Instead, the film appears to exalt in the ambiguity of silence and its function to resist coherent explanation and rationalisation. Faced with this ambiguity, Jill Forbes described La Cicatrice intérieure as ‘mannered and difficult to follow’ (Forbes 1992: 132). Rather than drawing attention to a failing in Garrel’s work, Forbes’s comment suggests a successful outcome of both this film and Le Lit de la vierge. The perplexing iconography used in Garrel’s first two underground films, and the convoluted, wayward journeys depicted, expose the viewer to an analogous experience of drift and disorientation, valued by the film-​maker. Statements that Garrel made at the time, in addition to responses from enthusiastic critics, reveal a strong connection between the

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aspects of drifting in the film works and drug culture. Reflecting on why people are drawn to his films, in an interview in 1971, Garrel states: ‘les gens de ma génération avouent y aller pour planer, c’est à dire par sensation’8 (Langlois 1971: 148). The term ‘planer’ has several possible meanings in French, capturing the idea of ‘floating’ or ‘drifting’, but it is also used to describe the sensation of being under the influence of drugs. Garrel captures both the idea of drifting and getting high by his use of this term. Responding to a viewing of La Cicatrice intérieure, Jean-​Louis Bory reinforces the film’s association with drug culture by deploying the same term used by Garrel:  ‘La Cicatrice n’appartient pas à un cinéma de réflexion logique. C’est un cinéma de vision, proche de l’intuition pure. Il procède par des vagues d’émotions progressives. Et si La Cicatrice intérieure, c’était la Saison en enfer de notre cinéma? Moi, je plane’9 (Bory 1972). Anecdotes relating to the genesis of both films and the nature of the productions suggest a belief in the emancipatory possibilities of drugs that was shared by Garrel and his entourage. Pierre Clémenti’s role in Le Lit de la vierge was in part inspired by Garrel’s interest in the phenomenon of people with no Christian upbringing taking LSD and imagining themselves to be Jesus. According to various sources, Clémenti, who was later imprisoned in Italy for drug possession, became convinced that he was Jesus Christ. In the final sequence of the film, where Jesus is shown walking into the water, Clémenti is said to have not wanted to stop, convinced of his superhuman powers, something that caused alarm among the onlooking cast and crew. The reception of the film at the time of its release appears to have been mixed. Garrel describes how the auditorium of the Pagode cinema in Paris was full every night (Azoury 2013: 11). However, he also alludes to the failure of the film to alter mindsets within France: ‘Il me semblait, puisque Chelsea Girls avait tenu un an dans une salle new-​yorkaise, qu’il devait être possible de se démarquer du cinéma accepté en France qui oscillait alors entre, disons, le néoréalisme et la Nouvelle Vague. Je me trompais, c’est le moins qu’on puisse dire. Je 8 ‘The people of my generation say that they go there to drift, meaning by feeling.’ 9 ‘La Cicatrice intérieure does not belong to a cinema of logical reflection. It’s a visionary cinema close to pure intuition. It proceeds through progressive waves of emotions. Could it be La Saison d’enfer of our cinema? I myself am drifting.’

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revois encore Nico pleurant après La Cicatrice intérieure. Nous avions tant travaillé sur ce film’10 (Garrel and Lescure 1992:  60). Garrel’s comments suggest a conservative cinematic culture in France at the time, contrasting with the greater open-​mindedness in New York that marked the reception of the American underground.

Garrel and the Situationist dérive The significance of the motif of the journey in Garrel’s first two underground films is illuminated by aspects of Debord’s cinema. Like Garrel in his early underground period, Debord enjoyed a nomadic existence, something that he reflects on in his most strongly autobiographical work, In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (1978).11 The film recounts his various movements within Paris, influenced by the Situationist conception of dérive, in which random wanderings in the urban space were extolled as a means of interrupting the regular patterns of existence dictated by the rituals of advanced capitalism, including work, commerce and leisure. This urban activity is alluded to in the film’s voice-​over:  ‘We did not seek the formula for overturning the world in books, but in wandering. Ceaselessly drifting for days on end, none resembling the one before.’ The film also reflects on Debord’s movements between Paris, Rome, Venice and the Auvergne region of France, all of which he lived in at some stage during the 1960s and 1970s. The notion of travelling and drifting in Debord’s life is captured visually in the form of the film. The work is replete with tracking-​shots taken from boats, including shots along the Seine and extensive shots moving from Giudecca island towards Venice. It includes several aerial photographs of the city plan of Paris and Florence, which the camera tracks across following the trajectory of the river Seine and the Arno. The restlessness evoked by the treatment of the river is matched by the incorporation of other 10 ‘It seemed to me that, since Chelsea Girls had managed to be screened for one year in a New York cinema that it must be possible to distance ourselves from the accepted cinema in France then oscillating, let’s say, between neorealism and the New Wave, I was wrong, that’s the least we can say. I can still see Nico crying after La Cicatrice intérieure. We had worked so hard on that film.’ 11 From here on the film title will be shortened to In girum imus.

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film fragments, including the advance of Colonel Custer’s regiment in John Ford’s Rio Grande (1950), the cavalry charge against Russian cannon in Michael Curtiz’s The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) and tracking-​shots of Allied troops advancing along a river bank in the Second World War film The Longest Day (1962). The montage of these elements induces the sensation of altering rhythms of duration and flow, capturing the feel of Debord’s nomadic existence. However, the type of journey that Debord extols, and to which he subjects his spectators, is neither comfortable nor reassuring but is instead defined by repetition, ensnarement and loss. The qualities characteristic of the journeys celebrated by Debord provide a notable parallel to Garrel’s work and contribute to an understanding of the implications of his formal approaches. The notion of the journey as a central motif in Debord’s work is evoked by the title of his second film, Sur le passage de quelques personnes à travers une assez courte unité de temps (1959),12 which translates as ‘On the Passage of a Few People through a Relatively Short Unity of Time’. The reference to unity in the title suggests the classical unities of time, place and action, something that is undermined by the aleatory shifts in location and temporality. Over a montage of four shots showing pedestrians walking in front of the Cluny museum in Paris, Debord attacks the day-​ to-​ day movements associated with being an obedient citizen in a society governed by the spectacle:  ‘Others unthinkingly followed the paths learned once and for all, to their work and their home, to their predictable future.’ Debord proposes strategies to resist this by evoking his nomadic and errant lifestyle as a counterpoint, but also by creating a digressive cinematic form. In girum imus is noteworthy for the recurrence of the motif of the labyrinth, evoked both in the voice-​over commentary and in the visual form of the work. Through the voice-​over Debord celebrates Saint-​ Germain-​des-​Prés, the place where he and his comrades enjoyed drunken gatherings during the 1950s, as ‘the best possible labyrinth for ensnaring visitors’, adding:  ‘No one left those few streets and tables where the “highest of time” had been discovered.’ In addition to the evocation of Saint-​Germain-​des-​Prés as a labyrinthine location, the title of the film assumes the form of a labyrinth, something that is directly addressed in the voice-​over commentary: ‘But nothing 12 From here on the film will be referred to as Sur le passage.

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expresses this restless and exitless present better than this ancient phrase that turns completely back on itself, being constructed letter by letter like an inescapable labyrinth, thus perfectly uniting the form and content of perdition: In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni. We turn in the night, consumed by fire.’ This notion of the form and content of perdition is evoked graphically by the titles that open the film. On two separate lines, one emerging from the left of the screen and the other from the right, the letters of the film title appear one by one, conveying how the palindrome functions as a snare, reflecting continually backwards and forwards on itself. Other visual elements, in addition to the verbal allusions, evoke this motif of an inescapable labyrinth. The visual collage incorporates the same moving and still imagery on several occasions (whether tracking-​shots along rivers, plagiarised film extracts, portraits of Situationists, advertisements, or recurrent shots of a war game favoured by Debord, called ‘Kriegspiel’) so that the viewer experiences this sense of drift, repetition and return. The motif of the labyrinth culminates in the subtitle that draws the film to a conclusion, or to a non-​conclusion, which reads: ‘To be rewatched from the beginning.’ The ‘zero degree’ sequence-shot of La Cicatrice intérieure, in which Garrel circles the desert sand twice as though ensnared inside an invisible labyrinth, strikes a notable parallel with Debord’s use of the labyrinth to establish a journey defined by perdition. This labyrinth defines the experience of watching both La Cicatrice intérieure and Le Lit de la vierge. In the manner of Debord, Garrel’s approach confers the sensation of being lost and cast adrift. Debord establishes the experience of being lost as essential to an avant-​garde, denoting the exploration of new terrain, away from the standard pathways that sustain the status quo. In this respect, Azoury’s description of how the desert functions in Garrel’s underground cinema is illuminating: ‘The Desert is not a retreat but rather a place of flight, a mystical flight into the future, the starting point of potential new beginnings, a zone outside of the ordinary garden controlled by society’ (Azoury 2006:  24). The lostness conferred on the spectators in Garrel’s desert films offers the possibility of discovery, a space for regeneration and renewal. Garrel creates this space by deliberately digressing from the familiar codes of identification utilised in mainstream narrative cinema. The lostness and disorientation conferred upon the viewer leave open

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the possibility of the revelation of something new. Garrel’s reflections on what he terms his ‘non-​narrative’ cinema resonate with the conclusions drawn by Azoury: Transformer le cinéma, ce n’est pas transformer le monde, mais c’est du moins refuser de concourir à la colonisation, comme dit Wenders, des imaginaires. J’ai fait du cinéma non-​narratif pour protester contre le cinéma d’identification qu’allaient voir la quasi-​totalité des gens qui ont l’âge de mon père:  si un adolescent va voir Le Pont de la rivière Kwaï, il rêvera peut-​être d’une carrière militaire, mais s’il va voir La Cicatrice intérieure ….13 (Garrel and Lescure 1992: 144)

Leaving his phrase unfinished, Garrel makes no direct claims as to the meaning or the function of the film. He does, however, establish his conscious decision to liberate the spectator from what he sees as the tendency of the mainstream to colonise the imaginary. In this respect, the literal and figurative wandering and digression that define his first underground films provide a space for the spectator’s emancipation.

Late underground: Les Hautes Solitudes (1974), Un Ange passe (1975), Le Berceau de cristal (1975), Le Bleu des origines (1978) Athanor (1972) is the final film that Garrel produced with the financial assistance of Sylvina Boissonnas. Shot in France and Sweden, the short film is composed of thirteen silent sequences of various static compositions of Nico and the model Musky. Stéphane Delorme observes how the stasis of the camera marked a turning point in Garrel’s underground period towards portraiture, replacing the long-​ durational, flowing sequence-shots that defined the previous two works. Avec Athanor, la caméra se fixe et les comédiennes (Nico et Musky) prennent la pose. Les quelques plans de ce film ne relèvent pourtant pas du portrait tel qu’il sera élaboré plus tard, il s’agit encore de la 13 ‘Transforming the cinema does not mean transforming the world but it is at least a refusal to partake in the colonisation of the imaginary, as Wenders has said. I produced a non-​narrative cinema to protest against the cinema of identification that almost all of the people of my father’s generation went to see: if an adolescent goes to see The Bridge on the River Kwai, he will perhaps dream of a military career but if he goes to see La Cicatrice intérieure ….’

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représentation d’une imagerie, non d’un dénuement. Les Hautes solitudes (1974) marque la rupture et l’avènement du film-​portrait. Le cinéma de Garrel est désormais consacré à la seule contemplation d’un visage de femme.14 (Delorme 2001: 312)

The formal rupture brought about by the static compositions in Athanor paves the way for Garrel’s approach in Les Hautes Solitudes and the three films which follow it. Nevertheless, these latter works display remarkable formal diversity, experimenting with differences in colour, image texture, film ratio and the use of sound. This section will give an overview of the formal diversity evident in these late underground works. Subsequent sections will then proceed to consider the significance of the aesthetic approaches adopted by Garrel by exploring the relationship with other avant-​gardes, including the American underground and Arte Povera. Les Hautes Solitudes offers a series of sequences filmed with Jean Seberg, the American actor most famous for her role as the young American student, Patricia, in Jean-​Luc Godard’s À Bout de souffle. Seberg’s face dominates the film, alongside several brief portraits of Nico, Laurent Terzieff and Tina Aumont, who have an implicit if ill-​ defined relationship with the star of Godard’s ground-​breaking debut feature. The texture of the image is often grainy and the montage alternates between rapid cuts and longer durational takes. Garrel recalls how Seberg deployed a type of method acting, following her training in Hollywood, and would perform a scene on condition that he would carry out a provocative act, such as sneaking into her apartment and stealing her purse (Courant 1975: 157). Nevertheless, sound is suppressed throughout the film, in the same manner as in Le Révélateur, and a clear narrative is not discernible. Nicole Brenez describes Un Ange passe (1975) as exposing the profound and disturbing powers of parallel editing, alternating between isolated portraits of Nico (including close-​up shots of her playing in concert towards the end of the film) and shots offering various 14 ‘With Athanor, the camera becomes rooted to the spot as the actresses (Nico and Musky) take their pose. The shots of this film do not, however, establish the portrait such as it will be elaborated later but are rather still concerned with the representation of an image rather than a bareness. Les Hautes Solitudes (1974) marked the rupture and the advent of the film-​portrait. Garrel’s cinema is from then on solely devoted to the contemplation of the face of a woman.’

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combinations of Laurent Terzieff, Maurice Garrel, Bulle Ogier and Jean-​Pierre Kalfon. At times the portraits are accompanied by sound (including the music of Nico, dialogue and ambient sounds) and at other times they are entirely silent. Brenez observes a strange allure in the absence of a fiction binding these various sketches, resulting in their relationship remaining ‘implicite, mystérieux, suspendu’,15 and creating a ‘temporalité perpétuellement inchoative d’une genèse’16 (Brenez 2013: 157). Compared to the polished appearance of La Cicatrice intérieure, there is a greater sense of an intuitive approach to filming. The sequences filmed with the actors give the sense of a recording of a film in the process of being made. This notion of a work that is incomplete, in the process of construction, reflects both on Garrel’s interest in the sources of cinema, the birthplace of creation, but also his openness to the imperfection and incompleteness that characterises his later underground work. This openness is articulated during an interview with Dominique Païni conducted while walking around the Louvre. An unfinished portrait of Bonaparte by David and the worn and cracked facade of Botticelli’s fresco Venus and the Graces (c. 1484) prompts the film-​maker to express his ‘goût pour l’inachèvement ou l’endommagement’17 (Païni 2005: 52). In contrast to the previous two works Garrel’s next film, Le Berceau de cristal, is filmed in saturated colour. It contains a soundtrack in part composed of the music of the German prog rock band Ash-​Ra Temple and features a series of portraits of Nico, Anita Pallenberg, Margareth Clémenti and Dominique Sanda, along with Garrel’s close friend Frédéric Pardo. Several sequences show Pardo in the act of composing his works of art, a type of pared down psychedelic painting, which, according to Garrel, used the early Renaissance technique of colour mixing known as tempera. Frontal shots of Pardo’s canvases intersperse the film, mingling with the saturated colours of Garrel’s portrait sequences and combining with the music to create an ethereal quality. Nevertheless, despite the warmth and richness of colour in a work that Garrel elsewhere described as dedicated to ‘la gloire du haschich’18 (Courant 1983), the film culminates in a sequence where Nico places a revolver to her head and kills herself. 15 16 17 18

‘Implicit, mysterious, suspended’. ‘Perpetually formless time of work-​in-​progress’. ‘Taste for incompletion, for things damaged’. ‘The glory of hashish’.

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Brenez comments on how the conclusion to Le Berceau de cristal establishes the function of the portrait as a memento mori (Brenez 2004:  242). More broadly, suicide is a recurrent motif in Garrel’s underground films, and the subject returns later in his film oeuvre. The concluding sequence of Athanor shows a high-​angle shot of Nico’s lifeless body, draped over the side of a rowing boat, floating freely on a lake. Les Hautes Solitudes shows Jean Seberg swallowing a series of pills at one stage, and Le Lit de la vierge concludes with a longshot of Jesus walking into the sea until the ocean submerges him. These allusions suggest a romantic impulse particular to Garrel’s cinema, with suicide cast as a gesture of revolt in response to the monstrosity of the established order. The notion of suicide is implicit in the title of Garrel’s penultimate underground film, Le Voyage au jardin des morts (1976). It is exceptional in the works of this later period because it uses scripted dialogues and is filmed in cinemascope. When composing the dialogues for the film, Garrel randomly selected passages from Gabriele d’Annunzio’s The Triumph of Death (1894), a novel dealing with a doomed relationship between Giorgio Aurispa and his married lover Ippolita. The adaptation of the novel, which had been out of print for sixty years, followed a suggestion made by Pardo. In addition to the use of dialogue, the film differs from other underground films thanks to its use of expressionistic lighting, including yellow, deep-​red and blue illuminations. Having previously collaborated with Jean Seberg, Garrel worked with another star of the European screen, Maria Schneider, famous for her roles as Jeanne in Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris (1972) and as the young woman in Antonioni’s The Passenger (1975). The film is consistent with other works of this late underground period as a result of the absence of a clear narrative structure. It was made with leftover film-​stock from Bresson’s Lancelot du lac (1974) given to the director by Jean-​Pierre Rassam, which turned out to have been damaged while in storage in Rassam’s cellar. Garrel, who only discovered the problem with the image after the shoot, has since described the film as ‘raté’19 and the colours as ‘dégueulasses’20 (Azoury 2013: 12). Despite the director’s criticism, the pictural quality of several shots in the film are reminiscent of Ingres, including a 19 ‘A failure’. 20 ‘Disgusting’.

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sequence with Ippolita (Schneider), bathing her feet against a backdrop of blue tiles with white crests, a noticeable yellowish tint to her complexion. The shot resembles the colouration evident in several of Ingres’s paintings, including La Grande Baigneuse (1808). The last film of Garrel’s underground period, Le Bleu des origines, was filmed entirely in black and white using a wind-​up camera. The title, referring to the alchemical quest for the original blue, reflects a recurrent interest in alchemy during this period. The term ‘origins’ is also consistent with Garrel’s fascination with a cinema of origins –​ returning to a static framing, rather than a mobile camera, and the earliest version of the cinematograph, where the hand of the operator manipulated the movement of the film in the camera. The film oscillates between portraits of Nico and of Garrel’s long-​time friend, and star of three of his previous feature films, Zouzou. Garrel places himself within this configuration, in a manner reminiscent of Dziga Vertov in his film Man with a Movie Camera (1929), appearing in several shots, reflected in mirrors and windows, turning the crank of the camera.

Portraiture and self-​chronicle: Garrel, Warhol and Debord The shift that occurs in Garrel’s underground cinema, observed by Delorme, is evoked by a description of the making of Les Hautes Solitudes by Jacques Morice. Morice’s portrayal encapsulates the evolution in style from Garrel’s early films of this period. He describes a film-​maker (Garrel) who makes regular visits to the home of an actress (Jean Seberg) in the VIIe arrondissement of Paris, each time with a 35mm film camera in hand. The nature of the shoot is captured with the following: Ensemble ils imaginent sommairement des scènes. Elle se concentre et l’homme déclenche la caméra. Pendant que le moteur ronronne, ils parlent de tout et de n’importe quoi, de choses futiles ou intimes. Personne ne les gêne autour, car il n’y a pas d’équipe, ni de techniciens, ni de répétitions. Ce film non-​sonore s’appelle Les Hautes solitudes.21 (Morice 1995: 112) 21 ‘Together they roughly imagine scenes. She concentrates and he starts the camera. Whilst the motor hums, they talk about everything and nothing,

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Morice highlights several notable differences in Garrel’s cinema from what was previously evident. First, Garrel is depicted as working alone with his friend, the actress Jean Seberg, indicating a change from the use of a small crew for his previous underground films. Second, Paris is the sole identifiable location in the film for the first time since Marie pour mémoire (1967), signifying an end to the nomadism that defined Le Lit de la vierge, La Cicatrice intérieure and Athanor. Finally, Morice notes Garrel’s emphasis on portraiture, characterised by an intimate relationship between the cinematographer and his subject. Les Hautes Solitudes exchanges the topography of the desert for that of Jean Seberg’s face, which it explores repeatedly, privileging close-​up shots of her. The sequence-​shots that defined the previous films are replaced by static framing, with occasional short panning movements. The conversations between Seberg and Garrel, mentioned by Morice, are evident during shots where she can be seen addressing Garrel behind the camera. Sometimes she smiles at him but on other occasions she reveals sudden oscillations in mood, from elation to despair, as her face becomes a rapidly shifting topography. The film records the intimacy of the exchange between Garrel and Seberg, revealing a fascination with the small gestures and shifting expressions of Seberg. Garrel’s fixation with recording the human figure freed from the subordination to a fiction establishes a parallel between his cinema and that of Andy Warhol. Several works are illustrative of Warhol’s filmic practice. Eat (1963) is a long-​durational portrait of Warhol’s fellow pop artist Joe Indiana. Indiana is framed at shoulder height, slowly eating a solitary mushroom, an act drawn out to over forty-​five minutes, in part due to the distended film motion. The absence of an interventionist montage is indicated by the inclusion of the white film leader, revealing that one film reel has ended and has simply been replaced with a new reel. The same composition is maintained throughout. Henry Geldzahler (1964) is a feature-​length portrait film of the eponymous curator of the Museum of Modern Art smoking a cigar. A similar framework was deployed for Screen Tests, hundreds of three-​minute films that Warhol shot between 1964 and 1966 featuring silent portraits of the various visitors, celebrities and guests that things futile or intimate. No one around bothers them. People barely remark that a film is being recorded, because there is no team, no technicians, no rehearsals. This film without sound is called Les Hautes Solitudes.’

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came to the Factory, including Marcel Duchamp, Yoko Ono, Allen Ginsberg, Nico and Salvador Dalí. Once again, these works were filmed with a static camera mounted on a tripod, the length of the work being determined by the duration of the film reel. In addition to these examples, Poor Little Rich Girl (1965), Warhol’s portrait film of Edie Sedgwick recorded in the confines of her New  York apartment, displays similarities with Garrel’s Les Hautes Solitudes. The film is composed of continuous takes of Sedgwick that run the length of the reel. The camera remains in a fixed location, observing the young fashion model waking up, performing the quotidian gestures of talking on the phone, smoking, applying make-​up, trying on clothes, as well as responding to questions delivered off-​ screen by Chuck Wein. Many of the compositions include close-​ups as the camera zooms in on her face to observe minute details such as the flicker of an eye, a smile, or Sedgwick rolling her tongue across her teeth. These details are similarly observed in Garrel’s portrait of Jean Seberg, where close-​up shots show her playfully rolling her tongue across her teeth or, on one occasion, record a tear dropping from her eye. Both works constitute an act of collaboration between performer and cinematographer. Callie Angel highlights this aspect of Warhol’s films, seeing the validation of Sedgwick’s performance through the appreciative and interactive responses of Warhol’s panning camera as symptomatic of his early underground cinema. Angel’s description of Warhol’s films as ‘jointly realised portraits’ resonates with Morice’s evocation of the intimacy of the collaborative exchange that occurs between Garrel (the cinematographer) and Seberg (the performer) in Les Hautes Solitudes (Angell 1994: 5). The extent to which Warhol influenced Garrel’s aesthetic ap­ proach­es is difficult to ascertain. Garrel describes how Nico brought him to meet Warhol at the Factory in New York after the couple first met in Italy in 1969. Garrel showed Warhol his most recent work, Le Lit de la vierge (1969), and Warhol showed him Imitation of Christ (1967), films that display an uncanny similarity in terms of their depiction of Christ as a madman. Garrel describes being marked by how the Factory functioned as an autonomous production unit and also by Warhol’s ‘façon de filmer les artistes dans leur cadre quotidien’22

22 ‘Way of filming artists in their day-​to-​day surroundings’.

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(Garrel and Lescure 1992:  59). Looking beyond questions of influence, both artists developed radical approaches to form marked by the filming of individuals freed from the subordination to a story, using a static frame and a shot length determined by the length of the film reel in the camera. The radicality of their approaches, within the context of modernist experiments in cinema, is highlighted by Émilie Vergé, who argues that they ‘composent pour le cinéma un modernisme, au sens où sa donnée fondamentale serait l’enregistrement du monde visible avec un caméra et cela rendu manifeste et suffisant’23 (Vergé 2009: 163). Vergé’s study articulates the extent of Garrel’s innovation and experimental minimalism by tracing the parallels with Warhol’s cinema. Beyond the significance of Garrel’s approach in relation to the history of cinematic form, a further important aspect of his work relates to the identity of the subjects drawn upon in his cinematic portraits. Reflecting on the motivations behind the portraits in Le Berceau de cristal, Garrel reveals an attraction to Warhol’s use of cinema as a type of personal archive, stating: ‘j’ai essayé de filmer mes proches dans le style de la Factory’24 (Garrel and Lescure 1992:  60). This desire to film those close to him in the manner of Warhol extends to all Garrel’s underground films, as suggested by the presence of Nico in each work and the recurrent presence of Maurice Garrel. Elsewhere Garrel identifies a motivation behind the change in direction that occurred in his cinema in the mid-​1970s. He describes coming across two portraits of little aesthetic interest, taken with an instamatic camera. The photographs lead to the reflection that what most interested him was seeing the precise gesture of an individual at a particular period in time:  ‘[Ç]a m’intéresse plus de voir des gestes exacts et de me rappeler les gestes exacts que faisait cette personne à cette époque. J’ai pensé qu’il serait plus intéressant pour plus tard de faire des films qui soient témoins’25 (Courant 1975). Speaking in relation to the depiction of his father in Un Ange passe, Garrel articulates the 23 ‘[They] designate a modernism in the cinema, in the sense that its fundamental gift would be to record the visible world with a camera, and this would be deemed manifest and sufficient.’ 24 ‘I tried to film the people I was close to in the style of the Factory.’ 25 ‘I’m more interested in seeing some exact gestures and to remember the exact gestures that this person made during this period. I thought it would be more interesting for later to make films that were testimonies.’

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desire to have a precise trace of the man for the future. He conceives this approach as following in the footsteps of the Lumière brothers, noting how Louis Lumière’s first instinct upon the discovery of the cinematograph was to film portraits of his children in the garden and his wife embroidering, adding:  ‘Les premières images du cinéma étaient des images de famille’26 (Courant 1975). Garrel situates his cinema within a deeply personal domain, identifying a context of artistic creation that seeks to ignore the notion of a future audience in favour of a documentary practice designed to establish traces of those close to him. One particular sequence in the final film of Garrel’s underground period, Le Bleu des origines, crystallises this desire to make filmed testimonies. Zouzou, star of Garrel’s early features Marie pour mémoire (1967) and Le Lit de la vierge (1969), is framed frontally with Nico in a medium-​shot, leafing through a photographic album. A  close-​up shot of a page from the album shows a portrait of two young girls, one mounted on the left of the page and the other below, on the right. The shot appears to encapsulate the premise underlying the film’s construction; a reproduction of a diptych recorded in a family album, through moving-​image portraits of Nico and Zouzou. The photographic album along with the shot of the two women function as a mise-​en-​abyme of Garrel’s larger project to record his lover, family and friends throughout his underground cinema. Debord’s films are notable for proposing the radical function of the cinema as a medium for recording one’s personal history. Antoine Coppola refers to a series of photographs of Debord and other Situationist comrades at the assembly of the occupation of the Sorbonne in 1968, shown in In girum imus, along with a subtitle in English drawn from Shakespeare’s Henry V, ‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers’. Coppola observes how the incorporation of this verse reinforces the idea of a small and secret grouping, the use of the English text intended to exclude a French audience. De ce groupe décrit par le texte, on se mets à chercher les visages sur les photographies qui défilent. Pour Debord, cela est évident, cela fait partie de son expérience personnelle. Il communique avec sa mémoire, la commente. Cette stratégie est utilisée, non seulement pour distancier le spectateur mais pour lui montrer à quelle point 26 ‘The first images in the cinema were images of the family.’

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ce discours théorique est aussi un discours intime et spontané.27 (Coppola 2005: 97).

Underlying the theoretical discourse present in Debord’s cinema is a lyrical and personal quality that precludes the viewer’s experience or understanding. This is consistent with the refusal of Garrel’s portrait films to be configured into a fiction or narrative that renders them readily comprehensible to a viewer. Debord himself, through his own cinema, theorises the political function of the use of the cinema as a medium for personal chronicle. In the voice-​over commentary to In girum imus he announces defiantly:  ‘I am going to replace the frivolous adventures typically recounted by the cinema with the examination of an important subject:  myself.’ The chronicling of his life, his ideas, his friends and lovers, is presented as a way of defying a cinema devoted to frivolous adventure, escapism and empty entertainment. The theorisation of the political significance of personal chronicle in Debord’s oeuvre lends itself to an interpretation of Garrel’s cinema. It is noteworthy how Garrel, with reference to Nico, describes the films of his underground period: ‘Mes films de cette époque qui ont paru étranges à tant des gens, sont pour moi la transposition limpide de ce que nous vivions. Leur seule intention était d’exprimer l’amour que j’avais pour elle. Ou plutôt, ils sont le produit de cet amour’28 (Garrel and Lescure 1992: 64). Garrel’s description of his films as a ‘limpid transposition’ of his life at the time echoes Debord’s use of the cinema to provide an account of how he lived. It is also in tune with the significance that Debord attaches to love in his films, something indicated by the affection expressed for his comrades and his wife, Alice-​Becker Ho. This is not to say that Garrel’s films are readily transparent in terms of their meaning, inviting the straightforward identification of the viewer. As Garrel suggests in the quotation 27 ‘From this group described by this text, we begin to scan the faces from the series of photos. For Debord, this is obvious, it is part of his personal experience. He communicates with his memory, comments on it. This strategy is used not only to distance the spectator but to show to what extent this theoretical discourse is also a spontaneous and intimate discourse.’ 28 ‘My films from that period which appeared strange to so many people are, for me, the limpid transposition of what we were living. Their sole intention was to express the love that I had for her, or rather, they are the product of this love.’

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above, their limpidity is apparent to him, something that is reminiscent of Coppola’s description of Debord’s films as a dialogue between himself and his memory. The portraits he creates are set apart from the reign of images associated with Hollywood or a mainstream cinema. The personal discourse also establishes a distance from the spectator, highlighted by Delorme in his description of Les Hautes Solitudes: ‘[C]‌’est un jeu à deux, le regard caméra n’implique pas le spectateur, il l’évince, pour mettre le réalisateur à sa place’29 (Delorme 2001: 312). The fact that several of the films are made entirely without sound, or contain lengthy sections without sound, contributes to the uncertainty and ambiguity of meaning in the film, creating the sense of a personal encounter between the film-​maker and the subject from which the spectator is excluded. By filming the figures close to him in what amounts to a personal and intimate exchange, Garrel challenges the cinema’s tendency to colonise the spectator’s imaginary with adventures lived out by star personalities.

Cinema Povero In November 1977, just prior to making Le Bleu des origines, Garrel recorded his first interview with Cahiers du cinéma since his interview with Rivette, Comolli and Narboni as a teenager in 1968. Describing his approach to film-​making almost a decade on from this first interview, Garrel stated:  ‘Je cherche à faire des films peu chers parce que il y a des gens plus pauvres que moi dans le monde’30 (Mairesse 1978:  61). This statement alludes to a poverist approach to film production that Garrel developed in his later underground period, beginning with Les Hautes Solitudes, an approach that sought to challenge both the visual codes and modes of production of a mainstream cinema. Several accounts of Garrel’s life during the 1970s present an image of a financially precarious existence. Describing the visits of Warhol to Paris during the 1970s, Garrel recalls: ‘Dès qu’il [Warhol] mettait le pied à Paris, j’allais le voir avec Nico et comme nous étions le plus 29 ‘It’s a game for two. The gaze towards the camera does not implicate the spectator, it excludes him in order to put the director in his place.’ 30 ‘I try to make inexpensive films because there are people less well off than me in this world.’

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souvent sans le sou, il signait des dollars que nous tachions de revendre au meilleur prix’31 (Garrel and Lescure 1992: 59–​60). Reinforcing this account of financial hardship, Nico’s son Ari Boulogne recalls staying with her at the home she shared with Garrel during the 1970s, located in the rue Richelieu, close to the Louvre. He describes an apartment in a state of extreme neglect, with a torn-​out fireplace and cigarette butts covering the floor. Boulogne adds: ‘Le plus souvent il était sans électricité. En hiver, il y régnait un tel froid que nous étions parfois contraints d’émigrer à l’hôtel Lutèce, rue Jules-​ Chaplain’32 (Boulogne 2001:  83). Accounting for this deprivation is not straightforward. Boulogne concedes that during these years his mother was addicted to heroin (87). Garrel would later evoke his relationship with Nico and how it became enmeshed with drug addiction in the film L’Enfant secret (1979). However, beyond problems associated with drug dependency, the nature of Garrel’s films and the statements he makes about his work suggest that poverty is bound up in a complex manner with his art, something that extends beyond a simple notion of material deprivation. The financial precariousness of Garrel’s position, evoked in the accounts above, can be seen to manifest in the cinema he produced. Le Lit de la vierge and La Cicatrice intérieure reflect a relative richness in Garrel’s work, owed to the generous patronage of Sylvina Boissonnas, which permitted Garrel to travel to the diverse desert locations that feature in these films, working with the aid of a small crew. Nevertheless, once this unconditional financial support ended, Garrel’s underground cinema increasingly came to reflect the constraint and impositions associated with producing his films unaided and with limited means. Referring to both Garrel’s and Warhol’s work, Vergé refers to the tendency for the shot duration to be determined by the length of the reel in the camera, as indicated by the film leader being included in the final montage. Alluding specifically to Garrel’s work, she describes the ‘inégalité frappante de la durée des plans, passant de très long au très court, une inégalité aléatoire 31 ‘As soon as he set foot in Paris, I would go to see him together with Nico and, because we were often penniless, he would sign dollar bills that we would attempt to sell on for the highest bid.’ 32 ‘Most of the time it was without electricity. During winter the place was so cold that sometimes we were forced to emigrate to the Hotel Lutece in rue Jules-​Chaplain.’

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imposée par la longueur des morceaux de pellicules qu’il récupérait dans les poubelles de Kodak’33 (Vergé 2009: 163). Vergé’s observation of the shot length in Warhol and Garrel’s cinema isolates a point of convergence between their works, while also drawing attention to a significant point of divergence. The random variation in Garrel’s shot length is something that was conditioned by the limited resources at his disposal. Warhol was not subjected to these same conditions and the shot length in his films is not marked by the same durational irregularity as Garrel’s. In Garrel’s 1977 interview with Cahiers, he elaborates on the nature of poverty as a material reality as well as an ethical practice. Garrel describes an artisanal approach to film production that refuses the codes of practice associated with industry professionals. His decision to assume the responsibility of filming his own work is explained as a means of avoiding a dependency on professional camera operators: ‘Les opérateurs, ils ne veulent bouger qu’avec de la pellicule neuve. Il y a une mystification énorme sur la pellicule, sur l’étalonage, sur les limites de développement. En poussant à 400 une pellicule qui a 11 ans ça marchait tres bien’34 (Mairesse 1978: 61). Garrel’s concession to using out-​of-​date film stock accounts for the variation in the image quality evident in his films. In Les Hautes Solitudes the colour varies, sometimes revealing a green tint indicative of ageing film. This is added to by variations in light exposure visible in Les Hautes Solitudes, Un Ange passe and Le Bleu des origines, with numerous shots either overexposed or underexposed, something that can be accounted for by Garrel’s refusal to work with a light meter: ‘Jamais un opérateur ne partirait sur un tournage sans sa cellule dans la main, moi depuis que je tiens ma caméra, j’en ai jamais eu de ma vie, une cellule dans la main. Je ne sais même pas la faire marcher’35 (Mairesse 1978: 61). Garrel accounts for his decision 33 ‘[The] striking unevenness of the length of the shots, which range from very long to very short, a random unevenness imposed by the length of the pieces of film that he finds in the bins at Kodak.’ 34 ‘Camera operators don’t want to go anywhere without brand-​new film. There is an enormous mystification regarding camera film, on its standardisation, on the limits of development. When I pushed an eleven-​year-​old film to 400 it worked really well.’ 35 ‘A camera operator will never begin a shoot without a light meter; as for myself, since I’ve taken charge of the camera I have never in my life had a meter in my hand. I don’t even know how to work one.’

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to work frequently without sound since Les Hautes Solitudes, attributing it to the fact that it meant that he could avoid having to employ someone to execute the task. This approach by the director reveals a desire to create a type of cinema outside of, and in opposition to, the modes of production and regulatory codes of industrialised cinema. This inclination is observed by Boulogne when he recalls witnessing Garrel working in his attic carrying out ‘la part artisanale’36 of his oeuvre, completing the manual tasks of editing, sewing the costumes and drawing the storyboards for his films (Boulogne 2001:  84). Garrel’s grand ambition appears to have been to make the cinema, the grand art of an industrialised modernity, something simple and poor that can be mastered and shaped by a single individual. These working practices, and the ethical considerations underpinning them, call to mind the Italian avant-​garde movement Arte Povera. Although Arte Povera is closely connected to the development of organic sculptural forms and installation works in the gallery space, rather than experimental cinema, the ethos of the movement helps to contextualise and interpret Garrel’s development of a poor cinema. Arte Povera came to be identified as a movement through the intervention of the art critic and curator Germano Celant when in November 1967 his article ‘Arte Povera: Notes for a Guerrilla War’ was published in the Milanese magazine Flash Art, following the group show he curated in Genoa in October 1967, Arte-​Povera –​ IM Spazio. Celant’s essay constituted a manifesto for the group, identifying twelve artists, including Luciano Fabro, Alighero Boetti, Mario Merz and Gilberto Zorio, bound by the use of simple methods and materials to create poetic statements that functioned as a political critique of technology and capitalist society. Celant’s manifesto describes a consensual political culture in which anyone can propose reform, criticise, violate, and demystify, while being obliged at all times to remain within the system. Within this context he envisages the artist as an apprentice jester, ‘called upon to produce fine commercial produce, offering satisfaction to commercial palates’ (Celant 1967:  35). Celant foresees a radical shift in the status quo brought about by artists who refuse to be bound by these codes and choose to foray outside the places and roles to which they are assigned. For Celant this was being achieved in the form of a ‘poor art’ practised 36 ‘The artisanal part’.

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in Italy by the artists mentioned above, existing outside of the official art market, dominated by Pop art, minimalism and formalism. As Celant contests in his article:  ‘To exist from outside the system amounts to a revolution’ (Celant 1967: 35). In addition to Celant, Giovanni Lista’s writings on Arte Povera are enlightening in relation to Garrel. Lista interrogates the meaning of poverty and how it helps to define specific critical positions central to the identity of the poverist grouping. Lista observes that Italian is one of the few languages in which ‘poor’ retains positive connotations, owing to the legacy of Francis of Assisi, extending beyond an economic value to the domains of spirituality, aesthetics and philosophy. Lista traces this particular emphasis in Arte Povera with reference to the poverist artist Giulio Paolini. His definition of poverty implies a reversal of values, that is, the choice of voluntary poverty in keeping with the Franciscan ethics:  Saint Francis’ reply to his father, who asked him to adhere to the bourgeois lifestyle, was to strip off his clothes, claiming poverty existed as true wealth. Thus, overturning values, Paolini voiced his determination to keep to the traditional means of art in order to shun a production of articles conditioned by the market and technology. (Lista 2006: 18)

Lista characterises a voluntary poverty drawn from a Franciscan ethical position that manifests in the materiality of Arte Povera, by which deliberately ‘poor’ materials and artisanal modes of production provide formal innovations that constitute an act of resistance to the collusion of art, technology and commerce. According to Lista, this chosen path of poverty, within the context of Italy’s post-​ war boom in the 1960s, established an ‘opposition between an art seeking to be “rich” and an art which controversially wanted to be “poor”, that is, a bourgeois ideology of progress and what was already the ideology of a poverist resistance’ (Lista 2006: 11). This involved a practice that shunned ‘monumental or sophisticated solutions, sticking to the sheer, necessary technicality’, and recovered ‘the force of craftsmanship by reviving simple gestures’ (28). In opposition to Enlightenment notions of progress inspired by material improvement, poverist art elevates the virtue of the poor, the irregular and the artisanal. These traits of Arte Povera articulated by Celant and Lista help to describe and explain the significance of Garrel’s approach in his later

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underground films. Garrel’s work reveals a commitment to resisting the conditioning of cinema by technology or by the need to satisfy commercial palates, embracing flaws and irregularities that merit the description ‘poor’. The apogee of this approach is embodied in the director’s use of an obsolete crank camera in the final work of his underground period, Le Bleu des origines, constituting both a measure of economy and a reaction to the harmonious, standardised images produced by technologically advanced cameras. The manual operation of this device produces portraits of Nico and Zouzou that deviate from the standard speed of twenty-​four frames per second. The same is true for the irregularities in the texture of Les Hautes Solitudes, a film that Jacques Morice describes as testimony in black and white ‘que le cinéma n’est pas obligatoirement réductible au capitalisme, qu’un film peut se montrer pour le prix d’une 2 CV, sans rien connaître ou presque de la technique’37 (Morice 1995: 112). Morice’s comment evokes the refusal of technical solutions and the creation of a ‘poor’ mode of production that sits outside of, and in opposition to, the capitalist system. The poverty of Garrel’s underground films does not suggest a contrasting richness and regularity in the cinema of Warhol or Debord. Many of Warhol’s films share a minimalist approach to production, shooting in 16mm, adopting a single key-​ light for illumination, eschewing elaborate camera movement and large crews. The Screen Tests are filmed without sound, and works such as Poor Little Rich Girl use sound recorded with an in-​built camera microphone, resulting in muffled conversations and the tinny sound quality evident when Sedgwick puts on various records. However, rather than drawing significance from a Franciscan ethical tradition embracing poverty, Warhol’s approach appears to emerge from a desire to do whatever required least effort, as captured in his laconic admission to Gretchen Berg as to why he abandoned painting for film-​making: ‘[I]‌t’s so easy to make movies, you can just shoot and every picture really comes out right’ (Berg 1967: 56–​57). Warhol still had the financial freedom to make as many films as he wanted, and seemingly without any

37 ‘that the cinema is not obligatorily reducible to capitalism, that a film can be put together for the price of a 2CV, knowing nothing, or at least very little, about technique’.

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limits to their duration, as is evident in works such as Empire (1964), which consists of eight hours of footage of the Empire State Building. The insouciance embodied in Warhol’s approach to film-​making contrasts with the difficulty and struggle faced by Garrel to produce work during the 1970s. Debord’s cinema could equally be considered to contain characteristics associated with a ‘poor’ cinema. His chosen form of the film essay, deploying a voice-​over with a visual collage that is mostly composed of recycled imagery, fits within this paradigm. The essay Le Mode d’emploi du détournement, co-​written by Debord and Asger Jorn, makes reference to the lack of expense associated with the artistic innovation of stealing and rerouting existing art forms: ‘Détournement not only leads to the discovery of new aspects of talent; in addition, clashing head-​on with all social and legal conventions, it cannot fail to be a powerful cultural weapon in the service of a real class struggle. The cheapness of its products is the heavy artillery that breaks through all the Chinese walls of understanding’ (Debord 2003:  198). Debord’s theft and rerouting of the imagery from Hollywood cinema, advertisements or from newsreel footage would appear to extol the virtue of ‘poor’ materials in the creation of a cultural weapon. Nevertheless, Debord was able to rely throughout upon the support of generous donors to produce his films. Sur le passage and Critique de la séparation were both produced by the Dansk-​ Fransk Experimentalfilmskompagni, a cultural enterprise financed by the wealthy Asger Jorn. Later the French producer and publisher Gérard Lebovici gave Debord free rein to pursue any film projects he desired, which led to the production of the film version of La Société du spectacle (1973) and In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (1978). In these films, produced by Gérard Lebovici’s Simar Films, the use of extensive passages from Hollywood cinema in both films, in a pre-​video era, incurred great expense that was only made possible by Lebovici’s support. Andrew Hussey has characterised Lebovici’s relationship with Debord, which permitted him to operate outside the commercial circuit, as a Renaissance model of artistic production involving ‘a complicit opposition between Lebovici the Prince and Debord as the Philosopher-​Sage’ (Hussey 2001: 347). This relationship, which allowed Debord absolute freedom in his cinematic enterprises, is comparable to the relationship Garrel briefly enjoyed with Boissonnas at the beginning of his underground period. Garrel’s

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obligation to self-​produce his films in the latter phase of his underground period strikes a notable contrast to the liberty enjoyed by Debord. In the absence of a donor (enjoyed by Debord) or accumulated wealth (enjoyed by Warhol), state funding or the sponsorship of commercial production companies appeared the most obvious choices open to Garrel to finance his work. However, Garrel displayed a commitment to circumventing the constraint and censorship he associated with both these sources. Cheap materials and simple production modes allowed Garrel to resist the demands of commercial producers seeking works designed to encourage a large audience by satisfying popular tastes and expectations. The inclination to deliberately flout this commercial exchange is expressed in Garrel’s explanation of the morbid choice of title for his penultimate underground film:  ‘Lorsque j’ai fait Le Voyage au jardin des morts j’ai fait exprès de prendre un titre qui repousse les gens’38 (Mairesse 1978: 61). The extent of Garrel’s aversion towards the commercial exchange associated with mainstream cinema is communicated by his description of an ideal type of cinema that would involve no public exhibition at all: À la limite j’aimerais travailler comme un peintre. J’aimerais travailler avec ma muse qui pose pour moi, et puis bosser le cinéma dans un atelier. Mais ça coûte tellement cher que tu es obligé de le montrer pour qu’il y ait de l’argent qui rentre. Ce n’est pas quelque chose qui est bien parce que c’est horrible de penser qu’il y a des gens qui voient ta vie.39 (Mairesse 1978: 61)

The hermeticism espoused in these comments underlines Garrel’s desire to withdraw from the rituals associated with the production and exhibition of mainstream narrative films, necessitating standardised products carefully adapted to encourage consumption and gratify a paying audience. In addition to resisting a production model associated with sponsors motivated by commercial success, Garrel’s decision to make a 38 ‘When I made Le Voyage au jardin des morts I deliberately chose a title that would push people away.’ 39 ‘Ultimately, I would like to work in the same way as a painter. I’d like to work with my muse who poses for me and work on my cinema in an attic. But it is so expensive that you are obliged to show the work to bring some money in. This is not good at all because it is horrible to think that there are people who see your life.’

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‘poor’ cinema offered a means of bypassing what he understood to be the nefarious influence of state funding. This is underlined by a comment he made in his interview with Mairesse: ‘Tu ne peux pas être indépendant avec de l’argent de l’État parce que tu es obligé de défendre l’État, c’est tout. Sous n’importe quelle position où tu te places tu ne peux pas faire autre chose’40 (Mairesse 1978: 61). Garrel’s analysis chimes with Celant’s identification of a consensual political culture in which criticism is rendered ineffectual by being officially approved by the system. Echoing Celant, Garrel points to the circular nature of the relationship between the state and the cinema it funds, implying that no matter how critical the work intends to be it ends up bolstering the authority of the state. Thomas Elsaesser explores the debate around the deterministic influence of state funding when he examines how the New German Cinema, with its dependence on the official patronage of Goethe Institutes across the world, became enmeshed in questions of state legitimation. Film-​makers such as Wim Wenders and Werner Herzog found themselves with the ambiguous honour of being considered as Germany’s ambassadors. Elsaesser notes how the tight relation between the cinema and the state in West Germany, with numerous funding bodies, federal commissions, grant authorities and subsidies, created ‘something “official” about the German cinema throughout its period of renaissance in the 1970s and 1980s’ (Elsaesser 1996: 17). He elaborates on this by pointing out how the resultant dynamic encouraged a paradoxical relationship between the state and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, one of the leading figures of the New German Cinema, who became ‘the enfant terrible, the rebel and outsider, whom official Germany needed as one of its liberal “alibis” as it negotiated a period of economic crisis and near civil war in the mid-​1970s’ (18). Contrary to his intentions, Fassbinder found his cinema in the position of supporting the image of an economically and politically liberal state, accepting of its detractors and distinct from the repression and constraint associated with the German Democratic Republic. Garrel’s poverist cinema provided a means of eluding this particular bind, whereby his cinema could be co-​opted 40 ‘You cannot be independent with the money of the state because you are obliged to defend the state, that’s all. No matter what position you place yourself in you cannot do anything else.’

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in support of the state, and he in turn could be cast as an apologist or ambassador for it. While the description ‘poor’ helps to define Garrel’s later underground cinema, approaching film-​making as an artisanal form in opposition to the wealth of either an industrialised commercial cinema or a cinema funded by the state, it can also be seen to extend beyond this period. Le Révélateur (1968), for instance, was made using a borrowed camera and several handheld torches for illumination. The stark chiaroscuro of the work was dictated by the material limitations experienced by Garrel. Even though Garrel turned to a more mainstream model of film production in the 1980s, the notion of a cinema of ‘poverty’ can also be seen as an influence in his more recent work. Discussing Les Amants réguliers (2005), a film that was distributed globally and for which Garrel achieved widespread critical acclaim, he spoke with pride of having made it for one tenth of the budget that Bertolucci required to make The Dreamers (2004), a work similarly concerned with the legacy and memory of May 68. Garrel expressed a continued preoccupation with the source of financing for the film, comparable to his assertion regarding state funding in 1977:  ‘You know, every cent in Les Amants réguliers has come from the political left, even though it’s a production funded by private and public money. That’s not a joke, it’s true. It had to be that way. There was no way you could tell this story that offers a radically left perspective with right-​ wing money’ (Grissemann 2006). Although the production context represents a significant shift from Garrel’s underground cinema in the 1970s, he uses this interview to express a persistent belief in the source of capital for the work as having a determining influence on its capacity to offer a politically engaged perspective on the événements. Garrel’s ‘poor’ cinema, and the statements he makes about the determining influence of capital point to wider debates that were taking place within French film culture, particularly during the decade following May 68. Sylvia Harvey examines how these emerged in the film journals of Cahiers du cinéma and also Cinéthique, the latter of which espoused a position quite similar to Garrel’s by promoting the political efficacy of a freedom from state finance or commercial funding: ‘Cinéthique’s emphasis was very much on the “break” which resulted in the setting up of alternative institutions (their own magazine) and alternative film distribution circuits, a break which was seen as the only way of avoiding the straightforward determinations

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of bourgeois finance’ (Harvey 1978:  85–​87). However, Harvey also points to possible shortcomings of this position, proposed by Cahiers du cinéma at the time, in terms of accounting for internal contradictions within the system, or indeed the possibility of an oppositional practice existing within dominant institutions. This is not a position that Garrel shared. His underground cinema pursues the ideal of a break with the established institutions associated with production and distribution. This intersects with the resultant cinema he produces, resisting the dominant modes of depiction through its ‘poverty’, and attacking the cinema’s traditional, ideologically conditioned methods of depiction. The grain, the roughness of the aesthetic, the hermetic nature of the subject of the films –​all these factors point to a deliberately dissensual cinema where the aesthetic is bound up with a desire for independence from state censure, and a resistance to the dominant forms of a commercial cinema

References Angell, Callie (1994) Something Secret:  Portraiture in Warhol’s Films, Sydney: Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney. Angell, Callie (2006) Andy Warhol Screen Tests. The Films of Andy Warhol: catalogue raisonné, New York: H.N. Abrams. Azalbert, Nicholas and Stéphane Delorme (2011) ‘Mon but c’est de faire des films d’amour politiques. Entretien avec Philippe Garrel’. Cahiers du cinéma, 671, pp. 69–​77. Azoury, Philippe (2006) ‘ATAVISM:  Notes on The Virgin’s Bed (Le Lit de la Vierge)’, essay included in booklet accompanying RE.VOIR DVD edition, pp.  20–​34. Azoury, Philippe (2013) ‘Passage à l’acte du cinéma’, in Bax and Béghin (eds), Philippe Garrel. Théâtres au cinéma, pp. 7–​13. Bax, Dominique and Cyril Béghin (eds) (2013) Philippe Garrel. Théâtres au cinéma, Bobigny: Collection Magic Cinéma. Berg, Gretchen (1967) ‘Nothing to Lose:  An Interview with Andy Warhol’, Cahiers du cinéma in English, 10, pp. 38–​42, repr. in Michael O’Pray (ed.), Andy Warhol: Film Factory, London: BFI (1989), pp. 56–​57. Bory, Jean-​ Louis (1972) ‘Une saison en enfer’, Le Nouvel Observateur (13 March), repr. in Bax and Béghin (eds), Philippe Garrel. Théâtres au cinéma, pp. 148–​149. Boulogne, Ari (2001) L’amour n’oublie jamais, Paris: Pauvert. Brenez, Nicole (2004) ‘Forms 1960–​2004: “For It Is the Critical Faculty That Invents Fresh Forms” (Oscar Wilde)’, in Michael Temple and Michael Witt (eds), The French Cinema Book, London: BFI, pp. 230–​246.

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Brenez, Nicole (2013) ‘L’Apogée du portrait’, in Bax and Béghin (eds), Philippe Garrel. Théâtres au cinéma, p. 157. Celant, Germano (1967) ‘Arte Povera:  Appuntiper una guerriglia,’ Flash Art, 5, repr. in Germano Celant (ed.) Arte Povera/​Art Povera, trans. Paul Blanchard, Milan: Electa (1985), pp. 35–​37. Coppola, Antoine (2005) Introduction au cinéma de Guy Debord et de l’avant-​ garde situationniste, Arles: Sulliver. Courant, Gérard (1975) Extract from Philippe Garrel à Digne, in Bax and Béghin (eds), Philippe Garrel. Théâtres au cinéma, p. 157. Courant, Gérard (1983) Philippe Garrel, Dunkerque: Studio 43. Debord, Guy (2003) Complete Cinematic Works: Scripts, Stills, Documents, ed. and trans. Ken Knabb, Oakland, CA: AK Press. Delorme, Stéphane (2001) ‘Désaccord majeur. Quatre films de Philippe Garrel’, in Nicole Brenez and Christian Lebrat (eds), Jeune, dure et pure. Une histoire du cinéma d’avant-​garde et expérimental, Paris: Cinématheque Française; Milan: Mazzotta, pp. 311–​314. Elsaesser, Thomas (1996) Fassbinder’s Germany:  History, Identity, Subject, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Forbes, Jill (1992) The Cinema in France after the New Wave, London: Macmillan/​ BFI. Garrel, Philippe and Thomas Lescure (1992) Une caméra à la place du cœur, Aix-​en-​Provence: Admiranda/​Institut de l’Image. Grissemann, Stefan (2006) ‘History is the Enemy of Art:  Interview with Philippe Garrel on Les Amants réguliers’, Cinemascope, 25, p. 29. Harvey, Sylvia (1978) May ’68 and Film Culture, London: BFI. Hussey, Andrew (2001) The Game of War: The Life and Death of Guy Debord, London: Pimlico. Langlois, Gérard (1971) ‘Le Grand Art:  la destruction’, Les Lettres françaises (10 February), repr. in Bax and Béghin (eds), Philippe Garrel. Théâtres au cinéma, p. 147–​148. Lista, Giovanni (2006) Arte Povera, Milan: 5 Continent Editions. Mairesse, Emmanuel (1978) ‘Dix ans après:  Philippe Garrel, Cahiers du cinéma, 287, pp. 60–​63. Morice, Jacques (1995) ‘Deux solitudes en silence: Garrel et Seberg’, Cahiers du cinéma, 19, p. 112. Pacadis, Alain (2005) Nightclubbing. Chroniques et articles 1973–​ 1986, Paris: Edition Denoël X-​Trême. Païni, Dominique (2005) ‘Souvenirs d’une visite au Louvre’, in Bax and Béghin (eds), Philippe Garrel. Théâtres au cinéma, pp. 51–​55. Shafto, Sally (2000) The Zanzibar Films and the Dandies of May 1968, New York: Zanzibar USA. Vergé, Émilie (2009) ‘Le Cinématographe et le Ready-​Made: stratégies figuratives dans les films d’Andy Warhol (1963–​1968) et de Philippe Garrel (1969–​1978)’, in Luc Vancheri (ed.), Images contemporaines. Arts, formes, dispositifs, Lyon: Aléas cinéma, pp. 161–​185.

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Plate 1  Godard et ses émules, 1967. Jean Eustache being interviewed as part of the documentary Garrel made for French television. The same interview was later incorporated into Les Ministères de l’art (1988), a documentary tracing the post-​ New Wave generation.

Plate 2  Actua I, 1968. Garrel’s short film, made on the streets of Paris during May 68, numbered his sole involvement in militant film-​making.

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Plate 3  Le Révélateur, 1968. Laurent Terzieff (the father), Bernadette Lafont (the mother) and Stanislas Robiolles (the child) shown fleeing an invisible enemy in this silent film made during the last days of May 68.

Plate 4  Le Lit de la vierge, 1969. Still taken from a three-​minute sequence showing a vagabond wandering in desert terrain. The sequence is accompanied by Nico’s song ‘The Falconer’.

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Plate 5  La Cicatrice intérieure, 1972. A  still from the film’s prologue showing Philippe Garrel and Nico wandering listlessly in the desert of New Mexico.

Plate 6  Les Hautes Solitudes, 1974. Jean Seberg in Garrel’s silent film-​portrait of the actress. The hazy, ethereal quality evident in the image is a result of the director deliberately exposing the undeveloped film reel to light.

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Plate 7  Elle a passé tant d’heures sous les sunlights, 1984. Chantal Akerman is shown in a lengthy close-​up shot accompanied by a recording of a discussion between her and Garrel. Akerman’s appearance in a fictional work, alongside a sequence with Jacques Doillon, contributes to the generic heterogeneity of the work.

Plate 8  Les Baisers de secours, 1989. Philippe Garrel (Mathieu) and his then wife Brigitte Sy (Jeanne) in Garrel’s most developed autofictional work.

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Plate 9  La Naissance de l’amour, 1993. Jean-​Pierre Léaud (Marcus) and Lou Castel (Paul). Castel describes a relatively conventional production differing from the climate of experimentation he experienced during the filming of Elle a passé tant d’heures.

Plate 10  Le Vent de la nuit, 1999. Xavier Beauvois (Paul) and Daniel Duval (Serge). Serge describes to Paul how he was subjected to electro-​shock therapy as punishment for taking part in May 68.

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Plate 11  Les Amants réguliers, 2005. The loose group of militants and artists, resembling the shipwrecked of Géricault’s Le Radeau de la Méduse (1818–​1819), are galvanised on the barricade. Philippe Garrel’s son Louis (François) is shown in the foreground, right.

Plate 12  L’Amant d’un jour, 2017. Louise Chevillotte (Ariane), Éric Caravaca (Gilles) and Esther Garrel (Jeanne) form the trio at the centre of a film that echoes Jean Eustache’s La Maman et la putain (1973).

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3 Narrative turn Autobiography and the imaginary self The release of L’Enfant secret in 1982 marked a turning point in Garrel’s cinema by inaugurating what the film-​maker describes as his narrative period. Several allusions establish a direct correlation between the couple at the centre of the film and Garrel and his former partner Nico. The other two feature films of this period, Liberté, la nuit (1983) and Elle a passé tant d’heures sous les sunlights (1984)1 as well as the short film Rue Fontaine (1984), equally draw on aspects of Garrel’s biography. Capturing the tendency towards self-​revelation that defines this body of work, the critic Alain Pacadis commented pithily: ‘Garrel s’explique’2 (Pacadis 2005: 351). The notion of recounting a recognisable story implies the idea of more standardised production modes and a style of film-​making that opens up to an audience beyond the rarefied spectators of the avant-​garde. Garrel has depicted the shift in his cinema forged by L’Enfant secret as a type of betrayal of his previous film-​making and the political and aesthetic principles of his youth: ‘Comme tout le monde, je trahis ma jeunesse. On fait toujours à l’âge mur ce qu’on dénonçait dans sa jeunesse’3 (Jousse 1989:  28). Garrel’s underground films were defined by a reticence towards providing transparent revelation of aspects of his intimate life and, at times, by the deliberate desire to shun the spectator. The notion of betrayal in relation to Garrel’s narrative turn seems nonetheless overstated. 1 For the rest of the chapter Elle a passé tant d’heures sous les sunlights will be shortened to Elle a passé tant d’heures. 2 ‘Garrel explains himself.’ 3 ‘Like everybody else, I  betrayed my youth. When we grow up we always do what we denounced in our youth.’

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The works of this period retain aspects of his previous films, both in terms of their formal properties and in terms of their production modes. Despite working with greater technical support and financial means, Garrel remains a dominant presence in terms of production, responsible in L’Enfant secret for the cinematography, screenplay and editing, in addition to making a cameo appearance. He was also the sole producer of L’Enfant secret and co-​producer of Elle a passé tant d’heures. Each of the films explores the relationship between art and everyday life, an enquiry that reaches its apogee in Elle a passé tant d’heures, which equally explores the added dimension of dreamed experience. Garrel considers the antagonistic relationship between the domains of the real and imaginary as well as the possibility of their exchange and fusion. In this exploration, an affinity can be traced between Garrel’s practice and the Surrealist poetics of André Breton. This period also reveals Garrel’s interest in tracing the creative lives of the film-​makers of his generation, a subject broached in Elle a passé tant d’heures through the incorporation of interviews with Chantal Akerman and Jacques Doillon in the diegesis of the film. The sketches with Doillon and Akerman form a prelude to a documentary made for French television about the so-​called ‘post-​ New Wave’ generation, Les Ministères de l’art (1988).

Tracing the self: L’Enfant secret (1979) L’Enfant secret portrays the relationship between Elie (Anne Wiazemsky), an actress, and Jean-​Baptiste (Henri de Maublanc), a film-​maker, depicting various crises that come between them. The choice of Wiazemsky and de Maublanc brings together two previous models of Robert Bresson, the actors having previously starred in Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) and Le Diable probablement (1977) respectively. Elie has a young son named Swann, who is looked after by his grandmother. Jean-​Baptiste is a director who is attempting to make a film entitled Les Forêts désenchantées, extracts of which are incorporated in the film, including whole sequences, stills and refilmed frames that are played in a halting motion. Jean-​Baptiste’s choice of Elie to star in Les Forêts désenchantées provokes a crisis, as the process of creation at once impinges on

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102  Philippe Garrel

and is impinged on by events in her everyday life. The film charts Jean-​Baptiste’s descent into madness and his gradual recovery following his separation from Elie. This trajectory is counterbalanced with Elie’s initial resilience, which gradually dissipates as she seeks refuge in heroin. L’Enfant secret was filmed with a small team over the period of a fortnight. It was shot in black and white and without the use of any lighting equipment. The modest budget of 44,000 old francs (equivalent to around £75,000) was raised by Garrel from friends who had been affected by issues explored in the film, namely the impact of drug addiction on a couple and the medical practice of electro-​shock therapy (Pacadis 2005). Many interior sequences are filmed in candlelight, producing a chiaroscuro effect reminiscent of the paintings of Georges de la Tour. The modesty of the means is evident in a tracking-​shot of Jean-​Baptiste, Elie and Swann walking alongside a wall surrounded with trees, filmed through the back of a car window. Recorded at a slightly canted angle, the thin strips along the rearview window are visible in the frame. In addition to the principal couple in the film, Garrel incorporates members of the nascent punk scene in France in acting roles, including Elli Medeiros, Edwige and Caroline Paulus (Bambou). This taste for popular figures in the musical and fashion milieu harks back to Garrel’s adolescent phase and the films made for French television with protagonists from the French and international pop scene. The film is divided into five chapters that emerge in intertitles: La Césarienne Section, L’Enfant secret, Le Dernier des guerriers, Le Cercle ophidien and Les Fôrets désenchantées. Garrel’s discussion of his development of the screenplay for the film reveals the direct correspondence with aspects of his personal life that he had recorded in a diary. Annette Wademant, formerly a scriptwriter for Jacques Becker, assisted Garrel in producing the screenplay. She invited him to note down details of his life and his thoughts about them, before advising which written passages he should keep for the final screenplay and which he should discard. This approach contrasts with his underground films, which were made almost exclusively without any screenplay. Prior to L’Enfant secret, Garrel had written short texts in verse form for which he sought to find a cinematic approximation (Pacadis 2005). Garrel describes the transformational impact that Wademant’s intervention had on his film-​making.

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Elle a été comme un médecin de l’âme, quelqu’un qui m’a guéri de l’hermétisme et qui m’a ouvert de nouveau au fait de ne pas avoir peur de dire les choses. J’avais l’impression, à une époque, que si j’exprimais ma propre vie, les choses restaient triviales. Je m’étais donc dirigé vers des choses d’avant-​garde, vers des problèmes purement artistiques. Puis je me suis rendu compte que ça n’avait pas d’intérêt, et il fallait que je dise ce que je pensais du monde, sans faire attention, sans arrêt à ma phrase.4 (Philippon 1983a: 23)

The language that Garrel adopts to describe the influence of Wademant implies a healing process based on the direct confrontation with experiences from his life, conforming to the psychotherapeutic process referred to as the ‘talking cure’. Garrel refers to the collection of writings that emerged as the Cahiers Wademant, sections of which are reproduced in the book co-​produced with Thomas Lescure. A significant episode in Garrel’s life recorded in the Cahier Wademant, and inscribed in the film, is his subjection to electro-​ shock therapy in an asylum in Rome during the early 1970s. Speaking of this experience, the director recalls how he had a type of breakdown during the filming of La Cicatrice intérieure: [U]‌n soir, après avoir longuement déambulé dans la ville, j’ai fini par pénétrer dans la Villa Médicis en fracturant une porte. J’ai passé la nuit dans le parc comme il est raconté dans le cahier, au matin les carabiniers m’ont arrêté et je me suis retrouvé dans un asile, attaché sur un lit avec une camisole de force. On m’a fait subir des électrochocs, sans prévenir mes proches qui, lorsqu’ils venaient me voir, ne comprenaient rien à mon attitude.5 (Garrel and Lescure 1992: 83) 4 ‘She was like a doctor of the soul, someone who cured me of my hermeticism and made me open once again to not being afraid to say things. I  had the impression that if I gave expression to my own life, it would be trivial. I therefore went in the direction of the avant-​garde, towards purely artistic problems. Then I realised that this hadn’t much interest and that I needed to say what I thought of the world without caution, without hesitation.’ 5 ‘[O]‌ne night after wandering for a long time across the city, I ended up breaking into the Villa Medici through a doorway. I spent the night in the park there, as is recounted in the journal, until the morning, when I was arrested by the Italian police and I found myself in an asylum, attached to a bed with a strait-​ jacket. I was given electro-​shock therapy, without any of my friends or family being informed, who when they came to see me understood nothing about my behaviour.’

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In the chapter in the film entitled Le Cercle ophidien  –​chosen by Garrel in reference to the psychiatrists that surround Jean Baptiste like a den of serpents (Garrel and Lescure 1992: 84) –​Garrel bears witness to this episode from his life. The chapter opens with a close-​ up shot of Jean-​Baptiste framed from behind and in shadow looking out of a window. He stares out at a second patient, with a shaven head, who is standing at the window of a room situated in the corridor perpendicular to his. The patient, played by Garrel, makes a number of silent gestures with his hands as though in warning to Jean-​Baptiste, before turning away from the window. Shortly after this, a shot frames a view of the length of the hospital corridor. The patient played by Garrel is framed in profile, sitting on a stool roughly half-​way down the corridor to the left-​hand side. Jean-​Baptiste is led past him by a nurse and taken into a separate room. As the door is closed on Jean-​Baptiste, the shot remains fixed for over twenty seconds, framing the patient in the corridor in silent meditation. The next shot shows the upper bodies of three nurses, framed in shadow against the light from the window and each looking downwards. One of them asks:  ‘Tu as peur?’,6 before flicking a switch. The camera then pans down to reveal the face and upper body of Jean-​Baptiste lying on a hospital bed with his eyes closed. The shot is interrupted on two occasions, first by a monochrome white screen, and then by a monochrome black screen that draws the sequence to a conclusion. The montage delicately conjures the violence and devastation inflicted by the medical intervention. Garrel comments on the understatement of the approach to this sequence, providing an analogy with Debord’s filming of French warships in In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni: ‘Le meilleur film que j’ai vu récemment contre la guerre c’est le dernier film de Guy Debord: quand il filme les bateaux de guerre dans la rade de Toulon et qu’il dit que ça l’inquiète, il dit ça très calmement. C’est mieux pour dénoncer les choses, de simplement les mettre à jour’7 (Philippon 1983a: 25). The allusion here appears to be to the controlled diction of the voice-​over deployed by Debord, a monotonous elocution that refuses oratorical flourish. Garrel’s use of a blank screen forms a further visual parallel with 6 ‘Are you afraid?’ 7 ‘The best anti-​war film I  saw recently was Guy Debord’s last film:  when he films the warships in Toulon harbour and he says that it worries him, he says it very calmly. It is a better means of denouncing things, to simply show them.’

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Debord’s cinema, where a black screen and white screen are recurrent motifs. The controversial practice of electro-​shock therapy is something that Garrel would return to in two later films, Le Vent de la nuit (1999) and La Frontière de l’aube (2008). Garrel’s compositional approach, bringing together aspects of his personal life into a fictional framework, can be termed autofictional. The French author and critical theorist Serge Doubrovsky coined the term autofiction. Doubrovsky used the term to describe his novel Fils (1977), which combines the supposedly mutually exclusive domains of autobiography and fiction. The mode of composition has since been associated with several French writers, including Marguerite Duras, Annie Ernaux and Emmanuel Carrière. Anne Wiazemsky herself published three autofictional novels, Jeune fille (2007), Mon Enfant de Berlin (2009), and Une Année studieuse (2012). Wiazemsky’s autofictional memoirs allude to her childhood, the beginning of her career as an actor, under the tutelage of Robert Bresson, and the beginning of her relationship with Jean-​Luc Godard. In addition to visual exposition, voice-​over is equally deployed in L’Enfant secret to reflect on Garrel’s personal experience and to calmly denounce the practice of electro-​ shock therapy. Accompanying a close-​up of the face of Elli, Jean-​Baptiste articulates the consequences of the experience of electro-​shock therapy exerted on his identity: Cette fois je commencais à retrouver la mémoire, le souvenir arraché au néant de mon nom, du film que j’avais commencé. Et toujours je reperdais pieds sous l’effet d’un nouvel électrochoc. Ces remontées des gouffres de l’absence constituaient la partie la plus douloureuse de l’internement. Il fallait faire des efforts immenses pour rassembler mon identité, mon passé, et autant pour m’accepter, reperdre le terrain conquis à chaque intervention.8

The voice-​over resembles a diary entry, in which Garrel provides witness to the violent intervention of psychiatry, but also to film-​making 8 ‘This time I was beginning to find my memory again, the memory snatched from the void of my name, the film that I was working on. And I kept losing ground after another electro-​shock. These resurfacings from the chasms of absence were the most painful part of the internment. I had to make immense efforts to regain my identity, my past, but also to accept myself, with each intervention losing the ground gained.’

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as a type of resistance. The act of confronting this incident from his past suggests an effort to reconstitute his identity and promote a means of healing. In this respect, it is significant that Garrel is himself present in the asylum as one of the patients. It suggests a literal return to this incident from his past, as a witness to what was lost and destroyed by his subjection to this treatment. Garrel’s autofictional approach establishes a paradoxical change from his underground works. L’Enfant secret reflects Garrel’s treatment of aspects of his personal history through their transposition into a fiction performed by actors. This contrasts with the immediacy of his underground films, featuring direct cinematic portraits of actors and friends, whose presence does not conform to a designated role. Nonetheless, Garrel’s underground films only obliquely revealed episodes from his life at the time, due to their opacity and the aporia created by the shunning of conventional narrative codes. To illustrate this point, the title of Garrel’s third underground film, La Cicatrice intérieure, meaning ‘the inner scar’, hints at personal trauma, but this suffering is never disclosed directly in the film. It is not until L’Enfant secret that the historical gaps from Garrel’s life during his underground period, such as his internment in an asylum and aspects of his relationship with Nico, are openly confronted.

Art versus life A predominant thesis explored in L’Enfant secret is the notion that art and everyday life are antagonistic domains that subtract from one other in a nefarious way. Three striking examples of this opposition are evident in L’Enfant secret. The first occurs when Elli learns of her mother’s death and travels with Jean-​Baptiste to attend her funeral. The sequence opens with Elli, framed in a medium-​shot, seated on a bed in the corner of a room. She is holding a letter and crying. As Jean-​Baptiste arrives from the left of the frame to ask her what is wrong, she tells him that her mother is dead. Following this, a series of shots shows the couple catching a train. Once seated in a carriage, framed in close-​up and in profile, Elli talks to Jean-​Baptiste, positioned off-​camera, about her mother: ‘J’avais promis que j’allais la voir. Si j’y serais allé [sic], j’allais pas faire ton film. Peut-​être ça

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aurait changé les choses si j’étais allée la voir, comme j’avais promis.’9 Elli’s response proposes the impingement that the responsibility and demands of artistic creation place on her everyday life, in this instance denying the possibility of spending time with a loved one. A second example of this theme occurs in the course of Elli’s journey to Germany for the funeral of her mother. She is framed in a medium-​shot alongside Jean Baptiste, inside a small railway station, writing a postcard to her son. Jean-​Baptiste asks what she is writing, and she reads out the card, which at the end contains a warning to her son not to cut his hair but to keep his fringe for the film they are making.10 Jean Baptiste’s response to Elli’s words functions as a self-​reflexive analysis of the intimacy of her epistolary address to her son: ‘Est-​ce que les pensées, les regards, les mots d’amour et les secrets gardent leur valeur quand ils sont exhibés devant les autres comme ça?’11 This resonates with the anxiety Garrel expresses during his underground period, when he lamented the necessity of screening his films and expressed his fear that people would see his life. According to Jean-​Baptiste’s formulation, the act of self-​revelation would seem to diminish the real experience, resulting in a paltry imitation. Jean-​Baptiste’s question underlines a central preoccupation of the film, namely a suspicion associated with the transformation of everyday life into a cinematic form for public consumption, and the strains that this act places on the everyday life of those who participate in its realisation. A third sequence in the film reinforces the proposition that the domains of the cinema and everyday life cannot intersect harmoniously. Elli and Jean-​Baptiste are shown in bed, in a close-​up shot, embracing tenderly. Conflicting with this image of harmony, Elli can be heard in a voice-​over stating: ‘Tu as une caméra à la place du cœur.’12 The metaphor deployed substitutes an organ synonymous 9 ‘I promised her that I  would visit her. If I  would have gone to see her I wouldn’t have made your film. Perhaps that would have changed things, if I had gone to see her, like I promised.’ 10 Elli’s comment seems to refer to the role of Nico’s son Ari Boulogne in La Cicatrice intérieure. Only eight years old at the time, the long-​haired Boulogne is shown in a lateral tracking walking in front of his mother who is on horseback. 11 ‘Do thoughts, looks, words of love and secrets keep their value when they are exhibited in front of others like this?’ 12 ‘You have a camera instead of a heart.’

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with emotion for a mechanistic recording device. It amplifies the indictment established in her previous criticism, accusing the cinema of intervening and presenting an obstacle to real life. Commenting on this aspect of the film and its relationship to his past with Nico, Garrel comments:  ‘Filmer, comme je l’ai fait pendant dix ans, une femme que l’on aime est une chose en soi assez folle. Il y a à ce sujet dans L’Enfant secret certaines phrases assez dures que prononce Elli et que Nico, hélas, m’avait dite. Elle pouvait me reprocher assez justement de faire un film de notre vie, au lieu de chercher à la rendre moins inconfortable’13 (Garrel and Lescure 1992:  40–​41). Elli’s equation of Jean-​Baptiste with the mechanical recording device of his trade implies the destructive implications of Garrel’s decision to make films emanating directly from his and Nico’s life during the 1970s.

Art and engagement: Liberté, la nuit (1983) Towards the end of L’Enfant secret Jean-​Baptiste and Eli are shown in a lateral tracking-​shot, almost three minutes in duration, walking against the backdrop of a large white wall in an urban setting. Jean-​ Baptiste describes his intention to make a film about a couple who escape from the city on foot, eventually arriving in the forest and finding a small home. The film that he describes appears to correspond to an extract from a film shoot at the opening of L’Enfant secret showing a young couple embracing in front of an old cottage. This type of anachronism is indicative of an imprecise temporality that defines the work. By contrast, Liberté, la nuit is a narratively linear film. Set during the French War with Algeria it is one of only two films by Garrel to be inscribed within a precise historical context, the other being Les Amants réguliers, which is set during the period of

13 ‘Filming a woman whom you love, as I did with her for ten years, is something quite crazy in itself. This subject is present in L’Enfant secret. There are certain quite harsh comments uttered by Elli in L’Enfant secret, in relation to this subject, which unfortunately Nico had said to me. She could quite justifiably reproach me for having made a film of our life, instead of seeking to make it less uncomfortable.’

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May 68. Both films have in common a careful interweaving of intimate stories with events of wider political significance. Beyond the testimony provided to the French activists who supported the struggle for Algerian independence, Liberté, la nuit explores issues relating to Garrel’s childhood and his genesis as a film-​maker. Following years in the wilderness, the film brought Garrel greater recognition, earning him the Perspectives du Cinéma prize at the Cannes Festival in 1984. Liberté, la nuit focuses on a group of FLN (Front de Libération National) supporters based in France, reflecting on the violent struggle to free Algeria from the French colonial occupation in the 1950s and 1960s. This struggle is integrated with the evocation of the lives of a close circle of family and friends attempting to eke out a living as puppeteers. Jean (Maurice Garrel) and his wife Mouche (Emmanuelle Riva) actively support the FLN. Having starred in Hiroshima mon amour (1959), Riva’s presence in Garrel’s film strikes a notable parallel with her previous role in Alain Resnais’s film. Like Liberté, la nuit, Hiroshima mon amour integrates the personal and the political by drawing together a brief affair between a couple with both the historical trauma of the Allied bombing of Hiroshima and the occupation of France during the Vichy regime. In addition to the context of war, Liberté, la nuit’s evocation of Jean and Mouche’s friends, engaged in the various tasks of preparing for a puppet show, alludes to Garrel’s own childhood and to the children’s television show Martin et Martine that his parents helped to produce. The film features two sequences with soliloquys delivered directly to camera. The first, towards the beginning of the film, reflects on Garrel’s artistic vocation and the legacy of his upbringing. Immediately following the exchange of weapons between Jean and an FLN militant, the sequence juxtaposes militarised struggle and art as forms of engagement. In a medium handheld shot against the backdrop of a brick wall, Laszlo (László Szabó), a marionettist, looks into the camera as he delivers the following monologue: Ça vous est venu comme ça, pendant la misère, ou par amour, pour ne pas mourir de faim, et c’est pour ça que vous savez le faire, parce qu’à un moment donné il s’est avéré crucial de savoir réussir une œuvre, justement, pour se sortir du froid et c’est pourquoi aussi votre bras

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n’a pas tremblé parce qu’il n’y avait pas moyen matériel de faire autrement. Et cet art vous saurez le faire toute votre vie. Alors, mieux vaut ne pas bouger. J’ai choisi d’être marionnettiste.14

In the last sentence, the address switches from the second person to the first person as Laszlo refers to his vocation as marionettist. His speech could be considered as a reflection on the necessity felt by Garrel to produce work in order to step in from the cold isolationism of his underground period. Following the assassination of Mouche by two paratroopers, Jean delivers a piece to camera. Departing in a car, having decided to abandon the struggle, he addresses his speech to his child. Filmed through the front window of his car in a high-​angle shot, his address provides witness both to the regime of torture overseen by de Gaulle and to the militants in France who supported the FLN against French colonial occupation. By this address from a father to a young child, Garrel enacts a historical transmission between the generation that lived through the war and a generation born in its aftermath. The second half of the film portrays the relationship between Jean and a young pied-​noir named Gemina (Christine Boisson), whom he meets when in hiding in a seaside village. Throughout this section of the film Jean and Gemina are the only two figures visible, apart from the two plain-​clothes policemen who arrive to assassinate Jean on a pier at the film’s conclusion. In one sequence, when Gemina wakes to find Jean no longer in bed she rushes out of their home in pursuit of him. Her pursuit across a rocky landscape appears an allusion to Antonioni’s L’Aventurra (1960) and the search for the missing Anna along the barren landscape of the Aeolian Islands.

Surrealist traces: Elle a passé tant d’heures sous les sunlights (1984) and Rue Fontaine (1984) In contrast to the narrative linearity of Liberté, la nuit, Elle a passé tant d’heures proposes a complex temporality, without any clear linear 14 ‘It came to you like that, during impoverishment or by love, in order not to die of hunger, and that’s why you know how to do it, because at a certain moment it became crucial to know how to produce an oeuvre, in order to step out of the cold and that’s also why your hand did not tremble, because there was no material means to do otherwise. And this art, you’ll know how to make this art for your whole life. So, better not to change. I chose to be a marionettist.’

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progression, that is reminiscent of a dreamscape. It touches on themes present in L’Enfant secret, including the separation of a couple, parenthood and addiction, while questioning the efficacy of the process of self-​ revelation. The identification of a coherent story is challenged by the presence of a film within the film; by the multiple roles taken by actors; and by the generic instability of the work, which appears at once like a fiction and a documentary, and at times a strange hybridised version of both. The film’s oneiric qualities and its merging of events pertaining to the real with fiction (and vice versa) imply an affinity with Surrealism. Garrel evokes this particular quality when he says: ‘[L]‌e film fonctionne ainsi: on suit une scène qui a un caractère, mettons, imaginaire et puis elle bifurque vers le réel ou vers le rêve … et c’est ainsi tout au long du film; il y a toujours ces trois niveaux: rêve, réalité, imaginaire (disons imaginaire “écrit”, scénarisé), avec parfois des points de jonction’15 (Garrel and Lescure 1992: 147). While autobiography is a central compositional source in both Elle a passé tant d’heures and the short film Rue Fontaine, Garrel’s creative approaches imply a conception of the self interpolated by dreams and by art, something that reveals an affinity with the philosophy and creative practices of André Breton. Elle a passé tant d’heures is divided into two chapters that are displayed in intertitles:  Les Ministères de l’art and La Nativité. It features four principal characters, Christa (Anne Wiazemsky), Jacques (Jacques Bonnaffé), Marie (Mireille Perrier) and Gracq (Lou Castel). In addition to appearing in character, actors also appear at times as versions of their real-​life selves. Garrel occupies a fifth role, appearing as the director of the film within the film, but also appearing as himself in interview sequences with the directors Chantal Akerman and Jacques Doillon. This description of the various figures that appear in the film is testament to the complex construction of the work and the imprecision of the roles occupied by actors and participants. Stylistically the film is close to some of the works of Garrel’s underground period. Apart from two songs performed by Nico, there is no musical score. The first song, ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’, written by Lou Reed and recorded with The Velvet Underground, 15 ‘The film operates in this way:  we follow a scene which has a character, let’s say imaginary, and then it bifurcates towards the real, or towards the dreamed … and it is like this for the whole of the film. There are always these three levels: dream, reality and the imaginary (let’s say the “written” imaginary, something written for a screenplay), with at times meeting points between them.’

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accompanies a car journey made by Gracq and Marie. The sequence is composed of extreme close-​ups that pan between the actors’ faces. The second musical extract is ‘Le Petit Chevalier’, sung by Nico’s son Ari Boulogne, which accompanies two close-​up shots of a photograph of Garrel holding his son Louis, who was born just prior to the making of the film. In addition to the minimalist use of music, Elle a passé tant d’heures is dominated by sequences without dialogue, or sequences in which the sound is removed entirely. The film is shot in richly textured and delicately illuminated black and white. Close-​ ups and extreme close-​ups of faces predominate, reminiscent of the approach to portraiture in Le Berceau de cristal and Un Ange passe. Elle a passé tant d’heures is in some respects a sister film to L’Enfant secret, taking up where the latter left off with a reflection on how Garrel and Nico’s relationship became enmeshed in addiction. The opening of the film is an eight-​minute sequence featuring a series of shots of Jacques and Christa. It begins with a static shot of Jacques walking into the foreground of the frame to meet Christa, standing against a black railing. As they talk in the faintly illuminated street, she explains that she has met someone else. This shot cuts to a closely framed composition, showing the same couple entering through an apartment doorway and Christa asking for a glass of water. Following this, a close-​up shows Christa lying motionless on a rug; her face is in shadow and the contours of a needle and spoon are just visible in the foreground left of the frame. A series of subsequent shots show Jacques picking up the needle and moving towards the apartment window. The concluding shot shows the couple struggling violently at the window as he tries to dispose of the heroin. The sequence forms a natural continuum with the conclusion to L’Enfant secret, where Wiazemsky, in the role of Elie, is shown in the reflection of a café window buying drugs from a street dealer. The use of the name Christa, the first name of Nico, reveals a continuity with the autofictional strategies used in L’Enfant secret to bring forth aspects of Garrel’s relationship with the German actor and musician.

Everyday and everynight life Alain Philippon describes L’Enfant secret as inaugurating Garrel’s transition from the isolation of his underground period, observing

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a film that ‘touche terre, retrouve le réel et le réel dans le réel qu’est l’autobiographie’16 (Philippon 1983b:  29). Elle a passé tant d’heures, however, seems to complicate Philippon’s proposition. Despite the initial continuity with L’Enfant secret, a voice-​over monologue read by Garrel that bridges the film’s opening with a close-​up portrait of Marie introduces a complex and esoteric creative approach. Delivered in a rapid, monotonous voice and deploying the third person, the voice-​over refers to a director who receives a proposal to direct Charles Perrault’s Blanche Neige at the Comédie Française. The text appears as a cross between a transcription of a dream and directions for a performance, describing how the man almost faints upon hearing about the offer, and detailing a whispered interjection from the script-​girl who tells him to take the job. The same text is repeated almost word for word later in the film in the setting of a theatre as Jacques, who is seated next to Marie in the gallery, reads aloud this time from a script while the camera pans to track Garrel pacing the auditorium. The voice-​over shifts from a discussion of Blanche Neige to a reflection on Christa: ‘Blanche Neige ne lui rendra pas Christa. C’est juste une façon de se servir de son vieil amour pour nourrir le public’,17 concluding: ‘Il terminera par dire non au grand art parce que ça l’aurait laissé sans amour et ça n’aurait plus d’importance.’18 In addition to the suspicion expressed towards the portrayal of the self in the cinema, the oneiric qualities of the voice-​ over, combined with the ludic repetition of the same text later in the film, imply an approach to autobiography that extends beyond the mere recollection and re-​enactment of everyday events. One particular sequence is illustrative of the film’s oneiric qualities. Marie is shown in a longshot in the middle of an expansive intersection of railway lines, playing hopscotch in between the rails. A  second shot shows her in the foreground of the frame meeting Gracq, who is holding two pistols, one of which he hands to her. Jacques arrives from the left of the frame, a figurine of Charlie Chaplin visible in his right-​hand pocket. As Marie passes the gun in 16 ‘Touches the earth, recovers the real, and more precisely the real inside the real that is autobiography’. 17 ‘Snow White will not bring him back Christa. It’s just a way of making use of his lost love to feed the public.’ 18 ‘He will end up saying no to grand art because it would have left him without love and it would no longer have any importance.’

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Jacques’s direction, Gracq addresses him: ‘Bonhomme, tu aides les anarchistes maintenant? Tu aimerais un truc comme ça?’19 Holding the weapon, contemplating it in a bemused fashion, Jacques replies: ‘Non, je ne saurais pas m’en servir et je risquerais de mettre fin à mes jours.’20 After this exchange, the shot remains fixed on the group. Marie, who never utters a single word during the encounter, rubs her eye as though half-​asleep and Gracq looks around absently. The public setting as a location for arms trading, and the calm stupefaction on the faces of the actors, call into question the relationship to a real event. The sequence is instead suggestive of the absurd landscape and logic associated with reverie. In a film made during a decade following the high point of the Red Army Faction, the interaction between the three characters invites reflection on the nature of revolution and armed political struggle. This concern of Garrel’s is implied in a different stage in the film when in conversation with Chantal Akerman, he informs her:  ‘Je fais un film contre l’usage d’héroïne et contre la tentation de la lutte armée dans la révolution.’21 Perhaps, therefore, the sequence conjures Garrel’s preference for peaceful revolution; perhaps the guns are a fragmented recollection of the trafficking of arms on behalf of the FLN shown in Liberté, la nuit. What is clear is that the incorporation of the sequence without any special inscription, alongside other sequences that relate to Garrel’s life, contributes to a sense of the subtle interpermeation of reverie and the real. The oneiric properties of the Elle a passé tant d’heures suggest an affinity with André Breton and his tracing of the ‘glaring absurdities’ of the manifest content of dreams and the ‘clownish character of nocturnal adventure’ (Breton 1990: 8). Garrel’s affiliation with the philosophy and poetics of André Breton is suggested both by allusions within his cinema and also in public statements. A  brief sequence towards the beginning of Elle a passé tant d’heures shows Jacques waiting in a car for Marie, who has gone to pick up the results of a pregnancy test. In a darkened frame looking through the car’s front window, Marie is shown leaving a clinic and returning to the car. The 19 ‘Alright my friend, are you helping the anarchists now?’ 20 ‘No, I wouldn’t know how to use it and I’d risk putting an end to my own life.’ 21 ‘I’m making a film against the use of heroin and against the temptation towards armed struggle in the revolution.’

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camera pans slightly to the left to accommodate her movement as she approaches the vehicle, revealing a piece of graffiti with the word ‘Nadja’ on the wall behind her in the left of the frame. Garrel’s admiration for Breton, and in particular his part autobiographical, part fictional text Nadja (1928), is affirmed when the director describes an encounter with Élisa Breton following a showing of La Cicatrice intérieure:  ‘Il m’est arrivé un jour de demander à Élisa, la veuve d’André Breton, si elle pouvait m’affilier au Surréalisme parce que j’aimais Nadja’ (Garrel and Lescure 1992: 36). Reinforcing the link with this influential avant-​garde, the title Rue Fontaine alludes to the street where André Breton lived between 1922 and 1966, in which his home at number 42 rue Jean Fontaine functioned as the centre of the Surrealist movement. Despite Garrel’s affinity with Surrealism, neither Elle a passé tant d’heures nor any of his corpus of films have much in common with the two most iconic Surrealist film productions, Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien andalou (1929) and L’Âge d’or (1931). The black humour, scatology and slapstick irreverence attacking sexual mores, the social repression of desire, the clergy and the state are far removed from the tenor and style of Garrel’s work. Writing of L’Âge d’or, Paul Hammond observes in particular the interest in the ‘lower stratum’ present in Buñuel and Dalí’s work: ‘There are endless examples of victims covered in mud, tar, paint, feathers. Conversant with Freudian libido theory, Buñuel and Dali self-​consciously used the oral, anal and phallic as the armature of their movie’ (Hammond 1997:  24). Although not without humorous and ironic elements, Garrel’s cinema is much more sober in tone and displays little interest in provoking shock or outrage in the way that such attention was courted by the knowing, Freudian-​inspired, scatological mise-​en-​scène of the Surrealist films. Instead, an observation made by Jean Douchet provides an insightful interpretation of the relationship between Garrel and Surrealism: Précisons, pour éviter tout malentendu, que la poésie et l’onirisme qui imprègnent son œuvre sont à mille lieues du bric-​ à-​ brac mythologique cher à Cocteau, s’il leur fallait une référence littéraire, c’est plutôt du côté de Breton  –​du Breton de Nadja  –​qu’on pourrait la trouver. La réalité peut sembler, en effet, parfois étrangement

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‘déphasée’ dans les films de Garrel, elle n’est jamais maquillée. Son cinéma descend en ligne direct de celui des Lumière, non de celui de Méliès.22 (Garrel and Lescure 1992: 21)

The film-​maker and critic proposes the strong resonance between Garrel’s cinema and the poetry and oneirism of Breton, evoking the simplicity of Garrel’s cinema. He underlines the distance between Garrel’s oeuvre and the trickery and special effects deployed by Méliès, who would appear rather as the ancestor of the multiple exposures and playful dissolves used for comic and shock effect in the cinema of Buñuel and Dalí. Garrel’s preoccupation with analysing his life in his narrative period resonates with the writings of André Breton. ‘Who am I?’, the enigmatic opening line of Nadja (1928), introduces a text that explores the writer’s identity and position in the world. Breton’s prose works Les Vases communicants (1932) and L’Amour fou (1937) both use his life as a material source while simultaneously theorising the necessity of autobiography as a radical and critical choice. In Les Vases communicants, Breton expounds his theory of the constant exchange that exists between inner and outer worlds, challenging positivistic theories of the self:  ‘The role of this tissue is, as we have seen, to guarantee the constant exchange in thought that must exist between the exterior and interior worlds, an exchange that required the continuous interpenetration of the activity of waking and sleeping. My entire ambition in these pages has been to offer some glimpse of its structure’ (Breton 1990: 39). Breton articulates his ambition to make visible the meeting point that reconciles what Peter Wollen describes as ‘dream (everynight life, so to speak) and waking everyday life’ (Wollen 1993: 134). Breton’s objective offers an apt description of Garrel’s treatment of oneirism in Elle a passé tant d’heures. The oneiric properties of Elle a passé tant d’heures are also evident in Rue Fontaine, which draws together biographical detail and reverie in providing an elegy to Jean Seberg. Friend of Garrel, and star of 22 ‘Let it be made clear, to avoid any ambiguity, that the poetry and oneirism that permeate his [Garrel’s[ oeuvre are a million miles from the mythological bric-​a-​brac dear to Cocteau. If a literary reference point were required it would be with Breton that we would find it, the Breton of Nadja. Reality may appear, in fact, at times strangely “disorientated” in the films of Garrel but it is never dressed up. His cinema is a direct descendant of Lumière, not of Méliès.’

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his underground film Les Hautes Solitudes, Seberg committed suicide in 1979. The principal female character is named Génie (Christine Boisson), a nickname Garrel had adopted to refer to Seberg. In a sequence towards the beginning of the film, Louis (Philippe Garrel) introduces his friend René (Jean-​Pierre Léaud) to Génie and they begin a relationship. Shortly after this introduction, Génie confesses to René how previously in her life she had lost a child. Framed in medium-​shot in the hallway entrance to her apartment block, she hands him a photo: ‘Il faut que je te raconte quelque chose. J’ai eu une petite fille qui est morte. Tiens, sa photo.’23 The reference is consistent with Seberg’s traumatic loss of her second child in 1970, when married to Romain Gary. The story received a great deal of attention in the media after the Los Angeles Times published an article implying that Seberg had conceived the child with a member of the Black Panthers, while still married to Gary (Orr 2007: 13). The allusion to Seberg’s life extends to the following sequence of the film when René is shown in a medium-​shot walking across a street in a busy district of Paris. The camera pans slowly to the left tracking his movement, before stopping to observe him as he looks up and suddenly steps back, raising his hand to his mouth in shock. The shot cuts to a close-​up of a newspaper stand and a headline indicating that Génie was found dead at her home that morning. Despite the apparent finality of the news, René is shown in a sequence shortly afterwards, walking up to a prostitute in the street, framed in close-​up and illuminated by a red flashing light. The prostitute, also played by Christine Boisson, has the same appearance as Génie. The next shot shows them in a bedroom chatting with each other. A cut to a close-​ up shot frames René lying in bed with his eyes closed. The prostitute emerges into shot, caressing his head and putting her arms around him. A rapid cut makes way for a frontal shot of the prostitute-​Génie standing in front of the seated René. She tells him:  ‘Je dois partir maintenant. Je vais là, derrière cette église si tu veux me retrouver, tu pourras toujours m’y rejoindre.’24 This return of Génie constitutes an illogical development in the film, reminiscent of the double presence of Zouzou in Le Lit de la vierge, who appears both as Mary the mother 23 ‘I need to tell you something. I had a little girl who died. Here, this is her photo.’ 24 ‘I have to go now. I’m going over there behind that church if you want to find me, you can always find me there.’

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of Jesus, and as Mary Magdalene. Consistent with the figure of Mary Magdalene, Génie’s reappearance in Rue Fontaine is not given any special inscription to distinguish it from the rest of the film. An extract from a diary kept by Garrel, written after Seberg’s suicide in 1979, helps to explain Génie’s reappearance in the film and her enigmatic address to René. The text refers to a dream that Garrel had recorded about Seberg: ‘Une femme ayant le visage de Jean m’apparut dans un rêve. La salle était vide, la porte était ouverte. Dans l’embrasure de la porte, on pouvait voir le mur d’une église. Le visage du fantôme était livide. Le fantôme dit: “Je dois partir maintenant. Je vais là, derrière cette église. Tu pourras toujours m’y trouver”.’25 Garrel’s description of his dream establishes the material source for the sequence. It confirms the significance he attaches to dreams as a constituent part of his identity and his experience of the world. The fact that the dream is not set apart from the other sequences, either by the manipulation of sound or the use of special effects in the image, enables this dream fragment to exist in parity with the allusion to details of his friend Seberg’s suicide and the traumatic loss of her first child. The treatment of Boisson in Rue Fontaine is consistent with that of the arms-​trading sequence in Elle a passé tant d’heures, facilitating what Breton describes as returning the dream ‘to its true framework, which could only be human life itself’ (Breton 1990: 17). Garrel informs Thomas Lescure that he organised Elle a passé tant d’heures according to five dreams that he had noted down. In response to this comment Lescure notes that, as with Rue Fontaine, these dreams have no special inscription such that ‘personne, à ma connaissance, ne les a reconnus comme tels’26 (Garrel and Lescure 1992: 143). Garrel concurs with this point, attributing the film’s failure to receive critical recognition to a belief by certain critics that he had ‘fait n’importe quoi’27 (143). Rather than being symptomatic of a lack of rigour, Garrel’s approach is indicative of a refusal of the hierarchisation whereby oneiric activity is considered ‘a degradation of the waking activity or a precious liberation from that activity’ (Breton 1990: 17). 25 ‘A woman with Jean’s face appeared to me in a dream: through a doorway you could see the wall of a church. The face of the ghost was livid, the ghost said: “I have to leave now, I’m going over there, behind that church. You can always find me there”.’ 26 ‘Nobody, to my knowledge, recognised them as such.’ 27 ‘Messed around’.

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Communicating vessels: art and everyday life The opening sequence of Elle a passé tant d’heures, showing Christa with drug paraphernalia, suggests that she is a direct incarnation of Nico. However, a cynicism emerges in the work regarding the evocation of real-​life figures through the artifice of performance. When Wiazemsky reappears in the film, following the rupture depicted in the film’s prologue, it is not as the character of Christa but as herself. The sequence involves an encounter between her and Garrel that directly addresses the subject of her role incarnating the director’s former lover. Framed in a doorway that leads to another room off-​screen where Garrel is located, Wiazemsky addresses him with the following: ‘Dis-​moi Philippe, si Christa devient … devient folle, ce n’est pas seulement une question d’héroïne, c’est aussi une question d’échec de vie, non? Moi, ce qui me trouble, c’est que tu … tu …c’est que ce soit à moi que tu fasses appel à jouer ce genre de personnage qui est à dix mille kilomètres de moi, tu le sais très bien. Donc quel est le rapport?’28 Wiazemsky’s speech upsets the implied transparency between her role and Garrel’s former partner Nico. She proceeds to refer to an incident she has been made aware of whereby Christa is said to have attacked a black woman in a café in the grounds of the Chelsea Hotel. Still off-​screen, Garrel confirms the veracity of the story and attempts to provide an explanation. He mentions the loss during the Second World War of Christa’s father, an army deserter who was assumed either to have been shot dead or allowed to die in a concentration camp. He adds that her mother had been driven mad by his disappearance and that, in addition to this suffering, Christa suffered in later life when she gave birth to a child whom the father refused to recognise. Having provided this explanation, Garrel walks into frame for the first time, pacing into the shadow of the foreground of the frame. Wiazemsky pauses before asking: ‘Et comment jouer ça?’29

28 ‘Tell me this, Philippe, if Christa becomes … becomes mad, it’s not only a question of heroin, it’s also about a failure in her life, isn’t it? For me, what I find troubling is that you … that you turn to me to play this type of person who is a thousand miles from who I  am, you know very well yourself. So what is the connection?’ 29 ‘And how do you perform that?’

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Wiazemsky’s question, left hanging in the air, implies the incapacity of life and art to merge, pointing to the failure of art to construct something commensurate with the complexity of everyday life. Wiazemsky’s countenance in the sequence, visibly anxious and disconcerted, signals the strain that the cinema places upon the actor, highlighting the burden of the labour of incarnating another human being. Art, in this sense, is not a compensatory activity but instead subtracts from real life, imposing a strain on the everyday life of the performer called upon to participate in its realisation. The nature of the interaction between Wiazemsky and Garrel in the exchange supports the impression that it constitutes a snapshot of the real, rather than a rehearsed performance. The hesitations in Wiazemsky’s speech and the fact that she and Garrel at times talk over one another suggest a spontaneous dialogue. Wiazemsky becomes both the incarnation of Christa-​Nico and her everyday self, that is, an actress in conversation with a director about the challenge and responsibility of playing a role in a film. Viewers may wonder whether a camera has been left running randomly or, at the very least, if Wiazemsky is unaware of the camera’s presence. The subject of the film shifts from an account of Nico’s past, captured through the incorporation of fragments of the real, to a seemingly unmediated insight into the everyday life of an actor. The mistruth of the act of performance in capturing the reality of someone’s past (Nico), is replaced with the real of an actress’s life (Wiazemsky). However, as the spectator is invited to draw such conclusions, the exchange is turned on its head once more when it concludes with Garrel walking into shot towards the camera, shouting: ‘Coupez là, on va faire un gros…’30 This conclusion to the conversation invites a reappraisal of the ontological status of the sequence. The supposed frankness of the snapshot of Wiazemsky in conversation with her director is returned to the domain of the imaginary, a ruse or a fiction created by Garrel. Nonetheless, Wiazemsky’s complicity in this construction is still indeterminate and it remains possible that she is unaware of this ploy. The overall effect of this toing and froing between the real and the imaginary, between documentary and fiction, is to generate a feeling of instability and a sense of the impossibility of identifying the barriers between these traditionally separate domains. 30 ‘Let’s cut there, we’re going to do a close…’ The shot cuts before he finishes his phrase but it can be assumed he is about to say ‘close-​up’.

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The doubling effect identified with Wiazemsky is also evident in the roles occupied by Lou Castel in the film. Castel appears alongside Garrel in a short, choreographed sequence towards the beginning of the film. It opens with a close-​up shot, almost in total obscurity, of two scales and a hand spooning out a powdered substance. In the next shot, composed with only a candle in the foreground for illumination, the two men discuss their reasons for dealing drugs. Just prior to this composed exchange, Castel is shown arriving on set in a medium handheld shot. As he emerges through an apartment door, he can be seen to spot the camera in front of him, and he smiles gingerly as he walks towards it. The shot, which lasts only a few seconds, is out of focus and composed at a slightly canted angle, reinforcing the sense that Castel’s reaction is spontaneous. By the incorporation of this sequence, Castel, like Wiazemsky, becomes a double presence in the film, the real-​life actor arriving on a set, and the incarnation of a drug dealer performing a scenario invented, or perhaps dreamed, by Garrel. Mireille Perrier’s recollection of the experience of working on Elle a passé tant d’heures provides an insight into the consequences of Garrel’s approaches to film-​making for the actors involved. She describes the implications of having to adapt to the incoherence brought about by the numerous roles introduced by Garrel in the course of the filming, and to the ludic and improvisatory approach he adopted during the production: ‘J’avais aussi cette sensation d’être en territoire, comme si … je me disais, que j’étais un peu sans papiers, sans identité. Le fait d’être sur un tournage et de ne pas savoir exactement ce qu’on joue, ça me donnait l’impression d’être dans un pays où je n’aurais pas eu mes papiers’31 (Delorme 2004). Elaborating on the discomforting experience of feeling without a fixed identity, Perrier refers to a striking four-​minute sequence, shot with a fixed frame, featuring her and Jacques Bonnaffé. She explains that Garrel invited her and Bonnaffé to converse with only the words ‘merveilleux’32 and

31 ‘I had this sensation of being in a territory, as though … I said to myself, that I was, you might say, an undocumented immigrant … without an identity. The fact of being in a film and to not know exactly what we were playing, that gave me the sense of being in a country without my identity papers.’ 32 ‘Marvellous’.

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‘incroyable’33 proposed as a basis for their interaction. The outcome of this constraint, around which the actors play spontaneously, is a sense of continual flow, of performers constantly shifting between being in character and out of character, representative types and free-​ floating agents. The experience that Perrier describes of finding herself in an uncertain terrain and without a stable identity, is applicable to the experience of the spectator encountering a liminal space in which performance intersects with a sketch of a performance, and the intentional merges with the accidental and unforeseen. With each of these elements Garrel introduces uncertainty and ambiguity, modulating how the spectator may engage with and interpret the image. The point where the real (everyday life) makes way for art (the imaginary), and vice versa, becomes unknowable, resonating with Michael Sheringham’s characterisation of Breton’s conception of a Surrealist poetics as interpermeating everyday life, rather than opening up to a world elsewhere. Sheringham highlights this fundamental aspect of Breton’s thought by citing the following line from Les Vases communicants: ‘There is a door half opened, beyond which there is only a step to take, upon leaving the vacillating house of the poets, in order to find oneself fully in life’ (Sheringham 2006: 109). The disorientating experience of being at once in an imaginary space and a real space, of being simultaneously witness to a work of fiction and a documentation of a film in the process of being made, is augmented by the formal properties of Elle a passé tant d’heures. One of the most striking examples of this is the approach to cinematography in the sequence mentioned by Perrier, founded on the words ‘incroyable’ and ‘merveilleux’. The interaction is captured in a close-​ up shot that shows the couple standing in a corridor, framed slightly from below. After several minutes, the focus of the shot gradually begins to alter. The image of the couple becomes more and more blurred as the foreground of the shot becomes increasingly distinct, revealing a glass surface covered with raindrops. The focus is maintained on the glistening raindrops in the foreground of the shot, with the blurred outline of Marie and Jacques in the background, before gradually shifting once again to show the couple in focus. Through this surprising and quite beautiful transition, an apparently simple

33 ‘Incredible’.

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composition is itself doubled, communicating with another at first invisible domain. The shot becomes two things simultaneously, an intimate portrait of a couple and a startling composition of glistening raindrops, in addition to all the gradations in between these two points of clarity. This doubling, and the porosity between the two extreme points of clarity, reinforce the apprehension of the doubling of the real with the imaginary in the film. The shot, which combines what appear to be two disparate, unconnected realms, provides a visual condensation of the premise of Breton’s thought to explore the conciliation of worlds traditionally held in opposition, including art and life, and dreams and waking experience.

Ministers of art: Akerman and Doillon Chantal Akerman appears in Elle a passé tant d’heures in a sequence composed of four silent shots in an interior location. The first three shots are extreme close-​ups of her face, faintly lit and set against a darkened backdrop. The final shot is a close-​up of a card held across her chest and just under her chin, with the title ‘The Golden Eighties’ inscribed in elaborate, handwritten text. The title alludes to Akerman’s musical film, Golden Eighties (1986), which at the time was in its early stages of development. Akerman appears mildly intoxicated, smiling at times in an intimate exchange with the cinematographer that recalls Garrel’s portrait film with Jean Seberg, Les Hautes Solitudes (1974). On this occasion, however, the shots of Akerman are accompanied by a conversation between her and Garrel, incorporated as a voice-​over recording. Prompted by Garrel, she begins by reciting an introductory title: ‘Les ministères de l’art. Les metteurs en scène dans le champ.’34 The conversation that ensues appears to merge the fictional with the factual, as Garrel begins to discuss the film he is working on, before coyly explaining that he managed to find the money for his production by selling heroin. By incorporating this anecdote, Garrel draws an ordinary conversation between two directors towards the domain of fiction, integrating their encounter with the sequence between Garrel and Lou-​Gracq, when they conspire to deal drugs. 34 ‘The Ministers of Art, the directors in the frame.’

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Garrel’s substitution of the portraits of Akerman’s face (synonymous with her subjectivity) with the title of one of her films (her art), is noteworthy. This act of substitution implies the inseparable bond between the artist and her creation, positing the person and her work as interchangeable. Prior to making her feature film, Akerman made the short Les Années 80 (1983), a type of film-​sketch, charting the development of the musical that would be made several years later, including directed rehearsals, castings for roles shot in video and a fully mastered song sequence recorded in 35mm.35 Marion Schmid writes of the film:  ‘Les Années 80 is, above all, a film about cinematic process, the moulding of reality into fiction which the director herself has signalled as the film’s nexus’ (Schmid 2010:  69–​70). The hybridity of Akerman’s sketch, creating a work that is ‘somewhere between documentary and fiction, “making of” and commercial pilot’ (73), resonates with Garrel’s film, in which fictional and documentary elements become indiscernible as discrete categories. Garrel’s decision to include Akerman, and his treatment of her in this sequence, valorise the role of the film-​maker as someone with the capacity to upset boundaries and challenge the habitual divisions of the real and the imaginary. The encounter between Garrel and Jacques Doillon occurs in a ten-​ minute sequence towards the end of Elle a passé tant d’heures. The sequence, once again, combines factual elements with fictional, and displays Garrel’s affinity with a film-​maker who complicates these boundaries. It is composed of five shots, opening with a silent composition of Doillon walking in the street, filmed through the rear window of a car. He points in the direction of the camera as though taken by surprise by its presence. The next shot is a silent, extreme close-​up of Doillon’s eyes and face, inside the travelling car, followed by a long-​ take of Garrel and Doillon standing in a medium-​shot against a wall, filmed through the car window. Framed slightly from below, Garrel, who is holding a notebook in his hand, appears to indicate several directions to his friend. It seems possible that this is a preparation for the interview that follows, but, rather than relaying their conversation, the accompanying soundtrack instead incorporates the hum of light traffic, the distant chimes of a church bell, the cries of children

35 The title translates as The Eighties.

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playing and the faint sound of a piano. The ambient sound recording bridges the next shot in the sequence, a frontal close-​up of Doillon in an interior space, reminiscent once more of the intimate portraits that predominate in Garrel’s underground films. The final shot in the sequence is composed of a more distant framing in the same interior location, with Garrel this time seated to the left of Doillon. Synchronised sound is introduced for the first time as Garrel asks him about the strategies he adopted towards filming his daughter in his work. Garrel’s question alludes to Doillon’s La Femme qui pleure (1979), which includes recorded sequences with his young daughter Lola Doillon, in an approach that echoes Garrel’s autofictional strategies in his narrative cinema. The seemingly frank exchange between the two directors is upset when Garrel removes a handkerchief from his pocket and from it reads the message:  ‘Je voulais te parler de l’éducation des enfants mais, voilà, je suis tombé amoureuse de —​—​tu sais, qui joue le rôle de Marie dans le film.’36 Doillon, visibly surprised by this interjection takes the handkerchief and finishes the phrase, which reads:  ‘[T]‌u veux pas lui dire que je l’aime?’37 By this detour, Garrel merges a conversation about his friend’s approach to film-​making with a ruse that draws this interview into the complex diegesis of the rest of the film. Discussing this sequence and the improvised strategies adopted by Garrel, Doillon later describes the experience of appearing in Elle a passé tant d’heures in terms that echo the reflections of Mireille Perrier discussed earlier: ‘[J]e ne savais plus où j’en étais, ce qui manifestement amusait beaucoup Philippe’38 (Garrel and Lescure 1992: 98).

Garrel, film historian: Les Ministères de l’art (1988) Made for the Franco-​German television station Arte, Les Ministères de l’art is the fruit of Garrel’s longstanding project to make a work 36 ‘I wanted to talk to you about the children’s education but I  fell in love with —​—​you know, who plays the role of Marie in this film.’ The name is suppressed in the soundtrack. 37 ‘Would you tell her that I love her?’ 38 ‘I no longer knew where I was in this, something which manifestly amused Garrel.’ Lescure relates how Garrel had told Doillon that he wished to do an interview about his approach to filming children, only for him to begin talking about another subject once the camera began to record.

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devoted to the film-​ makers of his generation. Ostensibly, the approach appears straightforward:  a series of filmed encounters and conversations between Garrel and several notable film-​makers who broke through in the wake of the New Wave, including Chantal Akerman and Jacques Doillon (both of whom appear in preparatory sketches in Elle a passé tant d’heures discussed above), in addition to Benoît Jacquot, André Téchiné, Werner Schroeter and Leos Carax. Belying the ostensible simplicity, Les Ministères de l’art emerges as a dynamic film-​essay that incorporates reflection on Garrel’s personal life and a polemic on the production conditions in France for a type of cinema motivated by personal expression rather than mass-​market exploitation. The film begins with a detour from its supposed subject. It opens with a sequence showing an encounter between Garrel and Jean-​ Pierre Léaud on the Champs Élysées. A close-​up of Garrel shows the director pacing the boulevard as he delivers a prefatory address to the camera, asking:  ‘À quoi pense l’acteur quand il joue au cinéma?’39 A  long-​shot tracks Jean-​Pierre Léaud walking down the boulevard, before the image returns to the opening frame showing the two men greeting each other in close-​up. Léaud proceeds to circle Garrel as the latter explains: ‘Je fais un truc sur Jean Eustache, sur La Maman et la putain, c’est pourquoi je t’ai demandé de venir.’40 This encounter between Garrel and the star of La Maman et la putain prefaces an interview the director recorded with Eustache in 1967 for the documentary film Godard et ses émules. Filmed in a series of close-​up portrait shots that zoom from time to time to form extreme close-​ ups of Eustache’s face, the director talks about how he made Le Père Noël a les yeux bleus (1966) with the support of Jean-​Luc Godard, who donated the leftover film reels from Masculin féminin (1966) and covered outstanding bills for the film. In addition to the discussion of the trials of finding the means to make art, it amounts to a tender portrait of Garrel’s colleague, who committed suicide in 1981. In an interview between Garrel and Jacques Doillon, the latter describes Garrel as a ‘rassembleur’41 because of the various efforts he has made to bring together the loosely affiliated friends and 39 ‘What do actors think about when they are performing in a film?’ 40 ‘I’m doing a thing about Jean Eustache, about La Maman et la putain, that’s why I asked you to come along.’ 41 ‘Gatherer’.

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acquaintances of the so-​called post-​New Wave. However, the absent Eustache also serves as a type of ‘gatherer’ in the film, as Garrel invites his interlocutors to reflect on the film-​maker’s influence and legacy. The portrait that emerges of the surviving members of this generation is at times bleak; a fragile, loosely knit body that Doillon compares to ‘bestioles en voie de disparition’.42 Reflecting on the relationship between their generation and that of the New Wave, Doillon adds pessimistically that they appear to have ‘récupéré toute leur fatigue mais pas leur santé’.43 A thesis that emerges in the course of the exchanges between Garrel and his colleagues is that this group is united both by the sincerity of their works and their commitment to a cinema that is fundamentally autobiographical. This thesis is sustained in the form of the documentary itself, which merges elements of Garrel’s personal life with the exploration of this generation. Garrel’s then partner Brigitte Sy, who was assistant director on the film, makes several appearances. In one instance, preceding an encounter between Garrel and Werner Schroeter, she is shown helping her partner prepare a voice-​ over text introducing the work of the German film-​maker. At first, the couple are framed in a long-​shot in shadow, seated on a landing at the top of a flight of stairs. The shot then cuts to a close-​up frontal portrait of Sy, as Garrel explains his admiration for Schroeter’s Le Règne de Naples (1978) and the egalitarian nature of its treatment of men and women. This extract is reminiscent of the polysemic and generically complex sequences discussed in Elle a passé tant d’heures. Multiple in form and meaning, it is at once a performance and the rehearsal for a performance, an introduction to a film-​maker and a portrait of a loved one. In another sequence, Garrel integrates a dedication to his friend Jacques Doillon with a portrait of himself and his young son Louis. The father and son are framed in a high-​angle long-​shot with Philippe Garrel seated outdoor on a short flight of stairs, extending from a circular building that looks like a type of observatory. In the foreground of the shot, Louis Garrel pedals his tricycle in continuous circles while his father delivers a short introduction to Doillon: ‘Jacques Doillon se joint à nous dans les années 60. Il a des amours dans la 42 ‘Creatures facing extinction’. 43 ‘Retained all their tiredness but not their health’.

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vie et il aime bien les enfants –​c’est le premier qui leur confie un grand rôle. Mais ce qui me touche tant c’est qu’il s’est bercé le cœur et que c’était la tendresse qui lui a donné sa vie.’44 In addition to the verbal expression of his esteem for Doillon’s intimist cinema, Garrel underpins his creative affinity by incorporating a portrait of his child at play. The circular form of the building in the backdrop and the child cycling in the foreground imply the tenacity and fidelity of Doillon and Garrel in tracing the same themes and forms. Garrel’s vision of the cinematic style and preoccupations that unite the film-​makers and artists of his generation is articulated in voice-​ over, accompanying a shot of the director taking leave of Doillon in front of the Cinémathèque at the Palais de Chaillot: ‘Je préfère, moi, l’esprit de Chantal Akerman, de Bernard Jacquot, André Techiné, Jacques Doillon, pour la raison suivant: les poètes, les livres, la peinture de notre génération, je pense à Muriel Cerf, par exemple, que je ne connais pas, écrivent de manière très simple leurs enfances et leurs amours. Nous ne devons pas nous disperser.’45 Garrel’s short summation mirrors the simplicity of the style he perceives in his colleagues. Previously, in conversation with Doillon, Garrel articulates a fear not that the cinema will die but that a certain type of subjective film-​making will become no longer possible, as commercial interests and arbiters of taste seek to evade the notion of crisis. Here he stakes a claim for the survival of the ministers of an art grounded in personal, everyday experience. In addition to considering the role of the artists of his generation, Garrel devotes a sequence to the subject of manual workers in the cinema. It constitutes a rare polemic in Garrel’s oeuvre, as he condemns the hierarchisation of the film industry and the treatment of its lowest-​paid workers. The sequence opens with a close-​up shot of 44 ‘Jacques Doillon joined us in the 1960s. He has loves in his life and he likes children –​he was the first to trust them for a big role. But what touches me is that he has soothed his heart and that it was tenderness that gave him his life.’ 45 ‘I myself prefer the spirit of Chantal Akerman, Bernard Jacquot, André Techiné, Jacques Doillon, for the following reason: the poets, the books, the painting of our generation, I’m thinking of Muriel Cerf, for example, whom I don’t know, write about their love and their childhood in a simple way. We should not disperse.’

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a woman on a shop floor cutting and splicing sections of film reel. A series of cuts of close-​ups showing faces of workers on the floor and their tools concludes with a long-​shot of four women in a line at their workstations. The voice-​over comments: Si j’ai décidé de parler des ouvriers et des ouvrières des labo c’est parce que dans les émissions de cinéma on en parle jamais, pourtant c’est bien eux aussi qui font le cinéma. Évidemment, ils ne sont pas sur l’écran mais pliés en deux dans une usine, les yeux rivés sur le film. Les hommes manipulent les produits toxiques pour le traitement des films et les femmes montent les négatives.46

In addition to highlighting the gendered division of roles, Garrel describes how after forty years of cutting and pasting film, the workers are assigned the role of laboratory cleaners, for which they receive a pitiful salary. He mentions one woman in particular, who, having worked with Vigo and Ophuls, finds herself at seventy years of age sweeping the floors. The incorporation of this sequence posits a critique of the separation of manual production and artistic or intellectual production in the cinema. The final sequence of the film is devoted to Leos Carax, emblematic for Garrel of a future for subjective film-​makers in France. In a humorous moment Garrel asks the young director if he saw La Maman et la putain when it was first released. Carax’s response underpins the differences between the generations: ‘Je m’y intéressais pas trop, j’avais 13 ans.’47 The final shot tracks Garrel and Carax as they visit a site that the former intends to use for his next film. Having crossed a bridge over the Seine, the two men arrive at a yard with a ruined building in the background. The yard is covered in mud and rubble, with broken bits of masonry and graffiti on the walls. As the two men exit the frame the camera rests on the location, a Yeatsian ‘foul rag and bone shop of the heart’ where the mystery of artistic creation lies. 46 ‘If I decided to talk about the lab workers, it’s because they are never talked about in television broadcasts, even though they also make movies. Of course, they are not on the screen but bent over in a factory, their eyes fixed on the film. The men work with the toxic products used to treat the films and the women edit the negatives.’ 47 ‘I wasn’t that interested. I was thirteen years old.’

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References Breton, André (1988) Mad Love, trans. Mary Ann Caws, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Breton, André (1990) Communicating Vessels, trans. Mary Ann Caws, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Delorme, Stéphane (2004) ‘Entretien inédit avec Mireille Perrier’, DVD extra, Cahiers du cinéma. Garrel, Philippe and Thomas Lescure (1992) Une caméra à la place du cœur, Aix-​en-​Provence: Admiranda/​Institut de l’Image. Hammond, Paul (1997) L’Âge d’or, London: BFI. Jousse, Thierry (1989) ‘Le refus du drame’, Cahiers du cinéma, 424, pp. 28–​30. Orr, John (2007) ‘Out of Noir:  Seberg-​Preminger-​Godard-​Garrel’, Studies in French Cinema, 7.1, pp. 43–​55. Pacadis, Alain (2005) Nightclubbing. Chroniques et articles 1973–​1986, Paris: Éditions Denoël X-​Trême. Philippon, Alain (1983a) ‘Entretien avec Philippe Garrel: à propos de L’Enfant secret’, Cahiers du cinéma, 344, pp. 23–​27. Philippon, Alain (1983b) ‘L’Enfant-​cinéma: L’Enfant secret de Philippe Garrel’, Cahiers du cinéma, 344, pp. 29–​31. Schmid, Marion (2010) Chantal Akerman, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Sheringham, Michael (2006) Everyday Life:  Theories and Practices from Surrealism to the Present, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wollen, Peter (1993) Raiding the Icebox:  Reflections on Twentieth-​ Century Culture, London: Verso.

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4 Dialogues

The fourth period in Garrel’s oeuvre, ‘dialogues’ (1989–​1996), encompasses the films Les Baisers de secours (1989), J’entends plus la guitare (1990), La Naissance de l’amour (1993) and Le Cœur fantôme (1998). Thematically, these works reveal similarities with the previous period, engaging with the challenges faced by couples, the impact of parenthood and the conflict that emerges when the desire to make art and to live freely encounters the responsibilities associated with being in a committed relationship. As with the films of Garrel’s narrative period, autobiography serves as a strong compositional source. The production context during this period, which saw Garrel with greater means at his disposal, reveals a marked shift with the film-​maker’s poverist period and even with his narrative period. The implications of material comfort and stability are addressed by various aspects of these works which muse on the raison d’être of the artist after the heroism and idealism of youth. The most significant indication of Garrel’s migration towards a standardised model of film production was the decision he made at this time to work with screenwriters, most notably Marc Cholodenko. From here on Garrel’s cinema accords greater importance to the role of the screenplay. This chapter considers how Garrel negotiates some of challenges associated with working within this altered production context, exploring his collaboration with a range of film professionals and the implications of these relationships for the aesthetic outcomes of his work. Garrel states in an interview during this phase, ‘le cinéma qui me passionne, c’est la sincérité. On fait des bons films

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avec les chutes de la vie, plus qu’avec ce qui est harmonieux’1 (Jousse 1989: 30). In light of this statement, consideration will be given to how these works confront the multifarious notions of crisis, and how the director balances making work that is more popular with a continued refusal to seduce or placate his audience. Long admired by Garrel, the director Jean Eustache pursued a model of film-making at once popular but deeply personal. Attention will be paid to the relationship between Garrel and Eustache’s cinema, in particular to the echoes of La Maman et la putain (1974) that emerge in La Naissance de l’amour.

Dialogue: Garrel, Cholodenko et al. A sequence from near the beginning of Les Baisers de secours alludes directly to Garrel’s collaboration with the writer Marc Cholodenko, acknowledging the director’s altered conception of the role of the screenplay in his work. Mathieu, a film director, meets with his father in a Parisian café. Philippe Garrel plays the role of Mathieu, and the father is played by Philippe’s father, Maurice Garrel. Mathieu J’ai un dialoguiste là, un type qui fait des dialogues. Père C’est important. Le cinéma ce n’est pas seulement les images. Ça colle entre vous? Mathieu Il fait les mots, moi je fais les images, à chacun son tour.2 The playful evocation of the role of Cholodenko indicates the first time that Garrel deploys the services of a writer in his cinema. Previously, Garrel drew upon the assistance of Anne Wademant for L’Enfant secret. Wademant, however, had an advisory role and gave editorial advice in relation to texts written by Garrel, rather than being directly involved in the composition of the screenplay. Garrel

1 ‘The cinema that interests me is one of sincerity. We make good films from the falls in life rather than from what is harmonious.’ 2 Mathieu I have a screenwriter now, a guy that writes dialogues. Père That’s important. Cinema is not only the images. Is it working out between you? Mathieu He does the words, I do the images, each of us takes his turn.

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has elsewhere acknowledged the role of Nico in creating her own dialogues in many of his underground films; however, much of this was improvised and did not conform to a formally defined role. Garrel’s approach to writing, prior to collaborating with Cholodenko, was relatively free and spontaneous. For Liberté, la nuit and Elle a passé tant d’heures sous les sunlights3 he wrote the dialogues the night before each day’s filming, resulting in material that he has described as ‘pauvre’4 but ‘juste’5 (Jousse 1989: 35). Cholodenko’s role as an official, credited dialogue writer represents a change from a spontaneous and largely solitary approach. Discussing his relationship with Garrel, Cholodenko reveals an existing admiration for the director’s work, including his underground cinema, indicating that this affinity made the transition to the role of screenwriter relatively straightforward. Cholodenko’s reflections provide insight into the developments in his relationship with Garrel during this period and also into the director’s conception of the craft of writing. He reveals how Garrel’s preference for spontaneity over the labour of rewrites led to the director’s tendency to either accept or refuse proposed dialogues in their entirety: ‘il croit au premier jet, à l’inspiration et surtout pas au travail’6 (Guérinin 1993: 38). The sparse, minimalist dialogues of Les Baisers de secours result from Cholodenko’s reticence to break ‘le silence Garrelien’7 (38). Nevertheless, La Naissance de l’amour, made four years later and marking Cholodenko’s third collaboration with Garrel, features lengthier dialogue and developed exchanges between characters, signalling a more central role for Cholodenko in composition. Highlighting the growing professional and personal relationship between the two men, Cholodenko points out that the principal characters in the film, the friends Marcus (Jean-​Pierre Léaud), a writer, and Paul (Lou Castel), an actor, are modelled on himself and Garrel respectively (39). Cholodenko’s role in Les Baisers de secours inaugurates a shift within Garrel’s cinematic style moving towards a greater faith in the role of dialogue and the craft of screen-​writing. 3 For the rest of the chapter Elle a passé tant d’heures sous les sunlights will be shortened to Elle a passé tant d’heures. 4 ‘Poor’. 5 ‘Honest’. 6 ‘He believes in the first draft, in inspiration and especially not in work.’ 7 ‘The Garrelien silence’.

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Having composed dialogues for Les Baisers and J’entends plus la guitare in response to precisely described situations provided by Garrel, Cholodenko shared a screenwriting role in La Naissance de l’amour with the writer Muriel Cerf. This was followed by further collaborations with several female writers, including Noémie Lvovsky (Le Cœur fantôme) and Arlette Langman (Le Vent de la nuit, Sauvage Innocence, Les Amants réguliers). More recently Cholodenko has worked alongside Garrel’s wife, Caroline Deruras (Un Été brûlant, La Jalousie).8 Cholodenko reveals that Garrel’s desire to have both male and female scriptwriters working on the same film extends from a belief that men and women do not speak the same way, and only a female writer can accurately reproduce the speech of a woman. The altered production environment of the ‘dialogues’ period was spearheaded by investment from Gérard Vaugeois and his production company Les Films de l’Atalante. For Les Baisers de secours Garrel received a budget of 3.8 million old francs, roughly £800,000. Although the sum was less than the average budget for a French film production at the time, it represents a more comfortable allocation than Garrel had enjoyed in his previous films. The shift in production conditions that sets the ‘dialogues’ period apart from those preceding it is highlighted in comments made by Lou Castel, who starred in Elle a passé tant d’heures before playing alongside Jean-​Pierre Léaud nine years later in La Naissance de l’amour. When asked about the experience of working with Garrel, Castel observed:  ‘D’abord j’ai été très bien payé sur La Naissance de l’amour, mais rien pour Elle a passé tant d’heures sous les sunlights …! Et sur une production plus “normale”, comme le fut La Naissance de l’amour, Garrel travailla de façon plus normale aussi, un peu plus comme les autres cinéastes. Ce fut cela le changement principal, pour tous les deux’9 (de Lastens 2013:  94). Castel’s observation, including his evocation of a shoot 8 Langman also worked as screenwriter for La Frontière de l’aube (2008) La Jalousie (2013), L’Ombre des femmes (2015). Duras worked as screenwriter on the latter two works in addition to Un Été brûlant (2011) and L’Amant d’un jour (2017). 9 ‘First of all, I was very well paid for La Naissance de l’amour, but received nothing for Elle a passé tant d’heures sous les sunlights …! And for a more “normal” production, as La Naissance de l’amour was, Garrel also worked in a more normal fashion, a bit more like other film-​makers. That was the principal difference, for both of them.’

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that afforded less space for improvisation, signals a shift away from some of the experimental methods used in Elle a passé tant d’heures. His comments reinforce the notion of a gradual move towards more conventional production conditions and a ‘normalisation’ of Garrel’s working practices, instigated by the deployment of Cholodenko as a scriptwriter. Nevertheless, the stylistic differences between the four ‘dialogue’ films, particularly in the approach to sound design and the treatment of the texture and colour of the image, reveal a continued taste for experimentation. Garrel’s collaboration with other technical professionals –​both experienced and relatively new –​influenced the eclectic stylistic traits of these works. The testimony of professionals recruited by Garrel provides insight into his working methods and highlights a strongly held belief in the deterministic relationship between the atmosphere of a film shoot and the resultant film image. When making Les Baisers de secours, Garrel instructed his cinematographer, Jacques Loiseleux, who had previously worked with Maurice Pialat on Loulou (1980) and À nos amours (1983), that he wished to make a film entirely in close-​ups. Although the film contains several longshots providing a context of place, both it and the other films of this period privilege the use of the close-​up, particularly of the faces and bodies of actors. Longshots are striking as a result of their infrequency. Beyond this predilection for proximity to the human figure, the film image differs markedly between the four films. In Les Baisers de secours, the frame is often bright and airy, distinguished by delicately contrasted black and white cinematography. Thierry Jousse highlights the active role played by professionals that Garrel worked alongside, in influencing technical decisions and aesthetic outcomes. He reveals how Loiseleux persuaded Garrel to have minimalist lighting support to give the impression of interior spaces only barely illuminated, after Garrel had initially insisted on having no artificial lighting. The director did, however, prescribe the use of a 100mm lens for almost the entire shoot, serving to create a narrow depth of field and isolate the actors from their surroundings. He nonetheless allowed Loiseleux relative freedom with the framing of subjects, and complete freedom with tracking-​shots (Jousse 1989: 37). For J’entends plus la guitar, Garrel worked with Caroline Champetier, a cinematographer whose work he was familiar with thanks to her previous collaboration with Jean Eustache, Jean-​Luc Godard, Chantal

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Akerman and Jacques Doillon. Champetier describes how she worked in conditions of relative autonomy and with an urgency conditioned by the context of Garrel’s mourning following the death of Nico. Her brief as cinematographer was to illuminate the shots making use primarily of natural sources of light, something that contributed to the gentle pastel tones and the granular textures that dominate the film. She also reveals her surprise at discovering that Garrel included two test shots of Benoît Régent in an apartment in place de la République in the final cut, despite the texture of each shot being noticeably different (Chauvin 2013: 60). For La Naissance de l’amour, Garrel worked with Raoul Coutard, the mythical cinematographer of the New Wave, famous for his collaboration with Godard and Truffaut at the height of their fame in the 1960s. Garrel gave Coutard a great deal of autonomy for the cinematography, with the cinematographer reporting:  ‘il m’a foutu largement la paix’10 (Devanne 2013: 205). The result is a high-​contrast black and white cinematography, reminiscent of films Coutard had previously worked on, such as La Peau douce (1964) or Alphaville (1965). Coutard’s cinematographic predilections differ significantly from the delicate black and white tones of Les Baisers de secours. Coutard also worked alongside Loiseleux for the final film of this period, Le Cœur fantôme, shot in saturated colour photography that contrasts with the soft colours and grainy texture of J’entends plus la guitare. Claudine Nougaret was responsible for the sound engineering on Les Baisers de secours, having previously worked on Rohmer’s Le Rayon vert (1986). She reached a compromise to record the sound with both tie-​mikes and a boom mike, following Garrel’s initial insistence that the sound be uniquely recorded with tie-​mikes. Garrel’s predilection for the tie-​mike related to the fact that it obliges actors to speak quietly, rather than projecting their voice, thereby creating a more subtle, understated performance (Jousse 1989: 30). The film maintains this intimate quality, with a delicate, muffled sound for many of the dialogues that creates a strange sensation of proximity to the actor. René Levert, a sound engineer with Godard and Truffaut for many of their films during the 1960s, worked on J’entends plus la guitare. Alongside Coutard, his presence reveals Garrel’s use of veteran professionals alongside newer talent. 10 ‘He mostly didn’t bother me.’

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Each of the ‘dialogue’ films contains a musical score. John Cale, a former member of The Velvet Underground and friend of Nico, performed the soundtrack that accompanies La Naissance de l’amour. This role preceded further collaboration with the director in producing the soundtrack for Le Vent de la nuit (1999) and Un Été brûlant (2011). Cale’s account of working with Garrel reveals the film-​maker’s preference for a freshness and spontaneity in the composition. Cale recounts that the recording of the soundtrack for La Naissance de l’amour was like a recital. Rather than working in a studio and carefully composing a score to match the image track, Garrel insisted on recording the first sketches offered by Cale (Cale 2011: 208). Rather like Garrel’s treatment of the process of scriptwriting when working with Cholodenko and his inclusion of the screen tests recorded by Champetier, Cale’s experience underlines Garrel’s continued taste for improvisation and spontaneity. Nonetheless, the testimonies above collectively establish Garrel’s growing confidence in the expertise of various collaborators and his openness to their contribution.

The single-​take film-​maker The various accounts provided by Garrel’s colleagues during his ‘dialogue’ period, relating to the director’s working practices, are also revelatory in terms of his philosophy of the image. The accounts of various collaborators have contributed to a certain mythology surrounding Garrel as ‘le cinéaste d’une seule prise’.11 Coutard describes the absence of rehearsals prior to filming in La Naissance de l’amour and Garrel’s preference for using only a single take for each sequence: ‘Le truc avec Garrel, c’est si jamais on a un problème à l’image, il faut tout de suite couper car sinon, il prend le casque, il écoute la prise et s’il n’y a pas de bavure sur le texte et sur le son, il garde la prise’12 (Devanne 2013: 205). This preference for a single take, and an acceptance of the imperfection necessarily incurred, suggests why several sequences between Jean-​Pierre Léaud and Lou 11 ‘The single-​take film-​maker’. 12 ‘The thing with Garrel is if ever there is a problem with the image, you have to cut immediately because otherwise he will take the headphones, listen to the recording and if there’s no error with the text, he’ll keep the take.’

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Castel in La Naissance de l’amour were kept, despite what appear to be minor errors in the delivery of their dialogue. Garrel’s taste for the single take, even when working within the comparatively comfortable conditions of this period, is consistent with his poverist phase, when material limitations meant that only one take was possible. Rather than being merely a habit acquired by Garrel, the economy of this approach reveals a fascination with the energy and spontaneity of the single take. In discussion with Thierry Jousse during the filming of Les Baisers de secours, Garrel reflects on his predilection for his minimalist approach, outlining a philosophy that echoes early theories of the cinematic image:  ‘On peut faire un plan superbe de quelqu’un passant une porte s’il y a une vibration très forte. Je pense que le cinéma attrape l’invisible, quelque chose qui est du domaine de la relation d’une personne à une autre, l’affinité ou le conflit réel’13 (Jousse 1989:  36). Garrel’s perspective resonates with Jean Epstein’s elaboration of the concept of photogénie, celebrating the capacity of the recorded film image, and especially the close-​up shot, to see better than the naked eye and bring to light the ‘prodromes peauciers [qui] ruissellent sous l’épiderme’14 (Epstein 1921:  93–​94). Garrel’s obsession with the climate of the shoot, and the capacity of the film reel to register a quality invisible to the eye, resonates with the theory of Epstein, and an idea that was fundamental to the Impressionist film avant-​garde. Beyond the predilection for avoiding multiple retakes, Caroline Champetier’s discusses other ritualistic practices she observed when working with Garrel as the cinematographer for both J’entends plus la guitare and Le Vent de la nuit. She describes a mystical charge that reigned on the set, similar to when working with Godard or Carax. She reveals Garrel’s continued preference for old and obsolete technologies, something that extends back to his use of a wind-​up camera for Le Bleu des origines. Discussing Garrel’s use of old-​fashioned arc lighting for the Le Vent de la nuit, Champetier observes the director’s attachment to the alchemy of the cinema: ‘C’est le côté messe noir, la dimension de magie du cinéma de Garrel pour qui la mystique 13 ‘You can do a great shot of someone walking by a door if there is a really strong vibration. I think that cinema seizes the invisible, something which is in the domain of the relation between one person and another, an affinity or the real conflict.’ 14 ‘Muscular auguries that shimmer beneath the skin’.

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de la prise unique, ou dans ce cas le temps de combustion de charbons, sont nécessaires au rituel du tournage’15 (Chauvin 2013:  60). Although costly, unstable and potentially hazardous, the use of arc lighting created a concentration during the shoot, due to the fleeting luminosity, creating a highly charged atmosphere on set which the director hoped would be captured by the film-​reel.

Love in crisis: Les Baisers de secours (1989) In terms of subjects addressed in the dialogue period, difficulties faced in the lives of couples remain a central preoccupation. Commenting on his obstinacy in making films that are predicated on the exploration of crises, and his reticence to make work that entertains, Garrel states: Comment un cinéaste peut-​il accepter de se vendre et être de ceux qui amusent les autres, en faisant comme si tout allait bien pendant une heure et demi? C’est absurde d’aller dans ce sens et de croire qu’on va se retrouver en accord avec soi et qu’on aura donné de l’espérance. On ne fait que susciter des exaltations artificielles. Fabriquer du désespoir.16 (Jousse 1993: 35)

The four films of this period each display a commitment to engaging the spectator in the confrontation of a crisis, in an uncompromising refusal of entertainment. The cycle begins in Les Baisers de secours with a film that Colette Mazabrard describes as consisting of mourning for a certain ‘idée de l’amour’17 (Mazabrard 1989: 26). Les Baisers de secours contains Garrel’s most developed use of autofiction, advancing on a compositional form used in L’Enfant secret and Elle a passé tant d’heures. As in these previous works, the antagonistic relationship between artistic production and the everyday life 15 ‘It’s the Black Mass quality, the magical dimension of the cinema of Garrel for whom the single take, or in this case the time it takes for coals to burn, are necessary to the ritual of the film-​shoot.’ 16 ‘How can a film-​maker accept selling himself and being someone who amuses others, acting as though everything’s alright during one hour and thirty minutes? It’s absurd to go in this direction, thinking that we will be at ease with ourselves and that we’ll have offered some hope. We only provoke artificial exaltations, fabricate hopelessness.’ 17 ‘Idea of love’.

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of a couple is explored. The actors in the film are made up of three generations of Garrel’s family. In addition to Philippe Garrel playing alongside his father Maurice, his then partner Brigitte Sy stars in the film along with their five-​year-​old son Louis Garrel. The film opens with a sequence in which Jeanne (Brigitte Sy) interrogates her director-​husband Mathieu (Philippe Garrel) as to why he has not chosen her for a lead role in a film that deals directly with their relationship. A close-​up of Mathieu, lying outstretched in the foreground of a sparsely furnished interior space, pans to reveal Jeanne’s entrance from a brightly illuminated courtyard through a large glass doorway. A four-​minute tracking-​shot observes Jeanne, mostly in close-​up, as she paces the room. The frame is dominated by daylight streaming in from the courtyard. Jeanne’s body, coloured in subtle grey tones and framed with a shallow depth of field, stands out against the luminous backdrop. The delicate movements of the camera and the luminosity of the frame create an ethereal effect, as though Jeanne might be some sort of apparition, a figure dreamed-​up by the onlooking Mathieu. Jeanne’s feeling of betrayal at being overlooked for the role becomes central to developments within the story. The potential for art to provoke conflict and expose fissures in the lives of a couple is highlighted in a sequence between Mathieu, Jeanne and their son Lo (Louis Garrel). Lo is shown in close-​up leaning against his mother, who is lying on a bed facing the camera. The shot pans backwards and forwards between the mother and child, with Mathieu remaining off-​screen throughout. The dialogue proceeds as follows: Jeanne  Alors pourquoi tu lui donnes le rôle à cette fille? Lo  Papa, il va faire le cinéma avec des filles? Mathieu  Mais non, mon amour. Papa il va gagner de l’argent pour Jeanne et Lo, et puis il revient tous les soirs pour être avec vous. Jeanne  Tu ne m’aimes pas. Lo  Moi je préfère maman … Mathieu  Moi, je vous aime pareille tous les deux mais il faut que je gagne les sous pour nous trois.18 18 Jeanne  So why did you give the role to that girl? Lo  Dad, he’s going to make film with girls?

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The child’s comment about his father making films with other women offers an enigmatic link between the craft of film-​making and the notion of infidelity. Mathieu’s defence suggests how the obligation to create art in order to earn money to support a family contributes to the division in the lives of the couple. His absence from the frame throughout the sequence reinforces the separation created by his artistic pursuits. Garrel’s discussion of the theme of betrayal in the film establishes the correspondence between the lives shown on screen and his lived experience. His comments on this theme also reveal a desire to confront traumatic experiences in his private life with a view to the fruits of this labour having a use value both for himself and for his audience. Beginning with the genesis of the film, he explains: ‘Ma femme Brigitte … avait été très triste au moment des Sunlights parce que je n’avais trouvé aucun rôle à lui confier, alors qu’il y avait dans le film un personnage qui lui ressemble, incarné par une autre comédienne. C’est à partir de cette situation que j’ai imaginé le scénario des Baisers de secours, de façon à lui donner cette fois un rôle important’19 (Garrel and Lescure 1992:  180). Jeanne’s feeling of betrayal at the opening of the film finds a counterpoint later in a betrayal on her part. Mathieu is shown returning home. As he opens the door a shot over his left shoulder reveals Jeanne lying in bed with another man. Lo is positioned at the edge of the bed, just to the left of the couple. Mathieu can be heard uttering, ‘vous ne pourriez pas faire ça chez vous?’20 as he walks towards the bed and lifts the child, before carrying him up a flight of stairs in the background. Speaking of this sequence, Garrel states:

Mathieu  Of course not my love. Dad is going to make money for Jeanne and Lo, and then he will come back each evening to be with you. Jeanne  You don’t love me. Lo  Me, I prefer mum … Mathieu  I love you both equally, but I need to earn money for all three of us. 19 ‘My wife, Brigitte … had been very sad at the time of Sunlights because I had not found a role to give to her, even though there was a character in the film who resembled her, incarnated by another actress. It was out of this situation that I imagined the story of Baisers de secours as a way, this time, of giving her an important role.’ 20 ‘Couldn’t you do that in your own home?’

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Ce traumatisme et ce refus de dramatiser sont plutôt des choses qu’on raconterait normalement à son psychanalyste. Mais le dire à l’écran permet au spectateur d’en tirer profit à sa propre vie. Tout le monde se trahit assez vite, car la fidélité physique n’existe pas. Je voulais montrer comment certaines personnes arrivent à passer outre cette histoire de trahison physique.21 (Jousse 1989: 29)

Garrel’s inscription of this act of physical betrayal is posited as something which may be of benefit to the spectator. The desire to communicate with an imagined spectator about crises faced by a couple –​in a way that might be constructive or educational –​constitutes a further echo of the philosophy of André Breton. The unusual title of the film, which translates as ‘emergency kisses’, is drawn from a verse in Breton’s poem ‘Tournesol’ (1923):  ‘Les pigeons voyageurs les baisers de secours/​Se joignaient aux seins de la belle inconnue’.22 In Les Vases communicants, Breton reveals his anguished reflections on his separation from a woman he loved, Suzanne Muzard, unnamed in the text ‘in order not to go against her wishes’ (Breton 1990:  73). Concluding this account, he asks:  ‘How could I not wish that someone who has read these lines may be, partly because of them, less unhappy than I?’, adding, ‘So much the better if my testimony helps someone to free himself, as I hope I have freed myself, from every idealistic bond’23 (73). The ambition expressed by Breton resonates with Garrel’s desire in Les Baisers de secours to free himself and his audience from an idealised belief in physical fidelity in a couple, by showing a way of transcending the act of infidelity and the feeling of betrayal. Like Breton’s prose, Garrel’s seeks to make work that may be applicable in the lives of his viewing public. Despite the utilitarian ambition of Les Baisers de secours, the film does not conform to the exposition of simple psychological types. The sequence where Mathieu encounters his wife in bed with another man avoids the drama and action that might be expected with this 21 ‘This trauma and the refusal to dramatise it are more like things one would talk about with one’s psychoanalyst. But to say it on the screen allows the spectator to take something from it for his or her own life. Everybody cheats quite quickly, because physical fidelity does not exist. I wanted to show how certain people manage to get through this story of physical betrayal.’ 22 ‘The carrier pigeons and emergency kisses/​Joined with the beautiful stranger’s breasts’. 23 Les Vases communicants.

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sort of revelation. Mathieu’s speech is muted and understated rather than confrontational. The domestic setting appears more like a theatrical stage, and as Mathieu climbs the stairs with his son, the staircase appears to shift slightly, like a prop constructed for the theatre. This suggestion of a ‘staged’ performance manifests a further deviation from the confines of psychological realism. It is hinted at during a short sequence that shows Jeanne rehearsing on stage, in her day job as an actor, receiving instruction from a director. Lefort observes that this anti-​spectacular non-​violence in Garrel’s cinema leaves a strong impression on the viewer:  ‘C’est ça son aventure énorme:  produire des images philosophiques qui donnent à penser le monde et pas des images psychologiques qui font réfléchir sur son propre cas’24 (Lefort 1989). The film remains speculative and open-​ended in its treatment of relationships, leaving space for reflection and application beyond Garrel’s personal connection with the issues raised. Although the trajectory of the relationship between Jeanne and Mathieu leads to a reconciliation between the couple, Les Baisers de secours does not draw to an idealised conclusion. Towards the end of the film, having surmounted the infidelity that drove them apart, Mathieu and Jeanne travel by train with their son to visit Mathieu’s mother in the countryside. One of the few long-​shots used in the film observes the protagonists climbing a path in the mountains with an alpine forest visible in the background. The frame is predominantly illuminated by bright light combined with the delicately contrasting shades of grey that trace both the forest in the backdrop and the figures ascending the plain. Later, Mathieu and Jeanne are shown having breakfast in front of his mother’s home. A medium close-​up pans between the couple and Mathieu’s mother, visible through a doorway in the background of the frame. The shot is slightly overexposed and Jeanne and Mathieu are bathed in delicately contrasted dappled light. Jeanne hums a lullaby and the scene appears to be one of bucolic harmony. As she sings, however, the sound of highspeed aircraft can be gradually heard, eventually drowning out all other sound. Warning against complacency, the interruption of industrial sound symptomatic of war hints at crises to come. 24 ‘That’s what his enormous adventure is:  producing philosophical images that allow people to think and not psychological images that only make people reflect on their own situation.’

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In memoriam Nico: J’entends plus la guitare (1990) Prior to embarking on his next film, Garrel learnt of the sudden death of Nico following a bicycle accident in Ibiza on 18 July 1988. Her death provided the stimulus for J’entends plus la guitare, a film that Garrel dedicated to his former partner. The expanse of time covered in the film is broader than Les Baisers de secours. As with L’Enfant secret and Elle a passé tant d’heures, the film alludes to various passages in Garrel’s relationship with Nico, including their first encounter in Italy, their separation and the news of her death. It also extends beyond this to consider developments within Garrel’s relationship with Brigitte Sy. These events are relayed through the use of an autofictional approach deployed in previous works, including the presence of Sy in an acting role loosely modelled on her relationship with Garrel. The film is notable for an unusual approach to montage, using straight cuts to realise transitions between different time frames, contributing to radical variations in the apprehension of the passage of time. A description of the film by Alain Keit captures the threadbare story and the simplicity of the narrative structure: Avec Marianne, une jeune allemande, Gérard partage amour et cocaïne. Marianne a un fils élevé par sa grand-​mère. Il y a également un ami de Gérard, Martin, un peintre qui est rapidement quitté par Lola. Puis c’est au tour de Marianne de partir. Elle revient, s’esquive à nouveau, laissant Gérard à ses aventures et à sa vie en commune avec Aline et l’enfant qu’ils ont ensemble.25 (Keit 2013: 200).

An important detail noted in Keit’s description is the presence of two couples:  Marianne and Gérard, and Martin and Lola. The trope of a film centred on two couples extends back to Marie pour mémoire, where Garrel argued that it had resulted in the film’s poor reception by frustrating audience identification, an identification normally facilitated by the presence of a solitary couple. Beyond J’entends plus la guitare, the figure of two couples is recurrent in Garrel’s oeuvre, present both in La Naissance de l’amour and later in Un Été brûlant. 25 ‘With Marianne, a young German woman, Gérard shares love and cocaine. Marianne has a child, brought up by her grandmother. Gérard has a painter friend called Martin, whose partner Lola leaves him. Then it’s Marianne’s turn to leave. She comes back, leaving Gérard to his adventures and his shared life with Aline and the child they had together.’

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The story of the latter film overlaps with J’entends plus la guitare, alluding to the year Garrel spent in Positano as a young man, with his friend Frédéric Pardo and his partner Dominique Sanda. Despite the threadbare narrative of J’entends plus la guitare, the film provides a profound interrogation of the life of the couple, providing at once a complex memorial to Nico as well as touching on aspects of Garrel’s relationships beyond Nico. Various elements of the film establish a correspondence between the principal couple Gérard (Benoît Régent) and Marianne (Johanna ter Steege), and Garrel and Nico. The voice and physical appearance of the German actress Johanna ter Steege recall Garrel’s former partner. In addition to her accented French, ter Steege’s pale-​coloured skin and light red-​blond hair bear a physical resemblance to Nico. Beyond this physical similarity, the film merges fiction with autobiographical detail as it reflects on Garrel and Nico’s past relationship. It alludes to Ari Boulogne, the child Nico conceived with the actor Alain Delon, who was raised in secrecy by his paternal grandmother. The relationship between Nico and her son is touched on in a sequence towards the beginning of the film which brings together Ari Boulogne’s grandmother, Edith Boulogne, and the fictional figures loosely incarnating Garrel, Nico and Ari. The encounter takes place when Marianne and Gérard return from Positano to Paris to visit her child at his grandmother’s home. In a medium-​shot in front of her home, Edith Boulogne addresses Marianne, thanking her for her son:  ‘Tu l’as fait beau, tu l’as fait intelligent.’26 This represents the second time Garrel broached the subject of Nico’s child, having previously addressed it in L’Enfant secret. In addition to the presence of Edith Boulogne, Garrel’s former partner Brigitte Sy has a significant role in the film’s autofictional form. Following his separation from Marianne, Gérard falls in love with Aline (Brigitte Sy). This dynamic draws together a character modelled on Garrel with the director’s then partner. Later, Jeanne and Marianne encounter one another in a sequence that condenses several of the thematic preoccupations of the film. It begins with a medium-​shot of the women seated across a table in a darkened café, framed in profile. Marianne is positioned to the left of the screen and Aline opposite, with a spotlight from the centre right of the frame 26 ‘You made him beautiful and intelligent.’

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providing faint illumination. There is no noticeable ambient sound, contributing to a heightened atmosphere of intimacy. As Sy begins to inquire about Marianne’s previous relationship with Mathieu, the opening shot cuts to a moving camera that gently arcs towards the women – first framing Sy in a medium-​shot and then the two faces of the women – before coming to rest on Marianne’s face in isolation. The calm and measured conversation provides a compelling interrogation of the evolution of a couple and the passage from unfettered, youthful freedom towards the compromises associated with middle age and familial responsibility. Aline  Il était heureux avec toi? Marianne  Je l’aurais pas peut-​être rendu très heureux. Mais c’était une autre époque. Aline  Qu’est-​ce que tu veux dire? Marianne  On n’avait peut-​être pas besoin d’être heureux. Peut-​être ce n’était pas ça qu’on cherchait en tout cas. Aline  C’était quoi alors? Marianne  À être des héros, à changer la vie peut-​être. Aline  Ah oui, c’est ça. Et puis maintenant qu’il ne cherche plus à être un héros, ou à changer la vie, comme tu dis, il est avec quelqu’un comme moi –​c’est ça?27 Following Aline’s departure, the sequence concludes with a static frame of Marianne alone, her face wet with tears. A musical extract of electric guitar riffs, from a live recording of The Velvet Underground, accompanies the last few seconds of the sequence before an abrupt cut to black screen. This dialogue and the conclusion to the sequence merge mourning for the loss of Nico with a lament for the passage of youth and the utopian desire to revolutionise everyday life. 27 Aline  Was he happy with you? Marianne  I may not have made him very happy. But it was another era. Aline  What do you mean? Marianne  Perhaps we didn’t need to be happy. Perhaps that wasn’t what we were looking for in any case. Aline  What was it then? Marianne  To be heroes … to change the world perhaps … Aline Ah yes. And so now that he’s no longer looking to be a hero, or to change the world, as you say, he’s with someone like me –​is that it?

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The tone of lamentation that characterises much of the film manifests later in a sequence between Gérard and his friend Martin, a painter. The sequence occurs following the death of Marianne. The faintly lit faces of the men are shrouded in darkness in a frame that is predominantly black. Gérard  Ça marche la peinture? Martin  Je vends tout ce que je fais. Ce n’est pas le luxe, mais c’est pas la misère non plus, quoi. Le juste milieu dis-​donc. Enfin, ça me permet de vivre sans faire autre chose que ma peinture –​que demander de plus? Je ne sais pas si tu te rappelles quand, quand on se voyait beaucoup, on pensait qu’il suffisait d’ouvrir les bras pour recevoir tout ce qu’on voulait, amour, gloire, bonheur, argent, talent. Moi, aujourd’hui, j’ai compris c’est exactement l’inverse qui se passe dans la vie: il faut fermer les bras et les garder serrés, très serrés, parce que la vie te retire tout ce que tu ne retiens pas très, très fort.28 As in the sequence when Marianne meets Aline, the intimation of grief is conflated with a sense of regret for the passing of youth, the end of a utopia. Martin’s speech expresses the idea of turning inward, a kind of conservatism (arms closed tight, rather than open to embrace possibilities) and of reaching some kind of compromise, a position of relative stability (‘le juste milieu’). The reflections invited by both the encounter between Gérard and Martin and the previously described encounter between Marianne and Aline echo questions Garrel raises when analysing developments in French and European cinema at the time. During a discussion between the film-​maker and the film critic Serge Daney that takes place during the dialogue period, the two men note how previously 28 Gérard  How’s the painting going? Martin  I sell everything I produce. I’m not exactly living in luxury but I’m not poor either … a happy medium, let’s say. I earn enough to get by without having to do anything besides my painting … you can’t ask for much more. I don’t know if you remember, when we used to see each other a lot, we used to think it was enough just to open our arms to receive everything we wanted … love, glory, happiness, money … talent. Now, I’ve understood that it’s exactly the opposite that happens in life: you have to close your arms and hold them really tight, because life takes away everything that you don’t clutch on to.

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committed film-​makers such as Bertolucci have rolled back on their previous artistic and political principles by making films motivated by commercial interest. Garrel argues that the fact that several film-​ makers that he admires ‘se sont pliés’29 is not necessarily due to betrayal but is instead a result of the fact that they have been ‘acculés économiquement’30 (Jousse 1991: 61). Coming to the defence of certain directors who have ceded to economic pressures, he argues that the state of contemporary cinema reveals that what has won out is the ‘idéologie du travail’,31 something that he and other film-​makers of his generation had previously challenged (60). This has led to a production climate motivated by profit and efficiency which Garrel compares to filming ‘à 300 à l’heure dans une voiture de course’32 (60). Although Garrel does not explicitly place himself in the same bracket of film-​makers who have moderated their engagement and experimentation in order to be able to continue to make work, questions relating to this problem are recurrent in his cinema. The climate of production that defines this period in Garrel’s oeuvre can be considered as analogous with the conditions evoked by Martin in the sequence with his friend:  not luxurious, but with sufficient financing to make work for a small audience, without having to do anything besides making films. This is in marked contrast to the director’s underground period, where his precarious lifestyle forced him to make films with little or no financing. Indeed, in his conversation with Daney, Garrel expresses doubts over his new position and the value of his cinema: ‘On est tiraillé par les défauts ou l’absence d’efficacité’33 (Jousse 1991: 58). What is striking in this new body of films is that Garrel’s doubts about the efficacy of his work, or about having made compromises artistically in order to have a more comfortable existence, are not displaced or repressed. These questions are placed at the centre of his oeuvre. The genetic propulsion of anxiety provides an antidote to the temptation to produce work that seeks merely to entertain or placate an audience. Further evidence of Garrel’s willingness to confront uncomfortable subject matters is underlined by the fact that J’entends plus la guitare does not amount simply to a lament for the loss of Nico. Instead, 29 ‘Have caved in’. 30 ‘Backed into a corner economically’. 31 ‘The ideology of work’. 32 ‘Filming at 300km an hour in a racing car’. 33 ‘We are torn by errors or the lack of efficacy.’

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the film opens up to a new crisis between Mathieu, his partner Aline and their young child. The concluding sequences of the film once more broach the subject of the physical act of betrayal in a couple, paralleling Les Baisers de secours. The beginning of an affair between Mathieu and a younger woman, Adrienne (Anouk Grindberg), is relayed with striking economy. Adrienne is framed in profile through a café window chatting to a friend sitting opposite, when Mathieu and Aline enter. The camera pans to the right slightly so that, as the four greet each other, Mathieu and Aline are positioned just beyond the periphery of the frame, identifiable by their voices. The camera pans further to the right, focusing on Adrienne, whose complicit smile suggests her attraction to Mathieu. The transition from this image of Adrienne to a future encounter between her and Mathieu is relayed by a straight cut that reveals a closer shot of her face in profile. A conversation ensues between Adrienne and Mathieu. The sexualised content of their exchange is heightened by the proximity of the camera framing, which sets Adrienne’s profile against a deepred backdrop. Adrienne Ça me fait plaisir que vous me rappeliez. Mathieu Ça me fait plaisir que vous acceptiez de boire un verre avec moi. Adrienne Si on commence comme ça, qu’est-ce que ça va être après? Mathieu Après … Adrienne Quand on va baiser. Mathieu Ah oui? Adrienne T’as pensé à moi depuis la dernière fois que nous nous sommes rencontrés? Mathieu Oui. Adrienne Fort? Mathieu Comment ça ‘fort’? Adrienne Fort. Mathieu T’es vraiment dégueulasse! Adrienne Mais non, c’est naturel!34 Mathieu’s whispered comment (‘t’es vraiment dégueulasse’) makes a nod to the exchange between Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg 34 Adrienne I’m glad that you called me. Mathieu I’m glad you agreed to have a drink with me. Adrienne If we start off like this, what will happen after?

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that concludes Godard’s À Bout de souffle. Beyond this humorous allusion, what is most striking is how the short sequence effects a sudden shift in the tone of the film, with only two shots serving to pass from a mood pregnant with mourning to an eroticised encounter. The film culminates in a crisis left in suspension when Mathieu returns home and is met by his partner. Holding their young baby in her arms, Aline confronts him as he enters through a large porte-​ cochère that opens onto a courtyard. She tells him ‘Je crois que ça serait bien si tu me quittais’,35 before adding, ‘C’est comme ça mon vieux, je suis ta bourgeoise, ta régulière, ta faiblesse.’36 Mathieu, in frustration, turns his back on his partner and child, pulling shut the large door to produce a natural black screen before the final film credits emerge in silence. The image of the door closing is paradoxical given the inconclusive ending. The film shifts terrain to address a new crisis. Garrel’s tribute to Nico eschews the temptation of providing a nostalgic, idealised memorial, opening up to new and challenging narratives that appear to resonate with more recent developments in his personal life.

La Naissance de l’amour (1993) The predominance of colour sequences filmed in daylight and in the summer-​time in J’entends plus la guitare make way for the contrasted black and white of Garrel’s next feature, La Naissance de l’amour, described by Alain Philippon as a ‘grand film nocturnal et hivernal’37. Here, Garrel takes up the crisis left in suspension in the previous film, with a work that explores the tension between the responsibilities of Mathieu  After … Adrienne  When we fuck. Mathieu  Ah, yes? Adrienne  Have you thought about me since the last time we saw each other? Mathieu Yes. Adrienne  Strongly? Mathieu  What do you mean ‘strongly’? Adrienne  Strongly. Mathieu  You’re really disgusting! Adrienne  Not at all, it’s natural! 35 ‘I think if would be best if you left me.’ 36 ‘That’s the way it is, old man. I’m your bourgeois, your ordinary, your weakness.’ 37 ‘A great wintry and nocturnal film’.

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parenthood and desire for sexual freedom and independence. Several elements set this film apart from previous works in this period. It is noteworthy for its allusions to the First Gulf War, which forms a backdrop to the relationships depicted in the film, and it incorporates Garrel’s first and only use of televisual imagery in his cinema. Having dedicated his previous film to Nico, La Naissance de l’amour forms a eulogy to the life and work of Jean Eustache, advancing on the homage paid in Garrel’s short film Rue Fontaine and in the television documentary Les Ministères de l’art. The enigmatic approach to montage and narration observed in J’entends plus la guitare is equally evident in the film. The time period addressed in La Naissance de l’amour is more refined than in J’entends plus la guitare and events alluded to appear contemporaneous with those in the life of the director, including the birth of his daughter Esther Garrel on 18 February 1991. Alain Philippon’s description of the film establishes how it extends from the crisis left suspended in his previous work, which culminates in Mathieu telling his partner that he only wishes to remain with her because of the child they share together: Même si ses personnages, et surtout les deux personnages masculins [Marcus/​Jean Pierre Léaud et Paul/​Lou Castel] ont atteint l’âge de la maturité, leur éducation sentimentale est toujours en devenir, non déterminée et sans doute interminable. Comment trouver l’accord entre actes et discours? … Comment préserver sa propre liberte sans qu’elle aille pour autant contre le désir de l’autre?38 (Philippon 1993: 30)

Several sequences bring out the conflict between family life and a desire for liberty, and the question of whether or not a couple should stay together for the love of their child. In one sequence, Paul (Lou Castel) and Fauchon (Marie-​Paule Laval) argue with their son Pierre. When the son refuses to put on his slippers in the apartment, saying that if he injures his foot it should not be of any concern to his parents, his mother replies in an attempt at reconciliation: ‘C’est pour

38 ‘Even if the characters, and especially the two male characters [Marcus/​Jean-​ Pierre Léaud and Paul/​Lou Castel], have reached the age of maturity, their sentimental education continues. How can one reconcile one’s words and one’s actions … how is it possible to preserve one’s freedom without going against the desire of the other?’

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nous, c’est pour toi, parce que si tu te fais mal, ça fait mal à nous aussi, tu comprends? Toi et nous c’est la même chose.’39 The mother’s response envisions the child as a kind of gel that binds the couple together, replicating a similar argument made by Aline in the concluding sequence to J’entends plus la guitare. The approach to montage, and in particular the influence of the style of editing on the perception of time and duration, is a significant feature in the work. Throughout, the use of fades or intertitles to indicate the passage of time is rejected in favour of straight-​cut transitions. Alain Keit observes the rare impact of this trait, which results in the alternating sensation of the slow passage of time with an impression of its rapid acceleration: Si l’histoire paraît strictement chronologique, cette chronologie est impalpable. Des secondes, des minutes, heures, mois passant, sont escamotés entre les plans. Aucune figure du style, aucune image de secours ne se glisse entre des scènes … La narration du film est bien semblable à celle qui prévaut dans nos souvenirs.40 (Keit 2013: 200)

Keit underlines the narrative minimalism of the film, and a deliberate stripping-​away of details that might render a more substantial story. Instead, the film combines sudden chronological accelerations with slow-​moving passages relayed in long-​takes. This approach frees the film from submission to a well-​balanced, evenly plotted story, privileging the freedom to dwell on certain moments and skip over others in a manner that resembles the working of memory. Alain Philippon draws a parallel between the character of Paul in La Naissance de l’amour and the film’s screenplay, describing both as ‘fugueur’41. Philippon’s description refers to the tendency of the film to avoid excessive information and explanation. He observes an editing style defined by musicality, whereby scenes of love between Paul and Ulrika are dwelt upon, and the separation and later reconciliation of Marcus and Hélène is treated with minimalist rigour.  ‘On 39 ‘It’s for us, it’s for you, because if you hurt yourself it hurts us as well, do you understand?’ 40 ‘If the story appears strictly chronological, this chronology is impalpable. The passing seconds, minutes, hours and months are buried in between shots. There is no figure of style, no supporting image slipped in between shots … the narration resembles that which prevails in our memories.’ 41 ‘Tending to run away’.

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a ainsi, à plusieurs reprises, le sentiment de ponctions dans des scènes dont on n’aurait gardé, au montage, que de brèves fulgurances. Le montage est véritablement musical:  il ne joue pas sur la déconstruction mais surtout sur des alternances, des accélérations et des ralentissements, de ruptures et de plages pleines’42 (Philippon 1993:  35). Indicative of this musical approach to composition is a sequence portraying the reconciliation between Hélène and Marcus that has drawn the attention of several critics. Having travelled from Paris to Rome for a second time, on this occasion accompanied by Paul, Marcus phones Hélène from a pension he is sharing with his friend. Off-​screen, Hélène invites him to come over. The next shot is of a soundless, close-​up portrait of Hélène lying in bed, her face bathed in bright light. As she breaks into a smile, a cut to a low-​ angle reverse shot shows Marcus’s face, shrouded in shadow. The shot is held for almost a minute, accompanied by a piano score by John Cale. The sequence underpins a paradoxical quality of Garrel’s approach to montage, which combines both minimalism and excess. Two silent static shots are sufficient to communicate the rapprochement between the couple; however, the duration of the shots exceeds the conventional boundaries of narrative cinema. The portraits go beyond relaying the end to the couple’s separation and instead open up to what Cristina Alvarez Lopez describes as the pulsation of time, ‘releasing, on the actors’ faces, every subterranean current that hides beneath the slightest gesture or the deepest gaze’ (Álvarez López and Martin 2011). This quality forms a further resonance with Garrel’s underground period, dominated by lengthy portrait shots that eschew the relationship with a fiction. The quotidian of family life is evoked in a second sequence, featuring an argument between Paul and Fauchon about the division of household labour. It opens with a longshot of Paul seated at the dinner table to the left of the frame, his wife Fauchon positioned to the right clearing dishes. When she complains about always being responsible for tidying up, Paul counters by saying that he had tidied up the night before, a remark that provokes the following exchange: 42 ‘In this manner, we have the impression of punctures in scenes as though only brief flashes have been kept in the editing. The montage is genuinely musical: it does not play on deconstruction but rather on alternation, accelerations and decelerations, ruptures and uninterrupted stretches.’

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Fauchon  Chaque fois tu fais quelque chose ici, on en entend parler pendant des semaines. Mais, c’est normal mon vieux! C’est la moindre des choses. Paul  Tu as raison. Ce serait la moindre de choses si … SI J’AVAIS ENVIE DE LE FAIRE! Seulement, faire la moindre des choses pour moi dans cette maison, C’EST UN CALVAIRE, UN CALVAIRE!43 As Paul shouts these last words aloud violently, the camera makes a rapid pan to the left to reveal the son standing in the doorway, his arms folded, overlooking the scene. He reminds his father that he does not like arguments, to which Paul replies in a gentle tone rendered comical by contrast with the previous outburst: ‘On ne se dispute pas vraiment, mon amour. On discute.’44 The pattern of the child surveilling and judging, but also acting as a kind of intermediary who seeks to draw the couple together, is recurrent in the film. It is evident in a later sequence, when Paul, having gone alone to a friend’s house for dinner, decides to stay the night in order to be with his lover Ulrika (Johanna ter Steege). The next morning, his wife phones the friend’s house to find out why he did not return home. During their conversation, the son asks to speak with the father. Paul, framed in close-​up, tells his son that his not returning home is not really serious, to which the son replies off-​screen: ‘Mais moi je voulais te parler ce matin.’45 Reinforcing the mother’s sense of abandonment and betrayal, the son’s accusatory speech puts Paul’s desire for liberty in conflict with his responsibility to his family. The culmination of the crisis occurs when Paul flees his family home by night, pursued by a repeated, monotonous cry of ‘papa’ from his son, who is framed in a high-​angle shot in an upstairs window looking onto the street. Garrel’s treatment of these instances of conflict refuses the conventions of naturalism and remains a step removed from what might be termed a ‘kitchen-​sink’ drama. Philippon’s observation that La 43 Fauchon  Every time you do something here we hear you talking about it for several weeks. But it’s normal, old man! It’s the bare minimum. Paul  You’re right. It would be the bare minimum if … IF I WANTED TO DO IT! Except that doing the bare minimum in this house IS TORTURE, TORTURE! 44 ‘We’re not really arguing, my love. We’re chatting.’ 45 ‘But I wanted to speak to you this morning.’

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Naissance de l’amour confronts the tension of family life ‘de manière aussi frontale’46 is perhaps misleading in this respect. Garrel’s approach is more oblique, resulting in part from the meta-​theatrical elements of the work. A case in point is a sequence that occurs twenty minutes into the film showing Paul and several other actors rehearsing for a scene from Berthold Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1944). The extract, from the concluding scene of the play, features a trial that draws on the myth of Solomon. The judge, who is played by Paul, invites two women who are in dispute over which of them is the rightful parent of a young boy to compete with each other for the child. The sequence is relayed through a lengthy sequence-shot from behind the stage, looking out onto the gallery, which pans to observe the movements of the director (Georges Lavaudant) as he gives instructions to his actors. Only the backs of the actors are visible, with the visual focus of the sequence centring on the craft of the director. This play within the film resonates with the relationship between Paul and Fauchon vis-​à-​vis their son. Paul’s decision to leave his wife tears the son between the poles of two parental figures, a dynamic that is condensed visually in the stage rehearsal. The director’s instructions to the women to pull more vigorously at the boy in order to heighten the authenticity of the struggle prompts reflection on the performances in the rest of the film. Through this approach, itself Brechtian in nature, Garrel invites the viewer to take a step back from the scenes of family life in the film, looking beyond the drama towards an intellectual relationship with the questions raised. This technique of creating distance between the spectator and the lives portrayed on screen is symptomatic of Garrel’s desire to avoid the spectacular in favour of a philosophical, reflective cinema. La Naissance de l’amour simultaneously invites reflection on the problematic dimensions of the relationship between the couple and their son, while at the same time inviting a nuanced interpretation that extends beyond straightforward identification. In several respects, La Naissance de l’amour recalls Garrel’s silent feature, Le Révélateur, filmed in the Bavarian countryside during the last days of May 68. In its exploration of various configurations of a family, La Naissance de l’amour can be considered as a dialogued version of the latter’s silent figurative exploration of the trio of a woman, 46 ‘In such a direct manner’.

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man and child. Reinforcing the parallel between these works is the backdrop of war that defines them. In the case of Le Révélateur a generalised conflictual atmosphere is alluded to, whereas La Naissance de l’amour differs by making explicit reference to the First Gulf War. These references emerge in two paralleling sequences in which first Marcus and then Paul, both off-​screen, watch news reports. In each sequence, the shot remains focused on the men’s respective partners working in the kitchen, while Paul and Marcus relay details of developments in the war. Beyond this indirect inscription, a more direct evocation of the conflict occurs with a shot of a television screen which immediately follows the birth of Paul and Fauchon’s second child. The imagery in question is not direct archive footage but a shot of a broadcast from a borderless television screen, showing charred bodies in a desolate landscape of destroyed buildings and rubble. The silence of the imagery, the absence of contextualisation by journalistic commentary, renders the footage more striking and disturbing. Directly following from a luminous close-​up of Paul holding his newly born daughter, the film juxtaposes creation with scenes of improbable violence and destruction. In discussion with Serge Daney, just prior to making La Naissance de l’amour, Garrel raises the question of the responsibility of artists in a time of political crisis:  ‘Mais des artistes peuvent-​ils faire une parenthèse, comme s’il n y’avait pas la crise, et nous parler de tout ce qu’ils veulent, absolument de tout, pourvu que n’apparaisse pas la crise de laquelle émergent tous les problèmes intimes, philosophiques et politiques?’47 (Jousse 1993: 35). His comment raises the problem of how to relate intimate struggles to a wider social and political context. The treatment of the Gulf War in La Naissance de l’amour, appears as an attempt to respond to this issue. The presence of televisual imagery and explicit references to war is exceptional in Garrel’s oeuvre. The only prior direct reference is to the Algerian War, which forms the backdrop to Liberté, la nuit. In the more recent work, the precise relationship between the crises in the lives of couples and the crisis of war remains oblique, and at no stage are these domains shoehorned together to produce a simple message. 47 ‘But can artists put events to the side, as though there has been no crisis, and talk to us about everything they want to, provided that the crisis from which all the intimate, political and philosophical problems emerge doesn’t appear?’

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Instead, the dialectic of these contrasting realms raises questions about the precise connection between the war and struggles faced by couples: Does the war, or indeed the measures taken by various states to maintain a particular geo-​political order, act on and influence the lives depicted on the screen? To what extent can individuals struggle against the conditions that produce disturbing events on a global scale? Garrel’s treatment of the war provides a space for these enquiries to emerge.

Le tombeau de Jean Eustache Having dedicated his previous film to Nico, La Naissance de l’amour forms a eulogy to Jean Eustache, who killed himself on 5 November 1981. Beyond the unsettling treatment of war and the conflict and crises between couples, the film is marked on occasion by a lightness and humour that closely resonates with Eustache’s cinema, in particular his most celebrated work, La Maman et la putain (1974). The allusions to Garrel’s friend, through the presence of stylistic echoes and shared thematic preoccupations, advances on those made in an earlier short film, Rue Fontaine (1984), which forms a preparatory sketch for La Naissance de l’amour. In the opening sequence of Rue Fontaine, Louis (Philippe Garrel) invites René (Jean-​Pierre Léaud) for a coffee. The conversation between the two men is composed almost entirely of an address by Léaud, delivered in a theatrical, non-​naturalist style. This approach to dialogue is reminiscent of La Maman et la putain, in which dialogue is often composed of long uninterrupted blocks. In Eustache’s film, the shot-​reverse-​shot convention is mostly avoided during these monologues, excluding any visual acknowledgement of the interlocutor in preference for a static frame and a long-​durational take of the speaker. Louis’s meeting with René outside the café is captured with a single shot, featuring a close-​up of René that lasts almost four minutes and accounts for a considerable proportion of the short film. In addition to the framing, the shot length and René’s theatrical elocution, the content of the dialogue is reminiscent of that of Alexandre in Eustache’s film. René’s speech is at once bleak and comic, an example being when he describes the pain of separation from a lover, who left him immediately after

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asking him to have a child with her. He follows this anecdote with a citation, recalled from a film, that is comic in its abruptness: ‘J’ai vu ça dans un film: un acteur disait un truc, comme ça, je me souviens plus bien, quelque chose comme ça: “Quand tu souffres du mal que te fait l’amour, il faut prendre des médicaments”.’48 René’s use of citation is reminiscent of Alexandre’s habitual and often humorous quotation from an eclectic range of sources. References to sexual mores and the, at times, coarse and pejorative language of René (‘On ne peut pas vivre sans une femme, à moins d’être complètement homo, ou d’aimer les hommes’49) recalls Alexandre’s crude references to gay people (at one stage telling his lover Veronika, when seated on a bench on the banks of the Seine at night, that they are under surveillance by ‘des voyeurs, des homosexuels, des flics, tout cela à la fois peut-​être’50). The first allusion to Eustache in La Naissance de l’amour occurs towards the beginning of the film. As Paul and his wife Fauchon are framed frontally leaving a café by night to walk to their car, Paul looks up off-​screen before saying: ‘C’est drôle, ça c’est la fenêtre où Jean s’est flingué. C’est drôle.’51 Paul’s nonchalant evocation of the suicide of a former friend mirrors a black, tragic comic register that defined both Eustache’s life and his cinema. Before shooting himself through the heart in his apartment in rue Nollet in the VIIe arrondissement of Paris, the film-​maker pinned a note to his bedroom door reading: ‘Frappez fort. Comme pour réveiller un mort’52 (Azoury 2006). The apparent levity of the allusion to Eustache’s suicide by Paul is in keeping with Eustache’s macabre humour. Eustache’s tendencies towards an at once tragic and comedic treatment of death and suicide is embodied in an allusion made by Alexandre in La Maman et la putain when in discussion in the Café de Flore with a friend who recently botched her own suicide:  ‘Écoute, je n’arrive pas à ne pas prendre le suicide au sérieux, pas plus que la mort, ou pas moins.

48 ‘I saw that in a film. An actor said something like this, I can’t remember too well, something like: “When you suffer from the misery of love, you have to take tablets”.’ 49 ‘You can’t live without a woman, not unless you’re totally homo, not unless you like men.’ 50 ‘Voyeurs, homosexuals, cops, and maybe even all of them at once’. 51 ‘It’s funny, that’s the window where Jean shot himself. That’s funny.’ 52 ‘Knock hard, as though to wake the dead.’

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Comment faut-​il dire? Alors parle moi de suicide tant que tu veux mais si j’en ris c’est que j’en ai très peur.’53 Beyond Paul’s passing remark, the homage to Eustache in La Naissance de l’amour does not occur through references to his biography. Instead the director is recalled through symmetries and resonances with his most famous work, La Maman et la putain, in a manner comparable to Rue Fontaine. As with the latter, the presence of Jean-​Pierre Léaud in La Naissance de l’amour is central to the stylistic echoes with Eustache’s film. Black-​humoured, idealistic, narcissistic and tragic, Léaud’s character Marcus resembles a middle-​aged version of the young dandy Alexandre in Eustache’s iconic film. The crossover between the characters is underlined by a sequence where Marcus decides to pursue his partner Hélène (Dominique Reymond) to Italy, in order to find out why she decided to leave him. Having confronted Hélène in Rome, Marcus pleads for her indulgence by reminding her that he has not pestered her much since she left: ‘Je ne te demande pas grand-​chose. Jusque-​là, je n’ai … je t’ai pas trop emmerdé.’54 The exchange between the couple parallels the opening sequence of La Maman et la putain, where Alexandre accosts his former lover Gilberte (Isabelle Weingarten) on her way to university, telling her: ‘Je ne t’ai pas beaucoup embêté ces derniers temps, je ne t’ai pas courue après, je n’ai pas cherché à t’empoisonner la vie.’55 Elsewhere, Alexandre’s attempts to persuade Gilberte that her new fiancé is mediocre and unworthy of her, despite never having met him, are replicated in Marcus’s attempts to persuade Hélène to return to him: Non, ne me dis pas ça, ne me le dis pas. Ne me dit pas que tu m’as quitté pour ce mec qu’il m’a suffi de voir une fois sans lui parler pour savoir … pour savoir que … qu’il a une tête de nœud. Je suis désolé, mais tu serais d’accord avec moi, cette personne a l’air idiot. Je n’ai jamais vu un regard aussi vide, un visage aussi plat.56 53 ‘Listen, I cannot seem to not take suicide seriously, no more than death, or no less –​how do you say? So, talk to me about suicide as much as you like but if I laugh, it’s because I’m very afraid of it.’ 54 ‘I’m not asking for a lot. Up until now I  didn’t … I  haven’t harassed you that much.’ 55 ‘I haven’t bothered you that much recently, I  haven’t chased after you, I haven’t tried to poison your life …’ 56 ‘No, don’t tell me that, don’t. Don’t tell me that you left me for this guy that it was enough for me to see once, without speaking to him, to realise that … that he’s a total dickhead. I’m sorry, surely you agree with me that the man looks like an idiot. I have never seen a look so empty, a face so flat.’

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Marcus’s pretension to omniscience, his egocentric and tragic-​comic pursuit of the truth behind his partner’s decision to leave him, parallel the characterisation of Alexandre to an extent that goes beyond mere coincidence. The performative qualities of Léaud in his roles as Marcus and Alexandre form a strong bond between La Naissance de l’amour and La Maman et la putain. In both works, Léaud speaks in a theatrical, mannered fashion, with precise diction. This theatrical quality of his delivery is heightened by the fact that that the dialogues written for Marcus are often wordy and uninterrupted, conforming to large blocks of uninterrupted speech. The minimalist montage that defines Eustache’s film is mirrored in Garrel’s so that Marcus’s verbal interjections are often presented within a static, uninterrupted frame, as previously rendered in Rue Fontaine. Heightening the sense of the resonance between La Naissance de l’amour and La Maman et la putain is the use of a high-​contrast black and white cinematography, differing from the granular colour stock used in Rue Fontaine. Eustache’s treatment of black and white in La Maman et la putain reflects his indebtedness to directors such as Murnau and Dreyer, and their use of contrasting black and white. In a sequence towards the end of the film when Paul and Marcus travel to Rome together, Marcus is filmed exiting a church, passing from light to darkness. As Paul paces in the foreground of the frame in front of the church, Marcus emerges from total obscurity, his pale face gradually emerging from the gloom, surrounded by the black shroud of his long overcoat. The sequence, which could come straight out of Murnau, recalls Eustache’s cinematographic proclivities. In addition to the performative qualities of Léaud in La Naissance de l’amour, Garrel summons a type of memorial to Eustache through the treatment of the comical aspects of sexual relationships. This is evident in a sequence towards the beginning of the film which portrays a sexual encounter between Paul and his lover Ulrika. As the couple are about to make love, she suddenly asks him if he has any contraceptives. The shot cuts immediately to a sequence in a chemist with the couple ordering condoms, awkwardly hesitating when the pharmacist asks what size of packet they would like. Undercutting an earnest treatment of relationships that predominates in Garrel’s cinema, the sequence conveys a faltering and farcical aspect of sexual relations. This anti-​romanticism recalls the first sexual encounter between Alexandre and Veronika (Françoise Lebrun) in La Maman

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et la putain, when Veronika realises she has forgotten to remove her tampon: ‘Attendez, vous allez enfoncer mon tampax. Ça y est –​merde! Il va encore falloir que j’aille voir le gynécologue. Que je lui dise avec une petite voix douce: “Je ne sais pas ce qui est arrivé, j’ai perdu mon tampax.” Ça m’emmerde, vous vous rendez pas compte?’57 In both cases, the directors bypass romantic pretension through the use of humour, proposing the practical, at times clumsy realities of sex. The motivation behind Garrel’s memorial to Eustache’s work may be explained by several factors, including the latter’s relationship with the film industry during his lifetime, in addition to his relative anonymity within the pantheon of French auteurs since his death. Garrel has espoused a belief that the French film industry was responsible for Eustache’s suicide by its refusal to finance his work, an act of omission that led to his despair. Alain Philippon has refuted this image of a ‘cinéaste maudit’, arguing that the multiple works produced by Eustache in his lifetime ‘témoigne davantage d’une véritable force de survie … que d’un écrasement par le “Système” ’58 (Philippon 1986: 7–​8). Disputes over rights to Eustache’s films have meant that, outside of several retrospectives, his work has been virtually inaccessible in cinemas since his death and, at the time of writing, only one of his films is available on DVD.59 Despite this near invisibility, or indeed perhaps because of it, Eustache has attained a mythical status in the eyes of cinephiles in France and throughout the world. In a biography of Eustache, Luc Béraud alludes to this paradox with reference to the French film review Les Inrockuptibles placing La Maman et la putain as number one in a list of the most beautiful French films of all time (Béraud 2017: 15).60 57 ‘Wait, you’re going to push in my tampax. That’s it  –​shit! I’ll have to go back and see the gynaecologist again and tell him with a soft voice: “I don’t know what happened, I’ve lost my tampax.” That really pisses me off, do you realise?’ 58 ‘Testify more to a genuine strength for survival … than a crushing by “the system” ’. 59 Une Sale Histoire (1977) was released on DVD in 2017 to coincide with a retrospective of Eustache’s cinema at the Cinémathèque Française in May that year. 60 The neglect is in part due to the fact that Eustache’s most significant work has (at the time of writing) never been released on video or DVD. Although poor-​quality copies can be found online, the film has only been visible on rare occasions at festivals or for special screenings since it was first screened at the Cannes Festival in 1973.

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Beyond issues relating to Eustache’s complex and at times contradictory position in relation to French film culture, the affinity that Garrel expresses for the film-​maker can be explained by a shared vision of the relationship between the personal and the wider political. La Maman et la putain proposes a microcosmic analysis of the trials of love conflated with a macrocosmic analysis of the political context in France after May 68. A sequence from near the beginning of the film stands out in terms of its rendering of this dichotomy of the personal and the political. Alexandre, having already been rejected by his former lover Gilberte, tries for a second time to persuade her to come back to him, after he spots her in front of the Café de Flore. Resigned to his failure, he seizes on her decision to marry another man of the same class by equating it with the failure of May 68. His verdict is delivered in a close-​up shot, isolating him from his surroundings, his face directed to the left, off-​screen rather than towards his former lover: ‘Tu crois que tu te relèves alors que tu t’accoutumes à la médiocrité. Après les crises il faut vite tout oublier. Tout effacer. Comme la France après l’Occupation, comme la France après mai 68. Tu te relèves comme la France après mai 68. Mon amour.’61 Eustache’s merging of the crises in the sentimental lives of the protagonists in La Maman et la putain reveals parallels with Garrel’s subtle interrogation of the personal and political in his work. A further bond between Garrel and Eustache is in the proximity of the lives portrayed in Eustache’s cinema to his personal life. This is true of Mes petites amoureuses (1974), which traces Eustache’s provincial youth growing up between Pessac in the suburbs of Bordeaux and his grandmother’s home in Narbonne. It is also true of La Maman et la putain, inspired by Eustache’s relationship with Françoise Lebrun, after she left him to marry another man. In his preface to the published screenplay of La Maman et la putain, Eustache says of the work:  ‘C’est le seul de mes films ou le passé ne joue pas. Il correspondait à ma vie au moment même où je tournais, et la recoupait de façon parfois tragique’62 (Eustache 1998: 9). In a deliberate confusion 61 ‘You think that you’re recovering, when in fact you’re getting used to mediocrity. After a crisis it’s important to forget everything quickly, erase everything. Like France after the Occupation, France after May 68. My love.’ 62 ‘It’s the only one of my films where the past plays no role. It corresponded to my life at the very moment I was filming, and it intersected it in a way that was at times tragic.’

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of fiction and autobiography, Lebrun plays the role of Véronique, one of the trio of leading protagonists in the film. Eustache’s manner of carefully intertwining his life and his cinema serves as a vital point of reference for Garrel, most notably in terms of the autofictional style he develops after his underground period.

Le Cœur fantôme (1998) Le Cœur fantôme is the final work in a tetralogy of films that trace the relationship between couples and families, and the pain of separation. It is striking thanks to the performance of Luis Rego, a comic actor, who plays the role of a painter who separates from his wife in order to begin a relationship with a younger woman. The film’s treatment of colour marks a notable contrast with the bold chiaroscuro of La Naissance de l’amour. Although several weaknesses emerge in the film in relation to its treatment of sequences pertaining to the oneiric, the film provides a reflection on the political power of the image that harks back to reflections made by Garrel as a young director. Like the other films of the dialogue period, the story of Le Cœur fantôme is relatively simple. Philippe (Luis Rego), a painter who is married with two young children, discovers a love letter belonging to his wife Annie, written by a man she has been visiting in prison. The discovery provokes a rupture in their relationship and Philippe begins to visit a prostitute (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi). One day, he goes to the street where he first met the prostitute and discovers that she is not there. Instead, he encounters a young woman named Justine (Aurélia Alcaïs), who recognises him from one of his exhibitions. Philippe decides to leave his family home in order to pursue a relationship with Justine. The burgeoning relationship between the artist and the young woman is counterbalanced with sequences portraying the relationship between Annie and the man she met in prison (Roschdy Zem). Philippe’s separation from his wife sparks an enquiry into the reasons behind his parents’ separation when he was a child. The performance of Luis Rego, an actor notorious for his comic roles, stands out in the film. Rego fled the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal as a teenager in 1960 in order to move to Paris. He became famous as member of Les Charlots, a parodic pop group that also had

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success in the 1970s with several feature films including La Grande Java (1970) and Les Bidasses en folie (1971). Émile Breton underlines the uncanny presence of Rego in Garrel’s film: ‘C’est lui, on le reconnait jusqu’à son insolent toupet de cheveux noirs, et pourtant il est un autre, habité par la tristesse même que Garrel avait su voir chez l’acteur comique’63 (Breton 1996). Le Cœur fantôme was only the second feature film since Le Berceau de cristal that Garrel had produced in colour. The presence of a cold, bluish tint to the image reinforces the sentiment of melancholy that Breton locates in Rego’s performance. In contrast to the granular pastels of J’entends plus la guitare, Le Cœur fantôme features bolder colouration and a saturated texture. The palette is dominated by blues with complementary reds, paralleling the colour scheme of several of Philippe’s canvases that are visible in the course of the film. The craft of the painter functions as a mise-​en-​abyme for the role of the director working in colour, selecting locations and costumes before composing shots according to a desired distribution of colours and forms. The mastery of colour represents a formidable achievement in the film, in which variations of blues and reds can be traced in almost every single shot, both in interior and exterior locations. Despite the formal qualities of the film, it received little critical attention and is Garrel’s only film since L’Enfant secret (1979) not to have been given a DVD release. The muted reception may be due to the treatment of four dream sequences that punctuate the work at various intervals. On each occasion, the sequence is followed by a close-​up of Philippe, either asleep or waking from sleep. The status of the sequences as dreams is directly signalled through the use of slow motion and the manipulation of the image in post-​production to produce highly saturated colours and contrasted imagery. The separation imposed by the disparity between sequences denoting everyday life and sequences denoting everynight life forecloses the emergence of an ambiguity present in films such as Elle a passé tant d’heures, where the absence of clearly inscribed dream sequences enabled the interpermeation of sequences pertaining to the real with those suggestive of a dreamscape. 63 ‘It’s him, we recognise him up to his insolent quiff of black hair, and yet he is someone else, inhabited by the very sadness that Garrel was able to see in the comic actor.’

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In a sequence midway through the film, Philippe meets with a friend and discusses both his recent separation from his wife and his new relationship with Justine. The encounter is filmed in a two-​ minute single shot with a mobile camera. The camera slowly arcs towards the two men, seated opposite one another, and smoothly oscillates between their faces in the course of their discussion. A shallow depth of field isolates their faces against the backdrop of their surroundings, eliminating details of the location. Contrasting with the dominant tone of the film, the dialogue is light and jocular, as the friend gently chastises Philippe for only having decided to meet up because his girlfriend was otherwise engaged. Towards the end of the sequence, the friend reads an extract from an article he has written for a newspaper. The short text describes the fragmentation of a collective revolutionary movement, faced with a false image of liberty regulated by the interests of finance, the media and the police: ‘Nous avons la liberté du droit, nous n’avons pas celle de la vie. Les pouvoirs de l’argent, des médias et de la police en nous imposant l’image de la liberté qu’ils nous concèdent, qui est leur liberté, nous empêche d’imaginer ce que serait la vraie liberté, notre liberté.’64 The text is reminiscent of a statement made by Garrel in the immediate aftermath of May 68 when asked whether an image can be dangerous. In response, the young director first posited the existence of state censorship as testament to the power of the image, before adding: ‘Les gens du gouvernement le savent très bien, qui se gardent leur télé pour eux tout seuls, parce qu’ils savent très bien que l’on mène une société où l’on veut avec l’image’65 (Comolli, Narboni and Rivette 1968: 48). In a film that focuses on the sentimental lives of couples and their families, the reflection on the workings of power seems to emerge from nowhere, a theoretical reflection slipped in parenthetically so as to almost go unnoticed. Nonetheless, it serves to solicit a consideration of the macro context underpinning the sentimental lives portrayed in the film. It equally forms a point of juncture 64 ‘We have the freedom of rights but not that of life. The forces of money, the media and the police, in imposing on us the image of the freedom that they accord us, which is their freedom, prevent us from imagining what real freedom would be, our freedom.’ 65 ‘The people of the government, who keep the television for themselves alone, know this very well because they understand that we lead a society where we want to with the image.’

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between the outlook of Garrel as a young director and as maturing director almost thirty years later. The short sequence implies a consistency in Garrel’s conception of the political in aesthetic terms and a defence of the critical potential of the cinema as an art form.

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References Álvarez López, Cristina and Adrian Martin (2011) ‘Phillipe Garrel: Portraits’, cinentransit.com (14 December 2011). http://​cinentransit.com/​philippe-​ garrel-​retratos/​ (accessed 14 October 2018). Azoury, Philippe (2006) ‘Jean Eustache, une balle à la place du cœur’, Les Inrockuptibles (5 December 2006). www.lesinrocks.com/​2006/​12/​05/​ cinema/​actualite-​cinema/​jean-​eustache-​une-​balle-​a-​la-​place-​du-​cœur-​ 1168437 (accessed 14 October 2018). Bax, Dominique and Cyril Béghin (eds) (2013) Philippe Garrel. Théâtres au cinéma, Bobigny: Collection Magic Cinéma. Béraud, Luc (2017) Au travail avec Eustache (Making of), Arles: Édition Institut Lumière/​Actes  Sud. Breton, André (1990) Communicating Vessels, trans. Mary Ann Caws, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Breton, Émile (1996) ‘Une nouvelle lettre de Philippe’, L’Humanité, 27 March. Cale, John (2011) ‘Comme un récital’, in Bax and Béghin (eds), Philippe Garrel. Théâtres au cinéma, p. 208. Chauvin, Jean-​Sébastien (2013) ‘Que la lumière vive. Entretien avec Caroline Champetier’, in Bax and Béghin (eds), Philippe Garrel. Théâtres au cinéma, pp.  60–​62. Comolli, Jean-​Louis, Jean Narboni and Jacques Rivette (1968) ‘Cerclé sous vide. Entretien avec Philippe Garrel’, Cahiers du cinéma, 204, pp. 44–​63. De Lastens, Emeric (2013) ‘L’acteur et la cause’, in Bax and Béghin (eds), Philippe Garrel. Théâtres au cinéma, pp. 92–​94. Devanne, Laurent (2013) ‘Entretien avec Raoul Coutard’, in Bax and Béghin (eds), Philippe Garrel. Théâtres au cinéma, pp. 204–​205. Epstein, Jean (1921) ‘Grossissement’, in Jean Epstein. Écrits sur le cinéma 1921–​ 1953, Paris: Seghers (1975), pp. 93–​94. Eustache, Jean (1998) La Maman et la putain, Paris: Cahiers du cinéma. Garrel, Philippe and Thomas Lescure (1992) Une caméra à la place du cœur, Aix-​en-​Provence: Admiranda/​Institut de l’Image. Guérinin, Marie-​Anne (1993) ‘Entretien avec Marc Cholodenko’, Cahiers du cinéma, 472, pp. 38–​39. Jousse, Thierry (1989) ‘Le refus du drame’, Cahiers du cinéma, 424, pp. 28–​30.

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Jousse, Thierry (1990) ‘Les baisers de secours, de Philippe Garrel. En toute intimité’, Cahiers du cinéma, 415, pp. 35–​37. Jousse, Thierry (1991) ‘Le Cinéma au présent. Philippe Garrel, Serge Daney: Dialogues’, Cahiers du cinéma, 443–​444, pp. 58–​63. Jousse, Thierry (1993) ‘Le cinéma de crise:  entretien avec Philippe Garrel’, Cahiers du cinéma, 472, pp. 33–​35. Keit, Alain (2013) ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror’, in Bax and Béghin (eds), Philippe Garrel. Théâtres au cinéma, p. 200 Lefort, Gérard (1989) ‘Le secours de Garrel’, Libération, 12 September. Mazabrard, Colette (1989) ‘L’amour, le cinéma’, Cahiers du cinéma, 424, pp.  26–​27. Philippon, Alain (1986) Jean Eustache, Paris: Cahiers du cinéma. Philippon, Alain (1993) ‘L’ amour en fuite’, Cahiers du cinéma, 472 pp. 30–​32.

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5 Past and future generations

The periodisation provided by Garrel to categorise his work extends only as far as the tetralogy of films discussed in Chapter  4. The film scholar Fabien Boully identifies a fifth period that begins with Sauvage Innocence (2001). Boully notes that prior to making Sauvage Innocence Garrel had felt unable to film generations other than his own (Boully 2004). The choice of two young actors in their twenties to play the principal couple in the work signifies a subtle change in direction from his previous films. Since La Naissance de l’amour Garrel has produced eight films at the time of writing. Although many of the stylistic and thematic preoccupations that define Garrel’s ‘dialogues’ period are present within these works, several distinctive threads can be traced that together form loose subcategories. The first concerns the memory and legacy of May 68, explored in the works Le Vent de la nuit (1999) and Les Amants réguliers (2005). The second concerns films that confront issues relating to young couples and the trauma of separation. This subcategory includes Sauvage Innocence (2001), La Frontière de l’aube (2008) and Un Été brûlant (2011). A third thread relates to the latest works produced by Garrel: La Jalousie (2013), L’Ombre des femmes (2015) and L’Amant d’un jour (2017). Filmed in black and white and each approximately seventy-​five minutes long, the works form what has been described as a ‘trilogie freudienne’1 (Delorme 2017: 12). A comparatively lighter tone in this trilogy, marked by occasional humour and cautious optimism, hints at a further shift in Garrel’s oeuvre. 1 ‘Freudian trilogy’.

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Remembering May 68: Le Vent de la nuit (1999) and Les Amants réguliers (2005) The early correlation between Garrel’s cinema and May 68 is discussed in Chapter 1. Garrel’s cinétract Actua I provided a silent documentation of the unrest on the streets of Paris marked by the refusal of a spectacular evocation of revolt. Thereafter, direct verbal or visual allusions to May 68 were conspicuous by their absence in Garrel’s cinema. Le Vent de la nuit –​released just after the thirtieth anniversary of May 68 –​constitutes a first, tentative return to consider this period in French history. This first attempt laid the terrain for a more developed exploration in Les Amants réguliers, signalling a reversal of Garrel’s stance of avoidance. This section will briefly compare approaches to the recollection of May 68 in both films, before subsequent sections provide an in-​depth study of Les Amants réguliers and its treatment of this period. The significance of Garrel’s intervention in Le Vent de la nuit and Les Amants réguliers is heightened by the controversial history surrounding May 68. Dominant narratives have posited this period as synonymous with all subsequent social evils in France (including the rise of a culture of destructive narcissism and a loss of respect for authority and natural hierarchies) or else have sought to dilute its radical political claims by depicting the événements as a type of cultural festival (synonymous with poetry, free love and joyful rebellion). Critical analysis has been characterised by a tendency to replace causal historical relations with mere temporal succession, so that May 68 has been posited as the catalyst of a future characterised by the progressive reign of a liberal consensus.2 Garrel’s return to this period therefore occurred within the context of a critical consensus that has seen the pre-​history of May largely eroded, along with the radical politics espoused by many of those who took to the streets. Having first alluded to his experience of electro-​shock therapy in L’Enfant secret (1979) Garrel returns to the subject in Le Vent de la nuit (1999), a film made three decades after the director’s confinement in a psychiatric hospital in Rome. Serge (Daniel Duval), an architect, 2 For an analysis of the tendency in various critical discourses to marginalise the radical politics of the events of May 68, see Ross (2002) and Ross (2008).

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takes Paul (Xavier Beauvois) under his wing as an apprentice. In a sequence near the beginning of the film, the two men are shown travelling in Serge’s red Porsche across anonymous sections of motorway between Paris and Rome. Paul asks about Serge’s subjection to electro-​shock therapy. Paul  Ça vous fait quoi exactement les électrochocs? Serge  Ça brûle le cerveau. Paul  Pourquoi vous en avez eu? Serge  Après mai 68, certains se sont retrouvés en taule, d’autres en bataillon disciplinaire, et d’autres en psychiatrie. Paul  Vous n’allez pas me dire qu’ils vous ont fait des électrochocs parce que vous avez fait mai 68? Serge  On ne peut pas le dire comme ça, mais c’est pourtant comme ça que ça s’est passé.3 As their conversation continues, Paul elicits more detailed descriptions of the intervention of the psychiatrists and the administration of electro-​ shock therapy. The strategy of re-​ enactment used in L’Enfant secret is replaced in this instance by verbal recollection and transmission. The violence of the intervention is suggested by a montage that cuts between close-​up portraits of the two men and shots from the car window of vast, anonymous stretches of motorway with clusters of high-​rise apartment blocks visible in the distance. This anonymous, desert-​like landscape is comparable to the blank screen in L’Enfant secret, intercut with a shot of Jean-​Baptiste being given electro-​shock therapy. Serge’s enigmatic explanation for his treatment, asserting it to have been a punishment for his actions during May 68, is significant in several ways. It flatly rejects the characterisation of May 68 3 Paul  What exactly does electro-​shock therapy do to you? Serge  It burns your brain. Paul  Why were you given it? Serge  After May 68, some people ended up in prison, others in disciplinary units, and others in psychiatry. Paul You’re not going to tell me that they gave you electro-​shock therapy because you took part in May 68? Serge  It’s never said that way, but that’s the way it happened.

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as a festival of sexual liberation and poetic freedom, instead testifying to the violent repression that took place during this period. Metaphorically, electro-​shock therapy also serves to conjure an institutional desire to eradicate the memory of revolt, both correcting the logic that sought to question the reigning political order while also preventing transmission to future generations. In this respect, the dialogue between Serge and the young man embodies an act of resistance to the erasure of memory. A further layer of signification to the sequence emerges from the fact that the inquisitive young man in conversation with Serge is played by the film-​maker Xavier Beauvois. Born just prior to the outbreak of May 68, Beauvois’s first feature film, Nord (1991), which he made at the age of twenty-​four, suggested a new and original voice among the young generation of French film-​makers at the time. The dialogue with Beauvois enacts the transmission of the memory not only to the next generation but also to a new film generation. By conceiving the dialogue with Beauvois, Garrel draws together the domains of political struggle and artistic creation. Beauvois’s role in Le Vent de la nuit marks a transition within Garrel’s cinema towards representing generations other than his own. This is evident in Les Amants réguliers, which casts a group of young actors in the roles of artists and revolutionaries. Garrel encountered these actors, including Clotilde Hesme, Nicolas Bridet and Julien Lucas, while teaching at the Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique in Paris, a role that he still occupies at the time of writing. By inviting these young actors to reconstitute a history of May 68, Garrel advances on the act of transmission between generations played out in the sequence between Beauvois and Duval in Le Vent de la nuit. This transmission has both a public and private dimension due to the presence of Louis Garrel in the film, playing a role that incorporates aspects of his father’s experience of the événements. The challenge of Les Amants réguliers to the dominant critical consensus surrounding May 68 manifests primarily in aesthetic terms. Returning to an event that marked Garrel’s life and cinema, the film can be considered as a summa in the film-​maker’s oeuvre, drawing together his unique treatment of autobiography, a cinematographic style defined by oneirism and portraiture and an economy of

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production fostered during his poverist period. The film’s interrogation of the relationship between art and politics draws together a subject persistently explored in Garrel’s oeuvre relating to the ministry of artists and the capacity of the cinema to function politically. The critique of dominant configurations of May 68 emerges in two primary forms. The first relates to the depiction of a group of young artists and revolutionaries who reject the values of the dominant political order, a group that is ultimately crushed in the aftermath of the failed insurrection. The second relates to the treatment of time in the film, and in particular the emergence of a heterogeneous temporal landscape as a result of the indirect citation of a number of works from the history of cinema. These two aspects will be explored below.

Les Amants réguliers and May 68: art and revolution Les Amants réguliers is composed of a prologue and four chapters marked by intertitles (Les Espoirs du feu, Les Espoirs fusillés, Les Éclats d’inamertume, Le Sommeil des justes4), providing a narrative trajectory that passes gradually from the initial hopes of May 68 towards the desolation of its aftermath. The opening chapter reveals pitched battles between demonstrators and the police. The loose grouping of François and his friends gradually takes shape in a wasteland of rubble and burnt-​out cars. A series of static shots in strongly contrasted chiaroscuro reveal their bodies slowly emerging from large piles of rubble and metal grills, resembling the shipwrecked survivors of Géricault’s Le Radeau de la Méduse (1818–​1819). By showing beaten bodies on the barricade and police attacking protesters, Les Amants réguliers significantly rejects a sanitised version of the événements. Furthermore, the evocation of the fate of the loose group of friends forged on the barricade provides a striking reflection both on the trajectory of Garrel’s career and on the impact of the failure of May 68 on utopian projects to reconcile art and revolution. The turbulence associated with May 68 is radically eclipsed in the film, making way for a reflection on the atmosphere inaugurated by the failure to bring about systemic change. The passage from 4 ‘Hopes of Fire’, ‘Shotgunned Hopes’, ‘Flashes of Unbitterness’, ‘The Sleep of the Just’.

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widespread contestation to the reformist agenda that undermined the revolutionary momentum is communicated with efficiency by a slow vertical shot tracking across the front page of the newspaper France Soir, dated 24 May 1968. In addition to headlines indicating the continued occupation of factories, the biggest headline refers to negotiations set to take place between the de Gaulle government and trade unions that would lead to the Grenelle Agreements. It is at this stage that the artistic configuration of May 68 comes to the fore in the film. The revolution moves away from the generalised contestation of the street to the privatised space of an apartment belonging to Antoine (Julien Lucas), a young man who has inherited a home and money following the death of his father. Antoine’s home shelters a community of friends from the barricade, who smoke opium, make art, fall in and out of love and live free from external constraint. Antoine casually states his indifference to the failure of the revolution: ‘Moi, ma révolution je l’ai faite le jour où j’ai hérité. Avec mon blé je me suis fait un royaume où les lois n’existent pas.’5 This partial, individualist revolution enables the group to live apart from the rest of society. However, the repressive state from which they initially appear immune is captured in François’s opium-​induced reveries that conjure the rounding-​up of militants by police. While the parallel artistico-​ political structure embodied in Antoine’s home is initially maintained, its erosion is communicated by a single-​shot sequence in which Antoine and François are visited by a police commissar and a bailiff seeking the repayment of overdue fines. The sequence forms a dramatic parallel to a passage from the beginning of the film where François defies the authority of a police officer by refusing to report for military service. The opening shot looks through a doorway in the living room on to an empty adjoining room. Off-​screen, the sound of the police knocking at the door can be heard as François, just woken, runs into the empty room. He runs briefly out of shot, before the camera pans rapidly to the left to observe him as he makes his way through the living room and into the hallway entrance. Alerted by François, Antoine emerges into shot. He delays the officers by pretending to look for the door key, meanwhile instructing his friend to hide any drugs that have been left in 5 ‘My revolution happened the day I inherited. With my money I made myself a kingdom where laws do not exist.’

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the living room. Having observed François hiding drug paraphernalia, the camera pans to the right to show the view from inside the living room looking on to the hallway. This framing is maintained with little alteration for the rest of the sequence, incorporating a solitary canvas on the wall in the left-​hand corner of the frame. Explaining the reason for their visit, the officers walk casually into the living room and stare off-​screen at the artwork on the walls while Antoine fetches his chequebook. The commissar comments, ‘pas mal, moderne, mais …’,6 informing François benignly, ‘je collectionne moi un peu, aussi’.7 François’s perceptible anxiety prompts the commissar to reassure him, ‘n’ayez pas peur’.8 When Antoine returns he apologises for having forgotten to pay the fines, to which the bailiff replies amicably: ‘Non, mais il n’y a pas de mal, ça fait travailler le métier.’9 In this short sequence, Garrel conveys the crushing defeat of this resistant community with striking economy. The defiance of authority is replaced by fearful compliance and submission. The stare of the camera is controlled and unrelenting, providing no possibility of escape. The kingdom without laws that supported the creative pursuits of François and his friends is now subject to the laws of the state. Beyond this submission to authority, the seemingly benign comments of the commissar as he looks at the paintings on the walls designate art as an accessory of a bourgeois society, a commodity like any other, collectable and subject to the laws of the market. Art is mere decoration, rather than a revolutionary tool, its peripheral status confirmed by the position of the canvas in the corner of the frame. Through the microcosm of the loose circle of friends in Les Amants réguliers, Garrel displays a genealogical labour, evoking the passage from May 68 to the post-​68. The depiction of the paranoia, isolation and loneliness that become the fate of the group forms a subtle and melancholic rumination on the consequences for those who became caught up in the revolt but were unable to reconcile themselves to its ultimate failure. In this sense, May 68 is not a generational rite of passage towards a reformed and pragmatic adulthood, it is a breach that cannot be surmounted. By showing 6 ‘Not bad, but a little modern …’ 7 ‘I’m a bit of a collector, too.’ 8 ‘There’s no reason to be afraid.’ 9 ‘Don’t worry, it gives us some work to do.’

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the dismantling of the group that engages in a brief experiment in constructing an alternative community in which art is freed from its enslavement to capital, the film denies the erasure of this unrealised historical possibility. Peter Wollen argues that the dissolution of the Situationist International, a movement that reached its apogee during May 68, signalled the end of an era of avant-​gardes. Writing of the implications of the dissolution that occurred in 1972, Wollen observes that it brought an end to a succession of avant-​gardes that had begun in Paris with the Futurist manifesto: ‘the epoch of the historic avant-​ gardes with their typical apparatus of international organisation and propaganda, manifestos, congresses, quarrels, scandals, indictments, expulsions, polemics, group photographs, little magazines, mysterious episodes, provocations, utopian theories and intense desires to transform art, society, the world and the pattern of everyday life’ (Wollen 1993: 124). Les Amants réguliers is inflected with the mood of the passing of the historic avant-​garde and the utopian ideas of converging popular revolution with art in revolt. The film is attentive to this shift, depicting the trajectory of Garrel and other artists of his generation both directly and by way of allegory. Having participated in May 68 as a young man, the greater part of Garrel’s adult life has been defined by the experience of ‘postness’ –​post-​New Wave, post-​avant-​garde, post-​revolution. His early underground period, during which he managed to produce work without commercial constraint thanks to the support of the donor Sylvina Boissonnas, is analogous to the independent model of production enabled by Antoine’s largesse in the film. Garrel’s personal experience of the suicide of friends, drug addiction and mental illness are recalled in the afflictions experienced by members of the group, including a long sequence towards the end of the film showing a young man under the influence of LSD being taken away to hospital. The modes of production and distribution for Les Amants réguliers reflect the shifts that have taken place in Garrel’s cinema in the decades following May 68, including a gradual transition from a poverist stance towards the acceptance of financing from private production companies and government subsidy. In this sense, the film forms a reflection on Garrel’s relationship to a radical political and artistic culture associated with May 68, and the trajectory his cinema has taken in the aftermath.

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Cinema/​history: film citation While Les Amants réguliers is marked by a melancholia regarding the failure of art and insurrection to combine in revolutionising society, in other respects the formal properties of the film lay claim to the continued capacity of art to function politically. The role of citation in the work is significant in this respect. The film composes a complex, non-​linear temporality through the citation of numerous works from the history of cinema. This approach relies on indirect allusions, or what can be termed metaphorical citation, whereby the allusions occur through stylistic similarities or resonances that invite the viewer to trace a connection with previous works of cinema. An analysis of the prologue to the film, which evokes multiple film sources, helps elucidate the nature and function of this citational approach. The opening titles of Les Amants réguliers emerge silently in black Times New Roman type formed against a white backdrop. The minimalism of this presentation recalls the titling Garrel uses in his first narrative films, L’Enfant secret and Elle a passé tant d’heures. The titles give way to a longshot of the banks of the Seine at night. The camera pans slowly to the left, coming to rest on a bridge linking the banks. The street lamps on the bridge, overexposed, appear surrounded by an indistinct halo of light pressing against darkness of the city. This image is immediately reminiscent of night-​time shots of the Seine in Eustache’s La Maman et la putain and in several New Wave films. The opening shot cuts to an apartment staircase. A group of young people are observed from above ascending a first flight of stairs. The mobile shot adjusts to observe them from below ascending a second flight of stairs. Recognising here an allusion to the cinema of Jean Eustache, the critic Gilles Grand writes: ‘Par des escaliers vus en plongée puis en contreplongée gravis par cinq garçons dans un plan mobile qui en est le second, le film de 2005 cite le sixième plan de La Maman et la putain, lorsque Léaud descend en solo de semblables marches’10 (Grand 2006: 76). In this visual echo Garrel displays an affinity with Eustache’s film; however, as with the treatment of the Seine the allusions and citations in the work are multiple and 10 ‘By the staircase, climbed by five boys, seen descending and then ascending in a mobile shot which is the second of the film, the film cites the sixth shot of La Maman et la putain (1973) in which Léaud on his own descends similar stairs.’

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find echoes in a number of other films, including the recurrence of staircases in Paris nous appartient (1961). It also looks back to Garrel’s second feature film, Le Révélateur (1968), made during the last days of May, in which staircases serve a symbolic function suggesting the passage between the real and the dream world. Shortly afterwards, two related sequences ensue in which François is visited by a policeman at his home. The first sequence relays a violent encounter when the police officer orders the young man to report for military service, something that he refuses. This is followed immediately by a burlesque sequence in which François manages to evade the police when the same officer returns to his home with another gendarme to arrest him. A low-​angle frontal shot shows François staring down from his apartment window, followed by a high-​angle reverse-​shot of his view of the street below, in which a tzigane violinist plays a lively tune. The shot cuts back to the interior of the apartment, observing François smiling before going to look in his room for some money for the performer. Shown from behind returning to the window, his glance to the left along the street is matched by a point-​of-​view shot that tracks two gendarmes striding in the direction of the apartment. The next cut is to a shot-​reverse-​ shot of the view of the street performer and of the apartment window, a mirror opposite of the shot order used previously. A  brief image of the street performer is followed by a low-​angle image of the apartment window, this time, however, without the onlooking François. The conclusion to the sequence is composed of a longshot taken in the courtyard of the apartment, capturing the two officers frontally as they walk towards the foreground of the frame while François descends a flight of stairs in the background of the shot and disappears out into the street. The ebullience of the sequence is contributed to by the vibrant soundtrack but also by the playful montage through which François plays a game of hide-​and-​seek not only with the police but also with the viewer. The humour is reminiscent of New Wave cinema. In particular, it evokes memories of a sequence from Truffaut’s Les Quatre cents coups (1959) in which Antoine Doinel (Jean-​Pierre Léaud) and his classmates are taken out jogging along the streets of Paris during a PE lesson. An aerial shot observing the joggers tracks back and forwards to capture groups breaking off at intervals to hide in doorways and cafés, leaving the ignorant teacher jogging virtually alone in the

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street. Discussing the sequence, Garrel points to an earlier cinematic heritage, noting how sight gags dealing with fear of the police go back to a popular anarchist tradition that stems from Chaplin and Jean Vigo (Burdeau and Delorme 2005: 75). In the next sequence, François and a friend meet on a staircase and discuss the rioting of the night before. This fades to black, and an iris-​in opens onto a medium-​shot which tracks alongside police vans and CRS riot police, gathering formation on a bridge over the Seine. The use of the iris shot to realise the transition recalls a device celebrated by several New Wave film-​makers, representing a homage to early cinema. As the shot tracks dreamily along the side of the police, observing a superior reprimanding an officer for being late, a voice-​over intones: ‘Libère toi de la répétition. Avance.’11 An iris-​out fades to black and draws the prologue to a conclusion. The voice-​ over has the pithiness of a revolutionary slogan from the period. Occurring over a reconstruction of a scene filmed by Garrel in Actua I (1968), and at the conclusion to a prologue that has already displayed a self-​conscious repetition of stylistic traits from various films, the slogan seems anomalous. Nevertheless, it establishes an enquiry central to the work, namely the possibility of advancing something new by citing works from the history of cinema. The slogan frames a challenge confronted in the film, to address this significant moment in recent French history without resorting to nostalgia or clichéd representation. The indirectness of Garrel’s allusions creates a work that feels like a number of different films, producing a complex temporality that emerges through the subtle shift from one allusion to the other, or from the overlapping of multiple citations. It reveals a significant indebtedness to early cinema. This emerges in the silence that predominates in the film, with images taking precedence over words, visual language over speech and dialogue. Specific sequences are reminiscent of the cinema of Marcel L’Herbier. When, for instance, François takes refuge on a rooftop by night after fleeing from police when they storm the barricades, the visual treatment invokes sequences from La Nuit fantastique (1942), where a dreamer (Fernand Gravey) wanders the Paris rooftops by night, bathed in bright moonlight and contrasting dark shadows. 11 ‘Free yourself from repetition. Advance.’

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Observing the peculiar oneiric quality of the film, Stéphane Delorme notes the allusions drawn to other works:  ‘Les Amants réguliers parfois rêve d’autres films, comme François, assoupi sur les barricades, rêve d’une autre révolution de paysans avançant groupés autour d’une femme en bonnet phrygien et d’un canon. Un rêve de révolution pour une révolution rêvée’12 (Delorme 2005: 12). As Delorme traces the nuances of reference, he highlights how the associative aesthetic developed by Garrel encourages the viewer to locate and imagine a range of sources. Describing, for instance, the image of the barricades that opens the second chapter of the film, Delorme writes:  ‘deux casques blancs recouvrant des tignasses sombres s’agitent dans la nuit. Les motards de Cocteau, nouveaux Orphées jettent désormais des pavés au milieu des ruines’13 (14). Jean Cocteau’s Orphée (1950) may or may not be deliberately invoked by Garrel, but Delorme’s observation underlines how the indirectness of the citational approach invites such speculation. The indirectness of the citation contrasts with Bertolucci’s The Dreamers (2003), a film that in other respects shares an uncannily close relationship with Les Amants réguliers. Aside from the fact that both films deal with May 68, their casting and production histories are intimately intertwined. Louis Garrel plays a leading role in both films, incarnating Théo in Bertolucci’s work. The making of Les Amants réguliers involved the use of extras from The Dreamers and the purchase of wardrobes of leftover clothing, in the manner of a B-​movie production. However, the approach to film citation constitutes a significant point of diversion between both works. Bertolucci uses a direct citational approach, intercutting the universe of three cinephiles (Théo, his twin sister and an American exchange student) in the lead-​up to the événements, with extracts from a repertoire of films mostly drawn from the New Wave and the canon of Hollywood cinema from the 1920s and 30s. The result of this approach is a clear textural separation between the world of the young trio and that of the film works they cherish, incorporated in their 12 ‘Les Amants réguliers dreams at times of other films as François, dozing on the barricade, dreams of another revolution of advancing peasants grouped around a woman in a Phrygian hat and a canon. A dream of a revolution for a revolution dreamed.’ 13 ‘Two white helmets covering sombre shocks of hair, agitate in the night. The bikers of Cocteau, new incarnations of Orpheus, throw paving stones in the middle of ruins.’

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original form. These worlds rarely become confused visually in a way that implodes the binary division of looking back from the vantage point of the present on an already solidified past. Furthermore, the allusions to these works through direct citation tends to fetishise these filmic moments, and is characteristic of the nostalgia that pervades the film, heightened through the retrospective yearnings of the young American in voice-​over for a time fresh with the possibility of change.14 Aside from the allusions already discussed, a further significant point of reference in Les Amants réguliers is Jacques Rivette’s Paris nous appartient. The central protagonist of Rivette’s thriller, the young and naïve student Anne Goupil (Betty Schneider), becomes involved in a conspiratorial network composed of artists and revolutionaries, as she seeks to resolve the mystery of the death of a Spanish dissident. The numerous gatherings in cramped interiors, the use of black and white high-​contrast cinematography, in addition to a large proportion of close-​ups, create a sense of intimacy among the group bound together against an external menace. These elements resurface in Garrel’s film in the gatherings of François, his lover Lilie and other friends in Antoine’s apartment. Garrel’s predilection for portraiture and tightly framed shots reinforces the closeness and singularity of the group. Rivette’s thriller combines a tone of gravitas with moments of lightness and humour, something that is echoed in Les Amants réguliers. In Paris nous appartient humour arises from the cameo appearances of various New Wave directors, most notably a sequence in which Godard attempts to seduce a friend of Anne’s on a café terrace. The garish, childlike portraits that cover the apartment walls of the American exile, Phillip Kauffman (Daniel Krohem), are comical, while simultaneously suggesting a disturbed mind. This distinct tonal register is evident in Garrel’s film, incorporating burlesque elements such as the hide-​and-​seek sequence with the police discussed earlier, in addition to evoking the fear and despair that envelop the group. This quality is summarised succinctly by Cyril Neyrat when he writes:  ‘Conjuguant les deux attitudes, le film ne cesse d’osciller entre solennité religieuse et légèreté profane’15 (Neyrat 14 For a more detailed analysis of the relationship between these films and the implications of their contrasting citational approaches, see Leonard (2011). 15 ‘Combining the two attitudes, the film continuously oscillates between religious solemnity and profane lightness.’

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2005: 17). Through this tonal oscillation, which pervades the film, Les Amants réguliers returns the spectator to Rivette’s first feature film. The parallels and stylistic resonances that emerge between Garrel’s film and Rivette’s first feature help illuminate a shared radicality in terms of conceptualising the workings of history and evoking events from the past that have been obscured. The oneiric quality that is definitive of Garrel’s film resembles the atmosphere of Rivette’s work. Gilles Deleuze foregrounds the capacity of fantasy and dream in Rivette’s film-​making to create a substantial, critical reality, using the metaphor of a stroll to capture the journey that Rivette takes his viewer on: ‘Already in Paris nous appartient, the stroll culminates in a twilight fantasy where the cityscape has no reality or connections other than those given by our dream’ (Deleuze 2005: 10). Deleuze argues that Rivette is less interested in a representation of reality than in constructing a dreamlike fantasy, in order to interpret the real. The metaphor of a stroll evokes a singular quality of Les Amants réguliers, a film that wanders through the ‘real’ past, and through the cinematic past, in a distinctly dreamlike and aleatory fashion. Given Garrel’s initially ambivalent relationship with the New Wave in his adolescent cinema, the predominance of indirect allusions to Jacques Rivette’s first feature film is perhaps surprising. Several factors suggest reasons for the affinity. First, like Les Amants réguliers, Rivette’s feature is defined by resonances with a range of other films and by a complex temporal patterning. The film’s labyrinthine plot is comparable to Fritz Lang’s Das Testament des Dr.  Mabuse (1933) and Michel Marie observes how it draws upon René Clair’s Paris qui dort (1924) and Feuillade’s Les Vampires (1915), filmed in a deserted city. Furthermore, Rivette assembles these influences to create a complex temporal pattern that enables the apprehension of traces of the past and their links with the political climate surrounding the making of the film. Marie writes: Le Paris de Rivette est un dédale obscur où se développent des complots, ceux de l’Organisation, lucide prémonition de l’Organisation armée secrète (OAS). Tous les personnages se sentent menacés. Le climat du film évoque la chasse aux sorcières aux États-​Unis, la révolution écrasée sous les chars à Budapest, mais le film donne aussi une description assez remarquable de l’ambiance intellectuelle de la IVe

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République finissante avec ses complots politiques et militaires sur fond de guerre d’Algérie.16 (Marie 1997: 75)

The Paris conjured by Rivette foregrounds the director’s conception of the cinema as an art form that enables the resuscitation of repressed and forgotten events. In Rivette’s film, fiction becomes a way of reflecting on and providing witness to the past. Rivette’s personal reflection on the origins of the work is noteworthy in this respect: ‘The origin of Paris nous appartient –​and this may seem a bit pretentious or even monstrous –​was the Budapest crisis at the end of 1956’ (Aumont, Comolli, Narboni and Pierre 1977: 26). The sole line spoken by Rivette during a brief cameo appearance  –​‘Vous ne savez pas qu’est-​ce que c’est qu’une revolution écrasée’17 –​adds weight to this interpretation of the film and to the relationship between its mood and the après-​mai depicted in Les Amants réguliers. Compared to many of the films of the New Wave that look forward to a rebellious youth culture of the 1960s, Rivette’s work reveals an inclination to consider aspects of the past that have been obscured, proposing history not as linear and progressive but a complex of intersecting temporalities. Garrel’s personal reflections on Les Amants réguliers reveal a position that mirrors Rivette’s desire to restore to visibility what has been obscured by hegemonic historical accounts: ‘Historically May 68 has been a great defeat. What makes my film optimistic, though, is the sheer fact of its existence. It is positive to know that you cannot censor this era at last. Art always finally tries to re-​establish different truths of events; there’s never just one truth to an event, after all, but always many’ (Grissemann 2006). Garrel’s comment lays claim to the political power of art and to the labour of fiction, as defined by Jacques Rancière, where fiction does not designate an imaginary universe that is opposed to the real but involves a “reframing of the ‘real’ ” (Rancière 2010: 141). A final trait that connects Garrel’s work with Paris nous appartient is the reflection on money and in particular money as an 16 ‘Rivette’s Paris is a dark maze where intricate plots develop, including those of the Organisation, a lucid premonition of the l’Organisation armée secrète (OAS). All the characters feel threatened. The climate evokes the witch-​hunts in the United States, the crushed revolution in Budapest, but the film also gives a remarkable account of the intellectual mood at the end of the Fourth Republic in France with all its military and political plots surrounding the Algerian War.’ 17 ‘You don’t know what a crushed revolution is.’

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abiding conspiracy. Deleuze considers the strange place of rehearsals that take place in Paris nous appartient in this respect. Gérard Lenz’s (Giani Esposito) continually thwarted attempts to stage Shakespeare’s Pericles, which forms a play within the film, encapsulate the nature of the production of Paris nous appartient, which developed piecemeal over several years as Rivette struggled with the constraints of financial backing. The film incorporates several sequences of theatre rehearsals in which actors walk out on the production. In one sequence, Jean-​Marc (Jean-​Claude Brialy) takes his leave of the troupe having being offered a paid role. Jean-​Marc’s departure enacts Brialy’s real-​life decision to end his involvement with Paris nous appartient in order to take up a role in Chabrol’s first feature, Le Beau Serge (1958).18 Deleuze argues that the trope of the work within the work is often linked in the arts to a consideration of surveillance, an investigation, a conspiracy or a plot. Elaborating on this point, he states: ‘The cinema as art itself lives in a direct relationship with a permanent plot [complot] an international conspiracy which conditions it from within, as the most intimate and most indispensable enemy. This conspiracy is that of money’ (Deleuze 2005:  74–​75). This assertion draws attention to a parallel with Les Amants réguliers, in terms of the struggle of the young artists to produce art free from commercial structures. Deleuze’s analysis invites reflection on how Garrel’s work draws together the crushing of the political struggle of May 68 with that of the dream of liberating artistic production from the constraint of capital. This suggests a further layer of signification in the citation of Paris nous appartient. In this sense, it is notable that the indirectness of Garrel’s citation of other film-​works provides an economy that frees the director from the constraint of a large commercial production. This stands in contrast to the expenditure incurred in the production of The Dreamers, contributed to by the need to pay for the rights to screen the multiple sequences from other films. In this way Garrel’s film is in keeping with the ethos of his poverist films of the 1970s, resisting the constraint of finance, through the economy of its approach.19 18 For a detailed discussion of the financing and production of Paris nous appartient, see: Neupert (2007: 271–​279). 19 Les Amants réguliers was produced for a budget of $1.5 million, a tenth of the budget of Bertolucci’s film, which cost over $15 million.

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Love, art and politics: Sauvage Innocence (2001), La Frontière de l’aube (2008), Un Été brûlant (2011) Thierry Jousse describes Sauvage Innocence as conjuring Garrel’s obsession with autobiography ‘réécrite, tordu sans cesse dans tous les sens, réaffirmé comme une pulsion à la fois mortuaire et salvatrice’20 (Jousse 2001: 20). Garrel’s reworking of aspects of his biography is equally present in the two films that follow Les Amants réguliers, La Frontière de l’aube and Un Été brûlant. All three works, the first two filmed in black and white and the latter filmed in colour, return to themes, narrative threads and formal motifs explored elsewhere in Garrel’s oeuvre. This time, however, the roles are enacted by characters aged in their twenties and thirties. The works reflect on the strains related to artistic production, including the pitfalls associated with stardom. One of the leading protagonists in Sauvage Innocence is an aspiring actress, Lucie (Julia Faure). La Frontière de l’aube and Un Été brûlant each have characters that are film stars, incarnated by Laura Smet and Monica Bellucci. The works are indicative of Garrel’s gothic and romantic sensibility, displaying the influence of the work of Edgar Allan Poe and Théophile Gautier as well as an oneiric quality present in Les Amants réguliers. In tracing the sentimental lives of couples, the films subtly explore questions regarding the relationship between art and the political. Following the tone of mourning that characterised Garrel’s films in the late 1980s, Sauvage Innocence is noticeable for its qualities of irony and humour. The film centres on a young director named François Mauge, played by the French-​Tunisian philosopher Mehdi Belhaj Kacem, who wishes to make a film about the scourge of hard drugs following the death of his partner Carole from an overdose. Having chosen his new lover Lucie for the role of Carole, François begins looking for the money to make his film. The portrait that emerges of the young director hints at a certain amount of self-​deprecation on the part of Garrel vis-​à-​vis his personal career trajectory and cinematic preoccupations. Nevertheless, beyond the humour that emerges in the portrait of François, the film reflects on issues relating to the financial privation experienced by artists who 20 ‘Re-​written, twisted in every direction, reasserted as an urge at once funereal and life-​affirming’.

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make work that is not motivated by entertainment, and on the sentimental and existential challenges that they face. Despite the fact that Sauvage Innocence has the traits of a more conventional, well-​financed production (large cast of actors, location shooting in Amsterdam and Paris, the use of richly textured black and white cinematography) it strikes several significant parallels with Garrel’s experimental film, Elle a passé tant d’heures sous les sunlights (1984).21 Both works deploy the device of a film within the film, incorporating sequences showing the physical apparatus associated with film production (including clapper boards, tracks used for sequence-​shots, sound booms) as well as the various personnel (camera operators, sound engineers, make-​up artists). A further narrative link emerges in the Faustian pact made by François in order to find the money to produce his film. The young director accepts an offer to traffic drugs in exchange for financial backing, a conceit recalling the voice-​over dialogue between Garrel and Chantal Akerman in Elle a passé tant d’heures where Garrel coyly confesses to having found the money to make his film by selling heroin. A final link emerges in Lucie’s struggle to play the role of François’s former lover, Carole. As she walks alongside a canal in Amsterdam, in a break from filming, Lucie confides in François’s stepmother about the strain of taking part in the film and of responding to the exigencies of her director-​lover. Framed in a frontal shot with a bridge in the backdrop, she describes how François has placed his ex-​lover on a pedestal, positing his pathological need to feed on her suffering:  ‘C’est comme en s’occupant de sa souffrance à elle, il arrive à oublier sa propre souffrance.’22 When her confidant advises her to just be herself, Lucie replies in frustration: ‘Oui, mais il y a le film. Moi, je ne suis pas Carole, je n’ai pas sa violence, je ne suis pas folle, je n’arriverai jamais.’23 The exchange closely resembles the sequence in Elle a passé tant d’heures, where Anne Wiazemsky, discussing her role as Christa (a loose avatar of Nico), complains of having to play a character that she has nothing in common with. Both sequences 21 For the rest of the chapter Elle a passé tant d’heures sous les sunlights will be shortened to Elle a passé tant d’heures. 22 ‘It’s as though by focusing on her own suffering, he manages to forget his own suffering.’ 23 ‘Yes, but there’s the film. I’m not Carole, I don’t have her violence, I’m not crazy, I’ll never manage it.’

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reflect on the impingement of the role of performance on the everyday life of actors. Lucie’s reflections equally imply the vampiric tendencies of her director-​lover, feeding off the pain of others in order to transform his lived experience into art. Despite Lucie’s suffering, the portrait that emerges of François is not without humour and irony. At a family gathering the young man explains his film project to his parents, to which his mother responds wearily, ‘un autre film sur Carole’.24 Her comment appears as an allusion to Garrel’s obstinacy in returning to familiar themes in his filmography, in particular his relationship with Nico. This ironic humour is consolidated by the portrayal of François’s hubris and naïveté, evident when he declares to Lucie: ‘En faisant un film contre la drogue j’espère vraiment contribuer à sauver le monde de cette saloperie.’25 Nevertheless, echoing the shifting tonal oscillation evident in Les Amants réguliers, Sauvage Innocence combines lightness and irony with earnestness, reflecting on the challenges faced by film-​makers who choose to make work with an ethical motivation, rather than a commercial one. Towards the beginning of the film, François visits a producer in search of funding. The producer dominates the conversation, notably posing questions that he then proceeds to answer himself, thereby rendering a dryly comic exchange. He tells François that he always found there was something ‘pas abouti’26 about his films, comparing them to a meal with a recipe, all the ingredients ‘mais rien sur les assiettes’.27 Having offered this judgement he goes on to explain that he has in fact not read François’s screenplay, deeming that because the young man is an auteur the text will have virtually no correspondence with the completed work. Throughout the exchange, François is filmed in a high-​angle shot, and the producer in a low-​angle reverse shot, visually underpinning the disparities in status and power. Despite the producer’s negativity, he surprisingly concludes their discussion by agreeing to give François a cheque to carry out test shoots for the film, but first excuses himself in order to attend to an urgent matter. The following shot tracks the producer descending a 24 ‘Another film about Carole’. 25 ‘By making a film against drugs, I  really hope to save the world from this shit.’ 26 ‘Incomplete’. 27 ‘But nothing on the plates’.

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grand staircase and wrapping his scarf around his neck as he makes to leave the building. A subsequent cut returns to François who rises from his chair and slowly paces around the producer’s empty office. Several cuts indicate the passage of time, before a cleaner enters the room and begins vacuuming. When François decides to return to the reception area, a security guard approaches and forcibly removes him from the premises. Beyond the humour of the sequence, arising from the producer’s stereotyping of auterist film-​making prior to his brazen departure, François’s humiliation is disquieting. His expulsion is suggestive of the arbitrary and violent dynamics that those in positions of power can exert in terms of the creation and valorisation of art. A later sequence between François and his illicit producer Chas (Michel Subor) parallels the encounter described above, once again underpinning François’s vulnerability. Having travelled to Barcelona to hand over drugs as part of his contract with Chas, François returns to the film set in Amsterdam with his head heavily bandaged. In a night-​time sequence, he confronts Chas about his treatment, only to have his injuries dismissed: ‘Crois moi, prendre deux baffes dans la gueule pour faire un film ce n’est pas cher.’28 As François continues to remonstrate, Chas issues a violent rebuttal: ‘Ah, tu m’emmerde. T’es même pas un artist. Pauvre type. T’es pas foutu de garder ta gonzesse même.’29 When François asks what he means by the last remark, Chas replies: ‘T’es même pas de la merde, t’es un trou dans l’air. Pauvre con.’30 The encounter unleashes the unspoken criticism in the meeting with the official producer. In his blackly comic, withering tirade Chas cuts through François’s artistic pretensions and his ethical motivations. Nevertheless, the extent of François’s humiliation –​beaten, compromised, subjected to the whims of a criminal –​ does not simply invite mirth or schadenfreude. As Chas walks away into the darkness of the night, François is pictured desolate and alone in the frame. As in the previous sequence the comical dimension merges with the tragic, inviting reflection on the material and emotional vulnerability of artists.

28 ‘Believe me, two smacks in the mouth to make a film isn’t that much to pay.’ 29 ‘You’re beginning to piss me off. You’re not even an artist. You’re a loser, you can’t even keep hold of your own chick.’ 30 ‘That means that you’re a nobody. You’re not even shit, you’re a hole in the air. Asshole.’

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Beyond exposing himself to physical danger, the consequences of François’s drive to make his film extend to his relationship with Lucie. Chas makes a brief allusion to this when, to the list of François’s failings, he adds the young man’s inability to hold onto his lover. In an image of life imitating art, Sauvage Innocence charts Lucie’s gradual descent into addiction, mimicking the trajectory of the character Carole whom she is called upon to incarnate. Two sequences chart the disintegration of her relationship with François as the pressures of making the film drive a wedge between the couple. The first, from towards the beginning of the film, opens with a high-​angle shot of François and Lucie in bed. As she rises to get a drink he tells her to come back before instructing her:  ‘Montre moi ton profil.’31 She obediently turns to the side before he adds: ‘Ah, nous allons faire un magnifique film ensemble, si tu ne fais pas la conne.’32 The exchange is reminiscent of a bedroom sequence in Fellini’s 8½ (1963), when Guido (Marcello Mastroianni), the director of the film within the film, instructs his mistress Carla (Sandro Milo) what pose to adopt. Beyond this nod to one of the most famous works about the relationship between the life and oeuvre of a film-​maker, the sequence serves to communicate the unsettling impact of François’s obsession with casting his lover as an object of his craft. Scrutinised and under pressure to accept to play in her lover’s film, Lucie’s response undercuts the initial light tone. She tells him:  ‘On était bien là. Pourquoi tu gâches tout? Je t’aime. J’ai pas envie qu’on se sépare. Je t’ai promis que je ferai le maximum pour ta réponse, mais j’ai pas envie qu’on parle de ça tous les jours.’33 Lucie’s gentle exasperation reveals a first intimation of the pressure created when her relationship with François merges with the pressure of performance. A second sequence, this time towards the end of the film, confirms François’s complete absorption in the act of creation, to the extent of being oblivious to the well-​being of his lover. It directly follows a sequence in which Lucie’s descent into drug addiction is revealed when she injects heroin for the first time. François is framed in 31 ‘Show me your profile.’ 32 ‘Ah, we are going to make a magnificent film together, if you don’t do anything stupid.’ 33 ‘We were good there. Why do you ruin everything? I love you. I don’t want us to separate. I promised you that I would do the maximum for your reply but I don’t want to talk about it every day.’

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close-​up in a handheld shot looking down at his notes in preparation for filming the next scene. Lucie enters the frame from the left of screen, kisses him on the cheek and tries to hug him. Without looking at her, he tells her he does not have time to talk to her. When she appears not to heed his warning, he tells her coldly: ‘Je ne peux te parler, tu comprends?’34 She seeks reassurance, telling him ‘Tu as vu? Maintenant j’y arrive’,35 suggesting her ability to finally play Carol now that she too has discovered heroin. Looking off-​screen towards the film crew, François barely acknowledges her. The camera pans a little to the right, cutting Lucie from the frame and showing François alone readying the crew for the shoot. The depiction of François’s relationship with Lucie recalls Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Oval Portrait’ (1842). The same work is alluded to in a sequence towards the end of Vivre sa vie (1962) in which passages from the text are read out by Godard in voice-​over. Poe’s short story deals with a painting of a beautiful young woman, discovered in an abandoned Italian castle. The narrator, who discovers the portrait, is enthralled by its lifelikeness. He comes across a book that explains the mystery of the painting’s composition. It recounts how a young wife agreed to pose for her husband, an artist obsessed with his work. Thinking only of his task of painting his wife, the artist failed to notice her fading health. When the portrait was complete he turned to face his wife only to realise that she was dead. In its reworking of Poe’s short tale and the resonances with Goethe’s Faust (1808), Sauvage Innocence invites introspection on artistic nature of labour. The film functions as a cautionary tale about the dangerous relationship between capital and artistic production but also on the pitfalls associated with artistic creation when it comes at the expense of real human relationships. Folowing the resonances with Poe’s ‘The Oval Portrait’ and Goethe’s Faust in Sauvage Innocence, La Frontière de l’aube similarly displays the influence of Romantic literature and Gothic fiction. On this occasion Garrel reworks aspects of Théophile Gautier’s novella Spirite (1865), through the depiction of a tragic relationship between a young photographer, François (Louis Garrel), and an actress, Carole (Laura Smet). As with Sauvage Innocence, the film draws both on 34 ‘I can’t talk to you, do you understand?’ 35 ‘Did you see? I’m able to do it now.’

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aspects of Garrel’s biography and his earlier works, adopting shot compositions and narrative tropes present in L’Enfant secret and Les Hautes Solitudes. There are also similarities with Les Amants réguliers. The veteran director of photography William Lubtchansky was deployed for both films, something that is evident by the similarly contrasted and at times grainy black and white imagery. The use of iris fades as transitions in Les Amants réguliers is equally present in La Frontière de l’aube and the musical score for both films is composed by Jean-​Claude Vannier. Nevertheless, La Frontière de l’aube was less commercially successful than the previous work and was notoriously booed when screened at the Cannes festival in 2008. This episode prompted one critic to rebuke those that had jeered the film for having refused ‘de se rendre à sa simplicité et à sa jeunesse incandescente, de traverser le pont et d’aller à la rencontre de ses fantasmes’36 (Morain 2008). Garrel’s most developed depiction of a ghostly universe, incorporating the trope of the forest, seemed to confound those expecting greater continuity with his most successful film work to date. The film begins with François visiting the home of a film star, Carole Weissman, for a photographic assignment. Having posed on the balcony of a large Haussmannian apartment, Carole begins to feel unwell and explains that she can no longer continue with the shoot. Framed in a medium-​shot against the light, with the handrail of the balcony in the backdrop, she asks François if they can continue tomorrow instead, telling him she will think of a suitable place. Her proposition reproduces the real-​life dynamic that existed between Garrel and Jean Seberg for the filming of Les Hautes Solitudes (1974). This involved Garrel making regular visits to Seberg’s home before they would embark on a collaborative act of production between camera operator and performer. La Frontière de l’aube does not provide a straightforward reconstruction of the life of Seberg. Like other films of this period, biographical detail merges with fiction as multiple biographies (including those of Nico and Garrel himself) conjoin. Nevertheless, shots of Carole writing in a journal, or in close-​up lying in bed, reproduce shots of Seberg in similar poses in Les Hautes Solitudes, and clear allusions are made 36 ‘To give themselves up to its simplicity, to its incandescent youth, to cross the bridge and encounter its fantasies’.

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to Seberg’s troubled life. François’s artistic collaboration with Carole leads to a romantic relationship that is plagued by Carole’s instability and alcohol abuse, eventually resulting in her suicide. Towards the beginning of Carole’s relationship with François, she is captured in a close-​up profile shot staring out the window of her apartment. She calls François over before indicating a plain-​clothed policeman on the street. A reverse high-​angle shot shows a man pacing the street below as Carole explains that she is being watched. This sequence appears to allude to the campaign of surveillance and intimidation carried out by the FBI on Seberg in response to her radical political sympathies and associations, a campaign said to have contributed to the actor’s psychological instability and her eventual suicide (Richards 1981). Following a breakdown, after her separation from François, Carole is shown inside an asylum in a high-​angle profile shot. The framing mirrors the precise composition of shots of Jean-​Baptiste shown attached to a bed in an asylum in L’Enfant secret. Later sequences show Carole being subjected to electro-​shock therapy. The blank screen that follows each application of the electric charge to Jean-​ Baptiste in L’Enfant secret is replaced in this instance by an iris shot that fades to black. Commenting on the filming of Les Hautes Solitudes, Garrel describes Jean Seberg’s medical treatment following a nervous breakdown: ‘Les psychiatres avaient exercé leurs talents, à coups d’électrochocs, ça n’a pas été sans conséquences’37 (Garrel and Lescure 1992: 102). In La Frontière de l’aube Garrel merges an obsessive subject of reflection in his cinema, namely his incarceration in an asylum in Rome where he was subjected to electro-​shock therapy, with allusion to the life of Jean Seberg. After Carole’s death, François visits her grave. A shot of the young man seated on a tombstone with his head in his hands, a pose resembling Rodin’s The Thinker (1882), fades to black and an intertitle signals the passage of one year. François begins a new life with Ève (Clémentine Poidatz), a fragile young woman, youthful in appearance. She becomes pregnant and the couple decide to marry, visiting Ève’s father and stepmother in a large chateau, where their engagement is made official. François becomes haunted by a series of visitations by Carole. The first appearance occurs prior to the visit to the 37 ‘The psychiatrists had also exercised their talents, with electro-​shocks, it wasn’t without consequences.’

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chateau, when she appears in a dreamlike sequence. A  high-​angle shot of François sleeping alongside Ève fades with an iris-​out to a black screen. The iris reopens to reveal the base of two large trees in the shadow of the forest and an abandoned house in the background. Dressed in medieval costumes, François and Ève walk into shot with their backs to the frame. They pass through the shadow of the trees and then dappled light before entering the house. The couple are shown in a high-​angle shot asleep on a bed of straw inside the house. A cut shows Carole, dressed in a long white robe, walking towards the window that looks onto where the couple sleep. Captured in a frontal shot, her body is positioned within the confines of a window frame so that she resembles a portrait come to life. She addresses the sleeping François, inviting him to come and join her: ‘François, quitte ce lieu, enfonce-​toi dans la forêt.’38 A close-​up of François waking from sleep fades to black through an iris-​out, before returning to the opening high-​angle shot of him lying in bed with Ève in his apartment. Carole appears to François on three further occasions, when the young man stares into a mirror in his apartment. On the first occasion, he is framed from behind putting a shirt on in front of the mirror. The light suddenly dims before Carole, dressed in the same white gown as in the sequence in the woods, begins to speak to him from inside the mirror: ‘Tu es mon amour blessé, tu t’ennuies dans cette vie.’39 Before disappearing, she tells him: ‘Je reviendrai. Je suis là, derrière le miroir, tu pourras toujours m’y retrouver.’40 On her second appearance, she confirms that she had been on her way to see François the night she was found dead in the street. When he asks her what she wants him to do, she replies: ‘Que tu viennes avec moi, que tu abandonnes ta vie faite de résignation.’41 The final apparition occurs on his wedding day, when François looks into the mirror and summons Carole by addressing her directly. When he asks her what she wants him to do, she tells him to come and join her quickly. As the apparition disappears, François exits the frame and the sound of a window opening can be heard off-​screen. The shot of the empty 38 ‘François, leave this place, thrust yourself into the forest.’ 39 ‘You are my wounded lover, you are fed up with this life.’ 40 ‘I will return. I’m here, behind this mirror, you can always find me here.’ 41 ‘That you come with me, that you abandon your life of resignation.’

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mirror cuts to a low-​angle shot of the opened apartment window, before returning to a shot of the mirror in which a demon-​like figure gradually appears. The image cuts back to a shot of the swinging window frame seen from inside the apartment before a final cut to a high-​angle shot reveals François’s lifeless body on the street below. The apparition of François’s former lover in the mirror draws on Gautier’s Spirite. In Gautier’s tale, a wealthy young aristocrat, Guy de Malivert, rejects the love of one of his entourage, a young widow named the comtesse d’Ymbercourt. Shortly after writing a letter of rupture, a beautiful young woman begins to appear to him in his living room in a Venetian mirror. Malivert falls in love with this young woman, whom he names Spirite. The following day, he spots her in the Bois de Boulogne but as he pursues her carriage, she is struck by an oncoming carriage and killed. Thereafter Spirite continues to appear to him in the mirror, a manifestation that becomes more frequent after he visits her tomb and discovers her real name. During these apparitions she recounts how she had loved him for some time but fate meant that they had never managed to meet. She explains that, having learned of his proposed marriage to the comtesse d’Ymbercourt, she decided to become a nun, unaware that Malivert had no interest in marrying the comtesse. Rather than inviting him to join her in the afterlife, she forbids him to take his own life, in contrast to Carole’s invitation in La Frontière de l’aube. Later when travelling in the mountains around Athens, Malivert is attacked and killed by bandits. His guide, Stavros, who managed to escape from the attackers, reported that Malivert’s face shone with celestial joy and that a beautiful woman appeared beside him, placing her hand of light upon his wound as though to calm his suffering. While Gautier’s Spirite is foundational to La Frontière de l’aube, Garrel’s refashioning of the tale delivers a more discomfiting work. The ghost of Carole manifests as a femme fatale, a jealous lover who covets François’s life and invokes his suicide. The visual treatment of François’s death eschews the suggestion of release, or a happy reunion with his former lover in the afterlife. François’s crumpled body is shown alone in an empty street with blood trickling from his head. Psychoanalytical interpretations of gothic fiction propose the relationship between ghostly hauntings and feelings of guilt. This mode of interpretation is acknowledged in the film itself when François visits a close friend after the second apparition of Carole.

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The friend explains that what he has witnessed are hallucinations generated by his guilt over Carole’s death, a guilt heightened by the pregnancy of his new lover and their imminent marriage. In a double-​edged comment, he tells François that he is tormented by ‘le bonheur, le bonheur bourgeois’.42 This notion of moving towards a position of comfort, bound up with the institutions of marriage and the family, takes up a subject explored in J’entends plus la guitare and La Naissance de l’amour. In La Frontière de l’aube, the inflection of a gothic sensibility enables an exploration of the link between material comfort and guilt. Garrel’s next film, Un Été brûlant, is less marked by the gothic allusions in the La Frontière de l’aube and Sauvage Innocence. Frédéric (Louis Garrel), a painter, lives with his partner Angèle (Monica Bellucci), a film star, in their chic residence in Rome. During the summer they are joined by Frédéric’s best friend Paul (Jérôme Robart) and his partner Elisabeth (Céline Sallette) when they come to visit. Paul and Elisabeth, bit-​part actors from modest backgrounds, meet on set during the shooting of a period film about the French Resistance, a work which forms one of two films within the film. Garrel’s recourse to two couples as a visual motif deploys a form first present in Marie pour mémoire (1967) and later used in J’entends plus la guitare. While tracing the burgeoning relationship between Paul and Elisabeth, the film provides a disturbing portrait of Frédéric and Angèle’s descent into violent jealousy and disillusionment. Described by Garrel as his attempt to make a B-​movie of Le Mépris, the film’s depiction of a couple’s gradual disintegration can be seen as analogous to the demise of the relationship between Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli) and his wife Camille (Brigitte Bardot) in Godard’s film. In addition to the strained dynamics between couples, the film addresses recurrent questions raised in Garrel’s cinema concerning the relationship between art and politics. Brief instances of a voice-​over are used in L’Enfant secret and Les Amants réguliers but in both cases the voice does not recount a story. Un Été brûlant is the first of Garrel’s works to deploy a narrative voice-​ over, albeit a minimalist one. The film opens with a shot of Frédéric standing outside a petrol station during the daytime, drinking from a hip flask. It cuts to a silent portrait of Angèle lying naked on a bed 42 ‘Happiness, bourgeois happines’.

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draped in an electric-​blue sheet, as though posing for a painter. On several occasions, she gestures with her hand in the direction of the camera, mouthing inaudible phrases as though in supplication. The image returns to Frédéric, this time by night, cutting between frontal shots of his face and point-​of-​view shots of the road. The sequence culminates in him accelerating and driving his car head-​on into a tree. A static shot of the car wreckage cuts to a black screen as a voice-​over from Paul explains: ‘Frédéric est mort. C’était mon meilleur ami. Frédéric était peintre’.43 The rest of the film focuses on the events preceding Frédéric’s suicide, including the summer that the two couples spent in Rome, the friendship between Frédéric and Paul and the tumultuous relationship between Frédéric and Angèle. The shot of Angèle in the prologue to the film calls to mind the opening of Le Mépris, where Brigitte Bardot, in the role of Camille, is filmed lying naked in bed. The sequence was famously incorporated at the behest of the American producers of the film, who wished to exploit Bardot’s status as a sex symbol. Garrel’s nod to one of the most famous sequences in film history is one of several allusions to Godard’s film. When Angèle separates from Frédéric, she leaves him for a young director who is making a film in Cinecittà. Following their separation, Frédéric travels to the studio in Rome hoping to see Angèle. In one of the few long-​shots deployed in the film, he is shown wandering alone amidst the ruins of an abandoned set. A  second shot taken from an even greater distance than the first, shows his diminutive figure drowned in the vastness of the desolate landscape, throwing a stone and walking across the sun-​bleached earth. The sequence recalls Godard’s treatment of Cinecittà, notably when Paul Javal wanders amidst the abandoned sets having allowed Camille to leave alone in a car with the film producer Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance). The dissolution of Frédéric and Angèle’s relationship is accelerated by the growing jealousy of the former. Frédéric’s attention becomes less focused on Angèle and is instead diverted by his suspicion towards potential rivals for her love. During a party hosted in the apartment, Angèle dances with another man. The skilfully choregraphed single-​shot sequence tracks the movements of Angèle, who is throughout positioned in the centre of the frame surrounded 43 ‘Frédéric is dead. He was my best friend. Frédéric was a painter.’

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by other party revellers. In the next shot, Frédéric addresses Angèle with laconic bitterness, telling her:  ‘t’étais bien, t’as bien fait la pute’.44 Following this exchange, Angèle is shown on the street outside the apartment with Elisabeth. As Louise attempts to assure her that Frédéric still loves her, Angèle replies: ‘Frédéric ne me voit même plus.’45 Mirroring the fatal flaw of François Mauge in Sauvage Innocence, Frédéric’s failing appears to be to have stopped looking at his lover. In an interview for the Cahiers du cinéma to coincide with the release of Un Été brûlant, Garrel describes his ambition of making ‘des films d’amour politiques’46 (Azalbert and Delorme 2011: 74). In this respect, in addition to the exploration of the complex dynamics between couples, Un Été brûlant reflects on the function of artistic creation and its relationship with political engagement. This exploration emerges in two sequences, both involving Paul and Frédéric. The first occurs near the beginning of the film when the two friends are shown walking near the Stalingrad Metro station in Paris, an area of the city used by refugees and the homeless for shelter. Paul and Frédéric are framed frontally in a long-​shot walking between large grey columns supporting the elevated Metro line. The camera tracks backwards, revealing several black men on the periphery of the frame. Suddenly, plain-​clothes and uniformed policemen run towards the men, pushing them to the ground before handcuffing them. As Paul and Frédéric exit to the front right of the frame, the former can be heard muttering to his friend, ‘quelle merde ce Sarko’,47 a reference to the then French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. The camera draws to a standstill, observing the other men being taken away. Despite the authentic location, the visual treatment of the sequence subtly toys with realist codes by privileging the apprehension of artifice. The usually sombrely lit area under the Metro line is brightly illuminated in a way that gives the impression of a set. As the camera draws to a standstill it exposes two large pillars, one on either side of the frame, that call to mind the perimeter of a theatrical stage. The image does not invite straightforward identification from the viewer by rousing indignation towards police brutality, or a state that targets 44 ‘You were good, you were good playing the whore.’ 45 ‘Frédéric no longer sees me.’ 46 ‘Political love films’. 47 ‘What a bastard this Sarko is.’

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people on the margins of society. Nor does the sequence provide a simple condemnation of the passivity of the two young men. The delicate vertical camera track expresses a harmony and virtuosity that undercuts the drama of the violence portrayed. The distance produced by the mise en scène leaves space for reflection on the causes of the repression witnessed, the relationship between the young men (artist and aspiring director respectively) and the day-​to-​day manifestations of political violence. This field of enquiry is extended in a single-​shot sequence that takes place on the rooftop terrace of Frédéric and Angèle’s apartment in Rome, a milieu that contrasts markedly with the previous working-​ class district of Paris. As the two men chat, Paul hands Frederic a copy of a tract entitled ‘L’Insurrection’, printed in the red and black colours of anarcho-​communism. Frederic leafs through the paper detachedly, as Paul explains how the prospect of revolution gives him something to cling on to in life. Responding to his friend, Frédéric expresses his satisfaction with the status quo. He sets the journal aside and tells Paul: ‘Pour moi il y a la peinture, il y a ma femme, et c’est à ça que je m’accroche –​à l’amour et puis à l’art.’48 As Frédéric takes up a handful of sketches in place of the newspaper, Paul persists: ‘Mais quand même, il y à la révolution. Je ne sais pas comment je le sais, mais je le sais. Sinon c’est la guerre, pas d’alternative, c’est évident.’49 The exchange draws into conflict a philosophy of collective militant struggle (Paul) and an individualist philosophy of l’art pour l’art, or art divorced from a utilitarian function (Frédéric). Garrel does not seek to resolve these contradictions in the course of the film by foregrounding the triumph of one perspective over the other. Instead, both positions are drawn into a dialectical relationship. Combined with the sequence in Paris, the exchange serves to provoke questions as to the efficacy of art and what relationship can be traced between art and political struggle. The positions articulated in the discussion between Paul and Frédéric touch on concepts that have marked Garrel’s life and his work from its inception. In a discussion between the film-​maker and Serge Daney reflecting on their experience of May 68, Daney 48 ‘For me, there is painting and there is my wife, that’s what I cling on to –​to love and then to art.’ 49 ‘But still, there is the revolution. I  don’t know how I  know it but I  do. Otherwise there’s war. No alternative, it’s obvious.’

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recalls Garrel’s absolute commitment to art within the context of a revolution: ‘Mais je me souviens de toi en 1968 et de la façon qui me paraissait très arrogante, de signifier que tu étais un artiste et que, de ce côté la, tu n’avais rien à prouver ou à racheter, alors que c’était si important pour les autres’50 (Jousse 1991: 58). Daney’s comment suggests a philosophy that Garrel has remained faithful to of an absolute commitment to art within the context of political struggle.

Parisian tales of love: La Jalousie (2013), L’Ombre des femmes (2015) The cycle of films referred to by Garrel as his Freudian trilogy has in common a treatment of the trials faced by couples, focusing on the workings of jealousy and betrayal. The director’s exploration of troubled sentimental lives alludes to the influence of poverty and material constraint. The city of Paris, often only obliquely depicted in Garrel’s cinema, emerges as a recognisable backdrop to the relationships depicted in all three works. The following section will look at the first two films of the trilogy, exploring the significance of the comparatively lighter tone that emerges in these works. Subsequent sections will look in greater detail at the third instalment, L’Amant d’un jour. In La Jalousie a young actor named Louis (Louis Garrel) leaves his wife Clothilde (Rebecca Convenant) for another woman. Louis’s new partner Claudia (Anna Mouglalis) in turn leaves him for another man, exposing the young actor to emotional torment mirroring that experienced by his ex-​wife. The notion of jealousy, addressed frontally by the film’s title, manifests in multiple ways that extend beyond a straightforward connection with dramaturgy. Set in a wintry, urban landscape, the film is reminiscent of La Naissance de l’amour. However, where the latter work is largely nocturnal, La Jalousie is for the most part diurnal. The black and white cinematography has a slightly green hue and faces are far the most part illuminated to provide a pale surface that contrasts with textured darker zones in 50 ‘But I  remember you in 1968 and your way  –​which to me appeared very arrogant –​of signifying that you were an artist and that in that respect you had nothing to prove or to owe to anyone, while this was so important for others.’

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the frame. La Jalousie also features a prominent role for a child, Louis and Clothilde’s daughter Charlotte (Olga Milshtein), whose performance is more naturalistic than the programmatic role of the son in La Naissance de l’amour. Despite the bleak wintry landscape, the film stands out by reason of its relatively optimistic conclusion, suggesting a softening in the director’s approach. The notion of jealousy in the film is not simply associated with erotic desire but emerges in multiple ways, acting like a glue that binds the various protagonists. This aspect is observed by Nicholas Elliott, who notes: ‘Garrel dépasse de loin les schémas classiques de la circulation de la douleur amoureuse (le triangle par exemple) en s’assurant que la jalousie circule dans toutes les directions’51 (Elliott 2013: 28). In addition to suggesting the envy of Clothilde, abandoned by her husband, the film relays Claudia’s suffering. One sequence draws together the latter’s jealous desire with a sense of despair over her material conditions. Having been turned down for an acting job, she is shown in a medium-​shot embracing Louis in their cramped apartment. He suddenly looks at his watch and realises with panic that he is late for rehearsal. The shot cuts from the faces of the couple to a shot of their lower bodies, as Claudia attempts in vain to block his passage, intertwining her leg with his legs in an invitation for him to stay. Louis’s decision to leave, to prioritise his work over his lover’s desire, precipitates Claudia’s betrayal when she later seduces a man she meets randomly in a bar. The experience of jealousy extends to Louis’s child, suggested when she declares during a meal with her father and Claudia that the person her father loves most is his own father, who died when he was young. The appearance of the cityscape of Paris in the film is paradoxical. La Jalousie is the first work by Garrel in which Paris is foregrounded as a backdrop to the lives of the characters, albeit a largely suburban Paris removed from the iconic monuments and locations of the centre. Even in Les Amants réguliers, the city is for the most part veiled by the predominance of sequences in interior locations (most notably Antoine’s ‘kingdom without laws’) or the choice of an anonymous landscape filmed in a series of long-​shots to depict the pitched battles 51 ‘Garrel goes far beyond the classic schemas of the circulation of the pain of love (the triangle, for example) by assuring that jealousy circulates in every direction.’

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between police and demonstrators. Set in a Paris of the twenty-​first century, as indicated by a glimpse of a vélib (free bicycle) and election posters in the street, La Jalousie is simultaneously defined by an atemporality conjured by the emptiness and prevailing silence of the city. The sense of a city that at once belongs to a precise period and to no period at all may relate to the origins of the film, said by the director to have been inspired by a relationship that his father Maurice had with a woman as a young man. The temporal imprecision may also be related to the oneiric properties of the film. Louis Garrel’s role as a stage actor in the film is consistent with the occupation of his grandfather, who had a long career in the theatre in addition to the cinema. The theatre in which rehearsals take place is located in Boulogne-​Billancourt, a commune in the western suburbs of Paris where Philippe Garrel grew up. Nonetheless, the relation between the character of Louis and real-​life referents remains oblique, pertaining neither to figures from the past nor the present, but instead seeming to merge multiple generations of the Garrel family. This convergence manifests in a short dreamlike sequence in which the young actor receives a visitor when at the theatre. The sequence is composed of a shot-​reverse-​shot that opens with Louis asleep and seated in profile in front of a mirror in a dressing room. The high-​angle shot cuts to a low angle shot of an older woman entering the dressing room, looking slightly embarrassed. She explains that she had been in love with the young man’s father and would always love him. A cut returns to the high-​angle shot of Louis, this time leaning forward with his eyes open. During the sequence the young man never speaks and is never visible within the same frame as the woman, giving a dreamlike, phantomatic quality to the encounter. The oneiric properties permit the emergence of several possible referents for the character of Louis, including Louis Garrel himself (both Louis Garrel and Esther Garrel have eponymous acting roles), his grandfather or indeed his father as a younger man. The theme of suicide is prevalent in Garrel’s oeuvre. Un Ange passe concludes with Nico placing a revolver to her head and pulling the trigger. In the films Les Amants réguliers, La Frontière de l’aube and Un Été brûlant, Louis Garrel plays protagonists who commit suicide. In La Jalousie, the suicidal tendencies of Louis are suggested in a short sequence in a dressing room when he chats with two friends from

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his theatre troupe. As the three men change out of their costumes, he declares that if his partner were to leave him he would shoot himself. One of the friends replies: ‘Ah oui, notre jeune Werther’,52 alluding to Goethe’s epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774).53 The friend’s comment humorously acknowledges a Romantic sensibility evident in Garrel’s oeuvre. Nevertheless, the film’s conclusion represents an exception to what has previously been observed. In a single-​shot sequence filmed with a wide-​angle lens, Claudia is shown in the cramped apartment she shares with Louis, packing her bags and leaving him with callous abruptness. Later, a high-​angle close-​up shot shows a revolver on the kitchen table with the magazine half-​ inserted. Louis’s hands emerge into frame, picking up the gun and inserting the magazine. The shot of the empty doorway pans upwards as he walks through a doorway, places the gun to his chest and walks out of frame. With the camera remaining fixed on the doorway, a shot is heard off-​screen and the sound of a body falling to the floor. The image cuts immediately to a brief shot of Louis unconscious in a hospital bed being attended to by his sister. After a fade to black, the following shot shows Esther in close-​up, this time in conversation with her brother. The failed suicide represents a lighter shift in Garrel’s cinema, subtly toying with the expectations of an audience familiar with the director’s deployment of his son. This development implies a softening in Garrel’s approach, opening up to the idea of the possibility of recovery, of transcending the pain of separation and loss. L’Ombre des femmes, the second film in the trilogy, resonates with aspects explored in La Jalousie, including the functioning of jealousy, which once again manifests as an emotion that is in constant exchange. The film provides a study of betrayal within a couple alongside an exploration of mythomania concerning the broader historical narrative of the French Resistance period. These themes are circumscribed by allusions to poverty and class inequality. Pierre (Stanislas Merhar) and Manon (Clotilde Courau), a couple in their forties, are working together on a documentary about a former member of the Resistance. When visiting the audio-​visual archives of the French military at the Fort d’Ivry outside Paris, Pierre meets Elisabeth (Lena 52 ‘Ah yes, our young Werther.’ 53 The reference to Goethe may allude by extension to Jean-​ Pierre de Lajournade’s Werther (1968), a film that Philippe Garrel performed in alongside his brother Thierry, or to Jacques Doillon’s Le Jeune Werther (1992).

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Paugham), a PhD student in history, with whom he begins an affair. Pierre’s wife later mirrors Pierre’s infidelity when she begins a relationship with a younger man. The lighting and cinematography differ from La Jalousie on account of the predominance of portraits of faces cast in delicate shadow. The colours are warmer, almost sepia-​ toned, and less contrasted than in the previous film. Having first experimented with a voice-​over in Un Été brûlant, Garrel deploys a more developed version of this narrative device. The film opens with a sequence in which a landlord confronts Manon in her home. A three-​quarter-​angle shot shows her positioned to the right of the frame drying her hair in front of a mirror. A cut then shows the front door of the apartment from the inside, as the background noise of the hairdryer merges with the sound of a doorbell ringing. The doorbell rings a second time in quick succession before a key can be heard turning in the lock and a man walks in. The camera pans downwards and diagonally to the left, observing cooking utensils and a portable gas cylinder with a saucepan on top. A handheld tracking-​shot that follows the man as he walks through the apartment is intercut with the opening shot of Manon drying her hair, oblivious to his presence. Framed from behind, the landlord walks into the room, startling Manon as he declares: ‘Madame vous êtes tenue d’occuper le lieu bourgeoisement, c’est dans le contrat.’54 The ensuing conversation is relayed in a series of shot-​reverse-​shots. The landlord is framed against the light from a window, in a low-​ angle shot. Manon is filmed slightly from above so that she appears cornered and defenceless. In response to the landlord’s threat to take her to court if the rent is not paid within forty-​eight hours, she whispers ‘pauvre con’55 under her breath after the man has already turned his back to leave. The opening sequence is reminiscent of the gendarme’s visit to the home of François Dervieux in Les Amants réguliers, in which a palpable sense of tension and fear is evident. The gendarme evokes the authority of the state and the police. In L’Ombre des femmes, the intrusion of the landlord implies the precarious situation of Manon and her partner faced with the power of a rentier class. However, whereas questions concerning the role of the police and modes of 54 ‘You are required to occupy the place in a bourgeois fashion.’ 55 ‘Poor bastard’.

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liberation form a spine that runs through Les Amants réguliers, the issue of Manon and her partner’s vulnerability to eviction remains largely peripheral. Describing the intrusion of the landlord, Michel Frodon evokes the subtlety of Garrel’s approach with reference to the film’s title:  ‘La scène a jeté comme une ombre sur toute l’œuvre à venir, comme un peintre qui mettrait sans signification précise une tache noire dans un coin du tableau, et la tache affecterait tout ce qui est représenté’56 (Frodon 2015). Frodon’s comment draws attention to the complex patterning of the film, in spite of a simplicity implied by the incorporation of an explanatory voice-​over. In keeping with the other films of the trilogy, L’Ombre de femmes focuses on the complex and at times painful sentimental lives of its protagonists. The circulation of jealousy has its source primarily in Pierre, who provides a striking portrait of a narcissistic personality. The first to fall victim is Elisabeth, who is shown in one sequence hiding opposite the apartment building where Pierre lives with his wife. There she witnesses the married couple being dropped off by a friend in a car, an image of an official, public bond that she will never enjoy with Pierre. Manon equally suffers, becoming a victim of her husband’s silence and growing indifference as he pursues his affair with Elisabeth. Pierre’s self-​centredness is addressed directly by a sequence showing him visiting Elisabeth in her small apartment. Comparing Pierre’s erotic desire for Elisabeth to his more familiar love for Manon, the voice-​over relays: ‘Il se justifiait avec cette double morale qui est celle des hommes, il se disait: “C’est comme ça parce que c’est comme ça. Je suis un homme et ce n’est pas de ma faute si je suis un homme”.’57 Despite Pierre’s apparent abdication of guilt or responsibility for his behaviour, he does not remain immune to the suffering he causes others. When he discovers that Manon has begun a relationship with another man, he is driven to an obsessive jealousy that endures even after his wife ends the affair, ultimately leading to the couple’s separation. Beyond the opening of the film, several other sequences allude to the precarious financial circumstances of the film’s principal 56 ‘The scene casts a shadow over the entire rest of the film, as though a painter had placed a black mark in the corner of a painting, without any precise meaning, and the mark had affected everything that is represented.’ 57 ‘He justified himself with the double logic particular to men, which is “it’s like that because it’s like that. I’m a man and it’s not my fault if I’m a man”.’

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protagonists. A  sequence from near the beginning neatly draws together themes of love, betrayal and material constraint. Manon is shown in a long-​shot, standing to the right of the frame pleading with Pierre to join her for a night out. Pierre, lying languidly on a couch to the left of the frame, refuses. He justifies his decision by explaining that his absence will mean that one of their friends will pay for her meal, to which Manon responds by angrily walking away. Pierre’s decision suggests a material basis for the strain on his relationship with Manon. This notion, however, is turned on its head directly after Manon’s exit. A straight cut shows Pierre standing in a corridor with Elisabeth, outside her apartment, in prelude to their first sexual encounter. The noble resignation of Pierre’s decision to let his wife go out alone is abruptly recast as a cynical act to facilitate his personal pleasure. The dialogue between Pierre and Elizabeth after they make love for the first time equally merges issues of class, love and betrayal. The couple are filmed in a high-​angle shot, lying in bed in Elisabeth’s tiny apartment. Elizabeth describes her family’s working-​class background and a father who ‘est devenu bourgeois’.58 Her description of her father’s altered social standing implies a certain duplicity on his part in abandoning his working-​class roots. When Pierre rises and moves out of the frame to use the toilet, the camera remains fixed on her while she asks rhetorically: ‘Tu crois que c’est quoi le pire, pisser là où on se douche, ou se doucher là où on pisse?’59 Pierre’s reply (‘Se doucher là où on pisse’60) is comically direct. As with the preceding sequence, Garrel appears to apply a delicate brushstroke to a canvas in order to raise questions concerning inequality without focusing overtly on the notion of class struggle. The treatment of the figure of the former résistant, whom Pierre and Manon are shown meeting on two occasions for their film, adds a further level of complexity to the theme of betrayal in L’Ombre des femmes. In their first encounter with Henri (Jean Pommier), Pierre and Manon are shown seated around a large table with the former résistant and his wife (Thérèse Quentin). The man’s testimony about his experience of occupation and his joining a communist Resistance 58 ‘Became bourgeois’. 59 ‘What do you think is worse, pissing where you shower or showering where you piss?’ 60 ‘Shower where you piss.’

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network in 1942 alludes to a struggle for national liberation and a collectivist egalitarian struggle. His speech, however, is peppered with interruptions by his wife, who tries to offer biscuits to the guests. The conflict between the wife’s interventions and the gravitas of the man’s testimony humorously suggest the pathological desire of an older generation to silence the traumatic memories of war. Henri’s story of resistance is, however, turned on its head in a sequence that draws the film to a comedic and blackly humorous conclusion. Accompanied by shots showing the inside of a church and Pierre walking up the steps outside, the voice-​over explains: ‘Un ans plus tard le vieux résistant mourut et Pierre et Manon se revoit à l’enterrement de Henri.’61 A three-​quarter frontal shot shows Pierre and Manon in each other’s company for the first time since their separation. Standing at the back of the church, they are both framed looking off-​screen to the right. As they discuss their lives since splitting up, Manon draws a comparison between the folly of their rupture and the stupidity of the résistant. When Pierre asks what she’s referring to, Manon explains: ‘C’était un faux résistant. Tu n’étais pas au courant? … Toute sa vie, toutes ses médailles c’était du vide. En fait il a trahi, il a donné les noms de ses copains qui ont été fusillés.’62 The concluding shot observes the couple walking along a tree-​lined street, their faces in delicate shadow. As they stop to chat, framed in a medium-​shot, they confess to each other the pain of being apart before they swiftly decide to end their separation. Still framed in the shadow of the overhanging trees, they take each other in their arms and embrace in a joyous scene of reconciliation. The prevalence of dark humour and levity in L’Ombre des femmes reinforces the sense of a shift within Garrel’s work, first suggested by the failed suicide attempt in La Jalousie. The evolution may in part be owed to Garrel’s deployment of the scriptwriter Jean-​Claude Carrière, famous for his writing roles with Luis Buñuel for Belle de jour (1969), Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie (1972), That Obscure Object of Desire (1977), and with Louis Malle for Milou en mai (1990). The latter work proposes a comically irreverent account of May 68 that strikes a 61 ‘One year later, the old résistant died and Pierre and Manon met each other again at the funeral.’ 62 ‘He was a fake resistant. Did you not know? … His whole life, all his medals, it was lies. He was a traitor, he denounced his friends and they were executed.’

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contrast with the solemnity of Les Amants réguliers. Garrel cites the role of Carrière in relation to the twist at the conclusion to L’Ombre des femmes:  ‘Carrière me pousse à ne pas être bien pensant … il a eu l’idée de faire du résistant un faux résistant. Il m’a écouté et il a dit: “Et en fait il a trahi, et on le sait à la fin!” ’63 (Delorme 2017: 17). The comical irreverence of the film’s ending, resolving one act of amorous betrayal by exposing an act of national betrayal, contributes to an overriding sense of ambiguity in the film.

Art, pornography and betrayal: L’Amant d’un jour (2017) The final film in Garrel’s ‘Freudian trilogy’, L’Amant d’un jour, focuses on the relationship between three principal protagonists: a father, his younger lover and his daughter. Gilles (Éric Caravaca), a philosophy professor, begins a relationship with Ariane (Louise Chevillotte), who is one of his students. After separating from her boyfriend, Gilles’s daughter Jeanne (Esther Garrel) moves into her father’s home, living alongside him and his new partner. The dominant themes of jealousy and betrayal in La Jalousie and L’Ombre des femmes are similarly addressed in this film. Nevertheless, where L’Ombre des femmes explores the male libido, L’Amant d’un jour addresses the female libido through the portrayal of Ariane’s unashamed sexual desire. The choice of Caravaca to play the part of the father represents a return by Garrel to portraying characters closer to his own generation, having focused on younger generations since Xavier Beauvois’s appearance in Le Vent de la nuit (1999). The portrayal of the trio of the father, his lover and his daughter reveals echoes with La Maman et la putain, underpinning the esteem for Jean Eustache held by Garrel, something previously discussed in Chapter 3. The opening sequence of L’Amant d’un jour shows Ariane and Gilles meeting clandestinely to have sex in the university toilets. A medium-​ shot from outside the toilets shows the couple entering and pulling the door behind them. Rather than the sequence concluding with this shot of the outside of the toilet door, a cut makes way for a close-​up of the 63 ‘Carrière pushes me not to be too politically correct … he had the idea of making the résistant a fake résistant. He listened to me and he said: “And in reality he betrayed, and we find out at the end!” ’

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lovers inside. Ariane’s face is dominant, positioned to the right of the frame at a three-​quarter angle, as she is shown climaxing vocally. Prior to L’Amant d’un jour, Garrel’s cinema is typically defined by a suspicion towards the depiction of sex and nudity. A sequence in Anémone (1967) showing the young couple parodically performing the rituals of seduction provides a provocative critique of the transformation of sex into a voyeuristic spectacle. To take a more recent example, two sequences in L’Ombre des femmes, connected by the use of a window frame, underpin Garrel’s tendency to evade an explicit portrayal of sex. The first sexual encounter between Pierre and Elisabeth in L’Ombre des femmes is not shown directly. A frontal shot shows the couple sitting on the edge of the bed embracing, before the camera pans away to the left and comes to a halt on a window frame. Later in the film, Manon is haunted in her apartment at night by the sound of protracted cries of pleasure rippling in through her bedroom window. Framed slightly from behind looking out the window into the dark, Manon waits for the woman’s cries to fade before turning away and getting back into bed alone. The sequence confirms the virtual invisibility of sex in Garrel’s cinema, spliced between cuts or situated away from the camera’s gaze. A possible influence on Garrel’s decision to alter his approach is suggested in a radio discussion between him and the film-​maker Arnaud Desplechin. Desplechin describes how after watching L’Ombre des femmes, he concluded that Garrel needed to confront the question of the nude. Desplechin later communicated this reflection to the director though his son Louis: ‘Je m’étais permis de dire à Louis Garrel qu’il me semblait sérieux pour un peintre de se poser la question de la nudité’64 (Serrell and Quenehen 2017). Garrel’s altered stance regarding the depiction of sex and the female body does not, however, appear as a straightforward capitulation from his previous modesty. In a sequence midway through L’Amant d’un jour, Jeanne stumbles upon a pornographic magazine at a newspaper kiosk with an image of Ariane naked on the front. A close-​up of the cover reveals the text: ‘Son portrait, ses photos, son premier film’,65 and a speech bubble reading ‘J’ai rien caché.’66 The shot draws attention to Louise Chevillotte’s role as Ariane, the actor’s first film role and a 64 ‘I took the opportunity to say to Louis Garrel that it seemed to me serious for a painter to confront the question of nudity.’ 65 ‘Her portrait, her photos, her first film.’ 66 ‘I hid nothing.’

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part that implicates both scenes of nudity and the depicition of overt sexual desire. The incorporation of the magazine cover provides an autocritical reflection on the dangers of the commodification of the female body in the cinema. Garrel’s longstanding anxiety about the use of the female body in a gratuitous spectacle is incorporated in an inquisitive, dialectical relationship with the explicit depiction of female sexuality in L’Amant d’un jour. Desplechin’s description of Garrel as a painter corresponds to the latter’s conception of his approach to filming bodies and faces in the film. Garrel qualifies the term painter by clarifying that he paints when working in colour but draws when working in black and white. Describing the discussion with his cinematographer Renato Berto for the filming of L’Amant d’un jour, he notes: ‘Je lui ai demandé plutôt un dessin au 2B, c’est à dire un crayon gras, qui se rapproche du fusain. Le trait n’est pas très précis, un peu épais. Quand je tourne, je suis complètement dans le dessin et la peinture’67 (Delorme 2017: 15–​ 16). Despite this description, the film incorporates imagery that is remarkably clear and light. This is the case, for example, in several shots of Ariane and Jeanne when the young women meet for the first time. The close-​up shots of their faces reveal precise lines, illuminated by natural light from a window. Garrel explains the clarity of the image in many of the close-​ups through the use of a lens with a focal length of 120mm, allowing proximity to the subject while providing depth to the image. During a night-​time stroll, towards the beginning of the film, Jeanne asks her father:  ‘Selon toi, c’est quoi la fidélité?’68 Framed walking alongside his daughter in a lateral tracking-​ shot, Gilles confides: ‘Je ne sais pas à quoi je suis fidèle, ni à qui.’69 The short sequence introduces a central theme explored in the film, namely the nature of fidelity and betrayal, whether in relation to a lover, a family member, a nation or to an idea. In the course of the film jealousy emerges as an emotion intimately bound to the notion of fidelity. The first suggestion of this is evident in a sequence immediately following the clandestine encounter between Ariane and Gilles, when Jeanne, 67 ‘I asked him instead for a drawing in 2B, meaning a fleshy pencil almost like charcoal. The lines are not too precise, a little thick. When filming, I’m entirely absorbed in drawing and painting.’ 68 ‘In your opinion, what is fidelity?’ 69 ‘I don’t know what I’m faithful to, nor to whom.’

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distraught after splitting up with her boyfriend, visits her father’s home in the middle of the night. Jeanne’s discussion with her father is filmed in a three-​minute sequence-​shot. The shot is interrupted once by a brief shot-​reverse-​shot that generates a sudden shift in the tone and direction of the exchange. Jeanne begins recounting the story of her rupture while Gilles listens attentively, makes her herbal tea and tries to console her. After two minutes, a three-​second insert, matching Jeanne’s eye line, reveals a close-​up shot of a handbag and make-​up bag on the kitchen table. Jeanne turns to her father asking ‘Il y a quelqu’un?’70 When her father indicates that he has somebody else with him, she then asks: ‘Elle va partir?’,71 to which he replies in the negative. Undercutting the poignancy of the opening of the sequence, the naïveté of Jeanne’s reaction humorously conveys the daughter’s abrupt realisation that her father’s love and attention are not reserved exclusively for her. The suggestion of Jeanne’s jealousy when she discovers that her father is in a relationship is mirrored later in a sequence featuring Ariane. Shortly after Jeanne moves in with her father and Ariane, Gilles returns home from work one day and finds the two women preparing dinner in the kitchen. A long, static shot shows Gilles moving towards the right of the frame to embrace his daughter before walking to the left of the frame in the direction of Ariane. Upset by Gilles’s preferential treatment of his daughter, Ariane refuses his kiss and walks off-​screen. Gilles is equally tormented by the fear of no longer being the object of Ariane’s affection, an anxiety first alluded to by a voice-​over extract that accompanies a shot of the couple chatting in bed together: ‘Comme il avait peur de la perdre, Gilles disait à Ariane que malgré toutes les infidélités qu’ils pourraient commettre l’un et l’autre, ils resteraient ensemble.’72 The hollowness of Gilles’s promise is laid bare following a night out in a restaurant with some of his students, during which one of the group flirts with Ariane. When the couple return to the apartment, Gilles is consumed by inconsolable jealousy. Framed frontally and with Ariane standing to his left, he is unable to look his lover in the eyes as she seeks to assuage his 70 ‘Is somebody here?’ 71 ‘Is she going to leave?’ 72 ‘Because he was afraid of losing her, Gilles told Ariane that despite all the infidelities that each of them might commit, they would stay together.’

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fear. This reneging on a previous commitment towards tolerance and trust constitutes a form of betrayal on his part. In addition to the notion of fidelity within a couple, the film touches on the question of political affiliation and the notion of loyalty to a nation or to a political ideology. This subject emerges during a discussion about the Algerian War that takes place between Gilles and his students in the restaurant. One of the students describes how his father’s family, who were pied-​noirs, were intimidated into leaving Algeria when the conflict broke out. Gilles responds by defending the moral necessity of aligning with ‘l’ennemi’,73 the Algerians that fought against French colonial rule for independence. The discussion provokes the intervention of the restaurant owner, a French veteran of the Algerian War, who addresses the seated diners in a low-​angle shot. Despite expressing sympathy with the Algerian cause and accepting that France should never have been in Algeria in the first place, he declares: ‘Jamais, je n’aurais pu trahir mon pays.’74 His statement presents an ironic inversion of the position put forward by Gilles.

Ariane–​Veronika: Garrel–​Eustache In an interview with Cahiers du cinéma to coincide with the release of L’Amant d’un jour, Garrel discusses his role as a teacher at France’s national theatre academy, referring to some of the texts he uses with students. In addition to the screenplay for Maurice Pialat’s À Nos amours (1983), co-​written by Pialat and Garrel’s screenwriting collaborator Arlette Langman, Garrel describes the fundamental role of the screenplay of La Maman et la putain as a teaching manual by stating ‘c’est comme les Stanislavski pour l’Actors Studio’75 (Delorme 2017: 14). Garrel’s strong familiarity with the latter text may in part explain the resonance between L’Amant d’un jour and aspects of Eustache’s film. The first hint of the relationship between the works is evident in a sequence that takes place shortly after Ariane’s jealous outburst, when Gilles and his daughter return to the apartment 73 ‘Enemy’. 74 ‘Never could I have betrayed my country.’ 75 ‘It’s like the works of Stanislavski for the Actors Studio.’

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following their night-​time stroll. The sequence opens with a longshot of Ariane sitting at the kitchen table, panning to the left to observe her rushing to the door to embrace Gilles. The camera pans to the right to observe the three protagonists as they move into the kitchen, adopting the same framing as the opening shot. Ariane wipes her eyes as she sits down at the kitchen table and then sips a glass of wine before apologising to them. The image cuts to a close-​up of her face as she declares:  ‘Je vous aime.’76 Her words recall Veronika’s address to Alexandre and Marie in La Maman et la putain when she proclaims her love for the couple during a long monologue filmed in close-​up: ‘Que je vous aime. Regardez, je commence à être saoule et je bégaie et c’est absolument horrible, parce que ce que je dis je le pense réellement.’77 Veronika’s love transcends any jealousy for the existing bond between Alexandre and Marie in the same way as Ariane’s declaration transcends her initial envy for the relationship between the father and daughter. Ariane recalls both the figures of the mother and whore referred to in the title of La Maman et la putain, loosely incarnated by Veronika and Marie. In Eustache’s film, these figures are not conceived of as clearly defined types but are instead suggestive both of maternal desire and a sexuality opposed to conservative sexual mores. Marie is the maternal lover who takes care of Alexandre, supporting him financially and indulging his egocentrism. Veronika incarnates the whore, who challenges the very use of the term to designate women who express their sexual desire freely, claiming in the same monologue where she confesses her love for Alexandre and Marie: ‘Pour moi il n’ y a pas de putes. Pour moi une fille qui se fait baiser par n’importe qui, qui se fait baiser n’importe comment, n’est pas une pute. Pour moi il n’y a pas de putes, c’est tout.’78 Ariane’s maternal love manifests in her devotion to Jeanne, watching over her friend generously and helping her convalesce after the painful rupture with her partner. She also embodies the figure of the whore, sleeping with other men without hesitation while in a relationship with Gilles.

76 ‘I love you both.’ 77 ‘How I love you both. Look, I’m starting to get drunk and I’m stammering and it’s absolutely horrible because I really mean what I’m saying.’ 78 ‘For me there are no whores. For me a girl who fucks any old person in any old way, is not a whore. For me there are no whores, that’s all.’

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The subtle integration of Ariane’s dispositions of mother and whore is captured during a sequence where she visits the home of Jeanne’s ex-​partner, Matéo, in order to pick up Jeanne’s belongings. Ariane’s address fluctuates between flirtatiousness and a protective didacticism. The sequence is filmed in a shot-​reverse-​shot, cutting between a close-​up of Ariane’s face and a medium-​shot of Matéo reclining on a bed. The close-​up reveals Ariane’s face breaking into a coy smile as she begins by telling him, ‘On peut se tutoyer.’79 Shortly afterwards she reproves his behaviour, warning:  ‘Il ne faut jamais dire à une femme de partir car après elle le fera.’80 Afterwards, she asks him if he is with someone else, promising not tell Jeanne, evoking a complicity that is once again suggestive of seduction.

Deux femmes Despite the ambiguity of Ariane’s encounter with Jeanne’s ex-​boyfriend, L’Amant d’un jour stands out in Garrel’s oeuvre as a rare portrait of the friendship between two women. The proximity between Ariane and Jeanne emerges through various narrative parallels in the course of the film as well as in visual compositions that associate them. The two young women are bound by pacts they make with one another. The first occurs when Jeanne agrees not to say anything to her father after discovering the photo of Ariane on the cover of the pornographic magazine. Later, Ariane reciprocates Jeanne’s vow of secrecy by promising not to tell Gilles about Jeanne’s suicide attempt. Visual parallels between the two women are recurrent in the film. Jeanne’s nocturnal walk with her father is replicated in a daytime stroll taken by Gilles and Ariane, also filmed in a lateral tracking-​shot. A sequence showing the women out together one night alternates evenly between shots of them dancing with different partners, including a shot of each of them being lifted into the air. The dramatic apogee of the film, which depicts the rupture in the relationship between the trio, places Jeanne and Ariane at opposite ends of the kitchen at equal distances from Gilles, who is standing in between then. With Gilles the only constant figure in the frame, the camera pans from right to left and back again, reinforcing the symmetrical positioning of the two women. 79 ‘We can address each other informally.’ 80 ‘You should never tell a woman to leave because later she will do it.’

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The closest precedent to the depiction of Ariane and Jeanne can be found in Garrel’s underground film Le Bleu des origines. The silent work, filmed with a wind-​up camera, alternates between static portraits of Nico and Zouzou in interior and exterior spaces, in addition to several shots showing the two women together in the same frame. The sequences incorporating both women include a frontal shot of them looking through a photographic album together and another shot of them smoking and chatting at a table in front of a café. These sequences suggest an intimacy and complicity between the female figures that is equally evoked in the multiple sequences placing Ariane and Jeanne in the same frame. Garrel makes two brief appearances in Le Bleu des origines, visible in a mirror reflection turning the handle of the wind-​up camera and, in an overhead shot, seated at a table looking at strips of film through a magnifying glass. The sensuous delicacy of the intimate portraits of Nico and Zouzou form a material source for the figurative study of Ariane and Jeanne. Garrel’s presence can also be seen as a precursor to the role of Gilles in L’Amant d’un jour. Beyond the formal parallels between Le Bleu des origines and L’Amant d’un jour, the narrative properties of the latter reveal a marked difference with its underground precursor. The use of an omniscient voice-​over text plays a significant role in the narrative development of L’Amant d’un jour, in the same way as it does in L’Ombre des femmes. Its presence has a paradoxical function, at once opening up new semantic and affective possibilities, including establishing suspense, while at the same time eliding some of the indeterminacy and uncertainty of meaning that marked Garrel’s cinema previously. These divergent tendencies are evident in the penultimate sequence of the film that takes place after Ariane has left. Gilles is shown meeting his daughter on his way home from work when he spots her inside a clothing boutique. In a close-​up showing the father and daughter reflected in a mirror, Gilles offers to pay for the jacket she is trying on. As he walks away, the camera pans to the left to observe him turn and smile at his daughter saying:  ‘Tu vas mieux toi, on dirait.’81 Jeanne replies with comical directness, ‘Mais pourquoi, j’étais malade?’82 The voice-​over comments:  ‘Avant de se séparer, Ariane avait dit à Gilles que Jeanne avait tenté de se jeter par 81 ‘You seem to be doing better.’ 82 ‘Why? Was I sick?’

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la fenêtre.’83 The explanation provided serves to underpin the extent of Ariane’s maternal affection for her friend, a sentiment that extends beyond her personal difficulties with Gilles. Nevertheless, having made explicit the source of Gilles’s insight, the voice-​over removes the need for the viewer’s speculation. This example is symptomatic of the use of voice-​over in the film, serving to interpolate the image and add a new semantic layer that guides the viewer’s interpretation of the dramaturgy. It contrasts with a greater freedom of interpretation and instability of meaning present in many of Garrel’s previous films, where the viewer is invited to guess at explanations for events because of a more minimalist narrative scaffolding. The final sequence, nonetheless, is both illustrative of the use of voice-​over to generate suspense and testament to the intelligence of the film’s construction. A night-​time shot of Gilles walking along the street is accompanied by the following voice-over commentary: ‘Trois mois plus tard, le soir de son anniversaire, Jeanne demanda à son père de la rejoindre dans un restaurant où elle voulait dîner avec lui.’84 The next shot shows Gilles seated alone leafing through a menu at a table set for three, inviting the question as to who the third guest will be. Gilles’s surprise at seeing his daughter arrive with her ex-​boyfriend is simultaneous for the viewer. The voice-​over in this instance creates the thrill of anticipation based on the shared ignorance of Gilles and the spectator. The conclusion to the sequence combines tragedy and comedy, reflecting the richness of the plotting and the multitudinous symmetries and inversions in the film. The final shot shows the three diners taking leave of one another. A frontal shot of the restaurant shows first Gilles, then Jeanne and Matéo exiting onto the street. Gilles embraces Matéo awkwardly before turning to embrace his daughter. He then walks off alone to the right of the frame while the camera pans to the left to observe Jean and Matéo walking together in the opposite direction. After a few steps, the couple come to a stop and kiss each other tenderly. The camera frames their embrace for several seconds before the end of the film is marked by a rapid fade to black. Gilles, who at the beginning enjoyed 83 ‘Before separating, Ariane had told Gilles that Jeanne had attempted to throw herself out the window.’ 84 ‘Three months later, on the night of her birthday, Jeanne asked her father to meet her in a restaurant because she wanted to dine with him.’

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the love and affection of both his daughter and his lover, is shown at the film’s conclusion bereft of both. Jeanne, heartbroken and alone at the beginning of the film, emerges happily reconciled with her former lover.

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References Aumont, Jacques, Jean-​Louis Comolli, Jean Narboni and Sylvie Pierre (1977) ‘Time Overflowing:  Interview with Jacques Rivette’, Cahiers du cinéma, 204, pp.  6–​ 21, repr. in Jonathan Rosenbaum (ed.), Rivette:  Texts and Interviews, London: BFI (1977), pp. 9–​38. Azalbert, Nicholas and Stéphane Delorme (2011) ‘Mon but c’est de faire des films d’amour politiques. Entretien avec Philippe Garrel’, Cahiers du cinéma, 671, pp. 69–​77. Boully, Fabien (2004) ‘ “Entre deux personnes”: esthétique de la co-​présence dans la quatrième période du cinéma de Philippe Garrel’, PhD dissertation, Université Lumière, Lyon. Burdeau, Emmanuel and Stéphane Delorme (2005) ‘L’art et mai 68. Entretien avec Philippe Garrel sur Les amants réguliers’, Cahiers du Cinéma, 606, pp.  74–​76. Deleuze, Gilles (2005) Cinema II:  The Time Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta, London: Continuum. Delorme, Stéphane (2005) ‘Les justes: 68 et après’, Cahiers du cinéma, 605, pp.  12–​15. Delorme, Stéphane (2017) ‘Une trilogie freudienne. Entretien avec Philippe Garrel’, Cahiers du cinéma, 773, pp. 12–​18. Elliott, Nicholas (2013) ‘L’Amour:  La Jalousie de Philippe Garrel’, Cahiers du cinéma, 695, pp. 28–​30. Frodon, Michel (2015) ‘L’Ombre des femmes: filmer comme on respire’, Slate, 14 May. www.slate.fr/​story/​101559/​cannes-​l’ombre-​des-​femmes-​filmer-​ respire (accessed 10 August 2019). Garrel, Philippe and Thomas Lescure (1992) Une caméra à la place du cœur, Aix-​en-​Provence: Admiranda/​Institut de l’Image. Grand, Gilles (2006) ‘Les barricades en sourdine’, Cahiers du cinéma, 613, pp.  76–​77. Grissemann, Stefan (2006) ‘History is the Enemy of Art:  Interview with Philippe Garrel on Les Amants réguliers’, Cinemascope, 25, p. 29. Jousse, Thierry (1991) ‘Le cinéma au présent. Philippe Garrel, Serge Daney: Dialogues’, Cahiers du cinéma, 443–​444, pp. 58–​63. Jousse, Thierry (2001) ‘Fatale attraction’, Cahiers du cinéma, 563, pp. 20–​21. Leonard, Michael (2011) ‘Cinema/​ History:  Philippe Garrel, Bernardo Bertolucci and May 1968’, Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, 1. www.alphavillejournal.com/​Issue%201/​ArticleLeonard.html (accessed 14 October 2018).

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Marie, Michel (1997) La Nouvelle Vague. Une école artistique, Paris:  Éditions Nathan. Morain, Jean-​Baptiste (2008) ‘La Frontière de l’aube’, Les Inrockuptibles (8 October). www.lesinrocks.com/​cinema/​films-​a-​l-​affiche/​la-​frontiere-​de-​ laube (accessed 14 October 2018). Neupert, Richard (2007) A History of the French New Wave, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Neyrat, Cyril (2005) ‘De l’iconique à l’ironique’, Cahiers du cinéma, 605, pp.  16–​18. Rancière, Jacques (2010) Dissensus:  On Politics and Aesthetics. London: Continuum. Richards, David (1981) Played Out: The Jean Seberg Story, New York: Random House. Ross, Kristin (2002) May ’68 and its Afterlives, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ross, Kristin (2008) ‘Managing the Present: Looking Back on ’68’, Radical Philosophy, 149. www.radicalphilosophy.com/​commentary/​managing-​the-​ present (accessed 14 October 2018) Serrell, Mathilde and Martin Quenehen (2017) ‘Philippe Garrel et Arnaud Desplechin:  noirs désirs’, France Culture (26 May 2017). www.franceculture.fr/​emissions/​ping-​pong/​philippe-​garrel-​et-​arnaud-​desplechin-​noirs-​ desirs (accessed 14 October 2018). Wollen, Peter (1993) Raiding the Icebox:  Reflections on Twentieth-​ Century Culture, London: Verso.

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Conclusion

At the time of writing, Garrel has recently turned seventy and is currently working on his twenty-seventh feature film, Le Sel des larmes, due to be released in 2020. In a career spanning over half a century, Garrel has in some respects come full circle. Having gradually distinguished himself from the New Wave as a young director by moving towards an experimental, underground cinema, the trilogy of La Jalousie, L’Ombre des femmes and L’Amant d’un jour displays continuities with the early films of Truffaut, Godard, Rivette, Rohmer and Malle. Set in Paris, shot in black and white and adopting a narrative voice-​over (in the case of the latter two works), the films hark back to the apogee of French film-​making, the late 1950s and early 1960s. Garrel’s career trajectory provides an interesting point of comparison with that of his friend Chantal Akerman, who committed suicide in 2015. Following an underground period in the 1970s, Akerman, like Garrel, entered a more mainstream phase, making larger-​budget works such as Golden Eighties (1986) and Un Divan à New York (1996). Akerman continued, however, to integrate these more mainstream productions with smaller, experimental works. The latter stages of her career were dominated by the creation of personal, essayistic films, including her last film, No Home Movie (2015), which provides an intimate portrait both of the film-​maker and her elderly mother. Following a high point of experimentation in Elle a passé tant d’heures (1984), a film that was poorly received by the public and ignored by many critics, Garrel’s cinema has been marked by greater uniformity and his films have performed more consistently in relation to the box office. A retrospective of Garrel’s work that took place at the Museum

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218  Philippe Garrel

of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul between November 2015 and February 2016 is indicative of Garrel’s growing international reputation. The implications of the shifts that have occurred within Garrel’s career since the late 1980s, both aesthetically and in terms of the climate of production and exhibition, are confronted within the works themselves. A noteworthy example of this emerges in the conversation between Gérard and his painter friend Martin in J’entends plus la guitare, evoking the problems that even modest material comfort can pose to one’s creative integrity. The relationship between Garrel’s cinema and that of Jean Eustache provides another revelatory point of comparison. Following the commercial failure of his fifth feature film, Mes petites amoureuses (1974), Eustache made only five further works, most of which were short film-​essays. Nevertheless, Eustache has had a significant impact on the formal traits and thematic preoccupations that have manifested across Garrel’s oeuvre. Having first interviewed the film-​maker for the television documentary Godard et ses émules (1967), Garrel’s post-​ underground cinema can be considered as an extended homage to the life and work of Eustache. The roles incarnated by Jean-​Pierre Léaud in Rue Fontaine and La Naissance de l’amour, resembling the character of Marcus in La Maman et la putain (1974), anticipate a subtle reworking of elements of the latter work in L’Amant d’un jour (2017). The homage to Eustache connects directly with Garrel’s genetic labour in Les Ministères de l’art, where he traces a school of film-​makers that followed the New Wave by proposing Eustache as a centrifugal force. Garrel’s cinema has gone some way to rehabilitating the memory of Eustache, while at the same time underscoring his own attachment to a cinema that closely integrates fiction and autobiography in a form that can be freely interpreted by an uninitiated audience. This development constitutes an evolution from the hermetic studies of Garrel’s underground period, influenced by a Warholian approach to personal chronicle through the use of portraiture. Since the release of L’Enfant secret (1979), Garrel’s recourse to a cinema that is at once deeply intimate and simultaneously directed towards a wider audience is evident notably through the elegy provided to his father in Un Été brûlant. Two cameo appearances from Maurice Garrel (in the form of a short sequence filmed with Louis Garrel and a close-​up of a framed photograph) operate at once within a fictional structure and

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within the framework of a personal testimony to the director’s father and long-​time collaborator. An aspect that sets Garrel apart is his recourse to dreams as a compositional source and the unique oneiric quality of films such as Elle a passé tant d’heures (1984), Les Baisers de secours (1989) or Les Amants réguliers (2005). The use of long-​durational portrait shots filmed in close-​up, fostered in particular during Garrel’s underground period but visible throughout his oeuvre, contribute to a style that is distinctly ‘Garrelian’. This approach to portraiture, combined with a romantic sensibility marked by the treatment of suicide and the exploration of the sentimental lives of couples, dominates in a cinema that traces the interpermeation of dreams, fiction and everyday life. Within this vast terrain the film-​maker has cultivated a subtle but concerted exploration of the relationship between art and politics, revisiting questions that have exercised him since a precocious film-​ making debut heavily influenced by May 68. In doing so Garrel has managed to elaborate an intimate cinema that remains accessible to a broad public, seeking to navigate questions surrounding love and loss, the sources of sentimental strife and the link between artistic engagement and political struggle.

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Filmography

Droit de visite (1966) 15 min., b/​w Production: Philippe Garrel Screenplay: Philippe Garrel Camera: André Weinfeld Editing: Philippe Garrel Cast: Maurice Garrel, Guillaume Laperrousaz, Françoise Reinberg Les Enfants désaccordés (1966) 15 min., b/​w Production: Maurice Garrel Screenplay: Philippe Garrel Camera: André Weinfeld Editing: Philippe Garrel Cast: Christiane Pérez, Pascal Laperrousaz, Maurice Garrel, Maurice Domerc, Jean-​Noël Roy Anémone (1967) 60 min., col. Production: ORTF Screenplay: Philippe Garrel Camera: Francisco Espresate Editing: Philippe Garrel Sound: Daniel Mostardi Cast: Anémone Bourguignon, Pascal Laperrousaz, Maurice Garrel, Philippe Garrel Broadcast: 1 January 1968 Conclusions (1967) 11 min., b/​w Production: ORTF Broadcast: 18 June 1967

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Du côté de chez Donovan (1967) 7 min., b/​w Production: ORTF Broadcast: 21 May 1967 Godard et ses émules (1967) 46 min., col. Production: ORTF Screenplay: Philippe Garrel Editing: Philippe Garrel Cast: Maurice Garrel, Guillaume Laperrousaz, Françoise Reinberg Broadcast: 22 October 1967 Handa et la sophistication (1967) 11 min., b/​w Production: ORTF Broadcast: 18 June 1967 Les Jeunes et l’argent: France Gall, Marianne Faithfull (1967) 1 min. + 7 min.,  b/​w Production: ORTF Direction: Phillipe Garrel, Guy Domoy Broadcast: 18 June 1967 Les Jeunes et l’argent: présentation (1967) 2 min., b/​w Production: ORTF Direction: Phillipe Garrel, Guy Domoy Broadcast: 18 June 1967 Le Living theatre (sic) (1967) 20 min., b/​w Production: ORTF Broadcast: date unknown Marie pour mémoire (1967) 80 min., b/​w Production: Philippe Garrel (with the support of Claude Berri and the Centre de la Recherche) Screenplay: Philippe Garrel Camera: Michel Fournier Editing: Philippe Garrel Sound: Jacques Dumas Music: Thierry Garrel Cast: Zouzou, Didier Léon, Nicole Laguigné, Thierry Garrel, Fiameta Ortega, Sylvaine Massart, Jacques Robiolles, André Bineau, Maurice Garrel

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Polnareff, Zouzou et les bonbons magiques (1967) 14 min., b/​w Production: ORTF Broadcast: 18 June 1967

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Ronnie et les mots (1967) 7 min., b/​w Production: ORTF Broadcast: 21 May 1967 Les Who enregistrent (1967) 5 min., b/​w Production: ORTF Broadcast: 21 May 1967 Actua 1 (1968) 6 min., b/​w Direction: Philippe Garrel, Laurent Condominas, Serge Bard, Patrick Deval, Alain Jouffroy La Concentration (1968) 84 min., col. Production: Philippe Garrel, Sylvina Boissonnas Screenplay: Philippe Garrel Camera: Michel Fournier Editing: Philippe Garrel Cast: Jean-​Pierre Léaud, Zouzou Le Révélateur (1968) 60 min., b/​w, sil. Production: Philippe Garrel Screenplay: Philippe Garrel Camera: Michel Fournier Editing: Philippe Garrel Cast: Bernadette Lafont, Laurent Terzieff, Stanislas Robiolles Le Lit de la vierge (1969) 114 min., b/​w Production: Philippe Garrel, Sylvina Boissonnas Screenplay: Philippe Garrel Camera: Michel Fournier Editing: Philippe Garrel Sound: Claude Jauvert, Jean-​Pierre Ruh Music: Les Jeunes Rebelles Cast: Pierre Clémenti, Zouzou, Tina Aumont, Magareth Clémenti, Nicole Laguigné, Babette Lamy, Didier Léon, Jaïmé Semprun, Jean-​Pierre  Kalfon Athanor (1972) 20 min., col., sil. Production: Philippe Garrel

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Screenplay: Philippe Garrel Camera: Michel Fournier, André Weinfeld Editing: Philippe Garrel Cast: Nico, Musky La Cicatrice intérieure (1972) 57 min., col. Production: Philippe Garrel, Sylvina Boissonnas Screenplay: Philippe Garrel Camera: Michel Fournier, Jean Chiabaud, Jacques Renard Editing: Philippe Garrel Sound: Claude Jauvert, Jean-​Pierre Ruh Music: Nico Cast: Nico, Pierre Clémenti, Philippe Garrel, Balthazar Clémenti, Daniel Pommereulle Les Hautes Solitudes (1974) 80 min., b/​w, sil. Production: Philippe Garrel Screenplay: Philippe Garrel Camera: Philippe Garrel Editing: Philippe Garrel Cast: Jean Seberg, Nico, Tina Aumont, Laurent Terzieff Un Ange passe (1975) 80 min., b/​w Production: Philippe Garrel Screenplay: Philippe Garrel Camera: Philippe Garrel Editing: Philippe Garrel Sound: Philippe Garrel Music: Nico Cast: Laurent Terzieff, Nico, Bulle Ogier, Maurice Garrel, Jean-​Pierre  Kalfon Le Berceau de cristal (1975) 80 min., col. Production: Philippe Garrel Screenplay: Philippe Garrel Camera: Philippe Garrel Editing: Philippe Garrel Music: Ash Rà Tempel Cast: Nico, Dominique Sanda, Anita Pallenberg, Margareth Clémenti, Philippe Garrel, Frédéric Pardo Le Voyage au jardin des morts (1976) 55 min., col. Production: Philippe Garrel

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Screenplay: Philippe Garrel Camera: Philippe Garrel Editing: Philippe Garrel Sound: Philippe Garrel Cast: Maria Schneider, Laurent Terzieff, Nico Le Bleu des origines (1978) 50 min., b/​w, sil. Production: Philippe Garrel Screenplay: Philippe Garrel Camera: Philippe Garrel Editing: Philippe Garrel Cast: Nico, Zouzou, Philippe Garrel L’Enfant secret (1979) 95 min., b/​w Production: Philippe Garrel Screenplay: Philippe Garrel Camera: Pascal Laperrousaz Editing: Philippe Garrel Sound: Alain Villeval Music: Faton Cahen, Didier Lockwood Cast: Anne Wiazemsky, Henri de Maublanc, Elli Medeiros, Benoît Ferreux, Cécile Le Bailly, Éliane Roy, Caroline Van Paulus, Edwige Grüss, Vincent Daré, Philippe Garrel Liberté, la nuit (1983), 80 min., b/​w Production: INA Screenplay: Philippe Garrel Camera: Pascal Laperrousaz Editing: Dominique Auvray Sound: Jean-​Pierre Laforce Music: Faton Cahen Cast: Emmanuelle Riva, Maurice Garrel, Christine Boisson, Laszlo Szabo, Brigitte Sy, Julien Sarfati, Mohammed Fellag, Salah Teskouk, Habib Laïdi Les Chemins perdus 1966/​67 (1984) 46 min., b/​w Production: INA Sound: Jean-​Pierre Laforce Broadcast 29 August 1984 Elle a passé tant d’heures sous les sunlights (1984) 130 min., b/​w Production: Philippe Garrel Screenplay: Philippe Garrel

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Camera: Pascal Laperrousaz Editing: Sophie Coussein Sound: Jean-​Pierre Laforce Music: Nico Cast: Mireille Perrier, Jacques Bonnaffé, Anne Wiazemsky, Lou Castel, Philippe Garrel, with the participation of Chantal Akerman and Jacques Doillon Rue Fontaine (1984) 17 min., col. Production: JM Productions Screenplay: Philippe Garrel Camera: Pascal Laperrousaz Editing: Sophie Coussein Sound: Jean-​Luc Rault-​Cheynet Music: Faton Cahen Cast: Christine Boisson, Jean-​Pierre Léaud, Philippe Garrel Les Ministères de l’art (1988) 52 min., col. Production: LASA Films, La Sept, CNC Screenplay: Philippe Garrel Camera: Jacques Loiseleux Editing: Sophie Coussein Sound: Jean-​Claude Laureux Music: Faton Cahen Featuring: Chantal Akerman, Juliet Berto, Leos Carax, Jacques Doillon, Philippe Garrel, Hélène Garidou, Benoît Jacquot, Jean-​ Pierre Léaud, Werner Schroeter, Brigitte Sy, André Téchiné Les Baisers de secours (1989) 83 min., b/​w Production: Les Films de l’Atalante Screenplay: Philippe Garrel, Marc Cholodenko Camera: Jacques Loiseleux Editing: Sophie Coussein Sound: Claudine Nougaret Music: Barney Wilen Cast: Brigitte Sy, Philippe Garrel, Louis Garrel, Maurice Garrel, Anémone, Jacques Kébadian, Valérie Dréville, Yvette Etiévant, Aurélien Recoing, Charlotte Clamens J’entends plus la guitare (1990) 98 min., col. Production: Les Films de l’Atalante Screenplay: Philippe Garrel, Marc Cholodenko Camera: Caroline Champetier

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Editing: Sophie Coussein, Yann Dedet Sound: René Levert Music: Faton Cohen, Didier Lockwood, Elton Dean Cast: Benoît Régent, Johanna ter Steege, Yann Collette, Mireille Perrier, Brigitte Sy, Anouk Grinberg, Adélaïde Blasquez, Philippe Morier-​Genoud and family, Édith Boulogne, Chantal Trichet, Thomas Salsman, Alexis Piccolo La Naissance de l’amour (1993) 94 min., col. Production: Why Not Productions, Vega Films, La Sept Cinéma Screenplay: Philippe Garrel, Marc Cholodenko, Muriel Cerf Camera: Raoul Coutard Editing: Sophie Coussein, Yann Dedet Sound: René Levert Music: John Cale Cast: Lou Castel, Jean-​Pierre Léaud, Johanna ter Steege, Georges Lavaudant, Dominique Reymond, Marie-​Paule Laval, Aurélia Alcaïs, Margi Clarke, Max McCarthy, Michèle Glezier, Marie Armelle Deguy, Bernard Ballet, Antonin Salsman, Bernard Bloch, Pierre Martot, Anne Macina, Touria Jabrane, Laurence Girard, Anne Aor, Serge Thiriet, Charlotte Godfray Le Cœur fantôme (1998) 87 min., col. Production: Gemini Films, Why Not Productions, Sylvain Monod Screenplay: Marc Cholodenko, Noémie Lvosky, Philippe Garrel Camera: Raoul Coutard, Jacques Loiseleux Editing: Sophie Coussein, Yann Dedet, Nathalie Hubert Sound: Jean-​Pierre Ruh, Georges Prat Music: Barney Wilen Cast: Luis Rego, Aurélia Alcaïs, Évelyne Didi, Maurice Garrel, Roschdy Zem, Camille Chain, Lucie Rego, Véronique Silver Le Vent de la nuit (1999) 92 min., col. Production: Why Not Productions, Les Films Alain Sarde Screenplay: Philippe Garrel, Marc Cholodenko, Xavier Beauvois, Arlette Langman Camera: Caroline Champetier Editing: Françoise Collin Sound: Jean-​Pierre Ruh, Georges Prat Music: John Cale Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Daniel Duval, Xavier Beauvois

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Sauvage Innocence (2001) 117 min., col. Production: Why Not Productions, Les Films Alain Sarde, The Kassander Film Co. Screenplay: Philippe Garrel, Marc Cholodenko, Arlette Langmann Camera: Raoul Coutard Editing: Françoise Collin Sound: Jean-​Pierre Ruh, Georges Prat Music: Jean-​Claude Vannier Cast: Mehdi Belhaj, Julia Faure, Michel Subor, Mathieu Genet, Valérie Kéruzoré, Jean Pommier, Francine Bergé, Maurice Garrel, Huguette Maillard, Jérôme Huguet, Manuel Flèche, Zsuzsanna Várkonyi, Patricia Couvillers, Esther Garrel, Mireille Roussel Les Amants réguliers (2005), 178 min., b/​w Production: Gilles Sandoz, Maïa Films, Arte France Screenplay: Philippe Garrel, Marc Cholodenko, Arlette Langmann Camera: William Lubtchansky Editing: Françoise Collin Sound: Alain Villeval, Alexandre Abrard Music: Jean-​Claude Vannier Cast: Louis Garrel, Clotilde Hesme, Julien Lucas, Eric Rulliat, Nicolas Bridet, Mathieu Genet, Rebecca Convenant, Maurice Garrel, Cécile Garcia-​Fogel, Marc Barbé, Nicolas Maury, Brigitte Sy, Martine Schambacher La Frontière de l’aube (2008) 106 min., b/​w Production: Rectangle Productions, Studio Urania Screenplay: Philippe Garrel, Marc Cholodenko, Arlette Langmann Camera: William Lubtchansky Editing: Yann Dedet Sound: René Levert, Alexander Abrard, Daniel Dehays Music: Jean-​Claude Vannier, Didier Lockwood Cast: Louis Garrel, Laura Smet, Clémentine Poidatz, Olivier Massart, Jérôme Robart Un Été brûlant (2011) 115 min., col. Production: Faro Film, Prince Film Screenplay: Philippe Garrel, Marc Cholodenko, Caroline Deruras-​Garrel Camera: Willy Kurant

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Editing: François Musy Sound: René Levert, Alexander Abrard, Daniel Dehays Music: John Cale Cast: Monica Bellucci, Louis Garrel, Céline Sallette, Jérôme Robart, Vladislav Galard, Vincent Macaigne, Maurice Garrel La Jalousie (2013) 77 min., b/​w Production: Integral Films, SBS Productions Screenplay: Philippe Garrel, Marc Cholodenko, Caroline Deruras-​ Garrel, Arlette Langman Camera: Willy Kurant Editing: Yann Dedet Sound: René Levert, Alexander Abrard, Daniel Dehays Music: Jean-​Louis  Aubert Cast: Louis Garrel, Anna Mouglalis, Rebecca Convenant, Olga Milshtein, Esther Garrel, Arthur Igual, Jérôme Huguet, Manon Kneusé, Eric Ruillat, Jean Pommier, Julien Lucas, Sofia Teillet L’Ombre des femmes (2015) 73 min., b/​w Production: Saïd Ben Saïd, Michel Merkt, Olivier Père Screenplay: Philippe Garrel, Jean-​Claude Carrière, Caroline Deruas-​ Garrel, Arlette Langmann Camera: Renato Berta Editing: François Gédigier Sound: François Musy Music: Jean-​Louis  Aubert Cast: Clotilde Courau, Stanislas Merhar, Lena Paugam, Vimala Pons, Antoinette Moya, Jean Pommier, Jean Pommier, Thérèse Quentin, Mounir Margoum, Claude Desmecht, Christian Cousquer, Michel Charrel, Louis Garrel L’Amant d’un jour (2017) 76 min., b/​w Production: Integral Films, SBS Productions Screenplay: Philippe Garrel, Jean-​Claude Carrière, Caroline Deruas-​ Garrel, Arlette Langmann Camera: Renato Berta Editing: François Gédigier Sound: François Musy Music: Jean-​Louis  Aubert Cast: Éric Caravaca, Esther Garrel, Louise Chevillotte, Paul Toucang, Félix Kysyl, Michel Charrel, Nicolas Bridet, Marie Sergeant, Justine Bachelet, Christian Bouillette, Laetitia Spigarelli

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Select bibliography

For critical works and interviews on individual films, see the References sections at the end of each chapter.

Books on Philippe Garrel Azoury, Philippe (2015) Philippe Garrel en substance, Paris:  Capricci. An extended essay providing an intimate exploration of Garrel’s work. The text includes an interview with the director focusing on his working methods. Azoury, Philippe and Cyril Béghin, Nicole Brenez [et al.] (2015) Philippe Garrel, désespoir éblouissant, Seoul: Hyunsil Book Publishing Co. A catalogue produced to coincide with a retrospective of Garrel’s work at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul. It contains several essays published in both English and French. Bax, Dominique and Cyril Béghin (eds) (2013) Philippe Garrel. Théâtres au cinéma, Bobigny:  Collection Magic Cinéma. Published to coincide with a retrospective of Garrel’s cinema in 2013, this text contains a comprehensive collection of short articles on the director’s work in addition to interviews with him and his collaborators. Boully, Fabien (2004) ‘ “Entre deux personnes”: esthétique de la co-​présence dans la quatrième période du cinéma de Philippe Garrel’, PhD dissertation, Université Lumière, Lyon. This PhD thesis, which is accessible online, contains a detailed study of the tetralogy of films Les Baisers de secours, J’entends plus la guitare, La Naissance de l’amour and Le Cœur fantôme. Garrel, Philippe and Thomas Lescure (1992) Une caméra à la place du cœur, Aix-​en-​Provence: Admiranda/​Institut de l’Image. An excellent analysis of Garrel’s work that proceeds through a series of interviews with the director that explore the relationship between his life and art.

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Grasshoff, Thibault (2015) Philippe Garrel, une esthétique de la survivance, La Madeleine: Lettmotif. A  study that shifts terrain slightly from Boully by concentrating on the tetralogy of J’entends plus la guitare, La Naissance de l’amour, Le Cœur fantôme and Le Vent de la nuit.

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Overviews of Philippe Garrel’s work Álvarez López, Cristina and Adrian Martin (2017) ‘Fugitive Variations: Philippe Garrel’s Elliptical Cinema of a Life’, BFI Film Forever (11 June 2017). www. bfi.org.uk/​news-​opinion/​sight-​sound-​magazine/​features/​philippe-​garrel-​ fugitive-​variations (accessed 23 November 2018). Le Cain, Maximilian (2001) ‘Voyeurism of the Soul:  The Films of Philippe Garrel’, Senses of Cinema, 12. http://​sensesofcinema.com/​2001/​feature-​ articles/​garrel-​2 (accessed 23 November 2018).

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Index

The titles of films by Garrel are listed individually. The titles of film, literary or critical works by others are given under the name of the respective author. Actua 1 6, 11, 36 Akerman, Chantal 11, 12, 18, 27, 97, 101, 111, 114, 123–124, 126, 128, 136, 185, 217 Années 80, Les 124 Golden Eighties 123, 217 No Home Movie 217 Alcaïs, Aurélia 163 Algerian War 3, 42, 109, 156, 182, 210 L’Amant d’un jour 9, 10–11, 168, 198, 206–215 Amants réguliers, Les 6, 9, 13, 18, 47, 91, 99, 108, 134, 168– 169, 171–183, 184, 186, 190, 194, 199, 200, 202–203, 206, 219 American underground 16, 18, 69, 73 see also Warhol, Andy Anémone 5, 21, 27–32, 33, 34, 38, 49, 207

Anémone (Anne Bourguignon) 5 Ange passe, Un 59, 72, 73, 79, 84, 112, 200 anti-cinema 22, 53–56 Arte povera 16, 18, 60, 73, 85–86 Astruc, Alexandre 48 Athanor 59, 72–73, 75, 77 Aurenche, Jean 48 Autant-Lara, Claude 47–48 autobiography 8–9, 13, 16, 69, 102–103, 105–107, 108–113, 116–120, 127–128, 131, 145, 162–163, 171, 184, 218 autofiction 8, 10, 105–108, 111, 125, 139, 144–146, 162–163 Azoury, Philippe 15, 64, 71–72 Baisers de secours, Les 9–10, 17–18, 97, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 138, 139–143, 144, 149, 219 Balachova, Tanja 2

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Beauvois, Xavier 98, 170–171, 206 Bellucci, Monica 184, 194 Belmondo, Jean-Paul 30, 149–150 Berceau de cristal, Le 59, 74, 75, 79, 112, 164 Bergman, Ingmar 42 Shame 42–43 Berri, Claude 4, 5, 27 Bertolucci, Bernardo 91, 148, 179 Dreamers, The 91, 179–180 Bleu des origines, Le 17, 59, 76, 80, 82, 84, 87, 138, 213 Boissonnas, Sylvina 8, 14, 59, 72, 83, 88, 175 Bonnaffé, Jacques 111, 121 Boully, Fabien 13, 17, 18, 168 Boulogne, Ari 83, 85, 107, 112, 145 Boulogne, Edith 145 Brecht, Bertholt 155 Brenez, Nicole 4, 15, 26, 73–75 Bresson, Robert 75, 101, 105 Breton, André 18, 101, 111, 114–116, 118, 122–123, 142 L’Amour fou 116 Nadja 115–116 Vases communicants, Les 116, 122, 142 Brialy, Jean-Claude 183 Buñuel, Luis 115–116, 205 Cale, John 137, 153 Carax, Leos (Alex Dupont) 27, 126, 129, 138 Carné, Marcel 47

Carrière, Jean-Claude 11, 205–206 Castel, Lou 98, 111, 121, 133, 134, 137, 151 Celant, Germano 85–86, 90 Cerf, Muriel 128, 134 Chabrol, Claude 49, 183 Champetier, Caroline 135–136, 137, 138–139 Chaplin, Charlie 57 Chevillotte, Louise 99, 206–207 Cholodenko, Marc 9–10, 131, 132–134, 135, 137 Cicatrice intérieure, La 16–17, 57, 59–61, 64–69, 71–72, 74, 77, 83, 96, 103, 106 Clair, René 181 Clémenti, Pierre 7, 60, 61, 62, 64, 66, 67, 68, 74 Cœur fantôme, Le 3, 10, 18, 131, 134, 136, 163–166 concentrationary universe 40–47, 53 Courau, Clotilde 201 Coutard, Raoul 10, 136, 137 Dalí, Salvador 78, 115–116 Daney, Serge 1, 147–148, 156, 197–198 de Beauregard, Georges 4 de La Tour, Georges 4, 102 Debord, Guy 22, 30, 37–39, 50–53, 55–56, 60, 69–71, 76, 80–82, 87–89, 104–105

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Critique de la séparation 38–39, 51–2, 88 Hurlements en faveur de Sade 55 In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni 60, 69–71, 80–81, 88, 104 Mode d’emploi du détournement, Le 50, 88 Société du spectacle, La (book) 30 Société du spectacle, La (film) 88 Sur le passage de quelques personnes à travers une assez courte unité du temps 38–39, 51, 55, 70, 88 Deleuze, Gilles 12–13, 16, 181, 183 Delon, Alain 145 Delorme, Stéphane 15, 72, 76, 82 Deruras, Caroline 10, 134 Desplechin, Arnaud 207–208 détournement 46–47, 50–53, 88 Doillon, Jacques 12, 18, 27, 101, 111, 124–125, 126–128, 136 Doubrovsky, Serge 105 Dreyer, Carl Theodor 160 Droit de visite 4, 22, 25, 31 Dullin, Charles 2 Duval, Daniel 169, 171 Elle a passé tant d’heures sous les sunlights 9, 10, 16, 97, 100, 101, 110–116, 118–125, 126, 127, 133, 134–135, 139, 144, 164, 176, 185, 217, 219

L’Enfant secret 15, 17, 18, 36, 83, 100–108, 111, 112, 113, 132, 139, 144, 145, 164, 169–170, 176, 190, 191, 194, 218 Enfants désaccordés, Les 4, 5, 22–25, 28, 31, 128 Epstein, Jean 138 Été brûlant, Un 10, 15, 134, 137, 144, 168, 184, 194–198, 200, 202, 218 Eustache, Jean 12, 14, 18, 26, 94, 99, 126–127, 132, 135, 151, 157–163, 176, 206, 210, 211, 218 Maman et la putain, La 99, 126, 129, 132, 157–162, 176, 206, 210–212, 218 Mes petites amoureuses 162, 218 Fassbinder, Rainer Werner 90 Fellini, Federico 188 Feuillade, Louis 181 film citation 171–172, 176–183 First Gulf War 151, 156 Foucault, Michel 28 Frodon, Michel 203 Frontière de l’aube, La 105, 134, 168, 184, 189–194, 200 Garrel, Esther 9, 99, 151, 200, 201, 206 Garrel, Louis 2, 6, 9, 99, 127, 140, 171, 179, 189, 194, 198, 200, 207, 218 Garrel, Maurice 2–3, 9, 23, 25, 28, 32, 34, 74, 79, 109, 132, 140, 200, 218

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Gautier, Théophile 184, 189, 193 Géricault, Théodore 99, 172 Godard et ses émules 26–27, 94, 126, 218 Godard, Jean-Luc 6, 10, 13, 24, 27, 30, 31, 33, 49, 50, 73, 105, 126, 135, 136, 138, 149–150, 180, 189, 194, 195 À Bout de souffle 30, 73, 150 Mépris, Le 194–195 Vivre sa vie 189 Weekend 24, 33 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 90, 189, 201 Hautes Solitudes, Les 8, 36, 59, 72–73, 75, 76–78, 82, 84–85, 87, 96, 117, 123, 190, 191 Herzog, Werner 90 Hesme, Clotilde 171 Hollywood 21, 73, 82, 88 Ingres, Jean-AugusteDominique 4, 66, 75 Isou, Isidore 55, 56–57 Traité de bave et d’éternité 56–57 J’entends plus la guitare 10, 13, 17, 18, 131, 134, 136, 138, 144–150, 151, 152, 164, 194, 218 Jacquot, Benoît 126, 128 Jalousie, La 10, 134, 168, 198–201, 202, 205, 206, 217 Jeunes Rebelles, Les 63 Jorn, Asger 50, 88 Jousse, Thierry 15, 135, 138, 184

Kacem, Mehdi Belhaj 184 Kalfon, Jean-Pierre 63, 74 L’Herbier, Marcel 178 Lafont, Bernadette 40–41, 47, 48–50, 95 Lang, Fritz 181 Langman, Arlette 10, 134, 210 Léaud, Jean-Pierre 13, 24, 45–50, 53, 54, 117, 126, 133–134, 137, 151, 157–160, 176, 177, 218 Lebrun, Françoise 160, 162–163 Levert, René 136 Liberté, la nuit 2–3, 114, 100, 108–110, 133, 156 Lista, Giovanni 86 Lit de la vierge, Le 7, 16, 57, 59, 60–64, 66, 67, 68, 71, 75, 77, 78, 80, 83, 95, 117 Lubtchansky, William 190 Lvovsky, Noémie 10, 134 Malle, Louis 205, 217 Marie pour mémoire 5, 16, 21, 27–28, 32–36, 37, 38, 49, 61, 77, 80, 144, 194 Marker, Chris 66 May 68 2, 6–7, 10–11, 12, 16, 18, 21–22, 24, 36–48, 52, 57, 59–62, 91, 94, 95, 109, 155, 162, 165, 168, 169–175, 179, 182–183, 197, 205, 219 Merhar, Stanislas 201 Ministères de l’art, Les 9, 27, 94, 101, 125–129, 151, 218 Murnau, Friedrich Wilhelm 160

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Naissance de l’amour, La 10, 18, 98, 131, 132, 133, 134, 136, 137, 144, 150–163, 168, 194, 198 New Wave 1, 3, 4, 12–14, 16–18, 21–24, 26–28, 31–34, 36, 40, 47–50, 53, 65, 127, 136, 176–183, 217 Nico (Christa Päffgen) 7–9, 10, 59, 64–67, 68–69, 72, 73–75, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82–83, 87, 95–96, 100, 106, 108, 111–112, 119–120, 133, 136, 144–150, 185–186, 190, 200, 213 Nougaret, Claudine 136

poverist cinema 3, 60, 82–92, 131, 138, 172, 175

Ogier, Bulle 74 L’Ombre des femmes 10–11, 134, 168, 201–206, 210, 213, 217 oneirism 7, 23–26, 63, 101, 111, 113–114, 116–118, 163–164, 171, 179, 181, 184, 192, 200, 219

Rancière, Jacques 182 Rego, Luis 163–164 Resnais, Alain 40, 109 Hiroshima man amour 3, 109 Révélateur, Le 16, 17, 21, 22, 40–44, 45, 46, 47–48, 49, 52, 53, 60, 62, 73, 91, 95, 155–156, 177 Riva, Emmanuel 3, 109 Rivette, Jacques 13, 82, 180–183, 217 Paris nous appartient 177, 180–183 Rohmer, Eric 47, 136, 217 Ross, Kristin 169 Rousset, David 40 Rue Fontaine 100, 111, 115, 116–118, 151, 157–158, 159, 160, 218

Paolini, Giulio 86 Pardo, Frédéric 63, 74, 75, 145 Perrier, Mireille 10, 111, 121–122, 125 Philippon, Alain 15, 112–113, 150–151, 152–153, 161 photogénie 131 Pialat, Maurice 135, 210 Plume pour Carole, Une 4 Poe, Edgar Allan 184, 189 Poidatz, Clémentine 191 Pollock, Griselda 40, 42, 45 post-New Wave 2, 12–14, 16–18, 214, 26–28, 33–36, 40, 49–50, 57, 65, 101, 125–129, 175

Sallette, Céline 194 Sanda, Dominique 145 Sauvage Innocence 9, 10, 17, 134, 168, 184–189, 194, 196 Schneider, Maria 75–76 Schroeter, Werner 126 Seberg, Jean 78, 96, 116–118, 123, 149–150, 190–191 Sedgwick, Edie 78 Shafto, Sally 14, 16, 42, 49, 52, 63 Silverman, Max 40, 42, 45 single-take film-maker 137–139 Situationists 16, 22, 30, 34, 38, 71 see also Debord, Guy Smet, Laura 184, 189

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spectacle 22, 30–31, 34–39, 51–52, 59, 70, 207–208 see also spectacular spectacular 35, 39, 60, 143, 155, 169 see also spectacle Surrealism 16, 18, 101, 111, 115–116, 122 Sy, Brigitte 9–10, 97, 127, 140, 144, 145–146 ter Steege, Johanna 10, 145, 154 Terzieff, Laurent 8, 40, 47–50, 73, 74, 95 tradition de qualité 47–49 Truffaut, François 24, 31, 48–49, 136, 177, 217 Jules et Jim 24 Quatres cents coups, Les 24, 49, 177 Vannier, Jean-Claude 190 Velvet Underground, The 111, 137, 146 Vent de la nuit, Le 10, 18, 98, 105, 134, 137, 138, 168–171, 206

Vergé, Émilie 37, 79, 83–84 Vigo, Jean 129, 178 Wademant, Annette 102–103, 132 Warhol, Andy 7, 18, 60, 76–79, 80, 82, 83–84, 87–88, 89, 218 Chelsea Girls 7, 68–69 Eat 77 Henry Geldzahler 77 Imitation of Christ 78 Poor Little Rich Girl 87 Screen Tests 77, 87 Weingarten, Isabelle 159 Wenders, Wim 11, 72, 90 Wiazemsky, Anne 101, 105, 111, 112, 119–121, 185 ZAD (Zone à Défendre) 11 Zanzibar film-makers 14 Zem, Roschdy 163 Zone à Défendre see ZAD Zouzou (Danièle Ciarlet) 7, 25, 33, 45–46, 54, 60, 61, 64, 76, 80, 87, 117, 213