Documenti di Didattica
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OMAGGIO
di Gabrielle Lucantonio
by Gabrielle Lucantonio
Andr Sylvain Labarthe (Terrasson, 1931), lhomme au chapeau" (the man with the hat), is often synonymous with
Cinastes de notre temps (1964-72) and Cinma de notre
temps (dal 1980), French television series which he brilliantly directed together with Janine Bazin. Nevertheless, limiting
him to these two series, which became legendary and irreplaceable, would be an oversimplification. It is fundamental to
take into consideration the wealth of the critic-filmmakers
personality.
"Le disparate est dans ma nature" ("The disparate is in my
nature) claims Labarthe in defining himself. Before using
images, he used words, and before words, he was interested in
various artistic and cultural movements of the 1900s, such as
psychoanalysis, surrealism and contemporary music.
At the beginning of the 1950s, after having studied with the
Jesuits and graduating in Philosophy, the future critic was
fascinated by surrealist-inspired magazines such as LAge du
cinma (edited by Ado Kyrou), for which Luis Bunuel was
the main and ideal cinematic point of reference. He went often
to the Henri Langlois Cinmathque and, during the same
period, discovered and grew to appreciate the "analytical"
criticism of Andr Bazin, which he offered up and preferred
over the criticism of "taste," then employed in most French
newspapers and magazines.
In 1956, Labarthe began writing for Cahiers du cinma and
became one of the vectors of cinematic modernity, reviewing
filmmakers such as Michelangelo Antonioni, Luis Buuel,
Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Jerry Lewis, Alain
Resnais, and films such as LAvventura (Michelangelo
Antonioni, 1960), Last Year At Marienbad (Alain
Resnais, 1961), The Good Time Girls (Claude Chabrol,
1959), Anatahan (Josef von Sternberg, 1954)
For Labarthe, modern cinema represents the encounter
between the objectivity of the camera and the subjectivity of
the filmmaker.
In regards to the popularization and theorization of cinematic
modernity, credit must be given to Labarthe for having discovered Michelangelo Antonioni, promoting him to one of
Cahiers main directors/subjects. Presented at the 1960 edition of the Cannes Film Festival, LAvventura divided the
editorial staff. In his summary (Cahiers du cinma, vol. 108,
June), Jean Domarchi did not hide his reservations about the
Italian film. For his part, Labarthe, in volume 110 of August
of the same year, published portions of the screenplay and then
a long analysis of the work by the director from Ferrara. In
October, volume 112 opened with a long interview with Antonioni, followed by the directors bio-filmography. In the following volume, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze wrote a beautiful
text on LAvventura and Labarthe wrote on La Signora senza camelie (The Lady Without Camelias, 1953).
Another important element to emphasize in Labarthes work is
his having theorized some of the fundamentals of modern cinema, asserting his ideas in reviews that not always tackled the
films in question directly. For example, Labarthe discussed the
theme of the film cameras pure gaze through Claude Chabrols
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The Good Time Girls: "The era in which the purity of directing fuses in a dialectical mode with the objectivity of the real."
He sustained the active character of the spectator with Last
Year at Marienbad. He was inspired by A Woman Is A
Woman (Jean-Luc Godard, 1961), which in his opinion
marked the ideal return to the cinema of the Lumire brothers,
to affirm that film must make the most of the present and eliminate any elements of pure syntax, and also that editing serve
to preserve the independence of the single frame.
His writings have undoubtedly garnered greater attention for
Cahiers, for the different types of cinema that in that moment
were proliferating throughout the world.
In 1964, Janine Bazin, Andrs widow, suggested that he
throw himself into the adventure of Cinastes de notre
temps, through which Labarthe substituted with a film camera the discussions he had previously undertaken with the
pen. This series includes over fifty broadcasts and represents
an invaluable reference point for film criticism and theory.
These programs are portraits of masters, created by directors
of the Nouvelle Vague and by critics. They are long conversations in which the director explains his or her way of making films. If "Cahiers du cinma" had invented a new method
of film criticism, as a result of the conversations between
Franois Truffaut and Jacques Rivette, with Cinastes de
notre temps, Labarthe and Janine Bazin continued in that
vein, becoming pioneers of a new practice that is highly diffused today, for instance in DVD supplements.
The "fathers" of cinema and the Nouvelle Vague were filmed
from the viewpoint of the politique des auteurs. But it is
above all through the interviews with younger directors that
the identifying signs of modernity are sought. Thus, it is within this spirit of alternation that Eric Rohmer made a film on
Carl Theodor Dreyer, Jacques-Andr Fieschi on Pier Paolo
Pasolini, Jacques Rivette on Jean Renoir and Alexandre
Astruc on Wilhem Friedrich Murnau. Labarthe films approximately twenty, and among these we offer films with protagonists such as John Cassavetes, Shirley Clarke, Jerry Lewis,
Fritz Lang and Jean-Luc Godard. After more than a ten-year
break, the series was picked up again in the late 80s, this time
entitled Cinma de notre temps.
During these years, Labarthe focused his directing energy on
various sectors: cinema, naturally, but also literature, painting, dance, theatre and music. Over time, his filmography has
grown to include over 600 works! These are not only interviews, but his own works, in which Labarthe attempts to
restore, through images, the universe of the person studied.
The most successful of these are three films created for the television series Un sicle dcrivains: Bataille perte de vue,
Sollers, lisol absolu and Atrocits, Artaud Cit. The
dandy with the hat, "lhomme au chapeau," we can also call
lhomme la camra, the man at the camera: indefatigable,
multifaceted, curious, passionate.
OMAGGIO
DIECI PENSIERI DI
LABARTHE
TEN THOUGHTS BY
LABARTHE
I do not remember going to the cinema with a friend. A solitary pleasure? I do not believe that the word pleasure is exactly right, and the world solitary is insufficient. Clandestine?
Perhaps. In any case, I know that I have always sought this
clandestine characteristic of representation (films, books) in
all of my romantic and sexual relationships. As if pleasure
were only something forbidden, disturbed.
Du premier cri au dernier rle, Yellow now, Liegi 2004
La famosa oggettivit fondamentale del cinema di fatto correlativa a una altrettanto grande oggettivit fondamentale del cineasta. Lanalisi fenomenologica della percezione tentata da Merleau-Ponty deve, a fortiori, essere
applicata allocchio meccanico della macchina da presa.
Dunque, vedere non pi solo vedere, filmare non pi
solo registrare il reale su pellicola. Che dire allora della
messa in scena, se non che in fin dei conti un modo di
giudicare (da Murnau ad Astruc), di interrogare (da
Rossellini a Chabrol), di amare o di odiare (da Stroheim
a Renoir)? Se non che propone un certo ordine del mondo? Uninquadratura di Welles, per esempio, sempre
un modo di sistemare le cose nello spazio: propone di
conseguenza sempre un certo modo che Welles ha di
guardare il mondo, di inserirsi e porre delle domande.
Antonioni hier et demain, in Cahiers du cinma n. 110,
agosto 1960
Il cinema tradizionale era riuscito a dissipare ogni possibilit di equivoco nellaccompagnare lo spettatore in
ogni scena, ogni inquadratura, suggerendo quello che
doveva pensare. Al limite, quel cinema, non aveva bisogno dello spettatore perch era gi incluso nel film. La
novit delle pellicole di Welles, e delle grandi opere del
neorealismo, fu di chiedere in modo esplicito la partecipazione dello spettatore. E in questo senso che bisogna
parlare di fenomenologia: lo sguardo dello spettatore
realizza il film quanto la volont degli autori. Rispetto a
Welles o Rossellini, loriginalit dei lavori di Resnais e
Robbe-Grillet fanno al cinema quello che fanno da molto tempo alcuni pittori astratti: propongono non una storia, ma un seguito di immagini che appartengono alla
stessa categoria di realismo del film, ed lo spettatore
che introduce la profondit.
LAnne dernire Marienbad di Alain Resnais, in Cahiers
du cinma n. 123, settembre 1961
Traditional cinema managed to dissipate any possible misunderstandings in accompanying the spectator through every
scene, every frame, telling them what to think. In the worst
case, that kind of cinema did not need the spectator because he
or she was already included in the film. The novelty of Welles
films and the great works of neo-realism lay in explicitly asking the spectators participation. This is the way in which we
must speak of phenomenology: the viewers gaze creates the
film as much as the directors desires. In regards to Welles or
Rossellini, the originality of the work of Resnais and RobbeGrillet do with film the same that many abstract painters have
done: they offer not a story, but a series of images that belong
to the same category of realism in film, and it is the viewer
who introduces the depth.
LAnne dernire Marienbad di Alain Resnais, in
Cahiers du cinma no. 123, September 1961
The mise-en-scene, in Chabrol, is nothing more than the execution of this gaze. The greatest mastery, nothing other than
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OMAGGIO
FILMOGRAFIA
CINEMA
Les Deux marseillaises (in collaborazione con Jean-Louis Comolli, 1968), Rauschenberg, fragment dun portrait (1968-70, cm),
Impression soleil levant (1969-70), Le coup de foudre (in collaborazione con Nol Burch, 1971, incompiuto).
TV
Dal 1964 al 1970, produce, in collaborazione con Janine Bazin, la serie Cinastes de notre temps (una cinquantina di titoli), per la quale realizza: Roger Leenhardt ou le dernier humaniste (1965), Marcel Pagnol ou le cinma tel quon le parle (prima
parte, 1966), Marcel Pagnol ou le cinma tel quon le parle (seconda parte, 1966), Raoul Walsh ou le bon vieux temps (in collaborazione con Hubert Knapp, 1966), Entre chien et loup, John Ford (in collaborazione con Hubert Knapp, 1966), Samuel
Fuller indpendant filmaker (1967), Dun silence lautre, Josef von Sternberg (1967), Le dinosaure et le bb, dialogue en huit parties entre Fritz Lang et Jean-Luc Godard (1967), Bleu comme une orange (1968), King Vidor (in collaborazione con Hubert
Knapp, 1968), Pierre Perrault, laction parle (in collaborazione con Jean-Louis Comolli, 1968), Jerry Lewis (prima parte,
1968), Jerry Lewis (seconda parte, 1968), Conversation avec George Cukor (in collaborazione con Hubert Knapp, 1969), John
Cassavetes (in collaborazione con Hubert Knapp, 1969), Alain Robbe-Grillet, prima parte: la dsignation (in collaborazione
con Nol Burch, 1969), Alain Robbe-Grillet, seconda parte: les formes dEros (in collaborazione con Nol Burch, 1969), Rome
is burning, portrait de Shirley Clarke (in collaborazione con Nol Burch, 1970), Busby Berkeley (in collaborazione con
Hubert Knapp, 1971), Claude Autant-Lara, loreille du diable (1971), Jean-Pierre Melville, portrait en neuf poses (1971), Norman Mac Laren (1972).
Nel 1990, ricomincia la serie con il titolo Cinma de notre temps, per la quale Labarthe realizzer: Nanni Moretti (1990),
The Scorsese machine (1990), Claude Chabrol lentomolgiste (in collaborazione con Jean Douchet, 1991), Josef von Sternberg
dun silence lautre (1993, nuovo montaggio del film del 1967), Eric Rohmer, preuves lappui (prima parte, in collaborazione con Jean Douchet), Eric Rohmer, preuves lappui (seconda parte, in collaborazione con Jean Douchet), Franju le
visionnaire (1997), David Cronenberg (1999), Le loup et lagneau: Ford et Hitchcock (2000).
Labarthe ha inoltre realizzato: Michelangelo Antonioni la table de montage de Professione: reporter (1974), Claude Chabrol
la table de montage de Les Bonnes Femmes (1960), Enfants coureurs du temps (1983), Djiido (1985), Carolyn Carlson, solo (1985),
Tout a pour Mandela (1986), Kandinski entraperu par Andr S.Labarthe (1987), Sylvie Guillem au travail (1988), Van Gogh
Paris, reprages (1988, cm), Bruno Schulz (1988, cm), Patrick Dupont au travail (1989), Jean Neumeier au travail (1990), Lhomme qui a vu lhomme qui a vu lours (1990), William Forsythe au travail (1990), Ushio Amagtsu, lments de doctrine (1993-94),
Lichtenstein, New York nexiste pas (1993-94), Le cinma vapeur (1995), Bataille perte de vue (1997), Sollers lisol absolu
(1998), Atrocits, Artaud cit (2000).
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OMAGGIO
LE DINOSAURE ET LE BEBE:
DIALOGUE EN HUIT PARTIES
ENTRE FRITZ LANG
ET JEAN-LUC GODARD
(t.l.: Il dinosauro e il beb:
dialogo in otto parti tra Fritz Lang
e Jean-Luc Godard)
fotografia/photography: G. Perrot-Minnot
montaggio/editing: Paul Loizon
suono/sound: Alain Costes
produzione/production: Janine Bazin e Andr S. Labarthe per
lO.R.T.F
JOHN CASSAVETES
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Nuovo montaggio di Dun silence lautre, che era stato creato per la serie Cinastes de notre temps.
Alcuni anni prima della sua morte, abbiamo avuto il privilegio di incontrare Sternberg pi volte e di organizzare
delle riprese, nelle quali, in presenza di alcuni amici, ha
accettato di spiegare la sua arte, di ripercorrere il suo itinerario e affidarci i grandi principi che lo hanno guidato
nellesercizio della sua arte.
Janine Bazin e Andr S.Labarthe
JEAN-PIERRE MELVILLE:
PORTRAIT EN NEUF POSES
(t.I.: Jean-Pierre Melville:
Ritratto in nove pose)
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durata: 52'
origine: Francia 1971
OMAGGIO
LA DERNIERE SEQUENCE DE
PROFESSIONE: REPORTER
(t.l.: Lultima sequenza di Professione:
reporter
Per Antonioni realizzare un film non una parentesi nella sua vita duomo, ma al contrario continuare a esistere
interrogandosi sul senso della vita e forse, grazie a questo,
imparare a vivere meglio. In breve, il tempo del film prosegue il tempo reale, e lo ordina, lo rende trasparente alla
coscienza. La regia ha quindi la missione di risolvere o di
aiutare a risolvere i problemi e le difficolt che assalgono
luomo. E una tecnica della coscienza di s.
Antonioni hier et demain, Cahiers du cinma n. 110, agosto 1960.
durata : 20'
origine: Francia 1985
La prima parte di questo film costruita attorno alla genesi dello spettacolo Solo a Venezia: concezione iniziale,
improvvisazione ed elaborazione della coreografia e della
regia. Prendono forma i diversi personaggi del balletto: la
signora in nero, la signora in giallo, la signora in blu. Per
ultimo, le repliche al Teatro della Fenice. La seconda parte
stata girata al Thtre de la Ville a Parigi, nove mesi dopo,
nel giugno 1984.
The first part of this film is constructed around the genesis of the
show Solo in Venice: the initial concept, improvisations and the
elaboration of the choreography and direction. The different characters of the ballet take shape: the woman in black, the woman
in yellow, the woman in blue. The culmination: the performances at the Fenice theatre. The second part was shot at the Thtre de la Ville in Paris, nine months later, in June of 1984.
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OMAGGIO
Claude Chabrol al tavolo di montaggio di Les Bonnes femmes spiega alcune inquadrature.
durata: 10
origine: Francia 1987-88
NANNI MORETTI
Filmando Moretti in vespa nelle vie della zona Monteverde, Labarthe realizza cinque anni prima, il primo episodio
di Caro Diario: sorprendente prescienza che inventa il prossimo soggetto del suo film.
Frdric Bonnaud, supplemento al n 37 di Les Inrockuptibles.
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OMAGGIO
GEORGES FRANJU,
LE VISIONAIRE
(t.I.: Georges Franju, il visionario)
Il fantastico sempre nella forma, linsolito nella situazione. Se si vede un tizio che passeggia in campagna con
un fucile di caccia sotto il braccio, si tratta di un cacciatore.
Lo stesso tizio che passeggia sui Champs-Elyses con un
fucile sotto il braccio, non sicuramente un cacciatore.
Ecco quello che risiede nei film di Franju: la paura non sceglie mai la figura del fantastico, ma quella di una violenza
pacifica , che si nasconde ai sensi, alla paura, in altre parole anche allimmaginazione; in breve, il puro spavento di
una verit sdrammatizzata. Labarthe ha fatto lo stesso.
Non estrapola.
Thierry Lounas, Cahiers du cinma n. 527, settembre
1998.
durata: 50
origine: Francia 1997
PHILIPPE SOLLERS,
LISOLE ABSOLU
(t.I.: Philippe Sollers, lIsolato assoluto)
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OMAGGIO
It takes time to develop words, so that they are well thought out,
so that they are not only questions and answers, but also the
result of editing with excerpts of films. This was the same with
David Cronenberg. We shot for one or two hours towards
evening, but we would prepare all day long, and the result was
more profound. The interview was set up like an installation.
Andr S.Labarthe, LHumanit, June 6, 2001
In questintervista condotta nel 1967 da Guy Cotte, Norman McLaren traccia il suo percorso di pioniere del cinema di animazione, iniziato negli anni trenta a Londra, poi
a Montreal passando da New York. Dedotta dalla forma
stessa dei film di McLaren, la regia di Labarthe offre unesperienza documentaria tra le pi avvincenti.
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