In this excerpt from a 1961 episode of the French television show “Cinépanorama,” Alain Resnais talks with François Chalais about his early career.
Now, Alain Resnais, let’s talk a little. Your film Last Year at Marienbad is one of the oddest films I’ve ever seen. For many it’s an enigma and each will form his own explanation. But to make sure I’m not way off track, I’d like to know your explanation of your own film.
It’s not my role to give explanations. For that matter, I don’t think the film is a real enigma. By that I mean that each spectator can find his own solution, and it will in all likelihood be a good one. But what’s certain is that the solution won’t be the same for everyone, meaning that my solution is of no more interest than that of any other viewer.
So you’ve prepared a mould and it’s up to each spectator to place himself in it. If he’s not prepared to do that, the film is not for him.
Exactly.
You need the help of the spectator.
Yes. I request it because I think it’s the best way to respect him and make a gesture of fellowship.
Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
That brings us to another problem: the strangeness of your film. In an era where the minute a director changes a comma in a text, he signs his film “A film by,” you simply put “Directed by Alain Resnais,” though in the end, of course, we know it’s your film. Is this a pose? An affectation? What’s behind this modesty?
I think it’s simply a concern for being realistic and maybe even for lucidity. I don’t see myself as an auteur. I think of myself as a director. I take the responsibility of a director.
You were the first to make documentaries like Night and Fog. Your Van Gogh was the first film of that type about a painter. Hiroshima is different from what’s been done before, as is Marienbad. You even made a film that was practically an advertisement for a large industrial company, but there you asked Raymond Queneau to do the commentary, in verse no less. Do you feel you’re creating a new cinema?
On the contrary, I feel I’m firmly within cinematic tradition. You say I was the first to do that type of film about a painter, but there were clearly films in that genre before in Italy. You say that I’m the first to do documentaries. But what about Paris 1900 by Nicole Védrès? I was assistant on that, and it certainly had a decisive influence on me. I feel much more in direct contact with the cinema of the past than like an innovator.
You don’t consider yourself an avant-garde auteur?
I don’t really understand that term.
Neither do I, for that matter. I was hoping you’d explain it to me. What do you like in other people’s films? For example, what are the qualities you most admire in a director? Is it the way he makes films, or his personality?
I don’t separate the one from the other. I try to learn the personality of a director through the works he presents.
What do you like in your films? What strikes you in them? What do you take most to heart in the films you’ve made?
I simply cannot answer that question.
Alain Resnais
Do you watch your own films?
As little as possible. I always try to think of the next film.
When you see them, do you think you should have done things differently?
Yes, of course. It’s unpleasant to watch a film you’ve finished.
So you’re insecure?
Absolutely.
Or proud? Or both?
I wish I knew.
You started making feature films after many years of apprenticeship. When you started in films, it wasn’t like now, where a young man of 20 or 21 is readily entrusted with feature films. In your day that just wasn’t possible. You did some excellent work in short films, some of which even received Oscars, which is wonderful. But you could have made features at that point. You could have made Hiroshima many years ago. Did you feel you were falling behind? Were you worried about that?
Not at all. I always thought of myself not as a director, but as a film editor, a trade I intend to continue to practice. I agreed to requests to make certain short films. If I’d been asked to do a feature film, I would have done it in the same way. But the problem of being ahead or lagging behind or the superiority of one genre over another was never an issue for me.
Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959)
But you weren’t being asked to do feature films. It’s said a director is not a director until he’s done a feature film. Take it as you will, but that’s what they say. The stigma of the short film — I’ve met young directors who say, “My God, I’m already 34 years, 4 months and 12 days, and I haven’t done a feature yet. This is awful.” It’s the need to write Le Cid at 26.
I admit that at the time you mention there was rather a deeply rooted tradition that said if you did short films, you couldn’t do feature films. It was a firmly entrenched bit of conventional wisdom.
How was the adventure of Hiroshima mon amour born?
It was actually commissioned as a short film. It grew bit by bit until we ended up with a 90-minute film. You could almost say it was by chance but initially it was to be no more than 45 minutes. And it was supposed to be strictly a documentary film. You see how it evolved on the way.
Last question, Alain Resnais. Is the cinema dead, alive, or about to be born?
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