Stage of the Art

Philippe Garrel, personal belongings.
text and photo Géraldine Postel

One afternoon in autumn, we ring the intercom of a building in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. We meet the warm and humble man on the fourth floor and he welcomes us in. He is quite an unusual character.  He has a strong personality and a striking face sculpted by time and a strength that seems to belong to the olden days. There are so many stories and films of his we could talk about but, today, film-director Philippe Garrel is shedding light for us on the creative process involved in making films, on his relationship with writing and music.

Mirror Photo #2
We follow Philippe Garrel to his work table, covered with blue gingham fabric that would make a perfect retro tablecloth; but this actually contains the duvet that is spread over his bed... “My work table is my bed”, he confides. We are in his bedroom and, as if to emphasise the symbolic nature of this most private space, he shows us the portrait diptych given to him as a present by painter Daniel Pommereulle, one of his best friends, now deceased. The portrait on the left shows Van Gogh’s bedroom, reworked by the artist who has placed Philippe Garrel within; this comparison between the two artists is pregnant with symbols. The second part of the diptych is the portrait of another dear friend of his: Frédéric Pardo, whom he refers to as a Parisian dandy and counter-culture prophet; in 1968, they were all part of La bande de la Coupole (the Coupole set), alongside Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Valérie Lagrange and Tina Aumont, amongst others. The work of the painter is a celebration of triangular friendship and bohemia, and is imbued with a pervading sense of nostalgia.

We were rather intrigued to discover that Philippe Garrel writes all of his scripts in camera, (in the bedroom)… It seems like a perfectly orchestrated production cycle, a kind of two-way light/memory system between two elements sharing the same name…

In the foreground: a typewriter… a glistening red shell in the centre of the room, “her” name is Valentine, the very first portable typewriter, designed by Etorre Sotsass in 1969. This is a character-revealing detail: he is a man of taste, deeply attached to beautiful things and quite happy to know little about new technologies (that being said, her twin from the Olivetti family is on display at the Beaubourg Museum of Modern Art). With his Valentine, he tells us, he writes very short scripts – 80 pages at the most – but admits to writing five times more than that, and discarding quite a lot as he goes. She must have followed him and stayed within reach in a number of circumstances, as the traces of white paint on her vivid red shell bear witness, the owner’s mark…

Conjured up in our minds are images of this man, half-sitting, half-lying, busy assembling, adjusting, changing and contemplating all the ideas and elements that will allow him to direct his next film. Here, we have a mind at ease with simultaneity and immediacy: the script is written using a typewriter: no cutting and pasting, a few crossed-out words, typing errors, accidents and pages that jolt out of the machine line after line…  The notion that Philippe Garrel is rather sensitive to 70s aesthetics is reinforced by the Polaroid camera, in the top left corner of the photograph. He works on his films as if he were composing music or beginning a painting: first, he decides on the frame, then on the bass line or horizon line. In other words, the casting, scouting and choice of colours for costumes and scenery take place simultaneously. He uses separate notebooks to define each phase; in one he sets out the colour palette, in another, the choices for costumes and actors, while the script develops on paper.

The musical dimension in his films is just as important. To him, a score should be devised in relation to the script as it unfolds, not added to the images in piecemeal fashion. He reminisces about a session at the Davout studio, where an orchestra composed a beautiful and precise piece of music in real time while watching a film projected onto a wide screen; it    made a lasting impression on him. He favours this type of approach, as it requires being in tune with the images. He is nostalgic for the presence of orchestras or musicians in a movie theatre during the projection of a film... everything happening at the same time.

While others work on their soundtracks in front of a video screen in a corner somewhere, Philippe Garrel invites musicians to spend a few days working at a cinema while the film is projected on a large screen. In 1969, Nico wrote The Falconer for his film Le Lit de la vierge, making this their first collaboration. He spent the next ten years of his life in a relationship with the singer-composer-actress-model, and made her the centre of his film La Cicatrice Intérieure in 1972, for which she also composed the soundtrack. Nico had become his source of inspiration, and appeared in seven of his films. They would travel by bus throughout Europe, and he can still remember some pretty rock & roll trips…

In 1991, Philippe Garrel released J’entends plus la guitare (I no longer hear the guitar) following the tragic and untimely death of his muse in 1988. It was then that he formed a friendship with John Cale, which still exists to this day: the American composer provided musical illustrations for his film Le Vent de la nuit, shot in 1999 with actors Catherine Deneuve, Daniel Duval and Xavier Beauvois. In Garrel’s latest film, La Frontière de l’aube, he chose Didier Lockwood to play Jean-Claude Vannier’s compositions. Philippe Garrel listens to all kinds of music: Shostakovich is one of his favourite composers, but he also enjoys listening to Lilly Allen, the Libertines and Pete Doherty, the Dirty Pretty Things. In fact, he admires Carl Barât for his artistic talent, but also for the way he looks, his countenance. “This boy truly has that certain little something, he could play Lacenaire…” he confides.

His relationship with time is definitely is quite unusual. In his films, which he releases following a pattern of one every three years, immediacy is – whenever possible – the key factor, with an approach similar to musical improvisation: the melody derives from the script, and four scenes out of five are shot in one single take. Deeply rooted in his heritage, he played in many films alongside his father, actor Maurice Garrel, before becoming a film-director himself. Philippe talks about the need he felt to work with his father, even until he was quite old. It is important to him that Garrel the father should be a passing presence in every film he makes, like a signature. He also points out the need he feels to perpetuate this process with his own son, Louis, whom he has enjoyed directing in his films, from Baisers de secours (Louis was 6) and Les Amants réguliers to La Frontière de l’aube, his latest work: it is the need for his films to have an echo in his real life that prompts him to consign these filial relations to film.

Philippe Garrel is a dual being, alternating between immersion in the present and withdrawal from the system. He is not particularly fond of new technologies (he has no e-mail address nor mobile phone!), and it is in this humble bedroom in the St-Germain-des-Prés district, on this bed, that he assembles all the fabulous elements that will form the basis for his next film, “an approach to the role of artists in society”, he tells us.

With aesthetic references, a lifestyle and a work method firmly anchored in traditional forms of creation, he is a keen actor, critic and observer of current practices and usages, and of contemporary artistic production. From the French New Wave to today, his frame of reference cuts across time. He quotes Henri Langlois, the founder of the Cinémathèque Française, and a friend: “Films in black & white will always be made, as this is an art form, not a necessity”. If we are to believe what Agamben said in his philosophy lecture at the University of Venice – entitled “What is the Contemporary?” – in which he quoted Nietzsche’s sentence, “The contemporary is the untimely”, it seems that Philippe Garrel is quite clearly a contemporaneous man.