Improvising Cinema (Film Culture in Transition)

FILM CULTURE IN TRANSITION IMPROVISING CINEMA GILLES MOUËLLIC Amsterdam University Press Improvising Cinema This book is published in print and online through the online OAPEN library (www.oapen.org) OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks) is a collaborative in- itiative to develop and implement a sustainable Open Access publication model for academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The OAPEN Library aims to improve the visibility and usability of high quality academic research by aggregating peer reviewed Open Access publications from across Europe. Improvising Cinema Gilles Mouëllic Originally published as Improviser le cinema () by Éditions Yellow Now (Crisnée, Bel- gique, dir.: Guy Jungblut). Translated from the French by Caroline Taylor Bouché. The translation and publication of this book have been made possible by a grant from the programme ‘Filmer la creation artistique’ (/)ofl’Agence Nationale de la Re- cherche (ANR) and by a subsidy from l’équipe d’accueil ‘Arts, pratiques et poétiques’ (EA , Université Rennes ). Excerpts of this work have already appeared in different versions in the following publications: –‘Improvised tangents…’,inCarnets du Bal, no. , Jean-Pierre Criqui (ed.), Le Bal-Images en manœuvre éditions, ; –‘Improvising/sculpting: Un couple parfait, by Nobuhiro Suwa’,in‘Le cinéma surpris par les arts’, Cahiers du Musée national d’art moderne, no. - (summer-fall ); –‘Rohmer and directing actors…’,inPositif, no. (January ), article commissioned by Vincent Amiel; –‘City rhythms: modern jazz in films noirs’,inLe siècle du jazz, exhibition catalogue, Da- niel Soutif (ed.), Skira-Flammarion, ; –‘An experiment in collective improvisation: Quatre Jours à Ocoee (), by Pascale Ferran’,inFilmer l’acte de création, a collective work, Pierre-Henry Frangne, Gilles Mouëllic and Christophe Viart (eds.), Presses universitaires de Rennes, . The texts were revised and expanded for the present edition. Cover illustration (front): Scene from À Nos Amours, Maurice Pialat, . Cover illustration (back): Ben Gazzara, Gena Rowlands and John Cassavetes (starring in John Cassavetes’ Opening Night). Cover design: Kok Korpershoek, Amsterdam Lay-out: JAPES, Amsterdam isbn (paperback) isbn (hardcover) e-isbn (pdf) e-isbn (ePub) nur Creative Commons License CC BY NC ND (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/.) c G. Mouëllic / Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam Some rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, any part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise). Contents Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Writing and improvisation A selection of models… and their limitations Emptiness or overflow Writing the unpredictable The script as matter 2. Creation in action A collective adventure Renoir and the actor, Rossellini and the world On the fringes of the New Wave 3. The influence of Jean Rouch Godard as improviser? Fabulation and improvisation Ritual and overflow in the cinema of Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche Improvised tangents: from documentary to fiction 4. Acting cinema The body filmed, the body filming Disinhibition in focus (): play Disinhibition in focus (): dance Improvising/sculpting: Un couple parfait (), by Nobuhiro Suwa 5. The temptation of theatre A seminal stalemate Theatricalities Montages 6.Therulesofthegame Directing from the inside (): the director and actor Directing from the inside (): delegations Rohmer and directing actors: a model of improvisation? 6 Improvising Cinema 7. Filming jazz City rhythms: modern jazz in films noirs More pointers from the small screen… John Coltrane, in the frame An experiment in collective improvisation: Quatre Jours à Ocooe (), by Pascale Ferran Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index of names Index of films Acknowledgements This work was published with the support of the Agence nationale de la re- cherche (ANR) within the framework of the programme Filmer la création artistique (FILCREA, /), under the aegis of Arts, pratiques et poétiques (Univer- sity of Rennes ) and its team. I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the following people for their invaluable contribution: Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, Vincent Amiel, Emmanuelle André, Jacques Aumont, Nicolas Bancilhon, Jean-Pierre Berthomé, Sylvie Cha- laye, Hugues Charbonneau, Jean-Pierre Criqui, Antoine de Baecque, Jacques Déniel, Antony Fiant, Pierre-Henry Frangne, Loïc Gourvennec, Abel Jafri, Koffi Kwahulé, Jean-François Laureux, Laurent Le Forestier, Chantal Le Sauze, Ré- gine Rioult, Julien Roig, Daniel Soutif, Eric Thouvenel, Mathieu Vadepied, Agnès Varda, Vincent Verdoux, Sarah Sobol, Charles Tatum Jr, Bruno Todeschi- ni. The quality of the suggestions made by the year - and year - students on the Masters Programme in Cinema Studies at the University of Ren- nes was also much appreciated: Jérôme Allain, Antonin Allogio, Marie Beau- temps, Anouk Bellanger, Simon Berthelot, Louis Blanchot, Leslie Dagneaux, Si- mon Daniellou, Guillaume David, Maxime Derrien, Emilie Doveze, Erwan Floch’lay, Marie Habert, Jérémy Houillère, Kevin Jaglin, Lenaïg Le Faou, Auré- lien Le Gallou, Caroline Le Ruyet, Céline Le Tréquesser, Robin Louvet. This project would not have been possible without the warm and loyal support of Alain Bergala and the confidence placed in me by Andrée Blavier and Guy Jungblut. As always, Laurence and Juliette. In memory of my father Introduction Long before it fired the enthusiasm of twentieth-century creators, improvisation had held its own in popular forms of theatrical entertainment such as medieval ‘games’ or ‘mystery plays’, precursors of Commedia dell’arte. It went on to be- come associated with music, the seventeenth-century definition of the verb ‘to improvise’ being ‘to create and perform spontaneously and without prepara- tion’. This musical grounding helped to establish improvisation as an ‘absolute poetic fact’, as the philosopher Christian Béthune put it, an assertion that tied in with Western beliefs, progressively based on notions of the artist and his work. The nineteenth century may have glorified Romantic genius but it also marked the decisive split between composer and performer, a way of proclaim- ing the written word’s superiority over invention in the moment, with the musi- cian losing any prerogative over the composition by becoming the mouthpiece of a pre-existing work. At that time, improvisation was assimilated to the vir- tuoso tours de force that so enthralled Salon gatherings – leading composers could sometimes turn out to be consummate improvisers but it was through their scores that they joined the ranks of creators. In one of the rare essays to be devoted to improvisation, Jean-François de Raymond claims that ‘Everything marginalises improvisation, the seemingly unaccomplished acts, the sketches. Lacking ancestors, genealogy or archives, it does not transmit, perpetuate or explain anything.’ This did not prevent it, however, from attracting a remarkable amount of attention across a broad artistic spectrum throughout the twentieth century, with varying degrees of success. The untapped potential of the body was explored through dance and theatre, while painting and sculpture inspired a fascination with gesture, the spontaneous nature of the Surrealists’ highly-prized ‘automatic’ writing was ap- plauded and the unpredictable happenings in the realm of the visual arts gained in popularity. This diversity also harboured a certain confusion, along with a legitimate wariness regarding the less convincing spontaneous creative experiments. Only jazz, which preceded and inspired many of these ventures, seems to have been unaffected by such doubts. With no other motive but to play together, musicians imbued with the black folklore of New Orleans imposed their ‘immediate inventive practices’ on every Western stage, brilliantly imple- menting the creative potential of improvisation. Having graduated in the space of only a few years from exotic artefact to the epitome of artistic revolution, jazz 10 Improvising Cinema gave credence to other forms of expression in which writing played second fid- dle to inventions in the moment. In a variety of ways, performance arts such as music, dance and theatre, which were particularly receptive to alternative improvised expression, all acted as possible models. Although performance plays a key role in the cinema – it goes without saying that improvisation goes hand in hand with filming, unexpected hiccups being part and parcel of every film shoot – no one at that stage associated the cinema with improvisation. Our brief, however, does not cover these episodes of forced improvisation; the aim here is twofold: to con- firm the existence of improvisational practices that can be specifically attributed to the cinema and to determine their powers of expression. In other words, we are not concerned with gauging the reactions to the random mishaps that may have occurred in the course of the shoot, but rather with revealing the practices that deliberately cast the spotlight on improvisation as the instigator of unpre- cedented forms of expression. To a certain extent, the cinema gives the lie to Jean-François de Raymond’s claim. The technical recording process that under- pins it actually makes it possible to keep track of past events and build them into potential archives: Filming an interview, capturing

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