INT: Hi, my name’s Jon Amiel. Today is the 15th of April 2011. I’m conducting an interview with Bertrand Blier for the Directors Guild of America’s Visual History Program. And we are at the Sunset Marquis Hotel in Los Angeles, CA.

BB: Hello, my name is Bertrand Blier. I was born on 14, March 1939, in Paris, France.

INT: Let’s begin at the beginning, as Dylan Thomas said. You know, tell me about your childhood. You came from a fairly interesting family background, and you know all of the questions, all of the things that we’re going to discuss today relate to your life as a Director. We’ll be seen mostly by Directors or other people kind of with an interest in the business and… I think for all of us how, how we came to begin to be in this world and to do this job is tremendously important. So tell me, tell me about your parents and your early childhood. 

BB: My childhood was a bit bizarre because when I was born in 1939 a world war [World War II] began. And so obviously it was obviously a little difficult. My father was a soldier stationed at the Maginot Line. He became a German prisoner after 15 days, during which he was sent to a prison camp. And I was all alone with my mother for two years. Then he escaped, and he saved himself with fake papers…and he was caught again several times and finally managed to make it back to Paris. And so when I saw my father again, he was a man who was always very anxious, and was afraid of being found again by the police. So he conveyed to me a horrendous fear… For example, when he heard the elevator--we were living in a building in Paris on the sixth floor--whenever he heard the elevator, he'd put on his jacket, get his wallet, and he was ready to leave by taking another staircase. It was always like that. I remember the fear he had. And I think that during my childhood, my father who was an extraordinary man--he conveyed some fears to me. So, the first fear was due to the war; that wasn’t his fault. And later, he told me about his fear of being an Actor. For example, if there was a premier at a theatre, and like all Actors, he was a bit nervous, and therefore I saw his fear, and I was afraid for him. [INT: Yes.] I learned about stage fright before I knew how to read, practically. I already knew what stage fright was, about performance anxiety, It was a childhood… there’s always a lot to say about childhood. There are good things and bad things, there's drama…but we can say I have been very lucky because my father was an extraordinarily warm man, funny, very funny, so that he was very strong in front of his children. He was very proud to have a son, and he was great with me and my… [INT: You’re the eldest?] Yes, I was the firstborn, and then I got a sister, 9 years later. I had an extraordinary relationship with my father because actors – my father worked a lot – but actors, what is wonderful about actors is that when they are not working, when they are done with a movie and they come back home, they have nothing to do except to play with their children. So my father was often absent, but when he came back he’d spend the day on the floor with me playing Cowboys and Indians, with the electric train and all that. It was really strong, and then I grew up and we had a friendly relationship, a friendship almost, between father and son. But every now and then he was taking back his role of father, because he was obliged to be strict and put his foot down when I had bad grades in elementary school or high school. But the majority of the time we were friends. For example, we would go to the movies. It was on Thursdays, and we didn’t have school on Thursdays, so we’d go see three movies— We’d watch films for two hours, four hours, six hours, eight hours; we’d see three or four movies, one after the other, in the Champs Elysees district. And since my father was famous, when we got to the cinema the staff would say “Come in Bernard, Mr. Bernard…” So we went inside the cinema like that and all the movies were one hour and half long, so we could watch 3 or 4 movies in a row.

INT: So just talk, because I think a lot of people who are listening to this interview won’t know who your father was, just describe, describe him to us as an Actor. 

BB: My father [Bernard Blier] was an Actor who became famous really quickly, at a very young age, because he acted in some movies that did really well, and therefore in the years after the War, during the 1950s, he was already a very famous Actor, very popular. So I was a child of a well-known person, of a celebrity. When we went out on the street, there was always someone who’d say, “Mr. Blier, some autographs!" This and that… So I was raised with that. When we went on vacation, for example, by the sea, my father couldn’t go to the beach. And when he came, he’d cover himself with a towel and hide behind his newspaper. And he’d tell me, “Look, over there to your right, there’s a schmuck who is about to come and ask me for my autograph. And the fat women over there, to your left, she’ll come in 15 minutes.” So, he couldn’t stay. He’d rest a half hour. When people are famous, they can’t go to the beach. . [INT: So you knew at a very early age, you knew these two things: you knew celebrity and you knew fear, the two things that seem to accompany each other in a sense, coming from…] Fear is "la peur?" [INT: Yes, fear.] Yes, for me it was tension. [INT: Ambient anxiety.] But anyway, at home, in my family, it was really pleasant. My father was a big man, smoked the pipe a lot, and he loved food very much so we had very interesting, big, large meals. We went to very good restaurants, and my father had a big American car. And it was great because during that time, we’d take road trips, which is no longer done. He had an American car, so I could lie in the back… when I was eight, nine years old. And it was great, very pleasant. It was made of iron and very big. He had a Packard. [INT: A Packard?] A Packard. [INT: Wow.] Yes, very beautiful. [INT: And you, do you also smoke a pipe?] Not when I was a child. [INT: Of course not as a child, no.] No, I smoked the pipe later on in life, when I became a Director. Because it helped me maintain my composure. I found out… for my first movies, I used to smoke the pipe to find courage and to make me look smart, and to make me look like an intellectual. With glasses and a pipe, you look a bit like--[INT: And a beard?] No, I didn’t have a beard. The beard came much later. [INT: Okay, okay.]

BB: So, you also asked me how I got into the movie business? [INT: We’ll get there in a second. Also, I’m interested talk about your mother as well, because you just told me she was a really great pianist.] My mother was a mother…she never worked. She worked when she was a young girl, but later on she got married and she never wroked. There was the War [World War II], so it was difficult. She raised me, then my sister. My mom was a homemaker. She was always a bit … she had a charming personality, and she was always a bit overwhelmed. She wasn’t at all the typical Actor’s wife. She played the piano well; she was brilliant when she gave concerts at 16, 17 years old. But subsequently, she stopped playing because of the war. And after, there were problems with raising children and all that, so she stopped playing the piano. But I forced her to play when I was 7, 8 years old, I forced her to sit at the piano and I said, “Play me Chopin’s Ballades or the waltz that you play so well.” Her hands were very beautiful; she had wonderful pianist hands. It was very beautiful to see and to hear her play.

INT: Do you think, for example, you know, for example, that piano, pieces of Schubert are such an important part, for example, in TROP BELLE POUR TOI [TOO BEAUTIFUL FOR YOU], you know, and music, you know, also Brahms features very prominently in your work as well. Do you think some of that came from listening to your mother, the associations, or do you think that’s just something that you would’ve…? 

BB: I think…I think that both of my parents gave me something. My father was the artist, officially, but I think that my mother was very artistic as well. So my parents gave me two legacies: there's my my father’s legacy, the show-business legacy, the actor’s trade and all that. And my mother probably gave me a good ear for music and the love for music…because my father didn’t love music so much.

INT: How did you start, how did it begin for you? Presumably you would go to film sets and see your father working. 

BB: No, I didn’t--[INT: No?] My father didn’t want me to be on the studio lot too much. But I would go with him on occasion, but not frequently. But he made me go when there were beautiful sets because back then, they’d still make studio sets with houses, and streets stretching out in the background. With the problems of perspective-- he took me to the houses that would get smaller and smaller; there were very small houses at the end of the street. It was fascinating for me. I was at the studios like that a few times, and then I would meet great Actors like Jean Gabin… But I’d seen great Actors throughout my childhood because they’d go to my parents’ house. [INT: Who else?] There was Francoise Perier, Simone Signoret, Montand [Yves Montand]. Gabin, he didn’t come to our house, but later on I worked with him quite a bit. And my father told me that after the war [World War II], he went--I don’t know if it’s true, because my father was as good a liar like a lot of Actors. He’d lie to me a lot. And after the war, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall came to Paris. They were on vacation and they were invited by all the French Actors who had invited Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. They went to dinner at Francoise Perier’s home, they went to dinner with other people who invited them. They came to my house, to my parents’ home. I was too young, so I had to go to bed at 9pm. My father told me that he’d never seen a man drink that much whiskey like Humphrey Bogart. And himself as well. My father told me, “They went to your bedroom; I wanted them to see my child. And Humphrey Bogart went to the side of your bed to watch you sleep.” So, I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s a great story. [INT: It’s a lovely, it’s a lovely story.] I tell Actors when they irritate me, “When I was little, Humphrey Bogart leaned over to look at me when I was asleep.” [INT: There you go!] “So listen to me and keep quiet. And besides, I have an Oscar.” [INT: And yeah, exactly. So they give you respect. Good thing.]

INT: Talk to me--before we move on from your early childhood, are there any memories of the war [World War II] itself that you still carry with you? I mean you were only six, I guess six, seven years old when the war finished. 

BB: You’re asking me if I remember the war? [INT: Yes.] Yes, I have many memories of the war. When one is old, childhood memories come back. Things that you never thought about. I realize now that I am a bit old that the war left its mark on me. Because I have… When the war ended, I was five years old. Six years old. [INT: Six years old, yes.] Six years old. So I remember the Germans. I would see them, I knew them. And then there were the bombs, the bombings. Allied bombings: American and British bombings to destroy the weapon factories that were--because we lived not far from Renault and Citroen, they were a kilometer away. So the planes, they dropped bombs that weren’t intelligent and that destroyed everywhere, except Paris. So very often at night, we’d have alerts [sirens], the same as the English had. We suffered just like them. We’d hear sirens and very quickly, we’d go down from the sixth floor to the basement. Me, I was in pajamas, you’d put on a jacket or something, and in the basement there was, I settled in and read because…basement was closed until sunrise. And I, I would read in the basement and all the people were in stalls like this along the corridors… They were stressful moments, certainly. The bombs fell on the streets two meters from our home. [INT: Two meters?] Two meters. The streets were very dangerous. But we were lucky because we weren’t, the bombs didn’t fall on us. But I remember all my friends in school had the same experience. I had a friend who was, one night, he was in bed, not that far away from my home, and there was a bomb that fell on his building and destroyed it…the façade was missing. If I remember these childhood memories it’s because of that.

INT: Do you think any of those memories or emotions have leaked, permeated your work? Do you think as a child of wartime, that you have a different perspective? 

BB: I think that my early years didn’t affect me, but now I think a lot about World War II. It has impacted me and when I write a story, I often want to talk about World War II, the Holocaust, all of that was part of my education. [INT: Yes.] It’s very important.

INT: So, let’s talk about your earliest memories of films, of plays, things that began to make you feel that I want to do that. 

BB: I would see my father in the theatre at a very young age. It was an extraordinary…because he had a role in play called LE PETIT CAFÉ, a play by Tristan Bernard, that I saw. When I was around seven or eight, or nine years old, I don’t recall, it was at the Theatre Antoine in Paris. And last year, I wrote a play that was staged at the Theatre Antoine, in the same theatre--that I staged, and that I staged. And in the theatre director’s office, an old theatre director, there is a picture of my father. And he gave me a Director’s dressing room while I worked there. The sign on the door read “Louis Jouvet Dressing Room”. And Louis Jouvet was my relative. All that is fantastic, to be in the same theatre. [INT: Yes. Extraordinary sense of continuity.] Of all the things that affected me were the theatre; my father on stage. That scared me. I was scared he would fall, or that people would throw tomatoes at him, or that he would forget his lines. Then I saw some films, but I didn’t systematically watch all of my father’s films. I’d watch one here and there, but I preferred to watch American films. [INT: Of course.] Yes. Adventure films.

INT: So what were those first films that made a deep impression on you? 

BB: t’s hard to say because I watched so many. At the time there were cinemas in every neighborhood I’d go to with friends, and we’d watch “Scaramouche”, films with Stewart Granger, THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO , we’d watch films like that. We’d watch three per week, so there wasn’t really any… I’d say the first that really made an impression on me was a film by Fritz Lang, a western called THE RETURN OF FRANK JAMES. [INT: Yeah.] Very good. I saw it with my father and I was fascinated. It’s truly a great film. With Henry Fonda, I think. [INT: Yes, I think so. So more--so not so much the films of Renoir [Jean Renoir], Rene Claire, Jean Vigo--] No, I saw--[INT: More the American films?] I saw them afterwards when I was 13, 14 years old. But before, I’d go to the movies after school. I would go see films…in the district. [INT: And, so…] But I saw the French films, I saw films with Fernandel, with Gabin [Jean Gabin], with…of course! I would also go to see the actresses, the beautiful actresses. [INT: Which were your first, who was your love on screen? Who did you love most? For me it was Jean Simmons.] Yes? For me, it was much later. I think it was Audrey Hepburn, ROMAN HOLIDAY. [INT: Oh yes. Yeah, absolutely.] I was destroyed. [LAUGHS] Before, there were others but I can’t remember. Ava Gardner as well. I really loved that actress who was in QUO VADIS… [INT: Who’s that--QUO VADIS--yes.] Deborah Kerr. [INT: Yes, Deborah Kerr. Oh yes.] Beautiful, beautiful. [INT: Beautiful.] Yes. [INT: She did a wonderful film--] THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO, is Deborah Kerr? [INT: Yeah, Deborah Kerr. Also, THE KING AND I. I saw that one when I was very young. She was beautiful.] Yes. She was beautiful. She was very beautiful. I liked Gregory Peck a lot. I don’t know why--[INT: Always.] He wasn’t a great Actor. He was a good Actor, but he wasn’t… [INT: No, but he was a great personality.] But he had an incredible physique. [INT: Did you see THE BIG COUNTRY? That was my favorite western.] No, I didn’t see that. [INT: Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Carroll Baker, Charlton Heston. My favorite, William Wyler directed it.] I haven’t seen it. [INT: Yeah, it’s fantastic.]

INT: So, how did you begin to take your first steps as a Writer and as a Director? How did that start for you? 

BB: Before I made the decision to be a filmmaker--because my father was very worried when I was 15, 16, my father was very worried to know what I was going to do in life. So he would tell me all the time, “Have you thought of what you’re going to do because you’re a man, you should have a profession.” I would tell him I didn’t know, that I didn’t have an idea. He said I should have one because--he was interested in chemistry. And he told me, “You know chemistry is a profession with a future. You should focus on chemistry.” But that didn’t interest me at all. Later when we went on vacation, with my family, to Saint Paul de Vence, a village where there is a lot of…and that has a hotel that is absolutely sublime. And at the hotel, Simone Signoret was always there, Yves Montand, all those people there. There was Henri-Georges Clouzot, who lived there, and who was in the process of making a film about Mr. Picasso, a great film about Picasso [THE MYSTERY OF PICASSO]. He was editing at a studio in Nice. So he was going to screen his work and he invited my father and I to a private screening at the studio, where I saw Clouzot’s film with Clouzot, I was fascinated by him. It was the first time I met a film Director, a great film Director. Because at my father’s house, Directors didn’t come to visit. Directors are smart. Before the New Wave [French New Wave], Directors didn’t exist. There were only Actors. And I got to know Clouzot, who was a fascinating man and with whom I spoke, because he liked talking to youngsters. He made me talk about my school and stuff like that. At the same time, every evening, there was…with my father. They would smoke the pipe, like that. And he gave me permission to observe the party. Clouzot let my father play with the casting of his film. At the same time, he was casting a film that he needed to begin called LES ESPIONS. He was looking to cast the lead role. So he said to my father, “What do you think if I cast Francois Perier?” And my father said, “Too fragile.” “And if I cast…” “Too big as well.” He was unhappy. Afterwards, he comes back into the room and my father says to me, “That idiot! He should think of me! I should be cast in the role.” [INT: Always the Actor, yes.] Yes. And so all that fascinated me. And when I went back to Paris to return to school, I told my father, “I have an idea for a profession. I would like to be a film Director.” And he told me…he was surprised, and he told me, “You’re going to be nervous your entire life. But if you want it, you should do it.” [INT: He was right.] Afterwards, he introduced me to people, I had all the help to begin, to start as, what’s it called in English? In France, we call it a trainee Assistant [Assistant Director]. I was 19 or 20 years old, and I began right away; I didn’t go to school, I went straight away to the studios. There was a series of film where I was an assistant, or a second assistant [director]. I learned a lot with these films because they were bad films. You learn a lot more with bad films because you can see what you should have done. You see a director doing a shot, and you’d say to yourself “No, that’s not the way to do it! You should be over there, not there.” But if you’re working on great films with great directors, you become fascinated, and you learn much less. Because great directors do shots that are exactly perfect. So the assistant would watch and think, “Ok, that’s nice,” but that’s it. But when you’ve got a director who doesn’t know how to do it very well - and if you’re passionate about film - it can be very interesting. You go talk to the director and tell him... I was always obsessed with the height of the camera, so I’d always go talk to my directors I was working with. I was working with Georges Lautner, and I’d always tell him, “You know, the camera should be slightly below the actors.” I was obsessed with Orson Welles, so I’d always be saying, “Lower the camera a bit.” But he wasn’t interested in this, he didn’t give a damn, but I was passionate about [the camera] being just a little bit lower. [INT: Always gives the Actor’s face more power.] Yes. [INT: Absolutely.]

INT: So, you know you are… [BB: The questions are also about writing?] Yes, I was about to move to that, yes. 

BB: I never wrote when I was young. I never had a desire to be a Writer. I didn’t know how to write. I knew how to read, and I read a lot. I really read a lot. [INT: You studied literature--] It’s because of that that I knew how to write afterwards. I read, when I was young; I read every day until two or three in the morning, I read. And my father would come home after he finished at the theatre, for example, at midnight, he'd come to see if I was sleeping. I'd quickly turn off the lights, he would see that I was sleeping, he would leave, and I would turn the lights back on and read until two in the morning. I would sleep in class.

INT: What do you remember reading? What were some of your favorite books when you were reading? 

BB: I was lucky because my father was a man who was passionate about books, old books. He was a bibliophile. He had in his office all the great classics, Molière originals, a Balzac first edition--[INT: Original?] Yes. First editions of Balzac, Voltaire, of the encyclopedia, all that. He had everything. So all the books he purchased to read, because he purchased a lot, because he read a lot, all the books…and he placed them in my room. I had a library in my room, where he placed all his reading books. And so I had a moment where I realized that in my room, I had all the American literature of the time, the 1950s, which was fantastic literature. All the police novels: Dashiell Hammett, Ross MacDonald, James Cain, all of Steinbeck [John Steinbeck], Caudwell [Sarah Caudwell], all that. I had all that in my room. So one day I began to read, and I read everything, especially American novels. When I say American novels, American popular novels; I didn’t read Faulkner [William Faulkner], I read that much later. But when I was 13 years old, I read Dashiell Hammett, Chandler [Raymond Chandler], things like that. So I had stored a culture that was very close to film, because when one reads Chandler, for example, many times he began by painting a scene--[INT: Yes, totally. He writes filmically--] Always. It’s marvelous, it’s marvelous. They’re writing films. But when I was 20 years old, I didn’t have any writing ambitions. I wanted to be a Director, but I didn’t know to. I thought I had to work with the screenwriter, the Writers. During that time, the people who I worked with, my main assistant said, “When you make your first film, never write the scenes yourself… That was the stupid rule of that time. [INT: Yes.] So, I didn’t start to write until much later. I worked in film as an Assistant and later I had a chance to work on a very bizarre film that fell into my hands. I was 22 years old. They asked me if I was interested and I said, “Yes, of course!” and I made a film at 22 years old that’s an experimental film, very interesting, about… At the time, we talked a lot about Cinema Verité. There was an American school, there was a Jean Rouch school, there was all of that. They asked me to make a film about young people. I made the film that was important for me [HITLER—NEVER HEARD OF HIM]. It was filmed well and it’s a film that made me step out of bourgeois environment, because I went to prisons, I went to juvenile detention centers, I went everywhere, and I met people from every walk of life. It marked me enormously and that I filmed… It was a very strange film. So I found myself at 23 years old, I became a Director. I couldn’t be an Assistant [Assistant Director] anymore, so I was unemployed. [INT: Of course. [LAUGHS]]. Afterwards, I made two films, fiction films, with… It was a film… During that period, there were many spy films, a bit serious. There were the James Bond and all that, and there was a moment when there were two or three Directors who made spy films that were serious. I don’t know if Burton was in it, THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, but there were serious films. However, when there were serious spy films, they never worked because spy films during that time weren’t serious. James Bond, things like that. If one made a serious film about espionage, I think they wouldn’t have been a success; even the great Directors were unable to. So I made a spy film, a very serious one--[INT: IF I WERE A SPY.] That’s it, IF I WERE A SPY. The film is interesting, but it was a complete failure… If it was released at a theatre in the Champs-Élysées, we’d close the movie theatre.

INT: You worked with your father on this film? [Bernard Blier; IF I WERE A SPY].

BB: With my father, there were older Actors. There were many great Actors. There was Bruno Cremer, Suzanne Flon, marvelous people. And afterwards… But the film wasn’t a terrible failure. And afterwards I didn’t make a film or do anything for 6 years. And it was during that time that the most important things in my life happened. Obviously, I tried making films. I had friends, I had friends who were Writers that I had come over and I told them that I would write them stories and they could pay me later. [LAUGH] I had never written like that. My friends said, “Listen, do you have something else to do?” So, I found myself alone and I began to write alone. I began to write all alone. I learned how to write by writing a script.

BB: There was a period where all my friends left, I found myself alone and I began to write alone. I wrote some stories--I learned how to write. You learn how to write on a board, putting pen to paper to tell a story. Afterwards, there was…I worked with a Director who is very famous in France, named George Lautner, who made LES TONTONS FLINGUEURS, all those films. I was his Assistant [Assistant Director]. I went to see him edit, he was editing a film, and I told him, “George, don’t you need a screenplay for your next film?” And he said, “Yes, I’m looking for a screenplay for my next film.” I told him this on a Friday I told him, “I have one,” which wasn’t true. I didn’t have one. But I told him that I had one, “I’ll give it to you on Monday.” And so I went back home and during the weekend I wrote 30 pages of a wonderful script.” And on Monday I gave it to him and he said, “Let’s make it.” So I wrote the script for the film [TROUBLESHOOTERS; LAISSE ALLER… C’EST UNE VALSE]. It was the first time I earned money with my pen. It is very important. Very important. The film was made with… It was a success. I told myself that we should do another one because we understood each other. And he made another one, but without me, with another Writer. …that I went home and sat in front of my typewriter, I had an old typewriter, and I typed 20 pages; it was the debut of GOING PLACES, LES VALSEUSES. [INT: Ha.] The novel, the crime novel.

INT: Do you think that some of the characters in LES VALSEUS [GOING PLACES] were--did, were they influenced by that very first film you did when you went out and worked with the… 

BB: Yes. Of course that influenced them. They were characters that I came across in my American novels. And also the young man and woman who I found while making my first film. All of that came… I was 30, 31 during that time. In my head, there was a world that began to be structured, structured by my reading, by life, by the difficulties, so I couldn’t write a lot before 30. I think you have to live a little bit to write. So I began to write a book that is, that should have been short, that should have been…what is called Serie Noire. In France, do you know the Serie Noire? They published all the great American Writers. So I went to see him, the Serie Noire, I went to see the director who gave me three rules, because there are rules in Serie Noire. And so, I decided to write a screenplay, develop a script. I wrote the script in novel form. And finally, instead of it taking three months as I had originally planned, it took me a year. It became a 500-page book. And when the book was finished, I had some friends in the literary world, and I went to see them and they told me, they read the book in 10 days. We met after 10 days, in June, the month of May-June and the book came out in September. And after eight days, it set a record, in stores. So it didn’t go badly. My home phone began to ring; they were Producers. It’s really a book wanting to be made into film. The Producers purchased the book, “What’s this book written by Bertrand Blier? He’s written a book that works, let’s read it.” So they read it and they saw that they could make it into a film. So they called me and I had 10, 12 knowing Claude Berri, people like that. I had to pick a good Producer, which is difficult. And I chose well. I chose a very good Producer. His name is Paul Claudon, and he had produced films of Pierre Etaix, he hadn’t produced bad projects, and he had an extraordinary quality, which pushed me to make the film. And he never put his foot on the break, because it was a very, very difficult film. And when I wrote scenes, I didn’t let him read them. I would go to his office in the mornings and I would say, “Paul, I wrote a scene but you can’t read it.” … And I’d read him the scene and he’d fall out of his chair laughing. And he said, “Let’s do it, let’s do it.” So, he pushed me to make the most stupid… It was wonderful. That’s why the film is, how do you say, inescapable, essential. Even when you didn’t like it, you still went to see it.

INT: You have a fairly unique experience as a Director, of having directed your father [Bernard Blier], I think three times: BUFFET FROID, IF I WERE A SPY--[BB: CALMOS, IF I WERE A SPY, and which is the other one…] BUFFET FROID. [BB: BUFFET FROID, yes, yes.] It’s wonderful! [BB: It is wonderful.] And how was that experience? Was it difficult for you, or were you so close to your father that there was no issues with power or with role? 

BB: Honestly, every time I’m asked that question I always say that there were times, but I didn’t…to film with my father. When one enters the film set, one arrives, one works, there isn’t such a thing as father or son, just an Actor and a Director. [INT: An Actor and a Director.] And afterwards, as time passed, he wanted me to call him, “Pa, pa, pa,” for example; I called him Pa, even Pa Bernard. I would say, “You can come…” I would say, “You can come to me,” but I would say, “Pa, pa, pa.” I would call him Papa much later when he was sick, that’s when he became my father. But on the film set, he was an Actor. He didn’t like it when I called him Bernard. It irritated him. He didn’t like it. “Bernard, do this…” But it wasn’t, it wasn’t a problem. He was a great Actor. [INT: Yes!] So the only thing that I would do, I think I was very severe with him, more so than other Directors, because I knew everything by heart. I knew all his gags, all his mannerisms--[INT: His weaknesses.] When he was unhappy, he would start to go, “Oh…” I would say, “No. No. You’re not going to do that.” And he’d say, “You’re right, you’re right. Let me know when I act like that.” [INT: That’s wonderful.] It was wonderful. He had confidence in me. He knew that I treated him fairly because I knew him… That’s all. I also worked a lot with Rougerie [Jean Rougerie], with Depardieu [Gerard Depardieu], Carmet [Jean Carmet], everyone that was in that film. It’s a great film, very easy. …by the lake it wasn’t easy, but if not, well, then there you go.

INT: So around that time, and I have to ask you this because sexuality and relationships are such a critical part of the things that you write about. What was happening in your love life at that time? 

BB: Nothing special. [LAUGH] Like you. [INT: Like me. [LAUGH]] No, I had a normal private life, quite normal. I loved women and young girls. First, young girls, then older ones afterwards, naturally. But that’s it. I think these are two very different things. In my films, there aren’t very many things that resemble my own life. I’m not at all like that. People are always surprised to find me … I remember after LES VALSEUSES [GOING PLACES] there were people who I met and who would say, “You made that film? I don’t believe it! You seem like you were brought up right!” I remember one day, I went into a shop to buy a Mozart biography. I went into the shop and asked the bookseller, “Do you have a Mozart biography?” He looked at me and said, “You’re interested in Mozart? You?!” He’d seen LES VALSEUSES and thought I was thug [INT: Flaubert [Gustave Flaubert] said something quite important on that subject, that I live the life of a bourgeois, I can’t--But I live the life of a bourgeois so that inside I may rage, I may be…] Yes, yes. Of course, of course. No, I dealt with love and sexuality and so on, just for laughs—for fun. I don’t make many serious films. I’ve only made one serious film, TOO BEAUTIFUL FOR YOU. It’s a bit serious, only a bit serious. [INT: A little, yes.] But the others are comedies. All, because all… [INT: Comedies very serious.] Yes, but you’re allowed to be…it doesn’t matter what. [INT: You know that.] Yes, but you can do whatever you’d like in a comedy. [INT: Absolutely.] And in serious films, you can’t. It resembles life too much, so you can’t. That’s why I love comedy a lot. You can share ideas, like when…

INT: It’s unusual for me to talk to a film director about theatre, but I think for you theatre is incredibly important. You know, to me if I look at your films, I can see Ionesco [Eugene Ionesco], and Genet [Jean Genet] and Theatre of the Absurd and even the way in which you use soliloquy, to me is deeply--almost Shakespearean in you use many devices that seem to me to owe more to the theatre in a sense than to any major tradition in film. Do you think that’s true? Do you recognize that? 

BB: Yes. I think that just like the Director Francois Truffaut was obsessed by literature, me, I am obsessed by, by theatre text. I’m not too theatre educated. I didn’t go to the theatre often when I was young, but I did read plays and afterwards… I think it come from my father. I lived with an Actor who did a lot of theatre. He was in many plays. I learned theatre positions, dramatic actions, because it was me who helped him read his lines. When I was young, when I was 10 years old, 11 years old, I’d come back from school and my father would say, “Well, drink your chocolate milk; hurry up because we have work.” And so I’d go to his office, I’d sit and he’d pace in front of me, and I’d help him repeat lines. And I played all the other roles; I played the wife, the lover, the concierge, etcetera. And he’d act his role. And he’d tell me, “You are very hard on me. If I drop a comma, you tell me.” And so I certainly learned from that. For the love of theatre, we made it work. Because making it work is like working with an extraordinary Actor. Every time he went on he was wonderful. I learned from that, and I certainly used it a lot in films without knowing... I didn’t know I was doing it. I just did it naturally, because I didn’t go to the theatre often. But I knew Ionesco, Beckett [Samuel Beckett], all those people, obviously, the English… I saw the first…Pinter [Harold Pinter]. I did all that. But--[INT: But your first love it seems is the spoken word.] Yes, dialogue. Yes, the dialogue. Not necessarily from films, but also theatre dialogue, or even dialogue from novels, when the Actors speak to themselves. I often have Actors who speak to themselves in my films, or who speak to the camera. I like that a lot because it’s theatrical, it’s also similar to novels. People speak in novels, speak to themselves. [INT: Yes, internal…you hear internal monologue in a sense. You hear the voice of the character.]

BB: And afterwards, I was influenced by the French New Wave, and by… I was very influenced by Francois Truffaut’s first film, THE 400 BLOWS [LE QUATRE CENTS COUPS], where there’s an extraordinary scene with the young kid, Pierre Leaud [Jean-Pierre Leaud], has a very long monologue where he is questioned by a social worker or I don’t know who. And he has a very long monologue that lasts 5 minutes, where he talks about everything about himself and recalls things. And I like when films stop so that a character can recall things. That’s usually never done in films. But I love doing that. It’s taking a risk. I like it a lot when the film stops and an Actor recalls things, like the theatre. In the theatre, you do things like that. [INT: Absolutely.] In films, no. It’s dangerous. [INT: Yes. And in a novel, obviously you have a first person narrative. You know, you look at Chandler [Raymond Chandler] or whatever and you just hear the first person, the internal monologue.] I like it a lot when the character speaks…for example, in TOO BEAUTIFUL FOR YOU [TROP BELLE POUR TOI], there is a scene where Depardieu [Gerard Depardieu] and Josiane Balasko are in a café, both of them--it’s the first time they’re together, they’re drinking coffee, and Gerard looks at Josiane and he says, “I love that woman.” [INT: Yes.] Blocking like that, it’s fantastic! It’s from cinema, it’s from novels, it’s what? I don’t know. But he’s never loved someone. You can speak to someone in a scene and say what you’re trying to get across, doesn’t matter what. It’s for the audience, just like in theatre. [INT: Yes, exactly.] Yes. It’s different in films because we frame like this, in CinemaScope, it’s too strong. [INT: Yes. Probably in TOO BEAUTIFUL FOR YOU, it was the height… I think you used that device more powerfully than in any other film. You know, sometimes your characters simply turn straight to the camera, and they break the fourth wall. But, interestingly in, for example, TOO BEAUTIFUL FOR YOU and some of your other films, they don’t talk to the camera as much as for the camera. They’re expressing their thoughts for us, for the audience without being directly--] Yes. In THE CLINK OF ICE [LE BRUIT DES GLACONS], my last film, the Actors look directly at the camera. [INT: Yes.] I explained to the public recently, I think they are looking at death, all, all the characters. Because it’s the subject of the film. [INT: Yes.] I never thought that way, but a camera can be used that way. You can look at it directly. It’s intimidating. The camera is intimidating. [INT: Absolutely. It’s cold, it’s impersonal.] It’s black. [INT: Yes, it’s black.] But in my first film called HITLER—NEVER HEARD OF HIM [HITLER, CONNAIS PAS], about the youth, I had my subjects come to the studio with…black. They were alone with three cameras. They were encircled by the cameras. And it was the old Mitchell camera with the three lenses. [INT: Yes, the turrets.] There were young men, young women, for example, extremely charming, who would speak, who were timid and in front of them there was this big camera… It was wonderful. But my dream is to make a film where you look directly into the camera. My dream is to make a film that is a real film. That’s to say there are moments where you see the cast, you see the camera, you go to the dining hall, you stop… I really like Karel Reisz’s film with Meryl Streep called LA MAITRESSE DU LIEUTENANT FRANCAIS. [INT: Oh, THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN.] There was a film, then the cast, and at the end of shooting, it was over. It was sad because it finished in the dining hall, the Actors, with Jeremy Irons… [INT: Yes. It’s John Fowles’ novel.] There was the film and the cast, the double story. It was wonderful. [INT: Yes.]