Alain Resnais: “I make it up as I go along.”

Alain Resnais held a press conference for You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet in the company of his producer, Jean-Louis Livi and several members of his cast: Pierre Arditi, Sabine Azéma, Anne Consigny, Anny Duperey, Hippolyte Girardot, Denis Podalydes, Lambert Wilson. They all paid emphatic and moving tribute to their director, in particular Anne Consigny, who said, “I give you my heart”.

Alain Resnais, on the film’s title:
lt just sort of crept in unnoticed to the editing room. It was a joke at first and became a sort of catchphrase between my editor, Hervé de Luze, and me. Then it was written on the cans, and the lab sent us the labels, and so it got adopted. But there was no firm intention behind it.”

Anny Duperey on the shooting and the final result :
 “This entire labour of love around Alain was directed towards the text. We were not bound hand and foot to an age, a character, a role. We were there to serve Jean Anouilh, the theatre, beauty itself. When I watched the film, I expected it to be technically masterful, but I didn’t expect it to hit me in that way. The technical mastery is there to serve the emotion. It’s a magnificent work.”

Alain Resnais on his collaboration with Eric Gautier :
“I had the impression I was working with a veritable magician. I asked him to do the impossible. He just smiled and made it happen (…) I didn’t want realist lighting because I wanted to actors to enter a sort of trance, as if sleepwalking, and I didn’t want them woken up.”

How does the film fit into his career?
“I don’t think in terms of career. I make it up as I go along. This film is unlike any other. If I’d thought of this film as a final statement, I’d never have had the courage or energy to do it.”

Report by B. de M.