Continues from: Timeline
Transcribed from the subtitles François Truffaut : portraits volés / un film de Serge Toubiana et Michel Pascal
One day I was alone with Bost working on The Watchmaker of St. Paul. I mentioned the article and asked if what Henri Jeanson wrote in his memoirs was true. That Truffaut had visited Bost, praised him to the skies and borrowed some of his papers including the script of Diary of a Country Priest which Aurenche was due to shoot as his directorial debut. It was only the first draft. Aurenche and Bost weren’t happy with it yet. Bost didn’t want to lend it to him but Truffaut talked him into it. All these documents, all these gifts and praises, resulted in that article. Truffaut wrote to Bost soon afterwards. He showed me the letter. Dear Pierre Bost, "My article probably surprised you. I didn’t mean all I said in it but I’m a young journalist with a career to make so I have to be outspoken even if it is unfair. I’ve always greatly admired you and your writing. I’m out to get Aurenche."
from Projections : a Forum for Filmmakers issue no. 2 -- I Wake up Dreaming (1993)
I meet Serge Toubiana and Michel Pascal who are working on a documentary on Truffaut, with whom I had a long and passionate relations. When he was a critic on Arts magazine I read him faithfully and even wrote to him a few times, particularly when he ripped The Searchers to pieces. I can still remember three films that defended vigorously and which I have never managed to see: South Sea Sinner(H Bruce Humberstone), No Sad Songs for Me(Rudolph Mate), High Lonesome(Alan Le May).
Truffaut even invited me to watch him shoot Les Quatres cents coups which I saw in its opening day at 2:00 P.M, as I did Tirez sur le pianiste, skipping classes in philosophy and law respectively. My first disappointment came with Jules and Jim (my opinion hasn't changed after seeing it recently); then, reading the memoirs of Henri Jeanson, I was shocked by what he really did to Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost, after showering them with compliments. Bost confirmed the story when I was working on Clockmaker with him and Aurenche, and even showed me a letter from Truffaut that read: "You must have been surprised by the brutal tone of my article. You will understand that I am a young journalist, and to get myself noticed I have to adopt a polemical tone and not necessarily say what I think...I still have a great admiration for you. It's Aurenche I'm after."
If you have read and assimilated my timeline, you will realize that Tavernier :
either
A. has a fifteen year old François Truffaut ringing the door at the home of a stranger who happens to be a screenwriter and borrowing the first draft of a script which is being worked on and not returning it for six years;
or
B. has Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost slaving on a screenplay that Aurenche plans to direct, all the while blithely unaware that five years earlier, the copyright holder of the novel that their script is based had, after reviewing their final script for this project, categorically refused them permission to adapt his novel and that, a year earlier, an adaptation of that novel filmed by Robert Bresson had been released to great acclaim.
Neither of Bertand Tavernier's stories work within the schema of the timeline that I have set up.
Continues on: Henri Jeanson's story
Showing posts with label "Henri Jeanson". Show all posts
Showing posts with label "Henri Jeanson". Show all posts
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Henri Jeanson's story
continues from: Bertrand Tavernier's stories 1993
from 70 ans d’adolescence by Henri Jeanson (translation mine)
Tell me how you started out, I will tell you who you are. The conditions in which Truffaut published his first article in Les Cahiers du Cinema are in the likeness of its author. they form an edifying anecdote which when I tell it in moments when the conversation is languishing, always is rewarded with its own humble succes de mesestime.
One day, Mr. Truffaut who wanted to his career to take off with a lightning start, requested from my friend Pierre Bost an interview which with his customary granted him.
Scarcely had he entered, “Oh, Monsieur Bost, how happy I am to get to know you. Imagine that I have admired you since 1944,” - he was twelve years old - I have read all your novels. Homicide par imprudence, Hercule et Mademoiselle, M. Ladmiral va bientot mourir. I know that you have been or are the friend of Gide, Camus, Saint-Exupéry, Paulhan, Copeau, Prévert, Fargue, Martin du Gard, Queneau, Alain and Jouvet who, on stage, has acted in your plays.”
“I thank you.”
“And I know that your name with that of your collaborator, Jean Aurenche, figures in the credits of some of the films which i like the most, Forbidden Games, Le Diable au corps, La Traversée de Paris, Le Château de verre, Gervaise...
“I thank you”
“I am sorry to request your discretion, this is what brings me here; I have been told that you have written with Aurenche a screenplay for Georges Bernanos’s Diary of a Country Priest.”
“That is right. but it was not filmed because it was not to liking of Bernanos.”
“He was certainly wrong.”
“No, for he knows his work better than us. It is within him always but within us only momentarily. A great difference.”
“I would like to ask you - but dare I ?”
“Go right ahead.”
“-to ask you to entrust your screenplay to me. I am so curious, so passionate for all that you have done. It need not be said that I will return it to you in forty-eight hours and that I will speakk of it to no one. I can keep a secret. Word of honor.
“Well then, take it. it is yours.
“Oh, thank you for this token of trust. I will not disappoint you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
And there is how some days later there appeared, in Truffaut’s name, a savaging - this time mercilessly - of Aurenche and Bost and their adaptation.
Such is this Truffaut who learned of the death of [Louis] Jouvet with a certain joy.
“I can not say,” he declared, “that I rejoice, only almost. He has made a pile of anti-cinema declarations. Oh well he is dead, too bad for him.”
Jeanson's story is rendered a little credible when you know that Truffaut had written this in an article for the weekly Arts, "This year, Aurenche and Bost proved themselves indispensible with La Traversée de Paris which they wanted to be clever and new, as well as with Gervaise which they wanted academic and conventional: according to what you want, they will "wrap it up" very neatly." (from The Early film Criticism of François Truffaut by Wheeler Winston Dixon, translation here by Sonja Kropp). In that article, Truffaut selected La Traversée de Paris which Aurenche and Bost wrote the screenplay for as one of the five best French films of the year. But, in context of Jeanson's story, here's the rub, the year was 1956 and the article was printed in the Dec 19 issue of Arts. Truffaut had had kudos for both films; however, neither film was made until 1956. So while Tavernier seems to have Truffaut borrowing the screenplay long before he did, Jeanson has him borrowing the screenplay almost three years after he wrote A Certain Tendency.
Jeanson had a certain skill with words and his memoirs can make for entertaining reading, but they could scarcely be termed history; indeed, because of the virtual non-presence of Julien Duvivier, it could just about not be termed a memoir. Jeanson as a scenarist is probably best known for his collaborations with the director Julien Duvivier with whom he collaborated on Pépé le Moko and seven other films. That being said, one would assume that Jeanson would refer to primary collaborator simply as Julien and that the memoir would flush with Duvivier anecdotes. But in some 350 pages, I could only find three instances where Duvivier gets as much as a passing mention. Jeanson tells his reader nothing of Pépe le Moko nor anything of Le Carnet du bal or any of his other noted collaborations with Duvivier. Duvivier only rates two passing mentions, and then towrads the end of the book, Duvivier is thrown what appears to me to be a dig in a long screed directed at François Truffaut. One is left to wonder if Duvivier's relationship with Truffaut is at the root of Jeanson's omission here. (for insight into the relations Duvivier-Truffaut please see my post Julien Duvivier and François Truffaut)
There is also the reference to Truffaut's coldness at Louis Jouvet's death because Jouvet made "a pile of anti-cinema declarations". I have tried to run down the actual quote - if there is such a quote - and I can discover no listing in Eugene Walz's François Truffaut a guide to references and resources in which this statement might have been made. Of course, Truffaut might have said it in an interview. Either way it would have been spoken too long enough after Jouvet's death to have been a case of disrespect. Were it that Truffaut made this statement on the occasion of Louis Jouvet's death in August 1951, it must be wondered upon how Jeanson would know. At that time, Truffaut was still not a journalist; in fact Truffaut was in Villemin Hospital - and not in the best of mental and physical condition - in August 1951, when Jouvet died. So it is doubtful that he made it then and if he did, then who was Jeanson's informer?
continues at: Bertrand Tavernier's story -- 1984
from 70 ans d’adolescence by Henri Jeanson (translation mine)
Tell me how you started out, I will tell you who you are. The conditions in which Truffaut published his first article in Les Cahiers du Cinema are in the likeness of its author. they form an edifying anecdote which when I tell it in moments when the conversation is languishing, always is rewarded with its own humble succes de mesestime.
One day, Mr. Truffaut who wanted to his career to take off with a lightning start, requested from my friend Pierre Bost an interview which with his customary granted him.
Scarcely had he entered, “Oh, Monsieur Bost, how happy I am to get to know you. Imagine that I have admired you since 1944,” - he was twelve years old - I have read all your novels. Homicide par imprudence, Hercule et Mademoiselle, M. Ladmiral va bientot mourir. I know that you have been or are the friend of Gide, Camus, Saint-Exupéry, Paulhan, Copeau, Prévert, Fargue, Martin du Gard, Queneau, Alain and Jouvet who, on stage, has acted in your plays.”
“I thank you.”
“And I know that your name with that of your collaborator, Jean Aurenche, figures in the credits of some of the films which i like the most, Forbidden Games, Le Diable au corps, La Traversée de Paris, Le Château de verre, Gervaise...
“I thank you”
“I am sorry to request your discretion, this is what brings me here; I have been told that you have written with Aurenche a screenplay for Georges Bernanos’s Diary of a Country Priest.”
“That is right. but it was not filmed because it was not to liking of Bernanos.”
“He was certainly wrong.”
“No, for he knows his work better than us. It is within him always but within us only momentarily. A great difference.”
“I would like to ask you - but dare I ?”
“Go right ahead.”
“-to ask you to entrust your screenplay to me. I am so curious, so passionate for all that you have done. It need not be said that I will return it to you in forty-eight hours and that I will speakk of it to no one. I can keep a secret. Word of honor.
“Well then, take it. it is yours.
“Oh, thank you for this token of trust. I will not disappoint you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
And there is how some days later there appeared, in Truffaut’s name, a savaging - this time mercilessly - of Aurenche and Bost and their adaptation.
Such is this Truffaut who learned of the death of [Louis] Jouvet with a certain joy.
“I can not say,” he declared, “that I rejoice, only almost. He has made a pile of anti-cinema declarations. Oh well he is dead, too bad for him.”
Jeanson's story is rendered a little credible when you know that Truffaut had written this in an article for the weekly Arts, "This year, Aurenche and Bost proved themselves indispensible with La Traversée de Paris which they wanted to be clever and new, as well as with Gervaise which they wanted academic and conventional: according to what you want, they will "wrap it up" very neatly." (from The Early film Criticism of François Truffaut by Wheeler Winston Dixon, translation here by Sonja Kropp). In that article, Truffaut selected La Traversée de Paris which Aurenche and Bost wrote the screenplay for as one of the five best French films of the year. But, in context of Jeanson's story, here's the rub, the year was 1956 and the article was printed in the Dec 19 issue of Arts. Truffaut had had kudos for both films; however, neither film was made until 1956. So while Tavernier seems to have Truffaut borrowing the screenplay long before he did, Jeanson has him borrowing the screenplay almost three years after he wrote A Certain Tendency.
Jeanson had a certain skill with words and his memoirs can make for entertaining reading, but they could scarcely be termed history; indeed, because of the virtual non-presence of Julien Duvivier, it could just about not be termed a memoir. Jeanson as a scenarist is probably best known for his collaborations with the director Julien Duvivier with whom he collaborated on Pépé le Moko and seven other films. That being said, one would assume that Jeanson would refer to primary collaborator simply as Julien and that the memoir would flush with Duvivier anecdotes. But in some 350 pages, I could only find three instances where Duvivier gets as much as a passing mention. Jeanson tells his reader nothing of Pépe le Moko nor anything of Le Carnet du bal or any of his other noted collaborations with Duvivier. Duvivier only rates two passing mentions, and then towrads the end of the book, Duvivier is thrown what appears to me to be a dig in a long screed directed at François Truffaut. One is left to wonder if Duvivier's relationship with Truffaut is at the root of Jeanson's omission here. (for insight into the relations Duvivier-Truffaut please see my post Julien Duvivier and François Truffaut)
There is also the reference to Truffaut's coldness at Louis Jouvet's death because Jouvet made "a pile of anti-cinema declarations". I have tried to run down the actual quote - if there is such a quote - and I can discover no listing in Eugene Walz's François Truffaut a guide to references and resources in which this statement might have been made. Of course, Truffaut might have said it in an interview. Either way it would have been spoken too long enough after Jouvet's death to have been a case of disrespect. Were it that Truffaut made this statement on the occasion of Louis Jouvet's death in August 1951, it must be wondered upon how Jeanson would know. At that time, Truffaut was still not a journalist; in fact Truffaut was in Villemin Hospital - and not in the best of mental and physical condition - in August 1951, when Jouvet died. So it is doubtful that he made it then and if he did, then who was Jeanson's informer?
continues at: Bertrand Tavernier's story -- 1984
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