“At the bottom now, the diplomats would rather take the no on the men and women of action. The time would be in the round tables and relaxation….” Paul Volfoni, the wisest of the crooks in clover, could not imagine that his words, held in the most famous cuisine of the French cinema, would be a day of beginnings to an academic colloquium dedicated solely to the art of Georges Lautner and Michel Audiard.
At the Sorbonne, 13 and 14 November last, fluff-pifs discarded, under the leadership tranquilizing of professor Olivier Frayssé, “meeting”, therefore, a team of augustus university has worked on the content and the container of the most cult French films. Starting from the nice principle that “culture is like jam, it is what gives the thickness and flavor to the toast”, Olivier Frayssé had invited around him of the eminent tontons thinkers, scholars of literature, music, sociology, philosophy and, of course, cinema.
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But before you attempt to make a synthesis of all these scholars work we have to speak of the numerous spectators – they were over two hundred at each meeting, who participated as an expert in these debates. Among them, we could recognize familiar faces. First and foremost, the family Audiard, who came out in force. His son, the filmmaker Jacques Audiard, his grandson, the prominent psychiatrist and novelist Marcel Audiard accompanied by his bubbly wife, Charlotte, have listened to the university theses with attention. The clan Lautner was also well represented by Martine Cartegini, the last girlfriend of the director, and Yves Rodallec, the cameraman history of the Tonton . Finally, the last but not the least, Marie-Claude Magne was present to speak to the inventiveness of her husband Michel Magne, composer legendary film.
musicology decodes the rhythm of the Tonton
It would be impossible to go into the details of the debates are often animated, which had the theme of discussing everything that has made this adaptation is very free, of the novel by Albert Simonin Grisbi or not Grisbi became a little more than half a century the cult film par excellence. Fashion puzzle, we will try to bring the highlights of these analyses will be published in extenso in the form of university theses in the coming weeks.
for two days, therefore, Crooks were triturated in every sense. And not that brutal. The musicologist Catherine Rudent, for example, has decoded what she called the implemented sound of the actors. For her, the aftershocks spread, but also, of course, the notes of Michel Magne gave a particular rhythm to the film. Moreover, the relevance of its analysis has been checked every time it illustrated his demonstrations with an extract of the film. As a single man, the amphitheatre, who knew by heart the dialogues, bruissait of contentment.
The philosophy of Crooks
The other tontonophiles distinguished, have all taken their task very seriously. Olivier Coquard has studied the thirty glorious years to the prism of the Tonton . Johann Chapoutot has managed the feat to clarify the geopolitics of the cold War by associating the history of the estate from the Mexican to the scenario of the secret agents. Olivier Frayssé has compared the geographical imaginary cultural film Lautner to the americanization of the world.
Jean Montarnal was interested in the art of the filmmaker in dissecting the constraints and technical choices that contributed to “produce a Lautner”s Touch, an aesthetic plastic and narrative close to the comic strip, based on the use of short focal length, the frequent recourse to the wholesale plan, the composition of polyphony in the plan, and the use of a pace both fast and discreet mounting.”
the Last point of this colloquium became so fierce that tigresque the wire of the hours is the issue raised by the doctor of philosophy Michael Devaux, organiser of the commemorations of the fiftieth anniversary of the film in 2013: is there a relationship between Crooks in clover and The Speech of the Method or to be more clear Audiard was he a disciple of Descartes ? After an explanation that has been excavated and the shiny moral audiardiennes and lautneriennes, enriched by the philosophies of Pascal, Bossuet, and of course that of Descartes, Michael Devaux will open the door to a new debate by claiming to work already to the study of the moralism of the two filmmakers. Quite a program!
This symposium in addition to its undeniable intellectual interest, we reserved a nice surprise. The expert es Crooks Pierre-Jean Lancry went to the Sorbonne flanked by the last actor alive to have played in the film Lautner. Georges Nojaroff aka the boyfriend of Theo “the guy’s apple juice” was come, therefore, to take the floor, a little impressed of having to represent all of his friends disappeared in a prestigious location. To his happy astonishment, he said: “next time, we will speak of Crooks in clover to the French Academy.”
He did not believe so well to say. This is actually an Immortal, Jean-Luc Marion, exegete of Descartes, Husserl, and Heidegger, which concludes brilliantly at the symposium. For him the question will not be whether the film is a cult but if it needs to be in the anthologies of the seventh art world and… the whole shebang.
● Crooks in clover… or the Discourse of Method
