I did not know Wajda personally, although of course I knew his films, which I admired like everyone else.
One day, he asked me to adapt 'L'Affaire Danton',
originally a play, written by a woman,
a Polish writer, Stanisława Przybyszewska, in the 1930s.
A woman who literally fell in love completely, remotely, with Robespierre,
and who wrote a very long play, which could not be staged, as it lasted eight hours,
criticising Danton and praising Robespierre.
Wajda had already adapted it for the theatre in Poland, where it was successful.
He had shortened it a lot, and he asked me to make it into a film.
What really interested me was not only working with Wajda, a great director,
but also to have a new understanding of our history, of French history,
a foreign perspective, an outlook from a great Polish man,
at a time when Poland was communist. It was really interesting for me to see
what 'communist Poland' would say about the French revolution.
So it was a project we did together, we expected to shoot it in Poland as that would be cheaper,
but as we were working on the screenplay, Jaruzelski came to power
and our exchanges with Poland were cut off and we could not even phone for weeks.
Meanwhile, Wajda kept working on the screenplay in Poland,
and as soon as contacts were restored in '81 I think, I went there
bringing ham, butter, detergents, anything unavailable in Poland at that time.
I noticed that Andrzej and his Polish screenwriter had unintentionally drawn
the story towards antimilitarist views which were in fact against Jaruzelski.
So we went back to work and I told him, 'Look, the film will last longer than Jaruzelski,
so maybe we should tone down that aspect'.
He trusted me and said, 'Re-write the film entirely, as you like, and I will shoot it'.
We shot it in France as we couldn't do it in Poland anymore.
We had to adapt the screenplay, since we had less money, and the film was shot entirely here,
with some of the Polish actors like Pszoniak, and Gérard Depardieu as Danton.
That made the screenwriting process more difficult, as the two groups
those around Pszoniak, meaning Robespierre, Saint-Just and the others were Polish,
and those around Danton-Depardieu, Desmoulins-Chereau and so on were French,
so we could only have a few scenes between the two groups for practical reasons.
And for the film I only wrote one scene between Danton and Robespierre, the restaurant scene.
Quite a long scene, which we'd been able to rehearse with Wajda,
his director of photography and both actors before the actual filming, so I was able to adapt it.
To me, 'Danton' is a very beautiful film, a film I have always loved.
I have defended it a lot, and it was welcomed here with praise from a famous historian,
François Furet, a specialist of the French Revolution, although some people had a few reservations,
but anyway, 'Danton' is part of the history of film-making.
The actors were wonderful, and Andrzej’s work was admirable.
Afterwards, I helped him on 'The Possessed', though I did not write the screenplay,
I only corrected a few scenes here and there.
Since then, I have been following his work quite attentively,
and I met up with him just last month in Paris.