So for example, among those things, there was something quite funny, which we did with Jean-Luc,
which was "The Soldiers".
So for "The Soldiers" we had decided... well, we... no, HE had made the decisions
and so we had done some tests,
so that the film would look like the ones that we see in the film libraries,
meaning that the films were developed but we don't have the negative anymore,
so you develop the negative from the positive that had been developed, and then from this bad
positive negative you develop... [Q] A duplicate?
A duplicate and in the end there are practically no grey areas anymore.
Which can be seen nowadays in computing, where we end up with 16 levels of grey,
that is white, black, and then 16 levels of grey in between,
meaning that there's nothing, there are no more shades, there's nothing at all.
So we had decided... at first we had decided to put the gamma back up to 0.90,
the negative's gamma, which was high, because normally they're at 0.70.
And then eventually I told Jean-Luc that it was a little annoying to do it like that
because if for whatever reason, we were forced to reduce the contrasts again
for I don't know what reason, or we've slightly damaged the negative,
it might be better to use 0.80, we'll get a little more variation in the grey,
and also to use a line negative film, a film which titrates.
So that's what we did. Which is why every time I can,
I do the digitalisation of the films that I made.
They call me, I do it for free, so that people don't think, 'We going to have to pay this guy to do it'.
Because when they digitalised "The Soldiers",
the guy saw this film without the greys, he tried to add a little grey everywhere.
So naturally there's no black left, there's no white left, there's nothing left, it's pile of s**t.
It has no meaning anymore, whereas this damaged aspect of the image needed to be kept.
And in addition it was done... there were loads of things but you needed to know it,
meaning that there are repeated scenes. which were done like in old films,
meaning that there are scenes that are repeated. For example, at on point we see a girl take her cap off,
her hair falls out in a distant shot, and we see her in close-up again where she repeats the same movement,
and we see a wide shot like it happened at a time when we didn't edit, we filmed things...
[Q] It was also a reference to silent films? Yes, yes, it was a reference to silent films.
So then, in fact, there was something quite amusing on the set. There was the star;
I can't seem to remember her name. It was a girl who was...
[Q] Wasn't she a singer? Yes. No, no, she wasn't a singer, she was...
No, no, she wasn't a singer, she was... I don't remember. No, no, she wasn't a singer, no, no.
[Q] The dark-haired girl? Yes, a dark-haired girl.
She was an up-and-coming actress.
So we filmed in the middle of winter, it was dreadfully cold, we were around
Paris near Lagny, etc. And she had gone to Chamonix to film an ad.
So Jean-Luc let her do it since she was young and starting out.
And there had been loads of really bad weather and there were no trains between... to Chamonix.
Since he needed her to film, he had managed something, the assistant director had sorted
something out with the Protection Civile, which at the time was a big effort.
The Protection Civile was going to go pick her up by helicopter in Chamonix
and drop her off at the airport in Geneva, so that she could get on a plane, but she refused.
She said, 'I'll wait for the snow to melt before coming back'.
So she was missing for a few days. And when we shot the scene with her,
Jean-Luc tells me, 'So we're going to do the scene where the Resistants are pushing her'.
And so he tells me, 'You're going to use... we're going to use the 75, a close-up on her,
you constantly follow her and you don't cut until I tell you to'.
So Jean-Luc arrives, so: action! And he grabs her, pins her onto the wall,
she slams her head against the wall, he slaps her, and he grabs her hair and he had a pair of scissors
as big as this, wham, he starts cutting her hair.
So obviously she was struggling as if she were acting the scene, she hadn't seen it yet.
And suddenly she saw her hair falling in front of her, so she really started struggling,
and Jean-Luc was still holding on to her and he kept on cutting and in the end he completely
got rid of her thatch. Obviously at one point he turned around and said, 'Cut!'
And she picked up her hair, went to the café crying and called her agent.