Quand Tarkovski parle cinéma

Annotation :

"Robert Bresson is for me an example of a real and genuine film-maker... He obeys only certain higher, objective laws of Art.... Bresson is the only person who remained himself and survived all the pressures brought by fame."

Annotation :

"For instance, when Bergman uses sound naturalistically - hollow footsteps in an empty corridor, the chime of a clock, the rustle of a dress - the effect is in fact to enlarge the sounds, single them out, hyperbolise them... He singles out one sound and excludes all the incidental circumstances of the sound-world that would exist in real life. In WINTER LIGHT he has the noise of the water in the stream where the suicide's body has been found on the bank. Throughout the entire sequence, all in long and medium shots, nothing can be heard but the uninterrupted sound of the water - no footsteps, no rustle of clothes, none of the words exchanged by the people on the bank. That is the way sound is made expressive in this sequence, that is how he uses it."

Annotation :

"La pureté du cinéma, sa force très particulière, ne tient pas en effet au potentiel symbolique de ses images, même le plus audacieux, mais à ce qu'il parvient plutôt à exprimer dans ses images tout ce qu'un fait peut avoir de concret et d'unique. Il y a un épisode du Nazarin de Buñuel, où l'action se déroule dans un village rocailleux brûlé par le soleil et ravagé par la peste. Qu'a fait le réalisateur pour créer cette sensation de détresse? Nous voyons s'allonger devant nous une route poussiéreuse, avec deux rangées de maisons qui ferment la perspective. Cette route bute contre la montagne qui obstrue le ciel et constitue le fond de l'image. Le côté droit de la route est dans l,ombre, le côté gauche dans le soleil. Au milieu de la route déserte, un enfant s'avance traînant un drap d'une blancheur éclatante. La caméra descend lentement. Au dernier moment, avant le changement de plan, un tissu blanc vient couvrir tout le champ de la caméra. Qu'est-venu faire là ce drap? Un drap qui séchait? À cet instant précis, nous avons perçu avec une force inouïe, et ressenti d'une manière extraordinaire, comme un fait médical, le "souffle de la peste"." (p.84, Le Temps scellé)

Annotation :

"Chaplin is the only person to have gone down into cinematic history without any shadow of a doubt. The films he left behind can never grow old."

Annotation :

"Je voudrais dire encore combien la condition sine qua non et le vrai critère de construction plastique d'un film, est son authenticité par rapport aux faits de la vie. (...) Encore un exemple, dans une séquence des Sept Samouraïs de Kurosawa. C'est un village japonais du Moyen Age. Des samouraïs à pied se battent contre des cavaliers. Il pleut à verse. Tout est dans la boue. Les samouraïs portent leurs habits traditionnels, qui laissent entrevoir leurs jambes nues et couvertes de boue. L'un d'entre eux tombe mort. La pluie lave ses jambes qui progressivement deviennent blanches comme du marbre. La mort est ici à la fois un fait et une image. Mais peut-être n'y avait-il eu là qu'un hasard? L'acteur courait, il était tombé, la pluie avait lavé la boue, et c'est nous qui prenons ce phénomène comme une révélation voulue par l'auteur." (pp. 84-85, Le Temps scellé)

Annotation :

"J'ai vu Persona de Bergman en de nombreuses occasions, et chaque fois je l'ai perçu différemment. S'agissant d'une œuvre d'art authentique, ce film laisse au spectateur le loisir d'un rapport personnel avec son univers, et la possibilité d'une interprétation chaque nouvelle fois." (p.197, Le Temps scellé)

Annotation :

"Bresson's actors on the other hand will never seem dated, any more than his films will. There is nothing calculated or special in their performances, only the profound truth of human awareness within the situation defined by the director. They do not play personae but live their own inner lives in front of our eyes. Not for one moment does Mouchette reflect on her audience, or think of trying to convey the full 'depths' of what is happening to her. She never 'shows' the audience what a bad way she is in. She seems not even to suspect that her inner life may be observed, witnessed. She lives, exists, within her constricted, concentrated world, plumbing its depth. That is the secret of her magnetism, and I have no doubt that decades hence the film will be as overwhelming as it was on the day of its first showing."

Annotation :

"Je me souviens du premier film que je vis à l'Institut, la veille de mon examen d'admission: LES BAS-FONDS, de Jean Renoir, adapté de la pièce de Gorki... La projection m'avait laissé une impression étrange et troublante, comme une sensation d'interdit, d'irréalité. Jean Gabin jouait le rôle de Pépel, Louis Jouvet celui du baron. Mon état tout à fait contemplatif et métaphysique se transforma soudain, au cours de ma 4e année d'études, en un débordement de vitalité."

Annotation :

"Il y a peu dans l'histoire du cinéma certaines tentatives pour rapprocher encore plus les films de la vie, de la vérité factuelle. Comme SHADOWS de Cassavetes, THE CONNECTION de Shirley Clarke, CHRONIQUE D'UN ÉTÉ de Jean Rouch. Ces films, par ailleurs remarquables, manquent selon moi au principe, à la logique de leur objectif: la poursuite de la vérité inconditionnelle des faits." (p.90, Le Temps scellé)

Annotation :

"Il y a peu dans l'histoire du cinéma certaines tentatives pour rapprocher encore plus les films de la vie, de la vérité factuelle. Comme SHADOWS de Cassavetes, THE CONNECTION de Shirley Clarke, CHRONIQUE D'UN ÉTÉ de Jean Rouch. Ces films, par ailleurs remarquables, manquent selon moi au principe, à la logique de leur objectif: la poursuite de la vérité inconditionnelle des faits." (p.90, Le Temps scellé)

Annotation :

"On a beaucoup parlé à une certaine époque en Union Soviétique de La Lettre non envoyée de Kalatazov et Ourousevski. On leur reprochait le caractère caricatural et inachevé de leurs personnages, la banalité du triangle amoureux, la faiblesse structurelle du sujet. Mais le problème de ce film était à mon sens ailleurs. Les auteurs ont fait fausse route, tant pour la conception artistique du film que pour la composition de leurs caractères, en s,engageant dans une direction qui n’était pas celle de leur objectif de départ. La caméra aurait dû suivre les destinées des héros dans la taïga, sans se préoccuper des rapports dramatiques que le scénario surajoutait. Les auteurs ont bien essayé de se rebeller contre le scénario, mais pour s’y soumettre à nouveau par la suite. Les caractères des personnages en ont été détruits, ou presque. En respectant aveuglément ce qui restait encore du scénario, les auteurs se sont avérés incapables de suivre leur voie propre, ce qui aurait permis de voir les personnages sous un autres angles. Le vrai problème fut donc leur infidélité aux principes qui étaient pourtant les leurs au départ. » (p. 91, Le Temps scellé)

Annotation :

"De même pour le Jeanne d'Arc muet de Dreyer, qui n'en finit pas de nous émouvoir [à l'instar du Mouchette de Bresson]" (p.181, Le Temps scellé)

Annotation :

"Bergman is a master with sound. It's impossible to forget what he does with the lighthouse in THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY: a sound on the very brink of audibility... War is the obvious catalyst for the cruel anti-human elements in people. Bergman uses the war in this film exactly as he uses the heroine's illness in THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY to explore his view of man."

Annotation :

"In Bergman's CRIES AND WHISPERS there is one particularly powerful episode, perhaps the most important one in the film. Two sisters arrive in their father's house where their elder sister lies dying. The film develops out of the expectation of her death. Here, finding themselves alone together, they are suddenly and unexpectedly drawn together by their sisterly tie and by the longing for human contact; they talk and talk and talk... they cannot say all they want to... they caress each other... The scene creates a searing impression of human closeness... Fragile and longed for... And all the more so since in Bergman's film such moments are elusive and fleeting."

Annotation :

"In Kurosawa's version of Macbeth we find a perfect example. In the scene where Macbeth is lost in the forest, a lesser director would have the actors stumbling around in the fog in search of the right direction, bumping into trees. And what does the genius Kurosawa do? He finds a place with a distinctive, memorable tree. The horsemen go around in a circle, three times, so that the sight of the tree eventually makes it clear that they keep going past the same spot. The horsemen themselves don't realise that they long ago lost their way. In his treatment of the concept of space Kurosawa here displays the most subtle poetic approach, expressing himself without the slightest hint of mannerism or pretentiousness. For what could be simpler than setting the camera and following the characters around three times?"

Annotation :

"There is one film that could not be further removed from the principle of direct observation, and that is Eisenstein's IVAN THE TERRIBLE. Not only is the whole film a kind of hieroglyphic, it consists of a series of hieroglyphics—major, minor and minute. There is not a single detail that is not permeated with the author's intent."

Annotation :

"What can one say, for instance, about the way Antonioni works with his actors in L'AVVENTURA? Or Orson Welles in CITIZEN KANE? All we are aware of is the unique conviction of the character. But this is a qualitatively different, screen conviction, the principles of which are not those that make acting expressive in a theatrical sense."

Annotation :

"The Red Desert is the worst of his films after Il Grido. The colour is pretentious, quite unlike Antonioni usually, and the editing is subservient to the idea of colour. It could have been a superb film, tremendously powerful, if only it had been in black-and-white. If The Red Desert had been in black-and-white, Antonioni wouldn't have got high on pictorial aesthetics, he wouldn't have been so concerned with the pictorial side of the film, he wouldn't have shot those beautiful landscapes, or Monica Vitti's red hair against the mists. He would have been concentrating on the action instead of making pretty pictures. In my view the colour has killed the feeling of truth. If you compare The Red Desert to La Notte or L'Eclisse it's obvious how much less good it is."

Source: http://people.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/On_Color.html

Annotation :

"In theatre actual blood cannot be convincing as a demonstration of poetic truth if it merely has meaning on one level, as a natural function. Blood in cinema, on the other hand, is blood, not a sign, not a symbol of anything else. Therefore when the hero of Wajda's ASHES AND DIAMONDS is killed surrounded by sheets hanging out to dry, and he presses one of these to his chest as he falls, and his scarlet blood spreads across the white linen to make a red and white symbol of the Polish flag, the resulting image is more literary than cinematic, even though it is extraordinarily powerful emotionally."

Annotation :

"Of course people don't learn from experience; today's directors constantly use styles of performance that belong patently to the past. Even Larisa Shepitko's THE ASCENT is marred for me by her determination to be expressive and significant: the result is that her 'parable' has meaning only on one level. As so often happens, her effort to 'stir' the audience makes for an exaggerated emphasis on her characters' emotions. It is as if she were afraid of not being understood, and had made her characters walk on invisible buskins. Even the lighting is calculated to instill the performances with meaning. Unfortunately the effect is stilted and false. In order to oblige the audience to sympathize with the characters, the actors have been made to demonstrate their suffering. Everything is more painful, more tortured, than in real life - even the torment and the pain; and above all, more portentous."

Annotation :

Malgré son admiration pour Buñuel, Tarko dit dans son journal à la date du 18 septembre 1970:

"très mauvais (...) d'une vulgarité indicible. Buñuel se permet parfois ce genre de déchéance"

Annotation :

"Il y a deux sortes de cinéastes. Ceux qui voient le cinéma comme un art et qui se posent des questions personnelles, qui le voient comme une souffrance, comme un don, une obligation. Et les autres, qui le voient comme une façon de gagner de l'argent. C'est le cinéma commercial: E.T., par exemple, est un conte étudié et filmé pour plaire au plus grand nombre: Spielberg a atteint là son but et c'est tant mieux pour lui. C'est un but que je n'ai jamais cherché à atteindre. Pour moi tout cela est dénué d'intérêt."

Annotation :

Although strongly opposed to commercial cinema, in a famous exception Tarkovsky praised the blockbuster film The Terminator, saying its "vision of the future and the relation between man and its destiny is pushing the frontier of cinema as an art". He was critical of the "brutality and low acting skills", but nevertheless impressed by this film.

"Further evidence abounds that Tarkovsky wasn’t quite as pedantic about “artistic” cinema as he let on. In SCULPTING IN TIME he names his closest cinematic peer as the aforementioned Luis Bunuel, who in addition to the “very bad” TRISTANA is most famous for the outrageous surreal shock fests UN CHIEN ANDALOU and L’AGE D’OR. Tarkovsky’s posthumously published diaries (collected in the volume TIME WITHIN TIME) reveal that among the films he chose to see were Andrzej Zulawski’s crazed exploitation freak-out POSSESSION, Lucio Fulci’s notorious trash-fest ZOMBI 2, and Peter Weir’s horrific THE LAST WAVE. Also, in a 1997 SIGHT AND SOUND article Tarkovsky colleague Layla Alexander Garrett reveals he “could talk for hours” about THE TERMINATOR."

Annotation :

"The completion of IVAN'S CHILDHOOD marked the end of one cycle of my life, and of a process that I saw as a kind of self-determination. It was made up of study at the Institute of Cinematography, work on a short film for my diploma, and then eight months' work on my first feature film. I could now assess the experience of IVAN'S CHILDHOOD, accept the need to work out clearly, albeit temporarily, my own position in the aesthetics of cinema, and set myself problems which might be solved in the course of making my next film: in all of this I saw a pledge of my advance onto new ground. The work could all have been done in my head."

Annotation :

"Underlying the concept of Andrei Rublev's character is the schema of a return to the beginning; I hope this emerges in the film as the natural and organic progression of the 'free' flow of life created on the screen. For us the story of Rublev is really the story of a 'taught', or imposed concept, which burns up in the atmosphere of living reality to arise again from the ashes as a fresh and newly- discovered truth."

Annotation :

"Unfortunately I never developed a working relationship with Donatas Banionis, who had the main part in SOLARIS, because he belongs to the category of analytical actors who cannot work without knowing the why and the wherefore. He cannot play anything spontaneously from within himself. He has first to build up his role; he has to know the relationship between the sequences, and what the other actors are doing, not only in his own scenes but in the whole film; he tries to take over from the director. This is almost certainly the result of all the years he spent in the theatre. He cannot accept that in cinema the actor must not have a picture of how the finished film is going to look. But even the best director, who knows exactly what he wants, can seldom envisage the final result exactly. All the same Donatas was very good indeed, and I can only be grateful that he played it rather than anyone else; but it was not easy."

Annotation :

"J'ai vu Apocalypse Now de Coppola. L'acteur dans le rôle principal est très faible. La dramaturgie est mauvaise. Le film ne tient pas debout. C'est comme un dessin animé en vrai."

(19 avril 1980, Journal)