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作者:JAMIL MOLEDINA
来源:www.thecinematicverses.com
发表时间:2004-4-9 15:21:55
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编者:许多人也许是在看了《小宇宙》《候鸟迁徙》之后才知道雅克贝汉的,但其实可能看了下面这张照片,会觉得他更面熟一些,是的,他还在《天堂电影院》里演过成年的多多,在《狼族盟约》里演过年老时的Thomas d'Apcher,当然,关于他还不止这些,详情请看下文。

Some of you may recognize Jacques Perrin from his extensive acting career, appearing in such cross-Atlantic sensations as Cinema Paradiso and The Brotherhood of the Wolf. However, early on, Perrin dedicated himself to creating film projects too, both from a professional and personal standpoint. His fascination with nature has brought us into the world of insects with Microcosmos, and now he takes us into the air to soar with birds, in Winged Migration. The experience of watching the film is astonishing, as described in our review, and so we were understandably curious to learn more about the man who conceived this soaring vision. Luckily, we had a chance to sit down with him while he was in town for the San Francisco International Film Festival.
Renaissance filmmaker Jacques Perrin
The Cinematic Verses: You’ve had a very successful career as an actor, what compelled you to go behind the camera?
Jacques Perrin: Thirty years ago, I enjoyed and appreciated an acting career in Italy — I made movie after movie, and it was a comfortable life. But I don’t think I’m here to be comfortable. I am here to be involved. It’s a little passive as an actor; you are involved at the last moment. I love acting, but I didn’t want it to be my profession. When you like so much of something, it’s great to step out of it, so you have the pleasure of returning to it.
In the 60s, I remember so many directors saying, “The system is terrible — I have a great project, but nobody wants to finance the movie.” Then I thought, when something matters so much to you, why ask someone else to finance it? It’s better to take on the risk of the adventure yourself. Also, cinema is an adventure not only of business, but also an adventure of life. I like to become involved in the subject I choose, whether it’s political, historical, or natural. I like to put all the essential elements together, to have the choice of the elements, to understand the others who are in it with me. We don’t make make movies alone, we make them with others. I know nothing about biology, about birds, about insects, about the details of politics. I don’t make movies about my political view, whether something is right or wrong, I just make movies about human interest stories.
My first production was with Costa-Gavras — it was a film called Z. It was fantastic, because it was 1968, and it put you into the social student movement in France, Europe, and in American universities. In France, it was an important strike. And Costa-Gavras is French, but his origin is Greece. At that time, we worried about the world — everywhere in South America, there were dictators — in Eastern countries, they were being taken over by communist governments — so the world’s hope was not so easy. It seemed like there were more dictators than democracies at that time. In Greece, the Colonels took power, and they made many things forbidden. You could not have long hair, you could not study Sophocles, Euripides, all the Greek authors, you could not have an independent political party outside the party of the government, and you could not like the Beatles — it was a strange country. One man, Dimitris Lambrakis, tried to stand up to this, and was shot. The movie is the recounting of one lawyer, who tried to prove that the responsibility for the killing was the Greek army.
The movie was based on real facts. When I was producing the film, everybody said to me, “People don’t want more politics, they get enough from TV and radio.” However, when it came out, it won two Oscars in Hollywood, it went all over the world, and it was an enormous success. And it was a political movie. I like that because the political approach for movies was not appreciated by the industry at that time, and there were, more or less, no political movies then. After that, I made another movie with Costa-Gavras about Uruguay, about the Tupamaros. It was called State of Siege. It was also a political movie.
But after a couple, I realized I couldn’t continue making only political movies. It’s good to be open, and when you are involved with life, you have so many interests. The cinema cannot follow all the different turns of curiosity, so I made a normal, traditional film, and I made a normal documentary, archiving past events. Part of that is that the documents speak for themselves. For example, you can see how the Germans fared during the last war. They shot so many films, but it was propaganda. But the same pictures, the same images, worked against them after the war. It’s very dangerous. I think one of the best guns we have is the picture, the movie.
But you can have different interests. When I make a movie about nature, it opens a window on nature, but it can still be a bit political. In the sense that if someday we don’t have the beauty of nature, it will be a difficult moment for everybody. And the problem of nature in the south, in the north, in each country will be the same. And now, for example, when you have a problem in Asia, the repercussions of the problem become worldwide. When we talk about oceans, what goes wrong in the Atlantic is terrible for the Pacific. We don’t live in countries with frontiers; we live on a planet. So our interests are bound by all things on the planet. So the next movie I do will be about oceans. The beauty of oceans, and also how many crimes there are in the oceans. So many people do what they want, because the sea is for everybody. That means nobody is watching, so you do what you want. It’s terrible.
So I go through life with curiosity. I know few things [laughter]. I didn’t study when I was young. But I am prepared to understand, and to make way for significant things. My profession is not cinema; the cinema is my form of life. If I live, well, why must I make an uninteresting subject? I make movies because I discover something. In normal life, it’s hard to go and ask all your questions to different professors and scientists, but with the cinema I have a good excuse to ask. And that’s called collaboration! And because it’s a movie, they talk to me. They give me the science, but also the heart — why they became scientists. I have this chance.
TCV: I remember reading that something similar happened with Winged Migration. That you heard of a man who successfully flew with birds, and wanted to talk with him. Is that how the subject of birds come into focus for you?
JP: I think when you dream of something, you always have the possibility to build the things in your dreams with movies. The moment I knew I wanted to do this was when I heard about the Canadian Bill Lichman flying with birds, 12 years ago, with the Canada goose. I thought, “Wow! This can be a fantastic movie!” When we think about freedom, we think of birds. Picasso, all the painters, they all showed freedom through birds. To follow birds into their space, to feel that freedom, would be magnificent. And also, they don’t know about the concept of a foreign country, because the idea of a country does not exist for the birds. They instead have the planet. They go for over 10,000 kilometers. So the only frontiers they know are the deserts, the seas, and the mountains. To have, in this century, a point of view of some other population, like animals and birds, it will be good. It is important now, our preoccupations are causing pollution and environmental damage that affects the whole planet. Yet the birds have been around for 70 million years, existing in harmony with the planet. So to have a new look on the planet, along with other people, there is a possibility for change. I hope you can understand me, English is not my first language. |
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