For half a century at the head of the Ombres Blanches bookstore in Toulouse, Christian Thorel has also been an insatiable film buff. He recounts this equally ancient passion in an autobiographical essay, “The Experimental Nights,” subtitled “A Cinema Notebook.” From Chantal Akerman to Jean-Luc Godard, from Roberto Rossellini to Jean Renoir, he tells us how films – their discovery, their exploration, their study – were essential throughout his life.
In the beginning was childhood. Castres, in the 1950s, had several cinemas, including the Lido, where Christian Thorel went to the 2 p.m. screening on Sundays in the company of his mother. His father, owner of a coach company, preferred rugby and discussions with friends. The cinema was French or American, popular and effective, favoring action and good feelings. An avid reader of cheap comics “Blek le Roc” and “Kit Carson”, the young Tarnais particularly appreciated westerns like “The Cheyennes”, by John Ford, and plunged with delight into the great shows of a David Lean adapting two books, “Doctor Zhivago” and “Lawrence of Arabia”, to make sumptuous epics.
Eustache, Rivette, Akerman: in Paris, the beginnings of cinema
Cinephilia would come later, during the “too short Parisian years”, with the frequentation of the Cinémathèque française, the small uncomfortable theaters of the Latin Quarter or the Entrepôt de Frédéric Mitterrand, an art house enclave in the Montparnasse of the little ones. shopkeepers. Assuming to be from the “class of 1968”, Christian Thorel is enthusiastic about “The Mom and the Whore”, by Jean Eustache (1973), “Céline and Julie Go on a Boat”, by Jacques Rivette (1974) and “Jeanne Dielman”, by Chantal Akerman (1976). Rivette, whose entire work he praises, even the very experimental – and terribly long – “Out 1” (1971). The bookseller is thus, an intellectual of his time marked by the writings of Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze or Susan Sontag and the cinema, even the most obscure, by Jean-Luc Godard or Marguerite Duras (did he review “The Truck”?)
Marked by Dreyer, Bresson and Pasolini
However, there is no parochialism in this thoughtful Protestant. Christian Thorel admires “Ordet”, by Carl Dreyer (1955), “where perfection unfolds without artifice or hitch, not only of the form, but of the meaning given to the human condition and to faith in humanity”, like “The Gate of Paradise”, by Michael Cimino (this extraordinary anti-western released with great fanfare in 1980); “Last Year at Marienbad”, by Alain Resnais (1961), “a rare, almost unique experience of the marriage of literary and filmic geniuses”, like “The Adventure of Mme Muir”, by Joseph Mankiewicz (1947). He knows in detail the filmography of Robert Flaherty (one of whose films gave its name to the Ombres Blanches bookstore), Pier-Paolo Pasolini (“incomparable and eternal voice”, in the cinema and in his numerous writings), Robert Bresson (“speaking with words, looking with feelings, approaching the truths) or Roberto Rossellini. Rossellini, whose “Europe 51” (1952) he saw for the first time on television. Fortunately, the development of DVD allowed him, like so many others, to build a quality personal film library, far from the mediocre copies long used by the ORTF, “in the snow of screens always poorly adjusted and riddled with numerous interruptions antenna. »
“The movie is a living cemetery”
At the end, there is death, inseparable from the very idea of cinema. Christian Thorel illustrates this theme by evoking “The day rises”, by Marcel Carné (1939), “Mouchette”, by Robert Bresson (1967), “Cris et whispers”, by Ingmar Bergman (1972), ” Profession reporter”, by Michelangelo Antonioni (1975) or “The people of Dublin”, by John Huston (1987). He also quotes the essential Godard: “The person we film is aging and will die,” he said in 1962, at the time of Live your life. So we film a moment of death at work. The painting is still; cinema is interesting, because it captures life and the mortal side of life.” Alain Resnais takes up this thought, developed by Roland Barthes, on the subject of photography, in his last book, “The Clear Room” (1980): “The cinema is a living cemetery, notes the filmmaker. The stars of the films of the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s continue to haunt us from the depths of their graves…I smell death in every cinema spectacle.”
Cinema whose ghosts we continue to bring back to life, with a relish that has nothing to do with it, on the big screens of the Cinematheque on rue du Taur or in our digital windows, nourished by our classics restored on DVD or Blu-Ray.
Book “Experimental Nights (A Cinema Notebook)”, by Christian Thorel (Verdier, 125 pages, 17.50 euros). Meeting with the author Wednesday June 10 at 6 p.m. at the Cinémathèque (69, rue du Taur) followed by the screening of the films “D’est,” by Chantal Akerman and “Les gens de Dublin,” by John Huston, at 8 p.m.
Jean-Marc Le Scouarnec
Literature
