ESRA students met director and screenwriter Jean-Paul RAPPENEAU on Thursday, February 6, 2020, as part of the ESRA Thursdays program. Passionate about literature, he adapted the novel of his youth, "Le Hussard sur le toit" by Jean GIONO, one of the most important productions in French cinema.
The students began by asking him how he went about adapting the book for the screen. Adapting a book requires a great deal of work, as the pace of reading is not the same as watching a film: it can't last 4 hours. For him, films tell stories that are "bigger than life, and not quite life itself". Everyday life has no place in his cinema. He particularly enjoyed the descriptions of nature in Jean GIONO's novels: the trees, the dawns, the winds, the twilights.
Jean-Paul RAPPENEAU went on to talk about choosing and directing actors, the moment when he becomes a spectator of his film. "That's the decisive moment, when you really have the script, when you have the film in your head, you feel it with every pore of your body. He always decides to give the role to an actor after careful consideration. In a way, the film will be acted and can't be any other way. However, he knows in advance what the actor can do, has spent time with him and has written the film by imagining the characters. In the end, the result is always better than he had imagined. For him, great actors are like sponges, soaking up the script and taking you somewhere else. The joy of this profession lies in what the actors give : "something you wouldn't have thought of, which is even more beautiful than you imagined, and which you applaud". As a general rule, Jean-Paul RAPPENEAU works a lot on the script and staging upstream, shot by shot, with camera movements and framing. The scriptwriter reserves little room for improvisation; the margin of freedom is fairly small, but he never turns down a good idea.
The students were curious about Jean-Paul RAPPENEAU's background, and he explained that in his day, the curriculum was governed by a kind of law. You had to have been an assistant, and that's how he got his start in film. Then one day, filmmaker Louis MALLE told him to stop being an assistant, and to help out on his next film. He went on to make a number of short films, notably "Chronique provincial", which won an award at the Tours Short Film Festival. Jean-Paul RAPPENEAU pointed out that today, things are different: it's easier to show what you've shot, and that there are no secrets: you have to work on lots of films to make a name for yourself. He ended the evening by talking about the book he is currently writing about his films and his life.
