At 91, director Alain Resnais has just left us.
It is with deep emotion that I learn of the death of this immense artist.
Alain Resnais, who won an Oscar for his short film Van Gogh in 1950, inaugurated his career as a fiction feature-length director with a real bang: Hiroshima my love, a masterpiece on memory, which recounted both intimacy and universality and marked a real turning point in the art of filming and telling.
We owe him many films that have long belonged to the history of our cinema, and even to the history, if we consider that he was the director of Night and Fog, which quickly became a reference point for understanding the tragedy of deportation during the Second World War.
Many other great successes will then remain in our memories: Last Year in Marienbad, Muriel, The War is over, Stavisky, Providence who won two Césars -best film and best director- as well as Smoking/No smoking, but also We know the song, César for Best Film, Les Herbes folles 2009 Cannes Film Festival Exceptional Award…
His work brought French cinema to the world.
The films of Alain Resnais, without ever conceding anything to the air of time, almost always had the pleasure of meeting the favour of the public as well as that of the critics, as through the jury of the last Berlinale who greeted his last formidable production Love, drink and sing, a Critics' Award and the Alfred Bauer Prize, created in memory of the festival’s founder, which each year rewards a film that opens new perspectives…
I address my warmest and most respectful thoughts to his companion Sabine Azéma, as well as to his producer Jean-Louis Livi, as well as to his talented actors like André Dussollier, whom Alain Resnais so intelligently directed, and who, still at the Berlinale, sent a song to Alain Resnais, to the delight of the audience.
Alain Resnais was indeed an artist deeply passionate about the desire to tell cinematic stories, such as the one he was writing and which was to be called Arrival and Departure. He worked in a variety of directions. It captivated us, it moved us, it also amused us by the fantasy of really stunning comedies. All the paths were good to him, provided that he succeeded in making man understand better, and in making us understand him.