“We had to strike a balance between a certain fascination with the evil at work and ensuring that the film was morally beyond reproach”
– The French filmmaker recounts the making of his new film, which explores the murky areas of collaboration with the occupying forces in France during the Second World War
Rays and Shadows [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Xavier Giannoli
film profile] is Xavier Giannoli’s ninth feature film, which will be released in France on 18 March by Gaumont. The French filmmaker recounts the making of his new film, which explores the murky areas of collaboration with the occupying forces in France during the Second World War.
Cineuropa: Why did you decide to make a film about the highly sensitive subject of collaboration in France during the Second World War?
Xavier Giannoli: I spoke with my friend and co-screenwriter Jacques Fieschi about the fate of Corinne Luchaire, a young actress of the 1930s – a modern, sassy young star who was hugely popular at the time – and who was drawn into that dark chapter of our history, which was the collaboration with the Nazi Regime by her father, who was head of the press during the Occupation. This man’s fate was fascinating, because he came from the pacifist movement following the First World War. He was a left-wing humanist who, over the course of the 1930s, drifted towards compromise with the Nazi regime during the Occupation. He embraced dangerous and toxic far-right ideas and renounced all the ideals of his youth. What were the driving forces behind this compromise? Ideological blindness? I don’t think so. A form of greed, an illusion of power, social vanity? I was interested in this, and I also discovered that Jean Luchaire was detested by the collaborationists, who found him lukewarm, insincere, a collaborator solely out of opportunism. And he was obviously also despised by the wait-and-see crowd who did not make deals with the Germans, not to mention, of course, the Resistance. So there was a tragic element to his life, and I wanted to understand it. I was also moved by the fate of Corinne Luchaire, by the cruelty with which history took its toll on her at the time of the Liberation, to the point of wanting to erase her from memory.
Was it your love of cinema that led you to Corinne Luchaire?
No, even though I’d seen Prison sans barreaux. It’s above all a romantic destiny, an extraordinary cinematic destiny because of the cruelty of her life. It took five or six years of discussions with Jacques Fieschi to work out how to tell this important and dangerous story. It was risky to tackle the immorality of the collaborators’ betrayal and to cast Jean Dujardin, the biggest star in French cinema, in the role of Jean Luchaire. Risky, and therefore interesting. We had to strike a balance between a certain fascination with the evil at work and ensuring the film remained morally beyond reproach. It was a cinematic gamble which, moreover, resonates with current events.
To what extent have you remained faithful to the historical facts?
Right from the start, I worked with historians, I read up on the subject, I did my research, and I hired archivists, all in order to create the film’s world and gather visual references, photos, films, and so on. I told one historian that I wouldn’t be forgiven for even the slightest untruth. He replied, “You’re right, and what’s more, you won’t be forgiven if you tell the truth.” I was fully aware that I was venturing into dangerous territory. It’s faithful to the facts, but I’m neither an academic nor a historian: this is a film, so certain artistic liberties have inevitably been taken, as the aim is to convey something of these characters’ destinies.
What about the flashback structure, with Corinne recording her memories on a tape recorder?
It was Corinne’s perspective that really struck a chord with me. She wanted to share her story; she knew she lived through a tragic period in history, and that her father compromised his integrity. She was tried for treason, subjected to terrible cruelty, and she had reached a point in her life – even though she was still very young – where she wanted to understand. It was a wonderful way of engaging the audience, because I believe that cinema can also be educational and offer viewers the chance to discover a period we think we know, but which, in fact, we don’t know all that well. However, making such a film raises questions in terms of ethics and aesthetics. To film characters who do immoral things and a dark chapter in history, you have to find the right angle, both in terms of camerawork and perspective, on this immorality, so that there is no guilty complacency, but neither any unambiguous punishment. Hence the title, Ray and Shadows. We had to seek out the nuances.
The film holds up a merciless mirror to the press.
This is at the heart of the matter: the responsibility of certain sections of the press to serve political propaganda. The film may serve as a call for viewers to remain vigilant, so as to not allow themselves to be manipulated. I am the son of a journalist, so I know what journalistic integrity is. Today, we live in a dangerous world of manipulation and fake news. I didn’t expect the film’s subject matter to be so closely mirrored by current events. When I started working on the film five or six years ago, we couldn’t have imagined that the political debate would revolve around fascism, communism and anti-Semitism – which are, at heart, the same ideas that were being discussed at the time of the film and in the 1930s. It’s very surprising and very frightening. I thought these monsters were dormant, but they were clearly only sleeping with one eye open. But human trajectories aren’t straight lines; there is complexity in history. All of this is a shifting, complex, nuanced subject. The film explores this scandalous and inflammatory subject, yet at the same time it is a kind of call for understanding. But mind you, I must stress, understanding is obviously not the same as excusing.
(Translated from French)
