Creation in action

The reluctance of many filmmakers to be branded as improvisers results from the confusion that surrounds any attempt to define improvisation, wavering between the mystical consecration of a quasi-divine source of inspiration and a damning indictment linked to its supposedly unprepared nature, denoting a lack of creative thought. By claiming it not only as a choice but as a practice, we hope to dispel a romantic and supposedly facile reputation that has been systematically belied. Every act of improvisation, in whatever discipline, is based on working knowledge, on mastering techniques that first have to be learned. The improviser is not satisfied with turning his technical know-how into a virtuoso performance, he needs to go beyond it. Every improvising actor is, first and foremost, a skilled professional, prepared to set aside his honed technique – as John Cassavetes required Peter Falk or Ben Gazzara to do - because he knows this is the only way he can take risks and allow something to escape in the course of the take. This is the subtext of Jean Renoir’s description of his teaching methods: ‘I wanted to convince these young people that they needed to despise technique […]. There was a risk they might then deduce that it was unnecessary to have any knowledge of the profession, which isn’t true; on the contrary one needs to know it really well, one needs to know it inside out so that one can forget it.’ ¹ From Bulle Ogier and Jean-Pierre Kalfon in L’AMOUR FOU (1969) to Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and Bruno Todeschini in UN COUPLE PARFAIT (2005) – but Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu in the works of Maurice Pialat also spring to mind – improvisation stems from a consummate mastery of the actor’s art. In more documentary-style films (such as L’APPRENTI or DERNIER MAQUIS), the actor’s technique may be of a different nature but it nevertheless calls upon genuine talent: ‘There are only actors in this film’, says Ameur-Zaïmeche about DERNIER MAQUIS, ‘and yet only the mechanics and I had ever acted before.’ ² The requirements are different here, as the actors are improvising their own characters on camera, in everyday situations that have been reinvented for the purposes of the film. ‘Playing oneself’ may not involve as much experience but that does not mean it does not require a great deal of work. The same applies to the technical crew, the sound technicians and cameramen in particular, who are forced to react in the moment to a situation that will only occur once, in the knowledge that the quality and speed of this reaction will determine the ultimate viability of the shot.