Interview with Bérenger Thouin, director of Golden age (Cannes Classics)
This is the story of a butcher's daughter who will end up a chatelaine, living through two wars and the great upheavals of the early 20th century.ecentury. For his first feature film, Bérenger Thouin chose the epic novel, the grand narrative of fiction. But rather than building expensive sets and recreating bygone eras, the director of Golden age He chose to use documentary archive footage. A unique experiment where reality transforms fiction – or perhaps it's the other way around. Having presented his film in the Cannes Classics section of the Cannes Film Festival, the filmmaker tells us about it.
What is the starting point of this film: the archives or the fiction?
The starting point was the story. It was the desire to create a character of a romantic adventurer, to portray a complex woman, with her desires, aspirations, and darker aspects, in a sweeping narrative, almost like a fresco. The archives come later, to support this character, to accompany her, to carry her, to give her a historical context, a framework, a setting. The archives are there to place her in her time.
In the film's introduction, you say that Jeanne Lavaur's life belongs only to herself. What did you mean by that?
She does what she wants. She's a butcher's daughter with dreams of becoming a countess. She has her own path, which she builds little by little. Gradually, she gains autonomy, freedom. But it was also a way of saying that we were going to play with the archives, with the language of cinema, what we show and what we don't show. She's the one telling her own story, so there are gaps, things that aren't said, others that are perhaps a little untrue. She's the one telling her story; she's not objective.
It's his personal and intimate story, and at the same time, it's a story of France. How did you define the chronological boundaries?
There's this idea of telling the story of the arrival of modernity, starting in a small village in 1900 with a 19th-century setting and ending in the 1960s at Orly airport. Moving from the world of our great-grandparents to something flashier, with airplanes, which ultimately resembles our contemporary modernity.
Your film evokes as much Paris 1900 by Nicole Vedrès in its first part that La Jetée Chris Marker's at the end. Were those explicit film references for you?
Absolutely. But when you're recounting seventy years of 20th-century images, it evokes something for everyone. I have my own cinephilia, and you'll find traces of all the films I love. Golden age It is full of references, but they are not necessarily visible, not even necessarily conscious. Even if it wasn't intentional, suddenly finding oneself on a fox hunt in a castle in 1920 obviously evokes... The Rule of the Game by Renoir. These are periods that we also know through cinema.
What research did you do to find the archives that make up the film?
The initial difficulty was figuring out what kind of footage we could use. It was quite a lengthy process, for example, understanding that we couldn't use fictional footage because there were immediately recognizable and very dated conventions. I eventually came across all these newsreel clips from the Gaumont-Pathé archives. It was the precursor to television news, but filmed in 35mm, very carefully, very cleanly, with an aesthetic sense of framing. These are archival images, but they're also cinematic footage.
Especially since you've transformed them to make them look even more like fictional images, with sound and visual effects…
Yes, they are somewhat reworked. But the film's principle remains this very traditional shot-reverse-shot interplay between archival footage and fictional scenes. Then there's the work of homogenization and sound design, because these archival clips are all silent. But in the same way, we tried to film in a kind of dialogue with these images; to make our images resemble them. By copying them a little, but without ever resorting to pastiche.
These archives come from different periods, and they are themselves very heterogeneous in their aesthetics…
Yes, and it's actually wrong to think of the film as a dichotomy between archive and fiction. Because these archival materials don't connect with each other at all. And making them coexist was already a challenge. So ultimately, whether it's archival or filmed footage isn't really what's important. What matters is that it's a story told through fragments.
How did you approach the aesthetics of these "filmed" sequences? Did you use period cameras?
No, it's more of a digital process, a search for textures and editing. We had to rediscover the filming techniques specific to each era, how they did close-ups, portraits, which shot values were acceptable or, conversely, which were anachronistic… And then, since these archives are newsreels, there were no film crews, just individual camera operators, so natural light. We tried to work as close as possible to those conditions – we had very little light compared to a traditional shoot. Similarly, at the beginning, there are no tracking shots, very little movement, only a few pans. Then, we started using a handheld camera, in an aesthetic closer to amateur filmmaking… The aesthetic of our film evolves along with the era and the history of cinema.
Did you have trouble finding the right archives corresponding to the film's story?
No, we had a huge amount of material and archives. The difficulty was more about finding the right balance: enjoying the archival footage without ever losing the fictional element. We couldn't let it become too much like a documentary. That's the risk: with such a vast archive of images, you're tempted to show too much.
The Golden Age, It's the story of a heroic, yet complex, woman who lives through the century. Was it important for you to have a female character at the heart of the story?
Yes, because there are many male representations in these kinds of highly romanticized stories. In its archives, the 20th century is largely recounted by men, for men, with men. In all the archives, whenever there are close-ups, it's almost always of men, politicians or athletes. So, following a female character allowed us to take a detour, to traverse the century off the beaten path and see it from a different perspective. While the film is constructed from early 20th-century archives...e century, the primary inspiration was the great novels of the 19the century, but by adopting a new point of view, by shifting our gaze a little.
Golden age by Bérenger Thouin
With Souheila Yacoub and Vassili Schneider
Cannes Film Festival – Official Selection Cannes Classics
Coming soon to theaters
