COUP DE TORCHON/CLEAN SLATE

COUP DE TORCHON/CLEAN SLATE
Bertrand Tavernier (1941- )
 Born in Lyon into a literary family
 A film fanatic
 Trained as assistant director to Jean-Pierre
Melville
 Léon Morin, Prêtre 1961
 Worked as a press agent for a film producer
 Supported the New Wave
Tavernier’s documentaries
 Philippe Soupault 1982
 Lyon, le regard intérieur 1988
 De l’autre côté du périph 1998
Tavernier’s films
 L’Horloger de Saint-Paul 1973
 Que la fête commence 1975
 Le juge et l’assassin 1985
 Coup de torchon/Clean Slate 1981
 Un dimanche à la campagne 1983
Tavernier’s films (2)
 La passion Béatrice 1987
 La vie et rien d’autre 1989
 Daddy Nostalgie 1989
 Laissez-passer 2000
 Holy Lola 2004
 Dans la brume électrique/In the electric mist
2007
Topics
 Great variety
 Period pieces
 Known as a humanistic director
 Coup de torchon
 A period piece: 1938 in the AOF
 Dark, violent side
 A purge
Coup de torchon 1981
 Script by Jean Aurenche (1904-1992)
 L’Affaire du Courrier de Lyon 1937
 Hôtel du Nord 1938
 Music score by Philippe Sarde (1945- )
 Jazz when there is movement
 Songs used as ironic counterpoint
 Je suis seul dans ma chambre vide
Plot in Coup de Torchon
 Inspired by Pop. 1280, a 1963 novel by Jim
Thompson set in southern US
 Translated into French
 Série noire
 Compared to Henry Miller and Céline
 Transposition to Gabon in Afrique Occidentale
Française
 Bourkassa Ourbangui
 Racism common elelment
Africa
Gabon
The French in Africa
 French Mission to civilize
 1895 Afrique Occidentale Française
 1910 Afrique Équatoriale Française
 1946 African colonies become Overseas
Territories part of Union Française
 1960 Independence
Tavernier’s representation
of Africa
 Avoidance of exoticism
 No wild animals
 Soft colours
 Shows seedy side of colonial life
 Better life than in France?
 “Cesspool of colonialism”
 Metaphor of the latrines
 Eurocentrism
French foods and drinks
 Tartines, duck, haricot de mouton, gâteau de
riz au rhum
 Ratafia
 Brandy with sugar and fruit
 Mandarin
 an apéritif wine
 Tricolore
 coffee with calvados, cognac and rhum
No nostalgia for France
 Not a better life there for working class
 Rose and Marcaillou
 From Ardèche
 Isolated area
 Family sends them lentils
 Rose’s future in France
 A prostitute in Marseille
 Huguette dreams of the Riviera
 Congés payés, opium for the working class
Stupidity and vulgarity of
the settlers
 Nono
 Bad French
 “tu m’ombrages”, “ça se torse”
 Huguette
 Hair rollers
 Lack of manners
 Van der Brouck
 Latrines
Satire of French
administration
 Colonel Tramichel
 Bizarre explanation of his name
 “Tra” “comme “Tralala..”
 “Michel” “comme “La Mère Michel”
 Ineffficient and stupid
 Double murder explained as murder-suicide
 Marcel Chevasson
 Nasty, vulgar and stupid
Colonialism and schooling
 Schools
 Turning Africans into Frenchmen
 Idealism
 Anne
 Irony
 The Marseillaise
 Planting of seeds of rebellion
Arise children of the fatherland
The day of glory has arrived
Against us tyranny's
Bloody standard is raised
Listen to the sound in the fields
The howling of these fearsome
soldiers
They are coming into our midst
To cut the throats of your sons
and consorts
To arms citizens Form your
battalions
March, march
Let impure blood
Water our furrows
Racism
 The life of a black man has no value
 Marcel Chavasson : Blacks “have no souls”
 They are not human
 Humiliations
 Whites do not shake the hands of the Blacks
 Names
 Fête-Nat(ionale): July 14
 Vendredi, cf Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1719)
Film within the film
 Alerte en Méditerranée 1938
 By Léo Joannon
 A spy-thriller
 Filmed in the Protectorate of Morrocco
 Native audience pays to see a film
propagating white supremacist ideology
 Irony
July-September 1938
 Munich Agreement
 Signed 29-30 September
 Partition of Czechoslovakia between Nazi Germany,
Poland and Hungary
 Signed by Daladier, Chamberlain, Mussolini and
Hitler
 Édouard Daladier
 Prime minister 10 April 1938-21 March 1940
 Radical Socialist
Black sun
 Solar eclipse
 Total darkness
 Drop in temperature
 Ironic reversal of colonial symbol
 A torch lighting up the dark continent of Africa
 Mission to civilize
 Brutality and stupidity of the colonizers
 A symbol of the end of an era
 Discordant music
Apocalyptic atmosphere
 The sandstorm
 “I thought that it was the end of the world”
 The destruction of moral constraints
 “Where is good, where is evil?”
 The end of Christianity
Esthetic Unity
 First scene
 Cordier watching young boys eating ants
 Eclipse of the sun
 He starts a fire for them
 Last scene
 Same but no eclipse
 He aims his gun
 At the boys?
 At the spectators?
Surface motivation for
murders
 Lucien follows advice
 Chavasson and Paulo
 “Hurt them twice as much as they have hurt you”
 The priest
 Does “what the others want him to do but do
not have the courage to do themselves”
The end of Christianity
 Loss of Christ’s message
 Christ is crucified again
 Graveyard scene
 Loss of faith
 Rose
 Mockery of prayers
 Lucien’s “Our father..”
 “Lies told to children”
Lucien, a messiah?
 Signs his confession “Jesus Christ”
 Says he has been sent to do a clean-up job
 Does what the others don’t want to do but
support
 The State
 Represented by Marcel Chavasson
 The Church
 Represented by the priest
 Perhaps an absurd justification
Absurdity
 Dog with a parting in the middle
 Story of the dogs who lost their hindparts
 Lack of meaning of human life
 Loss of humanity and communication
 Theater of the absurd
 Eugene Ionesco
 The Bald soprano 1950
Cordier and Bardamu
 Anti-hero of
 Voyage au bout de la nuit 1932
by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
 Obscenities and colloquial style
 Tales of
 Violent misadventures
 Travels to West Africa
 Influence of Céline on Sartre
Cordier and Jo Querelle
 Serial killer, hero of
 Querelle de Brest 1947
by Jean Genet
 Motivation for murder is the sheer liberating
power of it
 “It is a dirty job and .. I deserve the dirty
pleasure I get out of it”
Cordier and Existentialism
 Jean-Paul Sartre
 La Nausée 1938
 No Exit
 Philosophy associated with
 Atheism
 Dread, boredom, alienation, the absurd
 Lack of feelings
Lucien, a complex character
 Sensual and weak
 Lazy and cynical
 A personification of corrupt imperialism
 A skilled manipulator?
 A victim?
Sensual and weak
 Main preoccupations
 Food, sex
 An average Frenchman?
 Philippe Noiret
 Apparent indecisiveness of Norman peasantry
 “I am not saying that you are wrong but I am not
saying the you are right”
 “P’têt’ ben qu’oui. p’têt ben qu’non”
 In reality very clever
Lazy and cynical
 Passive
 In relationships
 Huguette, Nono
 Rose
 No idealism
 Gives back book by Saint-Exupéry
 Pushes away the schoolteacher
A personification of corrupt
imperialism
 Accepts bribes
 Pimps
 Allows child prostitution
 Le Panier fleuri
 A coward
 Marcaillou
 Wife beating, market scene
A victim
 Unhappy childhood
 Mother died when he was born
 Abusive father
 Mistreated by Huguette and Nono
 Suffers abuse and ridicule
 Called “lazy”, “stupid”, “sissy”, “ineffective”
 Nicknamed “Lucien, poil au chien”
Pernicious influence of
Africa
 The blindman: “We are entering the virgin
forest”
 Kurtz in The Heart of darkness by Joseph
Conrad, 1902
 Loss of moral compass
 Loss of illusions
Awareness of omnipresence of
evil
 Children dying of hunger
 Little girls sold for a mirror
 Excision
 “In this context murder is a civic duty”
Psychological realism
 Breaking point
 Too much abuse
 Cannot stand himself
 Thinks himself unworthy of Anne
 Desire to start anew
 Coup de torchon/Clean slate
 Kindness taken for weakness
 In fact very much aware of his surroundings
A guide to the colonial
setting
 Sometimes uncovers racism
 Death of African soldiers
 High death rate among the tirailleurs sénégalais
 Also among Bretons and Vendéens
 Crushing of the rebellion in Loumba
Final shot
 Gun perhaps aimed at the audience
 “Crimes are collective”
 “I try to save the innocents, but there are not
any”
Philippe Noiret (1930-2006)
 Acted in 125 films
 Le vieux fusil 1973 Robert Enrico
 César for best actor
 Les Ripoux 1984 Claude Zidi
 Cinema Paradiso 1988 Giuseppe Tornatore
 Oscar for best film
 La vie et rien d’autre Bertrand Tavernier 1990
 César for best actor
Isabelle Huppert (1953- )
 Favorite actress of Claude Chabrol
 Violette Nozières 1977
 Une affaire de femmes 1988
 La Cérémonie 1995
 Michael Haneke
 La Pianiste 2000
Stéphane Audran(1932- )
 Claude Chabrol
 Les Bonnes Femmes 1959
 Le Boucher 1969
 Violette Nozières 1977