Join WhatsApp Channel
Join Telegram ChannelThis film by André Cayatte was a great success in 1971, but it also had its detractors, such as François Truffaut.
This evening Arte will offer two cult films about thwarted love stories: Die to love (1971), by André Cayatte then Valmont (1989), by Milos Forman. First recommend them both to you. Note also that they are already visible in replay, and for free, on the channel's website. To see the drama with Annie Girdardot, it's hereand for the one worn by Colin Firth, it is by there.
It's all based on a true story
Die to love depicts a forbidden love story between a teacher and one of her students, in the excited atmosphere of May 1968. André Cayatte seizes here in 1971 a tragic news item which made the front page of all the newspapers two years earlier: the suicide of Gabrielle Roussier, a high school teacher who fell in love with one of her students aged 16, accused of embezzling a minor, thrown in prison then released and on the verge to be amnestied by the new President Georges Pompidou, will therefore choose to kill herself at the age of 32 by opening the gas at her home after having noted that any return to a life “normal” would be impossible for her (the Academy of Aix-en-Provence had just refused her the position of linguistics assistant for which she applied). The emotion that followed this desperate gesture moved the whole of France and even sparked the reform of preventive detention, deemed abusive in the case of Gabrielle Russer.
Charles Aznavour will subsequently dedicate a famous song to him, Die to loveon the B side of his 45 Tours No, I haven't forgotten anything. Jacques Deray announces his desire to dedicate a film to him. But it was finally André Cayatte who tackled it by asking Aznavour to use the title of his song.
Annie Girardot, “an extraordinary actress”: The French actress seen by filmmakers Edouard Molinaro and Claude Pinoteau
A director passionate about Justice
It is by no means a coincidence that Cayatte is embarking on this project. A lawyer in the 1930s, since the 1950s he has become a specialist in films that decipher the legal workings (Justice is done, We are all murderers…) or delve into the mysteries of famous news items like four years earlier with The risks of the profession where he returned to the tragic story of a teacher thrown into popular condemnation after being wrongly accused of pedophilia by one of his students. With his camera, Cayatte intends to track down injustice and prevent similar stories that could happen in the future from having the same consequences. Hence the idea with Die to lovewhile relying on the reality of a particular case (he called on Albert Naud, Gabrielle Russer's lawyer, to write the scenario with the journalist Pierre Dumayet), to tend towards the universality of about by changing the names of the protagonists and the city where the affair occurred
Hated by Truffaut, adored by the public, a springboard for Annie Girardot
The Gabrielle Russer affair had for a time divided France, Die to love will do it too. A letter from François Truffaut denouncing Cayatte's demagoguery in his treatment of the subject will ignite the powder. But the public will flock to the cinemas, giving the film the third biggest success of 1971: almost 6 million admissions. This immense success will change the destiny of its main performer, Annie Girardot. Because if after having considered stopping her career, she was relaunched by Claude Lelouch to become – thanks in particular to Live to live Or A man I like – the highest paid actress in French cinema; it is with Cayatte's film that we will begin to finance films on her name over the course of a prodigious decade where she established herself as the most popular actress in France with films like Doctor Françoise Gailland, Tender chicken, The discord, The Slap…