Pierre Lhomme – Army of Shadows: “Cinema is a story of encounters” [Interview]

C8 will rebroadcast Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows this evening. Première met his director of photography shortly before his death in July 2019.

Channel 8 will be showing a great classic tonight, Army of Shadowswith Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse And Simone SignoretThe painful story of members of a Resistance network confronted, on a daily basis, with death and betrayal in occupied France. Trailer :

Interview originally published on July 5, 2019: The greatest French cinematographer has passed away. We share one of our last interviews with the man who lit the cinemas of Jean Eustache, Jean-Paul Rappeneau and Jean-Pierre Melville, who is discussed in this final interview.

Do you remember precisely your first meeting with Jean-Pierre Meville?

He had arranged to meet me at noon in front of the train station in a provincial town. On the empty square, he was waiting for me near his Camaro, white I think, with his Stetson, his Ray-Bans, his putty raincoat… It was quite impressive, especially since knowing his reputation, I was a little tense. Melville was in fact a magnificent seducer, a little perverse. He could call me “Pierre” or “my little Pierre”, then suddenly “Monsieur Lhomme” to regain his stripes with authority.

It was Henri Decaë who lit his previous masterpieces. Did he explain to you why he called on you for this one?

I never asked him the question. He knew well the few films I had participated in as The Chamade by Alain Cavalier. We had in common a love of cold colours because they are more faithful to the grain of the skin. He wanted an image as monochromatic as possible, in shades of blue and green. It was important to him that the resistance fighters did not look like baby dolls, as if they were returning from winter sports… In fact, we would have liked to shoot in black and white but the film was expensive, it was too big a risk.

You have stated several times that you pushed Melville to pay more attention to the artistic direction of the film. This is surprising coming from a filmmaker who is classified in the category of great formalists.

I didn't “push” him. I regretted that Théo Meurisse, the set designer, didn't have time to give more realism to certain sets in the studio. Too often, we opened a door or a window on cardboard. Melville retorted that in Hitchcock's films, it didn't bother anyone. Let's just say that an image that was supposed to be naturalistic didn't go well with cardboard. But only the poor operator and the poor set designer see the aesthetic approximations!

There is still this improbable scene where Charles De Gaulle is played, for a very short long shot, by an extra wearing a mask! That's pretty bad…

But it's not a mask! Melville had a painting of De Gaulle's face done, applied as best he could on the actor… everything had been thought out so that the look would match just right. We cried with laughter behind the camera when we saw the result! Melville learned his trade in poverty, so to speak, with limited means. But as he was very clever, he had managed to develop a certain skill to get himself out of tricky situations.

In the delicate situation genre, there are many stories about the filming of the pre-credits sequence where fake German soldiers parade on the Champs-Elysées. And in particular that Melville filmed it alone, without authorization.

It's a legend. The problem was getting the Champs-Elysées empty, a request that was finally granted. As an anecdote, the soldiers are played by dancers who rehearsed for a week at the Boulogne studio. Melville thought that no one else would be able to goose-step. He was so obsessed with this shot that in the days leading up to its filming, he kept leaving the set saying, “guys, I'm going to see my dancers!“.

How did you manage the conflicts between Melville and Lino Ventura or Simone Signoret?

What can a crew do when a director starts humiliating an actor? You have to be as calm and kind as possible with the person in question, which was not difficult with Ventura, a great guy. Melville was a constant score-setter, he was a very tough man. He had an unresolved disagreement over The second wind that he made Lino pay. With Signoret, it was more insidious. He valued the actress but not the woman, whose convictions he did not share. She was unhappy and physically damaged at the time. Once or twice, I suggested to Melville that we cut certain shots in two, so as to get closer to Simone by changing the angle and size. When I couldn't film her gaze well, I was still very bothered. Melville didn't care.

Why did he choose them?

Cinematic demands came first for him.

You are sometimes credited in the credits with Walter Wottitz…

I ended up falling out with Melville. When he asked me, well after the shooting, to do some edits, I was no longer free – I was preparing the Pan-African Festival with William Klein. I still thought about these edits and suggested a colleague I had briefed beforehand – Yann Le Masson, who had filmed some sequences, including the day in London. Melville did not credit him (this is the custom for second unit operators), whereas he did for Walter Wottitz, who also did some shots. He actually called me to tell me how upset he was by his presence in the credits. A little revenge from Jean-Pierre…

Melville, Rappeneau, Eustache, Duras… We get the impression that you liked working with strong personalities.

Cinema is a story of encounters, some are provoked, others are the result of chance. Why do we make a very visual film or a film with a lot of dialogue? We can't listen and see at the same time, I agree with Bresson on that. In retrospect – forty years later – when I was supervising the restoration of the film, I realized how much Jean-Pierre Melville was Bressonian. All his moments of great cinematography, basically, are Bresson with great actors.

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