Philippe de Broca on Georges Delerue

1959-1968
In 1959, when I was twenty-six, I was preparing to shoot my first feature film Les Jeux de l'Amour (The Love Game), and I was looking for a composer. By chance I came across a publicity film for Maggi, with (mad?) cows dancing a French Can-Can! I said to myself: "That's just what I need: it's lively, it's got spirit, and it's thunderously loud!" Henri Colpi, who'd directed the ad, told me it was the work of a very promising youngster named Georges Delerue. I was out of luck: he'd deserted Paris for a holiday in the south. I jumped on a train to track him down on holiday in Saint-Jeannet. I can see his little Provencal house now, but it did have a piano. He opened the door himself, I was so young he thought I was a messenger! (laughter) We talked about the film, and I briefly told him what it was about, and mentioned the possibility of a waltz for the main title. He went over to the piano straight away: "A waltz like this?" That was it, he'd found one: his waltz had something perky about it, something elegant, with an aftertaste of sadness. From that day on, I couldn't do without Georges, both the man and the composer.

Why a waltz? I've no idea… At twenty-six I was already an old sod, completely out of it! (laughter). I've got a terrible distrust of fashions, and I try to rely on references that last. On top of that, when you've got a composer like Georges Delerue, you don't ask him to write a disco piece or some hard rock! Anyway, Georges didn't mind the connivance between my own universe and the waltz: perpetual movement, sentiments dancing round in a circle where nothing gets caught up, everything detaching itself… Many themes he composed are built on rhythms in three: Le Roi de Coeur (King of Hearts), Les Tribulations d'un Chinois en Chine (Chinese Adventures in China)… not to mention my first three films with Jean-Pierre Cassel: Les Jeux de l'Amour, Le Farceur (The Joker) and L'Amant de Cinq Jours (Five Day Lover). Then Cartouche (Swords of Blood) came along, which was offered to me by the producers from Films Ariane, Alexandre Mnouchkine and Georges Dancigers. Cartouche marked a real transition in my career: I went from light, nouvelle vague gallantries in black and white to spectacular cinema, historical and adventure films. And there I had to fight hard with Mnouchkine, who strongly suggested Georges Van Parys or Paul Misraki. Two veterans against a youngster who, at the time, hadn't yet proved himself in an epic register. I won in the end, I wore him out. Delerue made a magnificent success of the score for Cartouche, and from then on, Mnouchkine swore by him.

Physically, Delerue had a kind of broken look, with a large head and a very expressive face. He came from the north and looked like the Flemish peasants in Brueghel's paintings. His modest origins didn't mean his behaviour was "popular"; on the contrary, Georges was plain, but well-mannered and very warm. He had a grace that touched me a lot. Alexandre Mnouchkine often said: "Delerue is the happiest man I've met!" He was right: Georges liked to profit from his family, music, good food, and not complicate his existence. He'd come from nothing, and knew how to appreciate everything that happened to him, a certain comfort that came with success. He really took life at face value. I've never heard him go on about his work, or explain it, analyse it. Georges preferred to write music, not hold forth on the subject.

When I started, we were right in the middle of the "Branquignols" era, whose shows were put to music by a composer whom Delerue greatly respected, Gérard Calvi. They were comic films with comic music; they totally assumed the burlesque side. I adored them… but not for myself. In my view, comedy is based on seeing serious things in a funny way. Georges completely understood that approach: in my films he included everything I couldn't manage to do myself, out of modesty probably. And yet I always dreamed of telling tragic stories… although humour and derision almost always caught up with me, they hijacked me and took me hostage. Luckily, Georges was there to bring me back to more serious things. That's where his genius lay: beneath a veneer that was almost frivolous, he made an unfathomable sadness palpable, an impression of human fragility, fragile things where everything was either lost or about to be lost… Delerue's vision, his contribution, were everything I didn't dare express myself, everything I'd withheld from the scenario or the shooting.

If you want a caricature, I was casualness and superficiality, and he was depth. In a comedy like Le Diable par la Queue (The Devil by the Tail), his music adds a staggering dimension of tenderness, nostalgia… in a slow waltz, for piano and strings, portrayed onscreen by Jeanne's character (Clotilde Joanno.) That theme is the reason why Yves Montand falls for her: all of a sudden he stops playing the clown and tells her the story of his life as a pathetic little crook. When a woman plays that waltz for you, you can't do anything but fall in love! That theme for Jeanne is probably one of my favourite Delerue compositions… I'd love it to be played at my funeral! (laughter)

In Diable, I also liked the opening-title theme, a clever, court-musicpastiche. It ought to be played behind the fountains in Versailles… On the screen, you can see a decrepit stately home, with a roof that leaks like a sieve, and Jean Rochefort has to juggle with the chamber-pots.

Stéphane Lerouge