The film started as a joke.
A bad joke I made during the editing of La Bande des Quatre
because in that film, I don't know if you remember it
there is a character called Thomas and played by Benoît Régent
and when he approaches Laurence Côte
he starts talking about investigating lost paintings.
I had suggested to Pascal this imaginary painting
La Belle Noiseuse by Frenhofer.
And in about a minute and a half he tells her the story by Balzac.
Frenhofer, do you know him?
- One of your guys? - Not at all.
No, he's a painter...
A great painter who lived 300 years ago.
He was Poussin's unknown master...
His most beautiful painting is La Belle Noiseuse...
And after that, we went out for lunch with some friends
who would ask me what my next film would be
I would say The Unknown Masterpiece
because if people don't understand the film
I could say, it's normal because it's The Unknown Masterpiece
That's how it all started.
I thought... Right from the beginning
I was interested in the painter and his model
and not in telling the story of the painting itself.
And then, the more I would say it as a joke,
the more I would think about it...
The bad thing about bad jokes is that sometimes...
they stick in your mind and make you think.
I thought "Why not after all... That could be interesting".
And one night I told Claire Denis about it over dinner...
At the time she was working on our conversations with Serge Daney
two or three weeks before
and we were having dinner, talking about this and that and then she asked me:
Do you have a new film in mind?
So I told her the whole story
and asked what she thought...
I told her the story in 3 minutes
and she got all excited, "you have to do it". And I said yes.
"But something is stopping me".
"Does it have to be a painter playing Frenhofer or an actor?"
And she said "the way you told the story, it has to be an actor".
And I said immediately "if it's an actor"., I can only think of one".
There's only one actor in France who can play the part, Michel Piccoli.
And that's how in about 30 seconds we dedicated to go for it.
Of course I thought about it a bit longer before talking to Martine
so that she could ask Michel Piccoli if he would do the film.
But that's how it all started.
So the film was never called The Unknown Masterpiece
Never, The Unknown Masterpiece was... From the beginning we took...
I often said it and I say it again.
If I say it three times it's even more true
but here it's not three times it's 33 if not 333 times.
I believe that Balzac cannot be adapted to the cinema or TV or whatever...
You end up with a mere illustration of his stories.
On the other hand it's an amazing source of ideas...
And sometimes it's good to go and steal some ideas
and then change everything
I'm not saying you should do Rastignac like on TV, when channel France 2 did it.
But that's the right idea.
Except that they... well... Let's not talk about it.
Even if you immediately thought of Michel Piccoli,
the funny thing is that you still needed a real painter.
Yes, of course.
Bernard Dufour came to my mind very quickly
because I had seen a lot of his work in the 60s
and I had been very impressed by it.
The fact that he deliberately clung to figurative painting
and still with such energy...
I thought there was a lot of energy in his work.
So it wasn't long before we asked him and...
some friends of Martine's just happened to know him very well
so we met him and he said OK.
The making of La Belle Noiseuse went very smoothly.
And as the painter's hand Bernard Dufour.
The interesting thing is how
from La Belle Noiseuse - a 4-hour film right?
Four hours exactly.
Plus the intermission.
...you came to Divertimento, the 2-hour short version.
- So Divertimento is... - The thing is it was edited long after...
The film was finished, we had been to the Cannes Festival
where the film was extremely well received- we got an award-
but then there was still that contract somewhere
And so I worked with Nicole throughout the the summer - we weren't in a hurry.
It must have taken us four or five weeks.
We did it slowly when we felt like it.
And we dedicated to work from the outtakes only.
That's why there's practically nothing of the sittings
because everything was in the 4-hour film.
When Bernard had drawn something or started something
there was only one take, a second one would have been pointless.
So everything in Divertimento was edited from different takes.
With no exception.
And the editing is entirely different.
Whereas in the long version we have a lot of cuts,
here we keep the whole duration of the shot.
There's one example I always like to cite. It's the scene...
at the beginning, the first night
the different characters have just met
and Frenhofer invites everybody to stay for dinner, they are all eating outside
and on one side of the table we have Frenhofer and Marianne,
Michel and Emmanuelle
and on the other side we have Jane and David
and at the end of table we have Porbus.
I had shot the scene in a very classic way.
One side of the table, a 3-minute scene, something like that
with Michel and Emmanuelle
and then the other side with Jane and David
and of course a few shots of Porbus
whom we see turning pale as the conversation unfolds
and in the long version we have lots of different cuts.
We cut to Porbus then on the others, and so on...
The children went to agricultural college.
There were 12 of them.
So you love Nicolas?
And he loves you very much too, it's obvious.
Don't get upset, he's always like that.
I'm not upset, I'm listening.
Would you agree if he was to put his painting before you?
Would you agree to...
to lose him for a painting?
Anyway...
if Nicolas wasn't going all the way, I'd lose him because I'd leave him.
Why should we lose each other?
We painters are after the truth and truth can be cruel.
Hubble bubble toil and trouble, you never lost me.
I almost did.
And in the 2-hour version
we have the camera closing in on...
We have a wide shot of the table
closing in on Michel and Emmanuelle
and for two thirds of the scene it's only the two of them
Jane and David being off camera
and then after the two thirds we go to the other side of the table
and the others are off we only have one cut.
We come back to the wide shot when Porbus faints.
...children went to...
an agricultural college.
There were 12 of them.
So you love Nicolas?
And he loves you very much too, it's obvious.
- Don't get upset, he's always like that. - I'm not upset, I'm listening.
Would you allow him to put his painting before you?
Would you agree to lose him for a painting?
Anyway...
if Nicolas wasn't going all the way
I would lose him anyway...
because I would leave him.
Why should we lose each other?
We painters are after the truth and truth can be cruel.
Hubble bubble toil and trouble you never lost me.
I almost did.
It seemed to me that Jane Birkin's character was more important...
in a way yes because we cut a lot of...
it wasn't cut because there wasn't any material left!
I had used everything.
I couldn't show shots of Emmanuelle without the drawings.
So I kept very few of them.
A few at the beginning of course.
We had a few shots left...
A few times he had started drawing something and he didn't like it so...
he would start again and we used that.
That's very funny.
You have to have fun when you do that because editing can be so boring.
Either you do it very quickly like L'Amour par terre,
or you try to have fun by trying something totally different.
How did you find the title Divertimento? With Nicole during editing?
It was a bit of a whim.
It's because...
Since I was 14 I have been a huge fan of Igor Stravinsky
when I heard the The Rite of Spring on the radio for the first time in my life
during the Occupation
it was a shock and I never recovered from it.
His entire work.
And here for the film
for the first time I dared to have Stravinsky
for the opening and end credits.
It was Agon's Prelude and Postlude.
One of his most beautiful ballets, the last one he wrote for Balanchine.
With a little bit of Petrushka.
Stravinsky wrote several orchestra suites based on long ballet scores
and one, not my favorite, written for...
the Ballets russes in the 20s I think
...in his neoclassical phase was the Fairy's Kiss
based only on themes by Tchaikovsky
because he was a great admirer of Tchaikovsky.
He made a short version of it for orchestra and called it Divertimento.
It's a reference to Mr. Igor
the Great Igor as Claude Chabrol used to say.
And he was right.