Cinema, television, censorship
Interview with N. Philibert by Guy Gauthier, published in the periodical CinémAction n°110 - 1st quarter 2004
Your relationship with the bosses is a lengthy and complex one. Let's start at the beginning...
The project originated in the summer of 1975. At the time, Gérard Mordillat and I were working as René Allio's assistants on the film Moi, Pierre Rivière, ayant égorgé ma mère, ma soeur et mon frère... (I, Pierre Rivière, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister and My Brother…) We talked a great deal together, both driven by the desire to start directing. Gérard had shot two or three short films at the time whereas I hadn't yet directed anything... By chance, during the shooting of Allio's film, we met a man who had just written a fascinating thesis on a textile company in Upper Normandy in which he had gathered together the speeches made by the company's bosses between 1848 and 1914: commemorative speeches, medal award ceremonies, retirement receptions, etc. Reading this thesis led to the idea of a film on the words of contemporary employers for which we immediately found the title: La Voix de son Maître (His Master's Voice) (1).
In this post-1968 period, political and union militants obstinately continued to present employers in the same way as in the 19th century, without always seeing that, like all the rest, their world was changing too. The "absolutist" bosses were being replaced by a new generation of "managers" whose legitimacy came less from their family legacy than from their skills or their success at top business schools. They were no longer the owners of their company, they were employees, henceforth interchangeable and anonymous.
How did you go about setting up such a project?
In the course of 1976, we started looking for financing with the idea of making a cinema film, at a time when documentaries, apart from a few exceptions, were virtually non-existent in theatres. The Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (2), that had an extremely active and bold documentary production unit, expressed interest in our project. In return for their contribution, we agreed to make a three-hour version for television alongside our theatrical version… We then started meeting bosses. We preferred to meet bosses of leading groups, so that their words would have a genuine economic impact: the views of the boss of a small company are not the same as those of a man like Jacques de Fouchier, chairman of Paribas, who was directly or indirectly at the head of 800,000 employees.
The hardest part was not obtaining their agreement but setting up appointments with them. We had to break through barriers, move up through the hierarchy… In some cases, this preliminary work took up to four months! This explains why shooting lasted more than a year and a half. At the same time, there was a snowball effect: after the first few agree to be filmed, the following ones accepted more rapidly. As far as I remember, only two or three refused.
How did you go about persuading them?
We didn't conceal the fact that our film had a critical dimension in that it would subject their words to the closest scrutiny possible. All the same, there was no question of arguing with them. We met them before shooting to explain our method and prepare, with them, the themes that would be tackled: the hierarchy, relations with the unions, conflicts, strikes, the legitimacy of power in the company, etc. After filming, we invited them to see the dailies, we discussed them together and, most of the time, we offered them a second interview so that they could go further and perfect their replies.
At first, some of them probably expected us to try to trap them, to contradict them or provoke them, as journalists often do on TV. But our approach was the exact opposite. Controversy and sound bites, often very witty, were part and parcel of the terrain that they were prepared for. On the contrary, we wanted to allow them to express their thoughts fully, without any opposition. No contradiction! We created a void before them so that their words could have a free rein and so that the audience could observe, "in sequence", the circumvolutions of their thoughts that were laid bare without cuts or effects. On that level, one can refer to the staging of the employers' views, with the desire to show that these views are not only what is expressed but also what is left unsaid, the silences, attitudes, gestures, intonations, accents, hesitations, slips, etc.
Weren't you tempted to bring in workers or union members?
Actually, at first, we did consider the idea of pitching the film between these two extremes: the bosses' view and the union view. But we soon abandoned that idea. It would have led only to false dialectics. You get a boss to talk then you go to find a worker whom you get to say the exact opposite, you cut their two replies together and that gives the illusion of a debate: that's the surest way to prevent people from thinking. The film's critical dimension does not lie in a commentary or a counter-view, it comes uniquely from our cinematic choices: the framing, the fact that our questions are absent, from a few shots of the factories that punctuate the interviews, the editing and this almost fictional perspective that we have given to the film as a whole. Our approach was the opposite of the militant films that were so numerous at the time. In a militant film, you try to convince people, you seek the audience's emotional backing. There was no question of demonizing them to make a point. No question of making them into caricatures. We wanted to make a political film, in the noblest sense: not to tell people what they should think but to make them think…
They weren't filmed in a studio or an imposed setting...
On the contrary, we left the choice of setting to them: at home, in their company, wherever they wanted... At the same time, they attempted to show the most flattering image of themselves and their company… and that ended up becoming obvious on the screen. Relatively speaking, of course, our approach may call to mind that of certain court painters, like Velasquez or Gainsborough, who spent their lives painting the powerful people of their times: princes, kings, popes, dukes… and whose commissioned portraits, staged by the models themselves, reveal the latter's vanity.
So how did the bosses react on seeing the film?
A few weeks before the theatrical release, we invited them to a private screening. They came with their staff or their legal teams, but it all went well. They complained a little about the title that they found a little provocative but it went no further than that and the film was released without any problems. The press greeted it warmly and it had a relatively honourable career on the art-house circuit before being distributed on parallel circuits through works' committees. In the meantime, Mordillat and I had edited the three-hour version commissioned by the INA and that was due to be broadcast on Antenne 2 in November 1978, with a one-hour programme each week (3). And that's when the problems began...
How do you explain the fact that these episodes were censured when the film had been released without any problem?
Once we had finished editing the three episodes, we invited "our" bosses to come and see them, as we had done for La Voix de son Maître a few months earlier. We felt confident because the film's release hadn't been a problem for them. However, after the screening, François Dalle, the chairman of L'Oreal, rushed over to us, enraged, accusing us of having manipulated his words. Then he turned and walked away and we never saw him again. But, the next morning, we learned that the programmes - that were due to be broadcast just a few days later on Antenne 2 - had been "cancelled" without the least explanation...
That's when we found out what had happened: following the screening, François Dalle had called the office of Raymond Barre, the Prime Minister at the time, who had himself called the chairman of Antenne 2, who had immediately obeyed orders, without even asking to view the programmes. His master's voice had been heard...
The film ran for one hour and forty minutes, the three programmes one hour each. Therefore, they contained new material that had not been included in the initial cut…
The editing of the three programmes was necessarily a little different from that of the film. There were a few additional interviews, one or two more bosses, but nothing in the form of the programmes differed from the theatrical version. In fact, the sequences with François Dalle were absolutely identical in the two versions. In both cases, his interview was a very long one, without a single cut, as was the case for all of his colleagues. And so there was no possible manipulation. We had kept our word and done exactly what we had told them we would do. Moreover, each boss had seen his own dailies and had authorized us in writing to use "all or part" of the material. On a legal level, we were beyond reproach. So how can we explain the sudden change in François Dalle's attitude? I think he understood the extent to which the vanity that characterized their words represented a danger. As long as it was a film destined for a small number of screens, they did not fear much. But on TV…
What happened next?
Over the next few days, the press got wind of the matter, the Left made a huge outcry, everyone wanted to see the programmes. By cancelling them, the management of Antenne 2 had just ridden roughshod over the law and replaced the judicial authorities - the only competent ones in the case of a conflict - without having seen a single image of our work, without asking us for the least explanation, without thinking for one second that we could possibly be within our rights. With Gérard, I wrote a book about it (4). And then, as usual, a veil of silence ended up falling over this whole business.
Three years later, in 1981, a change of scene: François Mitterrand was voted into office...
Yes. Mordillat and I were immediately summoned to a meeting at Antenne 2, where the whole hierarchy had just been replaced. In the euphoria of change, we were greeted with open arms by the new head of programming who promised that he would set things straight and broadcast the programmes at last. But the weeks and months went by… Silence! We reminded the station of its promise... Still nothing! We went back, they swore that it would be going ahead soon but nothing changed. We had the impression that things were blocked somewhere, but where? A young socialist Member of Parliament decided to find out more. He investigated in the political world, working his way up to the Ministry for Communications, then the Ministry for Culture... and finally got back to us with the explanation: François Dalle was a childhood friend of Mitterrand's.
But La Voix de son Maître nonetheless ended up being broadcast on TV?
In 1991, thirteen years later, La Sept asked is to make a short version of it, running for 75 minutes, that we called Patrons 78 / 91 (5) in reference to these "missing" years. We therefore had to cut 25 minutes from the film. But we of course kept François Dalle's interview in its entirety!
(1) His Master's Voice, 16 mm, 100 mins, 1977.
(2) National Audio-visual Institute
3) Patrons / Télévision: 3 x 60 mins, 1978 : Confidences sur l’ouvrier, Un Pépin dans la boîte and La Bataille a commencé à Landernau.
(4) Ces patrons éclairés qui craignent la lumière, by Gérard Mordillat and Nicolas Philibert, with photos by Georges Azenstarck and Marcel Lorre, Éditions Albatros, 1979.
(5) Patrons 78 / 91. Broadcast on La Sept in 1991, 75 mins.
