Director's Statement
Writing & Conception
Mon nom est MARIANNE is a film which keeps evolving.
A sentimental romance torn apart by war segues into tense trust in wartime, changes again into heartbreaking betrayal before delivering its final shocking blow as an all-out revenge tale. In the end, Marianne is not where she thought she’d be and we are not where we thought we’d be.
We have been through something vast and profound.
Films in which one ‘experiences’ more than ‘watches’ - where you feel like you’ve been through something - are films I like to see and prefer to make.
For me, the most exciting part of creating Mon nom est MARIANNE was building her 1943 story around the perspective of memory. This permitted a fractured representation of time (as in memory) which leads us to question the veracity of Marianne’s tale: Are her recollections reliable? Do they take place in order? How can she recall moments for which she wasn’t present?
Fragmenting her story without telling the audience we are, leaves us with a tone of romantic, hypnotic melancholia - reflection over plot.
Marianne is present in all but four of the 1943 scenes, those scenes told from the perspective of her increasingly surreal
re-imagining - fantasy inside memory.
“The Hotel” scene, for example, played out between Josette and Captain Dietrich, is the culmination of these scenes, playing like a dream as she imagines how their rendezvous may (or may not) have played out.
The more we consider Marianne’s 1943 story, the less reliable it becomes. Is all of it - played over and over in her mind as she smokes at the window of her 1989 flat - just a twisted justification for horrific actions to come ..?
Moving through time to the late 80’s, we see that Marianne survived but that life hasn't turned out the way she would’ve liked. Choosing not to show her suffering, not to show how she ended up here, is part of the telling which may serve to establish this later era as the actual ‘here and now’ of our story.
The important thing was to not reveal my hand. Never tell the audience what I'm doing. No didactic flashback or obvious signifiers for time transitions - to do so would be to undermine the hypnotic tone of the film, replacing the film’s mysterious quality with ‘flat’ knowledge. Emotion versus intellect. Cinema, like music, is emotion.
And so the new drudgery of Marianne's existence - renting a room in her grandson’s crumbling HLM flat, her hostile relationship with him and his obnoxious girlfriend - become other motivations for revenge. Is she striking out against Marcel, or against herself?
Marcel’s last words to her - ‘Forgive yourself’ - resonate because Marianne lives in a world without mercy. War taught her that. Mon nom est MARIANNE - as cautionary tale - shows us what it is to live in a world without forgiveness.
Playing with time, the echoes of things are important and serve to capture how, over the decades, we humans have - and have not - changed. Parallels run all the way through the film, amongst which:
The delicate kiss of Marianne/Pascal versus the veracious snogging of Bernard/Camille; lines of dialogue are repeated from one era to the next - same words, different meaning; the dreams and hopes of one generation are precisely the same as the dreams and hopes of another; Marianne’s clandestine flyers and passports mirror Marcel’s stolen documents and pictures; songs from 40’s radio echo songs from an 80’s cassette; even the Scots - pilots to be rescued in the 40’s, a football team to be defeated in the 80’s; Marianne pulls the trigger at the climax of both parts with vastly different results; the film begins and ends with reflections and windows. The present always echoes the past.
Physical places tell stories too. Both worlds (1943 and 1989) take place in transitional spaces: stairwells, rivers, windows, doorways, reflections - because Marianne herself is between two worlds: unable to reconcile the past with the present, an idealistic and innocent victim of war, now a cold-hearted perpetrator of it.
filming
In capturing 1943, I gave everyone this direction:
“We are making a film from the 40’s, not a film about the 40’s.”
Tarkovsky’s ANDREI RUBLEV always felt to me like a film plucked from the 1400s, not a film set then. I wanted Marianne’s world to feel as real, textured and tangible as that.
So I chose to embrace the everyday drudgery of resistance - printing leaflets, writing letters, forging papers - resistance isn’t all running about with guns and blowing up trains (though there’s a bit of that too).
Much attention was placed on the way Marianne’s weeks in the basement felt for her - and a large extent of capturing that was letting our camera linger on her - holding on Marianne so the audience experiences our drama through character, instead of being told by plot.
The complimentary arts of cinematography (Laszlo Baranyai) and production design (Timothy Yalda) draw us into the environment by focusing on details, so that amongst big themes of trust and betrayal reside very human details: dirt 'neath the nails, dust and cobwebs and grime, torn clothes and broken, grubby skin, fatigue, headaches under bad light. This time spent with Marianne make her story immediate and relatable.
No perfect hair, no spotless costume - in Mon nom est MARIANNE we are with her in that basement - with her inside her memory ...
Not being a French speaker turned out not to be the hurdle one might think. Translators befriended from French festivals (where several of my shorts and my previous feature, Impasse, had screened) took on script translation while our set boasted several multi- lingual cast/crew members able to translate when required. For directing actors (half our cast didn’t speak English) I went back to basics - watch the actors and answer one question: Do I believe them? - because truth is in the eyes.
The aching beauty of the 1943 sequences is no accident, leading us to wonder if the worst years her country endured was actually the best time of Marianne’s life (she is in love, fighting for what she believes in, convinced of an idyllic and free future). Or is this how she romanticises her past to justify her actions in the present? It’s easy for us to believe that, when we look at how our filmmaking treats the following time period —
1989.
Now we are watching a different film. Gone is the reflective, melancholic style, replaced with stark social realism. Gone is the beauty of the past - Marianne’s present is cold and grey. Gone are our poetic dissolves (themselves a reflective, time-bending device) replaced now with straight, raw cuts.
Even the most suspenseful moments of the film - the final confrontation between protagonist and antagonist (conventionally the stuff of claustrophobic spaces, night and shadow-play) is depicted plainly, in bright sunlight, under blue skies. Breaking that ‘suspense’ convention invites us to consider that, for Marianne, wartime is everyday. Which makes her final actions all the more confrontational simply because she’s doing nothing in secret.
The history of cinema is a history of observing the human face. Watch Passolini’s faces - Fellini’s faces - Bresson’s faces - entire worlds are etched over them. The choice to hold on Lara Lihiya and Brigitte Fossey - in their respective Mariannes - to have the audience sit with Marianne for extended moments has the effect of inviting the audience into their thoughts. In the film’s most tense moments, I want to draw you in - not to plot but to character - to have you become internal with Marianne and experience what she’s experiencing. The effect can be stunning as time effectively slows down in moments when traditionally an edit would ramp up. Instead of racing to a climax, I bring you in cautiously, deliberately, as if her - increasingly quiet and still and careful not to make a mistake.
Now Marianne is the hunter.
Editing, Sound Design & Colour Grading
Treating 1943 as memory, I embraced dissolves along with the floating camera to capture a soft, elegant, romantic feel.
1943 is, in no small part, a tragic love story which needed a gentle touch conveying both longing and reflection.
For 1989, as revenge tale, I required a harsher, more abrupt effect. One compliments the other because without the floating camera, dissolves and gentle edit of ’43, we won’t feel the harshness of ’89. Both serve to create a distinct feeling of two vastly different eras in the same life.
The film opens with a prologue.
More than simply giving us setting and character, this prologue tells us how to watch MARIANNE. This 4-minute passage gives us elements of tone and pacing, establishes an unconventional use of time (present, past and another mysterious time/place), and pits our lover’s first kiss against images of resistance establishing love in wartime. By the end of the prologue we understand we are not watching a conventional film - there is something else at work here - a different kind of narrative design and a purely cinematic treatment of time.
It’s established early that the country house is visited by a Nazi Captain, but when Dietrich arrives I choose not to cut to him and this choice comes back to character - to memory and perspective. What does Marianne recall and how does she recall it?
She would not have seen Dietrich until she is driven away in her final moments at the house, and even then, only from a distance. Instead, her memory of Dietrich - his very threat - is carried only in the sound of his voice, his tone, in straining to hear his words through the flimsy basement door, words punctuated by floorboard creaks and boot steps from above as he circles, like a vulture. This is what haunts her decades later.
These sequences are among the most powerful in the film. Much time was spent in sound design finding just the right pitch and balance - voices, footsteps, floorboard creaks both near (Marianne and Melville in the basement) and far (Dietrich and Anatole above). For these scenes, the shots and editing are played very simply and shots on faces are held - it’s sound design and performance (Marianne’s face against Dietrich’s voice) that carry the excruciating tension. There is tremendous power in watching someone listen, as we are listening. By not cutting to Dietrich - by staying with Marianne and listening as she listens - we are completely inside her perspective.
I wanted the basement to have a life of its own. In the grade, cinematographer Laszlo Baranyai suggested we not let light fall off to black. Rather, in the basement we build a dark green into the blacks - the same dark green as the Nazi Wehrmacht uniforms. It’s a subtle thing, but in this way the Nazi presence is always in the basement with Marianne.
The basement also needed its own sound. Sound Designer
J. Peter Robinson offered the haunting resonance of a grand piano for the basement's room tone, all keys open, the piano itself seeming to breathe. The sound is tremendously effective; beneath the dialogue and effects of the basement lives an indefinable organic ambience giving the environment the unsettling feeling of being strangely alive.
Every convention established through our first 90 minutes is spectacularly shattered from the first 1989 cut. Time does that. Years pass ‘in the blink of an eye’ and we find ourselves in a new place - disorientated and having to find our way. By not giving the audience a clumsy time and place title card, I’m positioning you in that same disorientation, inviting you to find your way.
There are bold choices in the cut. Holding on Bernard and Camille’s 30 second ‘infinity’ kiss demands that these obnoxious kids are as in our faces as they are in Marianne’s.
But more than that, this is where simple observation shifts to expand audience experience: at first we are watching a kiss (the plot-point: they kiss). But then it/they become funny and awkward and as we hold longer we become uncomfortable and pray for this to stop, and as it goes on still, it’s all disgusting and stupid - just like them. The point of the shot shifts then from ‘they kiss’ (observation) to our evolving emotional reaction to them (experience). Bernard and Camille are the youth of our story and (for better or worse) the future of the country. Their’s is the future Marianne’s generation fought for.
When, later, Marianne complains to Bernard: “I didn’t realise I was fighting for this!” we feel the same exasperation she does.
That kiss then means a whole lot more than: ‘they kiss.’
I maintain that all of this is something only Independent Film can do - the accepted conventions of studio pictures, classic narratives and even the most adventurous television, simply cannot tolerate such cinematic exploration and persistence of vision.
When finally, decades later, Marianne catches up with Marcel, she first sees him from a distance. Again, putting us strictly in her point of view, we see Marcel from the same distance - from afar in the outdoor café and then across the expanse of the hotel dining room. No close up of him, though the desire for one builds in the audience. I wanted to get a sense of seeing him but not really seeing him and to keep that up for the duration of these scenes.
This is, in fact, the visual motif of Melville/Marcel all the way through the film (past and present) until the final confrontation and explains why, when Melville first enters the basement, we are straining to see his face - why, in so many of his shots, he is half in darkness - why, in his most tense moments, his face is kept from us (either by composition, framing or lighting).
At times, in total silhouette, he becomes a mysterious form with no face at all. He has something to hide - he is the keeper of secrets.
Now, in 1989, Marianne meets him again. I keep him away from us. She strains to see him clearly just as she strained to hear Dietrich clearly. And we, like her, find ourselves straining to get a good look at him. The effect is two-fold: it places us firmly in her POV but also draws us deeper into the film - we lean forward, trying to see him, wondering: “Is that really him?”
And, as eyes betray thoughts, by keeping him always out of reach, we’re never really sure what he’s thinking.
Marianne Today
It’s appalling to me that the themes and events of Mon nom est MARIANNE are as relevant today as they were in the darkest hours of WW2. Marianne’s struggles to evade Nazi capture echo the struggles of today’s immigrants hiding to avoid ICE across the US, Palestinians and Ukrainians seeking freedom, Iranians and Chinese fighting to avoid persecution, the rise of the Right across Europe - the parallels are chilling while the lessons of the mid-20th century are simply ignored.
There is much to be said about the relevance of MARIANNE in today’s world. The hypocrisies and doubt and confusion which plague us today are echoed all through the film: Anatole not knowing how to live under the constant threat of home invasion; Gérard reminding Marianne that the past was “a time of chaos and confusion”; Marcel explaining that his actions were somehow justified because “I was following orders” or “I was a child.” Using children in warfare isn’t only immoral, it’s a war crime - but the truth is both sides did it, exposing a hypocrisy of war which Marianne, as a kind of ‘forever-resistant,’ is now firmly part of.
Melville echoes some of cinema’s most affecting war-time children: Ivan (IVAN’S CHILDHOOD) and Florya (COME AND SEE), Oldrich (LONG LIVE THE REPUBLIC) and Brigitte Fossey’s own Paulette (FORBIDDEN GAMES) - children whose childhood is cut short by war.
In the end, we are responsible for our own actions and wars never end, they are passed down to the next generation awaiting yet another violent rebirth, just as Marianne embroils her own grandson in her vengeance.
Mon nom est MARIANNE poses the question as relevant today as in the middle of last century: Can this cycle of persecution, prejudice and violence ever end?
Marianne, left at her window, smoking, looking out to a bleak nothingness, obsessed with the past and unable to forgive, lost in reflection, serves as a haunting final image in our cautionary tale ... what is she thinking? ... Pascal’s final VO leads us back there ... to 1943 ... playing over and over in her mind ... the film ultimately emerging as a cycle on constant repeat ...