Australian Jewish News, Australia
Dec 23 2006
The triumph of the little man
French director Francis Veber.
jan epstein
IN the mould of the great German-Jewish director Ernst Lubitsch,
Francis Veber is France’s king of comedy. His skilfully-written farces
have conquered the world – The Tall Blond Man With One Black Shoe
(1972), La Cage Aux Folles (1978), Les Comperes (1983), Les Fugitifs
(1986), The Dinner Game (1998) and The Closet (2001).
So loved are these comedies, in fact, that Veber, who is arguably
the most French of all French film-makers, has for nearly two decades
been adopted holus-bolus by Hollywood.
Veber’s stage play, The Bloody Nuisance (L’ Emmerdeur), was adapted to
the screen by Edouard Molinaro in 1973, and remade as Buddy Buddy by
the great Billy Wilder in 1981. Veber himself directed the American
remake of Les Fugitives (retitled Three Fugitives, it starred Nick
Nolte), while Mike Nichols remade La Cage Aux Folles as The Bird Cage,
starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane, in 1996.
But the crowning accolade of Veber’s international career was the
invitation by the Jewish-American movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg to
live and make movies in Hollywood. Veber first met Katzenberg at Cannes
in 1985. "Jeffrey said to me, ‘We love your movies. Why don’t you come
and join us in America?,’" Veber explains by phone from Los Angeles.
"I had just made three successful films in France, so I said,
‘What for?’. But I was at a turning point in my life. I was ready
for something new. So 18 years ago I came to Los Angeles."
Although he feels at home in America, where he lives with Francoise,
his wife of 42 years, Veber’s films are still distinctly French. His
constant theme is the "little man" being used as a fall guy by the
rich and the powerful. His latest film, The Valet, is no exception.
More in the style of a classic French farce than many of his other
films, The Valet stars Moroccan-born comedian Gad Elmaleh, as Francois
Pignon, a car valet at a posh Paris hotel who becomes entangled in
the infidelities of millionaire businessman Pierre Levasseur (Daniel
Auteuil). Pierre is snapped by chance with a beautiful supermodel
(Alice Taglioni).
"I think what makes this type of farce so appealing to Americans is
that the French admit infidelity more," says Veber. "I know a lot
of Americans cheat on their wives. The difference is that this is not
laughable in Anglo-Saxon countries. I don’t know why this is the case.
"In The Valet, he [Pierre] is really suffering. He’s a tragic
character. This is not the way Americans treat such a subject. But
all the same, he is really suffering."
Despite these cultural differences, Veber is never asked to compromise
or tailor his themes to suit international audiences.
"When you are using your own cuisine, the style of your country,
your roots, you have a better chance of succeeding internationally.
"I remember a film, Divorce Italian Style, which starred Marcello
Mastroianni, about a man who wanted to divorce his wife, but because of
the Catholic religion, he couldn’t. For him, the only way to be rid of
his wife was to kill her. "That’s very Italian. Here in America you
can divorce her in half-an-hour. Nevertheless, it was a big hit here
[in the US], because like spaghetti and pizza, it’s so very Italian."
In most of Veber’s farces, the Chaplinesque fall guy has been given
the almost generic name, Francois Pignon. Pierre Richard played him
brilliantly in Les Compères, as did Daniel Auteuil in The Closet.
In The Valet, he is played by Elmaleh, a stand-up comedian who Veber
holds in very high regard. He is also Jewish, and for Veber, this is
the essence of what makes him funny.
"In his stand-up routine, Gad is always the victim – and for this
reason, he’s so obviously Jewish. But actually he’s a winner.
"Gad is also a Buster Keaton-type. His face is very deadpan, and his
eyes, they’re very seductive, but they are also very weird."
Another actor, Richard Berry, who plays Daniel Auteuil’s lawyer in
the film, is also Jewish, with both actors being strictly Orthodox.
But asked about the morality and philosophy that underpins his own
plays and films, Veber admits that behind the creation of Pignon and
his other characters lies his half-Jewish, half-Armenian background.
"I have two strong influences in my life – the Jewish one from my
father, and the Armenian one from my mother. These make my films a
little different in character. For instance, there are never erotic
scenes in my films. I’m embarrassed when I see people naked or having
sex in bed. And I prefer the little people to the powerful.
"I have two woes of lamentation in my blood. One is the Jewish
genocide, and the other is the Armenian genocide [committed by Ottoman
Turkey in 1915].
"I remember my father hiding in our Paris apartment for four years
during the war, in which time he could not leave the apartment because
the Germans were in the streets," Veber recalls.
"If he had been picked up, my mother, who was not Jewish, could have
been sent to a concentration camp. So he was hiding … His life was
ruined by this invasion, this nightmare. It’s impossible not to be
moved by that."
Despite his childhood memories of World War II, Veber, who was born in
1937, feels he never consciously weaves these themes into his scripts.
"It’s something that appears without your willing it. It’s not
deliberate to have something deeper in the comedy. It is simply the
case – it is there. When I see a Chaplin movie like City Lights,
for example, I’m on the verge of crying between laughs. Just by the
way he treats his character and the world.
"While it is satisfactory to make a comic facsimile of life, it is
far more satisfactory to know that people will think of it as being
about what is unfair in the world.
"The morality in The Valet is a little more obvious because you have
this millionaire in opposition to the little man, who in a normal
situation the powerful man would never have looked at. And in the end,
this millionaire is the loser."
pgID=2308
–Boundary_(ID_K7wjVflNvw5qAsWTWsFe1w)- –
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
