Writer: Marc di
Domenico
Directors: Marc di
Domenico, Charles Aznavour
Coming to the 2020
Alliance French Film Festival
Palace Cinemas 12
March to 8 April
Previewed by Len
Power 1 March 2020
Charles Aznavour sang in five languages, appeared in at
least thirty films, wrote somewhere in the vicinity of a thousand songs, and
sold hundreds of millions of records worldwide.
In 1948, Edith Piaf, of whom Aznavour had been a protégé, gave him a
movie camera. Until 1982, he shot hours
and hours of home movies. Aznavour died
in 2018 at the age of 94 and was given a state funeral in France.
It appears that Aznavour gave the director of this film, Marc
di Domenico, access to his personal film collection, suggesting he do something
with it. With a voice over by Romain
Duris as Charles Aznavour, the completed film charts the period of his career
when he was touring the world for his singing career.
Early in the film, Aznavour states that while we were
looking at him, we were not aware that, through his camera, he was looking at
us. The films have been expertly edited,
giving quite an insight into the man himself and what he observed and absorbed
about life around him.
He is quite candid in the film about his failed marriages to
Megan Rugel and Evelyn Plessis but his third marriage to Ulla Thorsell endured
until his death. As he once told a
newspaper reporter, “For the first marriage I was too young; the second one I
was too stupid; the third time I was right on.”
The sadness of the loss of his illegitimate son Patrick to drugs is
covered in the film as well.
There are several high points of interest in the film. Candid shots of Edith Piaf and the actress,
Anouk Aimee, show their charisma but their real selves appear to be strikingly
different to their usual public personas.
Film from backstage at Aznavour’s concert performances
crackle with electricity and there is a wonderful jam session where he is
playing piano and scat singing. Whenever
his well-known songs appear on the film’s soundtrack, you feel like they have
been with you forever.
Unfortunately the narration as translated into English comes
over as rather pretentious. These are
words about feelings and they don’t convey that in literal translations. I’m sure it would’ve sounded so much better
if you could just understand it in French.
Nevertheless this is an absorbing look at the man and his
life are in the period when he was making these films and there is that
wonderful music on the soundtrack to enjoy.
Len Power’s reviews
are also broadcast on the Artsound FM 92.7 ‘In the Foyer’ program on Mondays
and Wednesdays at 3.30pm.
‘Theatre of Power’, a
regular podcast on Canberra’s performing arts scene with Len Power, can be
heard on Spotify, ITunes and other selected platforms or at https://player.whooshkaa.com/shows/theatre-of-power.
