'He kept this spirit of a child'

Chomet was determined to reveal 'the human guy … the man who became Marcel Pagnol, rather than the figure of legend'

Marcel Pagnol, an iconic cultural figure in France through literature, theatre and films, maintained “the spirt of a child” throughout his life, driven by an inquisitive passion, curiosity and a tendency to be a control freak. He shares some of these traits with animation auteur Sylvain Chomet (Belleville Rendez-Vous, The Illusionist) who is also taking a child-like glee in his latest project A Magnificent Life - an animated version of the life of Marseille’s favourite son which has just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

Sitting in the cool shade of a white tent atop the Palais des Festivals with views over the sparkling bay Chomet looks in his element, basking in positive critical feedback such as “Chomet celebrates French literary giant Marcel Pagnol in enchanting style” (Time Out) to “A gorgeous, decidedly dewy-eyed hagiography” (trade outlet Screen).

Sylvain Chomet: 'Pagnol had the brain of an engineer much more than the brain of an artist' Photo: Richard Mowe

Chomet’s filmmaking style has mainly eschewed dialogue in favour of visuals, whereas with Pagnol he could hardly escape the emphasis on words and script. “I had done one live action film Attila Marcel [the titular main character hasn’t spoken a word since the death of his parents when he was two years old] but everyone around him was talking a lot. So in some ways I had become used to dialogue. The preoccupation in Pagnol was the technique of how to bring in the animation.

“We did the human actors talking on a white screen (or a green screen or a black screen) and the animators would use the acting of the characters to make the animation. And they were all n costume. So we spent around a month with the actors in a studio workshop in Belgium – even though we would not necessarily use all of their voices.

“It was just for the action … to give it a soul and I had to tell them to act naturally so when the actors talk in the film it feels natural – a bit like in a silent movie. And the characters are listening to each other. That was the main difference and then we did all the voices in post-synchronisation, which was also quite new for me.”

Chomet was determined to reveal “the human guy … the man who became Marcel Pagnol, rather than the figure of legend. He was someone who made mistakes … his wife did not want to move from Marseille to Paris which she hated because it was always raining and cold. They could not even find somewhere to stay because of the post-war scarcity of accommodation. I liked all his doubts and contradictions. He was not sure about doing his plays in the Marseille dialect. He was very anxious when his works were premiered: he would be found in the theatre hiding in the attic because he was so scared.”

Chomet on Pagnol: 'I was intrigued by all the doubts he had'

With American director Richard Linklater looking at the influence of the New Wave in his Out of Competition entry Nouvelle Vague, Chomet points out that it was actually Pagnol who influenced the“new” generation of filmmakers including Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol and Agnès Varda.

“They didn’t invent anything,” says Chomet, “it was Pagnol who was ground-breaking. When he made his first film Fanny there was a scene of Fanny walking in Marseille with a crowd around her. Pagnol was hiding in a truck with a camera shooting her in the street. Nobody knew he was there so it was a bit of cinéma verité before its time. He also influenced the Italian Neo-realists. He also did a lot of things to support cinema as an industry and he was responsible for the French imposing tariffs on the box office takings of American films shown in France which still exists today and is the reason why French cinema is alive and thriving. President Trump is probably wondering what the hell Marcel Pagnol was doing having these tariffs imposed in 1945!”

Chomet reveals that Pagnol had an enduring fascination with new technology. “Originally he wanted to be an engineer – he had the brain of an engineer much more than the brain of an artist. But he also had this connection with poetry because he was writing poems for his mother before she died. He wanted to continue with that but also kept his sense of being an engineer and an entrepreneur. He first went into theatre and then cinema came along and he started his own studio. He also kept this spirit of a child and was passionate about things. A new thing would come along and that would be his new toy.

Sylvain Chomet on Marcel Pagnol, above: 'I was fascinated by how he became this "brand"' Photo: UniFrance

“He met Robert Kane [an American film producer] and went to his Paramount studio in Paris where he explored everywhere – the edit room, the laboratory, and he opened up the cameras, looked at them, and saw how they worked. So when he opened his own studio he knew exactly every part of the process and how it worked. He was completely immersed in it from production to the final mix. The only thing that he did not do was to become a cinema owner. He tried to do that in Marseille during the Second World War but it did not work out, partly because he wanted to have a whole chain of cinemas rather than just one. He always wanted to be in control.”

Originally the project started with the idea of a documentary, a form Chomet had never attempted previously. When Pagnol’s grandson Nicolas, who looks after the Pagnol estate, contacted Chomet he became “excited and then I thought if he is the grandson it might be awful. But we met, we got along brilliantly and are now firm friends. I knew that with this guy I would be prepared to go all the way. It could been a stressful venture because Pagnol is such major figure in French culture.”

Chomet knew him his schooldays and as an Academician by which time the legend had been formed. “I was fascinated by how he became this ‘brand.’ I was intrigued by all the doubts he had and the fact that when he came Paris he worked as an English teacher which I did not know. So the first thing I actually wrote was the documentary and then we decided to put in some animation but it was obvious that these were two completely different forms. I wanted to bring in more of the poetry but the work I had done was extensive and was able to be use to inform the animation.”

Sylvain Chomet on Pagnol: 'Wen he opened his own studio he knew exactly every part of the process and how it worked'

There are two different version of the film available. Chomet wrote the script in French and then translated it into English. “We had the English version before we had the French one. I really enjoyed doing it. When we met Sony Classics four years ago we said, 'OK this will be an English-speaking movie and we will have a French version'.

“It was really interesting about the accents – we decided we would not attempt to do it in American accents but that we would opt for an English accent. So it was Oxford pronunciation for everyone and Cockney for the Parisians. We were struggling for the Marseille accent and someone said, 'Why not just do it in English?' … but it sounded Italian. It was weird and I knew that would not work out.

“I thought we should go with an accent with a lot of singing in the inflections and I thought about a Scottish accent, which everyone knows, and the same with the Irish accent. In the end we went with the Welsh accent, which works really well. A lot of the voice cast were Welsh and they were all excellent. We did the post-synchronisation in the UK where the actors are really sharp.”

For his next project Chomet intends to turn full circle and return to the atmosphere of his Oscar-nominated hit Belleville Rendez-vous with story-boarding due to begin next month. “It’s a script I wrote at the same time as The Triplets and so is in similar spirit but with different characters – and there will be no dog but instead a cat,” he adds.

A Magnificent Life will be distributed in the UK and Ireland by Picturehouse and internationally by Sony Pictures Classics. Richard Mowe interviewed Sylvain Chomet at the 78th edition of the Cannes Film Festival.

Photo call in Cannes for the team from Sylvain Chomet’s The Magnificent Life, from left: French rapper SCH who sings the theme song; with voice cast of Géradline Pailhas and Laurent Lafitte flanking the director Photo: Courtesy of Cannes Film Festival