SEE THE SHOW:
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“Do you know Saint-Paul de Vence?” When she asks this question to Jacques Prévert, in 1941, the young actress Ketti Gallian does she imagine to what extent it will link the destiny of the poet and the village of the Côte d’Azur?
The shootings of the films for which Jacques Prévert wrote the dialogues are then relocated to the Victorine in Nice, in a free zone, since the studios in the Paris region are closed. Jacques Prévert seeks a remote place to hide his friends Joseph Kosma, composer, and Alexandre Trauner, decor designer. Both, under the law against the Jews in France, are prohibited from participating in a press, radio or cinema business.
Therefore Jacques Prévert settles in Saint-Paul de Vence. First at the hotel “La Résidence”, today the Café de la Place, meeting place for boules players, then, from 1948, he rented “la Miette”, a small house in the ramparts, near East of the village, facing the morning sun.
He was very present in the life of the village, he loved its different places, its restaurants, its parties. He wandered through the streets in the evening, shouting “Dormez Saint-Paulois! Jacques Prévert is watching over you!”
Some Saint-Paulois still remember the character with great precision today. Among them, Catherine Issert. She now runs an art gallery in the village. Little girl, is was the close friend of Michèle Prévert, the daughter of Jacques and Janine.
His memories, through this “Cult CM”:
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Saint-Paul, creative refuge for cinema and poetry
In Saint-Paul, Jacques Prévert wrote a lot. Scenarios and dialogues from films that have become cult works of French cinema. Children of Paradise, realized by Marcel Carné in 1945. And three years earlier, Evening Visitors. The decor of the castle was recreated in the studios of the Victorine, but several exterior scenes were shot in the countryside around Saint-Paul de Vence and Tourrettes-sur-Loup.
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In Saint-Paul, Prévert also devoted himself to his passion for poetry. In the village, he dedicated the longest poem in his repertoire, “C’est à Saint-Paul de Vence”, where he recounts his meeting with the poet Saint-Paul André Verdet. Here again he wrote the lyrics to the song Dead leaves, to music by his friend Joseph Kosma.
Charles-Armand Klein, author of book “Jacques PREVERT au soleil du Midi”, associates this song full of loving nostalgia with the story of Prévert with a young actress who can be found in the cast of “Evening Visitors”: Claudie Carter.
Claudie Carter was 17, he was 36. She was pretty, Jacques Prévert then had a Humphrey Bogart side. They fell in love. But it didn’t last. She came to Saint-Paul, in the football team there was a young captain … little by little, she withdrew, as the sea recedes on the sand … This is the story of ” Dead leaves”.
It was in 1946, in the film The Doors of the Night, which we hear for the first time Yves Montand hum the words of this song that has become a monument.
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Yves Montand … pillar of the “Prévert gang” which then took up its quarters in Saint-Paul de Vence. Yves Montand, Simone Signoret of course, Pierre Brasseur, and so many others in the world of cinema. Artists too, starting with Pablo Picasso.
The clique is used to meeting at theAuberge de la Colombe d’Or. The boss at the time, Paul Roux, became one of the most loyal friends.
Today his grandson François keeps some of Jacques’s gifts in the establishment to his friend Paul and his family. Essentially collages, using Jacques Prévert’s favorite technique from the late 1940s.
It was regular, Jacques Prévert often left us collages. We have a lot of them. This is the rue de Saint-Paul, which has since changed. I have another one somewhere, with a procession … he’s a little anticlerical, as he used to …
“It is forbidden to forbid !”
Jacques Prévert died in 1977. A whole and committed character, a poet both surrealist and libertarian, what would he tell us today?
Charles-Armand Klein remembers a reply attributed to Prévert, when he met the mayor of the village in alleys invaded, in the 1940s, by unruly sheep:
To the mayor who said “I am going to ban …”, Jacques Prévert replied “It is forbidden to ban!” Today he would tell us 100 times more … Jacques Prévert would make a revolution all by himself!
To see the show PointCult ‘, Jacques Prévert: the power of poetry, see you on France 3 Côte d’Azur on Saturday March 27 at 7:15 p.m. React to the program with #Pointcult.
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