This completely crazy feature film returns to the cinema in a restored 4K version and you must not miss it!
In April 1991, France discovered a real cinematic UFO: Delicatessen! Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, this work has been released in a restored 4K version thanks to Splendor Films. A real gem, this film is absolutely worth (re)discovering!
Rated 4.1 out of 5, one of the best science fiction films of the 90s was also released in theaters on November 8 and will captivate you!
Delicatessen’s story takes us to the middle of a wasteland where a building stands inhabited by strange characters. All are customers of the butcher on the ground floor, whose stocks increase with the disappearance of certain tenants.
One fine day, Louison, an unemployed clown, arrives. A virtuoso of the musical saw, he pleases Julie, cellist, the butcher’s daughter.
A striking first film!
Delicatessen is the first feature film by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro. However, this is not their first collaboration. Individually, Caro had worked in comics and Jeunet in advertising.
Together, they had already made five short films including The Bunker of the Last Burst (1981). This film caused a sensation because it sparked riots in certain cinemas. The duo also signed Foutaises (1989), which won the César for best short film in 1991.
“I lived above a butcher’s shop and I was woken up every morning by the sound of a chopper. My girlfriend at the time told me: They are killing the tenants up there, and they come down every day of one floor.
It’s going to happen to us, we have to move quickly! This is how the film was born. A closed place, because we were looking for something not too expensive, and a fun idea”confides Jean-Pierre Jeunet in the columns of First.
Splendor Films Dominique Pinon and Karin Viard
Weight support
The director and his sidekick, Marc Caro, received a lot of support from producer Claudie Ossard, who fought to find financing for the film.
“I really thought I would find the money. I tried to reassure them but they no longer believed me! They were desperate. I had meetings and I was always in the action, but they could only “wait. It was horrible. Every time I saw people, I said: It’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay. But it never was.”remembers the producer.
Finally, Claudie Ossard managed to convince UGC, who signed her a contract for five films. “She said Delicatessen would be first. It came down to Claudie’s tenacity. She admitted to me that if we hadn’t called her every two days to ask her how things stood, she might have- to be abandoned”indicates Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
Delicatessen was to be filmed in a building slated for demolition located in the west of the Paris suburbs. Unfortunately, at the last minute, the mayor demanded a “baksheesh of 100,000 francs” to production. The team refused and decided to go to the old Seita warehouses in Pantin, where Luc Besson filmed Nikita.
“We had a whole factory of our own for 5,000 bales per month, it was great, there was no one except the pigeons. The budget was 18 million francs, it was tight. There were sixteen weeks of filming but we weren’t allowed a single hour of overtime. Some Sundays, I saw my Caro doing the patinas himself on the sets.”underlines Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
Splendor Films
Jean-Claude Dreyfus
Movie faces!
Delicatessen is carried by two weighty actors, “cinema faces”: Jean-Claude Dreyfus and Dominique Pinon. According to Jeunet, the casting had to be completely different!
“The main character of Louison was to be played not by Dominique Pinon but by Christophe Salengro, the president of Groland. So we did some tests and then I realized the limits of these visual actors, a little less good in dialogue and composition. That’s where I got the idea for Pinon.”explains the director.
To interpret the Butcher, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro had set their sights on Jean Bouise. Unfortunately, the actor died before filming, in July 1989, at the age of 60. The two authors therefore turned to Jean-Claude Dreyfus.
“One day, they came to my house and put the script of Delicatessen on the table. I said to them: Hey, it’s fun, turn around. And they found themselves facing 250 pigs, because I collect pigs for years.
It made them laugh. They came to offer me another role and suddenly in their eyes, I became the Butcher. I fell madly in love with this story.”declares the actor.
From Jeunet to Fincher
Finally, it should be noted that the film’s cinematographer was none other than Darius Khondji, a great artist who has collaborated with David Fincher (Seven), Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris) and Bong Joon-ho (Okja).
According to the cinematographer, both Jeunet and Caro always had a view of the whole thing. However, “Caro supervised everything, particularly the visuals: the color, the lighting, the atmosphere, the costumes, the sets…”
“Jean-Pierre was really about the acting direction and the framing. But sometimes Caro and I had a tendency to perhaps go too far in the stylization, and Jean-Pierre would bring us back towards more realism or comedy.
Since they had storyboarded everything, it was very precise. It’s rare that I work on a film that is so well thought out, worked out in advance. It’s just them, David Fincher and Bong Joon-ho.”
Ultimately, Delicatessen was very well received by critics and audiences. It notably attracted 1.5 million spectators to the cinema. He also won 4 Césars in 1992: Best First Work, Best Set Design, Best Editing and Best Original Screenplay.