When asked about his plans, Virgile Loyer, passionate about the novel by René Daumal, has long replied that he wanted to adapt Mount Analogue on the big screen. Those who know the fate of the book by the author from Reims (1908-1944) easily understand: “It was a way of discarding myself, I had nothing planned”, recognizes the 46-year-old filmmaker and ceramist. Because the operation is perilous and has seen many directors break their teeth. In this unfinished novel, published in 1952, isn’t the yacht that transports the characters called The impossible ?
The first disappointments date back to the end of the 1960s. The book was then prized by psychedelic youth, who saw it as an invitation to the most extreme experiences. In 1969, the British producer Peter Fraser, holder of the rights, approached the director François Truffaut. Problem: the author of Four hundred strokes hate the mountain. She reminds him of the Alpine club where his mother and stepfather met.
“Truffaut told Fraser to contact me, because for him montagne and Moullet are synonymous, recalls Luc Moullet, an 83-year-old director. We discussed the project, titled My Own Strangers. Fraser wanted Glenn Ford, me Charlton Heston. I offered him a sixteen-week shoot on the Ruwenzori massif, in Central Africa. “ With his screenplay, the filmmaker think you have “Solved the main problem” : how to represent this mysterious mountain, whose base is accessible, and the summit inaccessible? “During the ascent, the hero successively loses each of the five senses. Then white, mist, nothing. And descent, during which he recovers his senses. The project will fail for the sake of money. “
At the same time, the filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky also clashes with the British producer. His second feature film, El Topo (1970), has just triumphed at the box office. The Chilean intends to engage with an adaptation of the Mount Analogue. It is an old moon, which he has caressed since he discovered René Daumal during a vacation on the Côte d’Azur, while rummaging in the library of a bishop. Alas, Peter Fraser refuses to cede the rights: “So I mixed up Mount Analogue to my own obsessions, like tarot. It has become The Sacred Mountain (1973) “, he confides in the reissue of the novel by Gallimard, to be published on October 14, in a beautiful book style.
A film far removed from the book
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