On January 19, a small cinephilic earthquake took place, when the producer and distributor Charles Gillibert, who had just acquired the mythical company Les Films du losange (Barbet Schroeder, Eric Rohmer, etc.), announced the restoration and concession of the rights to work of Jean Eustache. To better measure the shock, it should be remembered that, since the suicide in 1981 of the filmmaker, the promotion and the preservation of his work were made complicated by Boris Eustache, his son, who holds the rights. Access to posterity of this work among the most singular was slowed down, at the same time as the desire to know it, maintained by a core of cinephiles, was increased tenfold, according to this old pendulum movement that all lovers know.
Of course, the blackout was not total. There were a few retrospectives of the work, at the Center Pompidou (2006) or at La Cinémathèque française (2017). But, to take the example of The mother and the whore, there is one passage per decade on television, a deteriorated copy circulating on the Internet and a Japanese DVD edition. It’s not much for a film of this size.
What will have decided the beneficiary of this work, so reluctant to part with it, to finally do business with the producer Charles Gillibert? With exemplary discretion on the financial question, the latter evokes several reasons: “The anniversary of the death of Jean Eustache, who was able to play psychologically, the old connection of Films du losange with this work that the company co-produced and whose mandates it still manages, and no doubt also the fact that we Not many of us were able to offer restoration work on the entire work. » Régine Vial, historical figure of Films du losange, adds: “The restoration was undoubtedly a decisive element, and we are carrying it out in collaboration with Boris Eustache. »
Sharpness and grain
The good news of this rehabilitation has already mobilized moviegoers around the world, from the United States to Japan. The Mom and the Whore will travel everywhere, starting with the Cannes Film Festival, which shows the film on Tuesday May 17, before it is released in France in June, on a hundred copies.
Davide Pozzi, Director of L’Image Regained: “Removing a scratch is a simple thing, but restoring colors and luminosity to color grading is another matter, which has to do with the cultural history of perception”
The actual restoration work was carried out by a team of expert blades. Entrusted to L’Image regainée, a Bolognese company which is an authority on the subject and which has just bought the Eclair laboratory, it takes place in its Parisian branch, in the shadow of the imposing Pathé Wepler, place de Clichy. Its director, Davide Pozzi, a former Erasmus student, remembers having discovered The Mom and the Whore in Paris, at the Forum des images, on a small screen. He retains the memory of a film that breathes ” the truth “.
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