It is a solitary and mysterious star, an illuminated film unlike anything known, the only one ever made by Alain Cuny (1908-1994), three years before his death. Atypical, like the imprint left by the actor on stages and screens: massive silhouette, cavernous voice and the look of a necromancer. Alain Cuny was also one of the most fervent interpreters of Paul Claudel, so much so that, when going behind the camera, it is still a text by the playwright that he adapts, after having frequented and defended him all his life. on the planks.
The Annunciation made to Mary is a medieval mystery made film, which, thirty years after its release, returns to the obscurity of theaters in a restored copy, also released on DVD and Blu-ray (Potemkine editions). Knowing that it dates from 1991 offers another reason for amazement, so much everything about it seems antiquated, both deeply archaic and wildly futuristic, so far away, so close.
The drama, well known to Claudelians, is of a limpid outline, and yet steeped in thwarted forces and secret contaminations. In the XVe century, in a “Conventional Middle Ages”, Violaine with blue eyes, daughter of the Champagne farmer Anne Vercors, surprises in the morning their host, Pierre de Craon, about to leave, builder of churches and leper since the day he dared to lay his hand on her. He leaves her out of spite, she gives him a kiss. Shortly after, the father, getting ready to leave for Jerusalem, hastens the marriage of Violaine with Jacques Hury, the best of his peasants. But the rumor of the exchanged kiss spreads: Violaine, ladre in turn, is rejected by Jacques, who instead marries his youngest, Mara. Seven years later, on Christmas Eve, Mara brings to her sick sister, living away in rags, her infant who died suddenly. Violaine brings little Aubaine back to life, taking on the color of her eyes.
story of a miracle
The Annunciation made to Mary is therefore the story of a miracle, but also of a thwarted love (a Claudelian motif par excellence) which, not finding fulfillment in earthly forms, must take spiritual paths. From this subject with marvelous accents, Alain Cuny retains the clean line, the medieval obscurity, the primitive breath. The 82-year-old novice filmmaker brings together a cast of non-professional actors, among whom he reserves the role of the father.
Even more daring option: the voices will be entirely post-synchronized, so that the word merges with the thought. From the theatre, the film evacuates the convention to keep only the ritual part, the “liturgy”: the bodies borrowing the postures of icons, the voices drawing from a deep invocative register. The drama settles in the very flesh of the profane world: this Axon nature theater which serves as its setting, or the four whitewashed walls of a simple farmhouse.
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