Round Up
#11
Spring 1978
A title first:
"THE RAILWAY OF DEATH", Imagine cinematographically speaking, to get
out of this unfortunate situation, and decide on its technical accomodations? It's very simple:
find a siding cut by a bridge spanning a large waterway: get the rental of a
locomotive, in good condition, another wagon partly deprived of its
compartmentalization to allow conventionally for the camera not to operate in
the shadows: a platform wagon, then another wagon held in reserve. I found it all near
Aigues-Mortes. The scenes inside the wagon took place on a back and forth road of three
kilometers. The first difficult scene was to break the horse's kicks at the
wall facing the train. These kicks being quite soft, which I had planned, and,
anxious to use close-ups, I rented horses legs. These I had fixed onto a wheelbarrow, that
the wheel was stopped by a bumper arranged by a machinist.
On a signal, the wheelbarrow
was pushed hard, and the necessary part of the legs struck the partition (close
shots cut to those of the horse in action).
The train in
motion, I mount my horse. The bridge will be reached. It's a gateway without a
guardrail. When the convoy is engaged, I will have only fifteen seconds to dive
and escape, according to the needs of the scenario. The horse, with his eyes bandaged - is of
little use for much - and terrorized by the inversion of a violent blow of the
bridle, he tilts and we fall twelve meters in a waterway twenty five meters wide
... without too much trouble: it was time.
But, as we are
still turning with a single apparatus, we must return to the water to resume
the exit of the water.
These
eccentricities aside, I happily did something else in these films, for which I
imagined plausible actions, arriving at a moralizing end. Curiously, it was sometimes necessary to
make several endings, according to the desire of the buyers of certain
countries. No disappointing end, no unnecessary violence, on the contrary,
gender-based liquidation; ends that we performed one after the other, with the
greatest hilari, ty.
Five Japanese
students became my Indians, delighted with this paid vacation. Feathers wigs, we
could take first plans without fear of ridicule. An old Gitane mad me into a
Sioux Sorcerer with an impressive realism.
When I was
shooting the Guardians in the Camargue, brothers of the Cowboys were very
comfortable wearing a Stetson and leather breeches. In other places, the director gathered me
men having done their service in the cavalry, in order to avoid the incongruity
of the scenes executed by so-called "horsemen", which attracted by a
stamp superior to that of the "pedestrians", deceived in good faith
of those who had committed them.
It is for all
the above reasons that the Americans were interested until 1914, in the first
Westerns made in France, whose locations, costumes and characters had seduced
them. Here is what a newspaper in Chicago says, under the pen of Mr. Georges
KLEIN:
"The film
“THE RED MAN’S HONOR” produced by KLEIN-ECLIPSE films, presents a universal
interest, because it marks an era in the history of cinema. This is the first
time that an Indian subject, perfect in detail, has been made in Europe, and
submitted to the American public. We cannot find any fault in “RED MAN'S HONOR”. The
main reason is that Monsieu Joe Hamman lived on the Western Plains and gives an
endearing realism to the behavior of the Red Men, their habits and their
costumes, which are authentic pieces.
I then resumed
the series "NICK CARTER", and I wrote many screenplays such as
"THE INFERNAL RIDING". Of course there is a "nail". On a battlefield in
Virginia, a gunner gathers four dumb horses and hitches them to a field gun of
which the drivers and the servants were killed. He goes at a gallop, puts in a
battery and draws ... it’s nothing like you can see. And all this in the middle
of explosions and bursts of machine guns.
The arrival of
the shells was done with the help of big bombs buried with a long wires
conected to an electric board and a control lever. The track of the machine-gun bullets was
reconstructed by the explosion of a series of small detonators, also branched
on a wire, and thus at the rate desired by the same means. Needing dead horses,
I bought them from a hedgehog, who will get them back ... after the victory.
The scene was shot on the Plateau de Fontvielle, near Arles. ÉCLAIR was big and
preferred big trips.
The firm had
an annex in the United States. The French studios were installed in Epinay, in
a large yard, the area of the famous naturalist LACEPEDE. We may not be able to
turn things around. A meadow, a forest, a small river (excellent decoration for
gold seekers), a dense forest (with jungle all around), avoiding expensive
trips abroad for low budget movies.
A charming
hunting pavilion of Louis XIII saw evolve on its doorstep, all the historical
characters of the repertoire.
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