Introduction
"Au pays des visages" isn't Frédéric Rossif's first documentary about
an influential artist, but it certainly is one of the first for which Vangelis
provided the score. Even though Vangelis is not credited for his music in the
film, it is unmistakably his. The question remains if the music heard in "Au
pays des visages" is an original score, as most of it can also be heard in
"L'apocalypse des animaux", so it could be that Frédéric Rossif just re-used
that score for this documentary.
The film focuses on the photography of
Gisèle Freund (1908-2000),
the renowned and award-winning German-born photographer who fled the Nazi-regime
in Germany in 1933. She received a PhD at the Sorbonne in Paris, and pioneered
in portrait-photography including photos of Andre Malraux, Boris Pasternak,
Walter Benjamin, Virginia Woolf, Eva Peron, Samuel Beckett and James Joyce to
name but a few.
In 1940 again she escaped the nazis and fled from the south of France to
Argentina. Later she also worked in Mexico and returned to Paris after the war,
where she wrote several books on photography, some of these autobiographical.
Other art-based documentaries by Frédéric Rossif that Vangelis
provided a musical score for include Georges Mathieu ou la fureur d'être
(1971), Georges Braque ou le temps différent
(1974), Pablo Picasso
peintre (1981) and Morandi (1989).
Details and Credits
Au pays des visages (France, 1972)
Length: 45 minutes
Directed by Frédéric Rossif
General direction: Jean-Charles Cuttoli
Cinematography: Georges Barsky
Sound Engineer: Augusto Galli
Montage: Geneviève Winding
Assistent montage: Gisèle Chezeau
Music by Vangelis Papathanassiou
Text by Mando Aravantinou
Dialog by Martine Sarcey and Pierre Vaneck
Producer: Michelle Wiart
Assistent producer: Jean Mylonas
Produced by Télé Hachette and Bayericher Rundfunk.
Media
Unfortunately "Au pays des visages " has never been released in
any format after its original production in 1972.
Synopsis
(in French) "Frédéric Rossif a tenté d'aborder l'oeuvre de Gisèle
Freund mais le sujet n'est pas cerné. Veut-il nous faire rencontrer cette grande
photographe ? Elle est, dans ce film qui parle beaucoup, bien absente du
discours. Le titre "Au pays des visages" donne une autre piste, celle des
personnalités littéraires qu'elle a admirablement photographiées, de Joyce à
Virginia Woolf en passant par Adrienne Monnier, Walter Benjamin, Malraux. Mais
là encore, il y a dispersion dans les citations, les plans de coupe du paysage
style calendrier des postes, l'interview d'Asturias, fragment de travail
télévisuel, et le rappel fragmentaire de son travail de photoreporter à Paris,
en Angleterre. Où sommes-nous ? Au niveau des images et du son, on se retrouve
dans le daté, les tics emphatiques des années 50/70 : la présentation
"dictionnaire" de tous les auteurs, la voix du commentateur qui martèle les
textes, les stéréotypes poétiques, etc. Un film historique que la sensibilité
actuelle reçoit avec surprise. A voir parce qu'historique."
Movements
